She stood with the slow deliberateness of someone used to her own drunkenness. She rested the bottle on the table next to the paper. The story in the Press was about the identity of one of the decapitated bodies they had found in Kingsbury Run. One of them had been Edward Andrassy. The police had identified him by his fingerprints.
Eddie.
Of all the evil things to come home to after her mother’s funeral. To find out that not only had Eddie been killed, but that someone had severed his head. Flo rubbed her own neck thinking, That’s how you kill them....
Flo tried to chide herself for caring. How many other men had left her for one reason or another? Men left her every goddamn night.
Somehow Eddie was different. Eddie was the only one of the whole damned group that seemed to care beyond himself. Eddie had been the only one to question what was going on. He wanted out of this world as much as any of them. But he shared with Flo some questions about the cost, and more courage to voice them.
Flo wondered if that was what got him killed. She felt colder than ever.
The shades were drawn, but the sunset cut a molten line across the wall opposite the window. The line fell across the shelf holding her dolls. She turned to them and felt her eyes moisten. They stared back with eyes glassy and dead.
Flo loved the dolls. They were the one thing that followed her everywhere she moved. They were the only children she would ever have. But right now it seemed as if she shared her room with a dozen tiny corpses.
She sat at the table and watched the blind-carved sunlight cut molten-red stripes across the room. Everything was gray except the light. The room was colorless, emotionless, like every other room she’d rented by herself. She spent her life moving from place to place, wallowing in the ugliness. She liked to think that someday she would find someone or something that would make it better, lift her away from this endless numb grayness.
Melchior promised an escape from this dead world, and for a while she had believed him. But the grays were still gray, and the only promise of color was the sunlight washing her walls with the tint of blood.
If it was all true, she would even lose that, the smoky-red sunlight that sometimes refused to warm her. She would be trading the sun for what might be grayness without end.
The sunlight faded, plunging her room into darkness. She lifted the bottle to her lips with a shaking hand, and another ice-cold hand touched her wrist. She froze at the touch, unable to move.
“Hello, Florence,” the familiar whispery voice said from behind her. “You were missed.” The cold hand traveled up her arm, and the only movement that Flo was capable of was an involuntary shudder.
She opened her mouth to explain, but fear and liquor choked off her words leaving her stuttering, “... I ... I...I...”
Another hand found her free hand, placing her in a cold embrace from behind. So cold, but in two places it was becoming very warm. Not the places a man usually became warm. His wrists, where they touched her skin, began pulsing with a warmth that throbbed deep within the vein.
Her visitor kept talking. “I know where you were, Florence. Your landlady, Mrs. Ford, drove you to Pierpont for your mother’s funeral.”
“H-h-how?” His wrists were like brands on her skin. A warm sensation spread beneath her skin, a feeling like the liquor, or like the first brush of sex before it became disappointing.
Lips brushed the back of her neck like the touch of a flame. She shuddered again and squeezed her legs together. “You are all a part of me now,” he said. “Never forget that.” His teeth lightly bit the back of her neck, drawing blood. A violent shudder shook her, and the bottle slipped out of her fingers.
She was no longer cold.
“I feel what any of you do.” He licked the trickle of blood from her neck. “That was why Andrassy had to die with my enemy.”
Flo was breathing hard now. Her body was filled with the warmth, the hunger, the need. Her world wasn’t gray any longer, it was burning with reds and yellows. It was hard for her to speak. She wanted it so badly. But she managed to ask, “Why Eddie? Why that way?” Every word hung upon a shuddering breath.
“There are others like me, my enemies. Eddie betrayed me to them.” He drew his tongue across the back of her neck. “All of you are too close to coming over to me now. A normal death might produce a crippled thrall. He had to die like one of us.”
Flo was beyond speech now. She could smell the pulsing warmth in his wrists, his heart beating so slow it was agony. He released her hand and turned his wrist toward her. It felt like the sun shining on her face. He raised it to just below her mouth.
“You are leaving your world. Sever what ties you have left to it. When you join me, nothing and no one will follow you where you go.” Below her, the skin slit itself along the vein. The long wound wept blood that seemed to glow with an inner light. It was impossible to refuse, even had she wanted to.
What was Eddie compared to this?
Flo descended on the offered arm and fed.
8
Friday, October 5
Stefan was at home, staring at a newspaper, but not really reading it, when the phone rang. He let it go a few times before he answered it. He was frustrated and didn’t really want to talk to anybody.
When he answered the phone, it was Nuri’s voice on the other end. “Hello, Stefan?”
“Yeah, what is it, Nuri?”
“I just called to see how you’re doing.”
Stefan shook his head. “I appreciate the concern, but how do you think I’m doing?”
“The vacation’s got you out of joint, doesn’t it?”
Stefan sighed into the receiver. “I just need to figure out what to do with myself.”
“What are you going to do when you retire?”
“Let’s change the subject. Are you calling from work? Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” Nuri said. “It’s not a problem, just something I thought you’d like to know.”
“What?”
“Have you been following the Kingsbury Run murders?”
“I’m on vacation, remember?”
Nuri chuckled a little. “Well it’s not like I’m doing any real investigating, but they need loads of people to tote that barge and lift that bale. They have me going through missing persons’ records.”
“So?”
“I’m looking at people who disappeared on or before September twenty-third, and while I’ve yet to find a match for our headless body, I did find someone you might be interested in.”
Nuri paused and Stefan said, “Come on, spit it out.”
“Apparently a colored woman lost her husband on September twenty-second, after a fight, last seen wearing overalls and walking in the direction of the railroad tracks around dusk.”
Nuri was right, Stefan was interested. “Where, what tracks?”
“Would you believe East Forty-Ninth?”
“The Run?”
“The Run.”
Stefan shook his head, “That has got to be the man I found—”
“Way ahead of you,” Nuri said, “Get a piece of paper, I have her address.”
Stefan quickly copied the name “Wilma Fairfax” and an address not too far away from the Run.
“If you’re lucky,” Nuri said, “the wife has a photograph of him, and you can put that case to bed.”
“Thanks,” Stefan said, shaking his head. He felt the return of some of the unease he’d felt when talking to Iago. Mrs. Fairfax’s husband had been heading toward the Run at dusk. Hours later he’d been bleeding and screaming about the Devil.
Stefan wondered if the man had seen something.
He was quiet long enough for Nuri to ask, “Are you all right?”
Stefan nodded. “Yeah. I’m just wondering how I’m going to explain that the hospital lost her husband’s body.”
It was getting close on to nine o’clock when Stefan drove his car down the little brick dead-end street that Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax called home. The
street was lined with apartment buildings that felt too large for such a narrow street. The bricks glittered, the street lights reflecting over broken glass.
As he rolled to a stop in front of the Fairfaxes’ building, he thought he heard gunshots. He tensed and scrambled out of the car before he realized that the shots were from a radio, just someone playing the climax of “Death Valley Days” too loud. He straightened up, feeling somewhat embarrassed as the show drifted into a cigarette commercial.
He chided himself. There was an echo that made the radio program sound deeper, and made the sound a little more realistic, but the error had to be mostly his own nerves. Something about this was making him uneasy, far more uneasy than the typical notification of the next of kin.
The Fairfaxes’ building was a tired pile of brick that waved laundry out a few windows, but otherwise drew blinds against the neighborhood it found itself in. He walked up the front steps, trying to ignore the radio in the background. He could feel glass crunching under his feet all the way to the front door.
The halls inside the apartment were dark and narrow. They smelled of cooking and rusty plumbing. From behind the doors he could hear more radios, at a more decent volume, children playing, couples talking or arguing, and he passed one door that closed in the sounds of two people being very passionate with each other.
He stopped in front of the door to the Fairfaxes’ rooms, and heard nothing beyond it. His unease increased.
Stefan rang the doorbell, and he could imagine the bell echoing in an empty apartment. There was no response. He rang again and called, “Mrs. Fairfax? Police. I need to talk to you.”
Still no response.
He knocked and rang again. “It’s about your husband.”
With that, the door swung open into a spartan apartment. The person opening the door wasn’t Mrs. Fairfax. Stefan stared dumbly at the man for a few minutes. For a few long moments Stefan was convinced he had gotten the address wrong.
But when the man said, “Detective Ryzard, fancy meeting you again,” it began to sink in who this man was. Stefan wouldn’t need any pictures to identify Mr. Fairfax. He was standing in front of him, the same man he had driven out of the Flats, the same man who had supposedly died at St. Vincent’s Charity.
At least now he knew why the hospital had lost the body.
“Mr. Fairfax?”’ Stefan said. He tried to keep the shock out of his voice, but he couldn’t help staring. It was the same man, the same face, clean of blood now. The same hair, graying at the temples. The same crazed eyes that seemed to be looking beyond everything.
“Yes, yes,” Fairfax said, nodding. His eyes belied the calmness of his voice, which was almost dead of emotion. His voice was a cold monotone, but his eyes were ablaze with something—anger, fear, hate, lust... Stefan couldn’t tell, but it fed his own growing unease.
“Can I come in?” Stefan asked. “I think we need to talk.”
“Of course,” Fairfax said. “I apologize for any trouble we’ve caused you.”
He opened the door on the little two-room apartment. The first thing that struck Stefan was the smell of burning wax. The main room was dim, lit only by a half-dozen candles. It took a moment for Stefan’s eyes to adjust to the dimness enough for him to enter.
Fairfax walked over to a threadbare couch and sat next to an old woman that Stefan guessed was Wilma Fairfax. Now that the initial shock of seeing the man was receding, he noticed that the man was dressed differently. He wore a pinstripe suit that was tailored for him. It wasn’t the height of luxury, but it was out of line for the apartment he lived in, as well as for the clothes Stefan had seen him in before.
“Mr. Fairfax—” Stefan began.
“You can call me Samson,” he said, placing his hand on Wilma Fairfax’s. Stefan noticed that she didn’t move at the contact. She remained sitting, hands on her knees, staring at her lap. The woman didn’t even look up to see the stranger enter her house. The posture worried him.
“Samson then. Just to reassure myself, you are the same Samson Fairfax that your wife reported missing? The same man I drove to St. Vincent’s?”
Samson Fairfax nodded, much of his expression outside of his eyes invisible in the candlelight. “Isn’t it obvious?” Stefan saw a hint of a smile that instantly vanished.
“Not if you believe the doctor at St. Vincent’s.”
Samson shrugged. “The doctor made a mistake, that’s all. I have a sickness, gives me ‘spells,’ as my mother used to call them. I woke up on a cart with all these dead people, I got out of there fast.”
Stefan nodded. “So why didn’t you tell any doctors, or the police, when you recovered?”
“My family was more important. I had to take care of Wilma.” Stefan noticed Samson squeeze Wilma’s hand. The gesture looked less than tender. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
Stefan nodded. Wilma’s silence was beginning to disturb him. He turned to address his next question to her. “Why didn’t you call us to tell us your husband had returned?”
“Why should she?” Samson said.
“She filed a missing person’s report that’s still open. That’s how I found you.”
“Oh,” Samson said in a voice that seemed to grow even colder. “I did not know that.” He turned to face his wife, and Stefan could almost see her wince. “I’m certain that it was just an oversight on her part. Wasn’t it?”
Samson rubbed her knee, and Wilma gave a weak nod. She seemed to shrink in place. Stefan could almost feel what she was shrinking from. There was something present here, a weight behind Samson’s eyes, steel in his voice, a hardness in his posture. None of it had been present the last time Stefan had seen the man.
Samson had been the same man who’d been crazed and near death in the Flats, but he wasn’t. Stefan couldn’t rationalize the feeling, but it felt as if the core of this man had been hollowed out and something ominous had been poured in to fill the empty space.
“Forgive my wife,” said the man who looked so much like Samson Fairfax. “When I returned, she was quite ill. I’ve been doing what I can to tend to her.”
He commanded attention away from his wife, as if she were mere furniture. Stefan felt the pull of his words and resented it. It was disquieting to realize that he disliked the man whose life he had saved.
“Are you a religious man, Mr. Fairfax?”
Samson responded with an iron stare. Stefan could feel the offense carried in the gaze. It wasn’t the offense of a man whose faith was questioned.
“I’m asking,” Stefan continued, “because of some of the things you said to me when I took you to the hospital. You talked about the Devil walking the tracks. You asked me to pray for you—”
“I do not need your prayers, Detective Ryzard.”
“I just wondered what you had been referring to—”
“I was referring to nothing. It was deranged babble. There is no devil.”
“Perhaps you saw something farther up the tracks. You’ve heard about the murders that happened in the Run the same night?”
Samson stood. “I think you should go. You are upsetting my wife.”
Stephan stood, maintaining an uncomfortable eye contact with Samson. Something made him start to repeat the Twenty-third Psalm in his head. I shall fear no evil, Stefan thought as he asked, “Did you see anything on the tracks that night?”
“I was not in my mind then. I remember nothing of that evening.”
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Stefan stared into Samson’s eyes. “Then how is it that you know who I am?”
An ugly expression, near to hatred, broke across Samson’s face like a wave cresting an insufficient breakwater. In his eyes, Stefan saw a fury that made him start reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. He was off-duty. He shouldn’t even be here.
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
It was Samson who broke eye contact. “Get out of my house,” he said. Stefan backed toward the door. He could hear the th
reat in Samson’s voice, and he was in no position to test it. Maybe if he was here officially, he would have. Not now.
As he backed over the threshold, he could catch a glimpse of Wilma’s eyes as she finally lifted her head to regard him. That glance frightened him, a glance from eyes that were as dull as those of a corpse.
“I did pray for you,” Stefan whispered as Samson slammed the door on him.
Stefan stood before the door for a long time, but no noise emerged from the apartment beyond. Eventually he turned and walked away. As he left, his mind drifted back to Iago. There was no logic to the connection Stefan began making between the men. Nothing to link them but a similarity of presence.
And the murders in Kingsbury Run.
As Stefan walked to his car, his feet crunched across glass again. This time he looked more closely and saw fragments of a broken mirror.
9
Thursday, October 10
Carlo Pasquale drove. That’s all he did. There was more to what was going on, but he was involved in the Mayfield Road Mob through relatives, not through ambition. He had no desire to know. When Papa said drive, he drove, no questions.
As Carlo drove the long black V-12 Lincoln toward the docks, he thought he wasn’t quite as ignorant as he wished to be. His passenger was going to a meeting with a man named Dietrich, and from the shotgun his passenger carried, it wasn’t to shake hands. Carlo didn’t want to know what Dietrich had done to anger Papa.
The Lincoln slid into fog coming off of the lake. The world turned gray outside. Carlo felt that the night had turned very cold, even though he was safely buttoned up in the car.
They were passing warehouses, and his passenger, till then mute, started giving him directions. In the fog, the car traced a maze that Carlo barely felt able to retrace, only from memorizing his passenger’s directions, not from any visible landmarks.
Eventually Carlo heard the instruction, “Kill the lights and turn right into the next open bay.”
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