Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4)

by JC Andrijeski

  THE GUARDIAN WATCHED.

  He looked in the window of an upper-story apartment building, unmoving on a heavy branch in the tree outside that same window’s glass.

  The person inside didn’t know he was there.

  No one expected someone to watch them from a tree, not in the city.

  The one he watched was still awake, however. Occasionally, the guardian saw the faint shine of their eyes through the window now that the lights were off. He knew they did not sleep, but stared out over the view of the city and the bay and the orange streetlights.

  He wondered what they thought about. What moved them now, in these final hours.

  Eventually, the man inside the apartment must have tired of trying to sleep.

  The guardian watched as he threw the red silk covers back and sat up, rubbing his face with his hands after he’d turned on the light perched on a low table by his bed. Light scratches decorated one arm. A deeper set of scratches from the same set of fingernails also patterned his neck and the top part of his chest. A bruise discolored part of his jaw, even in the dim light.

  This one had fought back.

  Still, the man seemed pleased with himself.

  The light on the bed table looked expensive. Colored glass twisted into artistic shapes, it didn’t look like it had been machine-made. Something about it looked vaguely obscene. Given where this man lived and how he lived, the guardian suspected no other lamp existed like it in the world––that it was original, and hand made, like the painting on the wall over the bed and the metal sculpture on the balcony overlooking the city lights.

  Those blood-red sheets covered his king-sized bed––fitting in terms of color, and likely covered in stains that the guardian could not see. The man wore no shirt, only red boxer-briefs and a gold chain around his neck.

  He was a weight-lifter. Proud of the work he had sculpted.

  His muscles were not particularly functional, even though he used them in his extra-curricular activities. To the guardian, they looked primarily decorative.

  The man was vain. Vain about his body. Vain about his life.

  He had not brought the girl tonight back to his own apartment.

  He never brought them to his home. He never brought them where he might be found and identified later. This was his sanctuary. His lair.

  Earlier that night, he had followed her to her own sanctuary, for the sole purpose of making it unsafe. Unlike him, she’d lived modestly, in a small, single dorm room on the campus of San Francisco State University. This man had left her there, too, approximately five hours earlier. The guardian watched him leave, and, seeing the state of him, the scratches on his arms and neck, the bruise on his face that hadn’t been there before, he had suspected what occurred inside.

  As in times before, when his love had still been a child––the guardian got there too late.

  When he entered that dorm room, the man had already finished his work.

  The guardian felt regret for that. Regret––but also resolve.

  He watched the man now.

  Awake. Perhaps still wound up from his conquest earlier.

  He’d left the girl with two black eyes, five broken teeth, a concussion, several broken ribs. Lacerations. Bruises. A leg that might have been broken. Possibly a cracked pelvis.

  The guardian felt her over, but could not be certain of all of the broken and bruised pieces he felt. She had been unconscious. He called an ambulance, but did not wait for them to arrive.

  He thought she would live, but he could not be certain of that, either.

  It would make no difference to this man. Even apart from the direction of the man’s own fate that night, the guardian knew that. He had left the girl for dead. He had enjoyed himself. He would also do it again.

  There would be no confessions from this one. No feigned remorse, no begging, no tears. He would not say he was sorry, like the vampire had, from the night before.

  He would not pray with the guardian.

  This was an animal. Animals did not ask for absolution. Animals felt no remorse––and they did not pray. Once they became dangerous to man, animals needed only to be put down.

  The guardian had no doubt that the man had done this before. He had hurt before. Over and over again, hunting and stalking, hurting and feeding and fucking like a rabid dog. He would never stop. Not until a guardian came from the woods and took his pelt.

  Broke the sharpened teeth. Ripped out the offending heart.

  Everything had changed since the guardian came up here, to this new place... this new city.

  They had needed him here, far more than he’d known.

  She needed him.

  He understood now, why the old woman had approached him.

  He had left the city of his birth––the City of Angels––only to be gifted with a new angel upon his arrival here, one who would show him the direction of his new path. Perhaps not an angel this time––a saint. His very own St. Francis, who led him through the woods by the hand, pointing out the patches of decay, the areas where he could do the most good in making the grounds pure for new growth.

  She whispered to him now, telling him that this man had cut out her heart.

  It bothered the guardian.

  It bothered him greatly.

  She forgave the guardian, for letting it happen. She forgave the guardian for coming too late. She murmured to him, comforted him, forgave him, absolved him. She reminded him that he had been needed elsewhere before now.

  But it bothered the guardian. It bothered him greatly.

  He watched the man in the red boxer briefs pace his hardwood floors.

  The guardian sat there, motionless, watching as the same man snatched an expensive mobile phone off his kitchen counter, calling up a number as he wandered the mostly-dark rooms. The guardian watched the man’s face as he gazed out the window overlooking the city.

  He watched him as someone on the other end answered his call.

  He watched him talk. Laugh.

  He laughed a few times, throwing back his head, that meaner glint still in his eyes as he scanned the city streets, perhaps thinking of his next prey. He laughed and paced and talked and when he finally put down the phone, he turned on a widescreen television, sitting cross-legged on a red leather couch and smiling to himself, like a wolf.

  A wolf who has just eaten. Who is still cherishing being fed.

  The guardian did not move.

  He watched the man who had hurt his beautiful saint, thinking about how he had done it. He had changed her with his hurt, not broken but bent her, turned her into a Saint of War––a beautiful thing in its own right, with the power of Light behind her. But she had left her heart behind. She had cut out her heart and put it in a box, and that pained the guardian greatly.

  She was stronger than most. Most would not come out of it more beautiful than they had been before the pain.

  The girl in the dorm room would not.

  And his beautiful saint, his holy warrior––she had cut out her heart.

  She had done it because of this man with the red boxer shorts and the stupid, obscene lamp and the ugly paintings.

  A man who’d spent a few hours that evening in a college dorm room on the other side of town, playing music loudly to disguise the sounds as he beat a young female co-ed majoring in theoretical mathematics nearly to death.

  The guardian watched him, thinking about these things.

  This man would not create any more angels of war, however beautiful they might be.

  The man in the red boxer briefs paced the length of his four room flat.

  The guardian watched the movements of the apartment’s single occupant with a studied detachment. He could wait... for days. Weeks, if need be. He was patient. He was willing to wait for however long it took to ensure he accomplished his goal.

  Tonight, however, that would not be necessary.

  Even so, the certainty that he did not need to rush calmed the guardian, just as it always d
id.

  Just like the vampire in the bar, this one had revealed himself to the guardian quite willingly. That, or the guardian had grown more skilled at seeing... at listening... at opening those cracked doors to let in the Light.

  He hoped that was so.

  Life was about finding the one thing.

  Finding it, then bending one’s whole life, one’s whole soul around whatever that one thing was. Becoming one with it. Merging it into one’s mind and body until that one thing was perfected inside the purest beating of a single human heart. Until that one thing became not only who he was––but what he was.

  This was his one thing.

  He was the guardian.

  He would protect his saint, no matter what it took.

  Eight

  LOYALTY

  MY PHONE RANG right by my ear, so loudly I jerked up, panting, before my mind snapped back enough to recognize the sound. My immediate thought was that it was Black. Without looking at the caller ID, I snatched it up, pressing the answer key and holding it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey.” Not Black. Nick. “Doc, you at Angel’s still?”

  I combed a hand through my sleep-mussed hair, squinting out the bay window at the morning sun. It looked like it had only been up above the horizon for a few minutes.

  “Yep,” I said, still trying to wake up, to even get my eyes open. “It’s early, Nick. What’s up? Something happen?”

  “We’ve got another one.”

  My mind clicked into sharper focus. “The Templar?” I said.

  “Looks that way, yeah. Mozar thinks so.”

  “Where?” I squinted at a clock shaped like an elephant on Angel’s wall, rubbed my eyes. “Who found the body?”

  “Guy got killed in his own house. He lived alone, but had a housekeeper who came in early. She found it. Apparently it’s a real fucking mess.” He hesitated, and I could feel something on him that time. Something I got the distinct impression he didn’t want to tell me.

  “What?” Fear ribboned sharply through me. “What happened? Is Black okay?”

  Nick exhaled in annoyance. “Christ, Miri. He’s fine. Far as I know, anyway. He hasn’t called in since I saw you yesterday.” He hesitated again, then sighed. “Just get Angel up, okay? You both need to get down here. I’ll tell you more when I see you.”

  “Nick––” I began, frustrated.

  But he’d already hung up.

  I stared at the face of the phone for a few seconds more before I jerked to my feet.

  BY THE TIME I’d managed to get Angel up and out of bed and the coffee made and both of us through the shower and more or less dressed and ready to go, Nick had already called me back and told us to meet him at the crime scene instead of at the station.

  He gave me an address in Russian Hill that I didn’t know, which was a relief, but he still didn’t tell me anything, which was starting to piss me off.

  When we pulled up to the curb on Hyde Street, just across from the famous, switchback segment of Lombard Street, it was easy to tell which building it was. The cops already had the whole area cordoned off, and the same two uniforms I remembered from the day before stood in front of the building, keeping the entrance clear from tourists, who were already starting to mill around the area in curiosity, even though it couldn’t have been later than seven a.m.

  Luckily, the same uniform cop Nick badged the day before remembered me.

  I’d reached the entrance before Angel while she went to park the car, and it didn’t occur to me until then that’d I’d forgotten my consultant’s tag, which I normally wore around my neck. But the uniform cop with the crew cut smiled at me right off, gesturing with a hand to go right in.

  Nodding and smiling back in relief, I walked through the etched glass doors of the lobby. I was a little surprised when the cop followed me, motioning me towards the building’s only elevator once he’d entered the lobby behind me.

  I only understood why when I got inside the elevator itself. Like at Black’s place, the penthouse apartment needed a key to get to the top.

  The cop with the crew cut and the shy smile had the key. Following me into the elevator, he inserted the strangely cut piece of metal into the jagged key hole under the round numbers, twisted it sideways, and pressed the button for “PH” at the top.

  Then he exited the elevator, smiling at me again and bowing his head.

  Old school manners. Kind of nice. At least he wasn’t being weird to me, like Mozar and Glen and pretty much everyone else had been yesterday. I never once saw the uniform cop look lower than my eyes.

  I was ridiculously glad to be wearing my own clothes again. Nick stopped by my apartment before dinner the night before so I could pack a bag for Angel’s, and I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to fill an overnight bag with my own shirts, my own pants and socks and skirts and shoes––and my own, clean supply of bras and underwear.

  When I reached the top of the building, the doors opened directly into an apartment.

  Whoever had lived here definitely had money.

  Maybe not Black kind of money, but closer to that ballpark than most.

  The view alone would have convinced me of that, even if it wasn’t for the fireplace embedded in the wall, surrounded by what looked like pure white marble. Expensive-looking art covered the walls, and a Chinese dragon made of pure jade covered most of the mantle. The porch outside those giant windows overlooked most of downtown and had a fire pit and a hot tub, along with a rock garden and expensive, dark-wood deck furniture surrounded by more modern art sculptures and more Chinese stone art. I even saw an antique-looking stone screen covered in more dragons, like something from the Forbidden City.

  The guy had a bit of a China-dragon fetish.

  Something about this felt familiar.

  I couldn’t put my finger on what. I’d definitely never been here before.

  Following the sounds of low voices, I walked across the length of those bay windows, which seemed to wrap around the entire flat, and entered an entertainment room. The apartment seemed to make up a single, long line that wrapped around the top of the hill, probably to maximize as much of the view as possible with the available square footage. The way it was designed, I wondered if some famous architect had built it.

  I heard Nick’s voice as I approached what must have been the master bedroom.

  Without waiting, I walked inside, and then immediately came to an abrupt stop.

  I was used to crime scenes. I’d seen quite a few of them.

  But this one was something else.

  I stared up at a suspended, headless corpse, hanging over the bed.

  It looked like he’d been decapitated after he’d been suspended, and hung upside down so the blood would pour down in a straight line until the heart stopped. The heart had then been removed, likely post-mortem from the lack of blood around the cuts in his chest.

  When I looked down, I saw it––the heart, I mean.

  The killer had placed it in a carved black wooden box, also Chinese-looking, and left it right in the middle of the bed.

  The dark red sheets were black in the center from all of that blood, and visibly wet still, so this couldn’t have happened all that long ago. A few hours probably. Maybe less.

  The coppery smell filled the room.

  I stared at the man’s naked back and saw the same wing-like carvings there as I’d seen on Norberg. That strange, laddered A-symbol stood in the center, clean and much more easily readable this time, maybe because most of the blood had been drained out by the position of the corpse. There also seemed to be more writing.

  “What does it say?” I said to no one in particular, pointing at the letters. “Is it readable?”

  Nick answered from behind me. “Yes.”

  I glanced back and saw him flipping through the notebook he carried. He found it a few seconds later.

  “They come to you looking gentle like sheep, but they are really dangerous like wolves. You will
know these people by what they do.” Nick grunted, glancing up at me. “That one I’ve heard. I looked it up. Matthew 7:14-16.”

  Something else occurred to me. I looked around for the head, realizing only then that I’d never seen Norberg’s the day before.

  “The heads,” I said, feeling foolish it hadn’t occurred to me before. “What does he do with the heads?”

  I turned, looking at Nick once more, and he frowned. He glanced at Mozar, who I realized only then was the man standing next to him. The suit he wore today was the same color blue as his eyes. The material looked heavier, so more San Francisco-appropriate.

  “It was in the hot tub, Miri,” Nick said, blunt. “Unlike Norberg, this one had been scalped. He pinned the scalp to the grass, like he was drying it.”

  I grimaced. “And Norberg’s?”

  “They picked it up last night,” Mozar said from next to Nick. “It washed ashore in the Marina. That one wasn’t scalped.”

  I nodded, muttering, “Water.”

  “It seems to be a theme, yes,” Mozar said, even though I hadn’t said it very loud.

  When I glanced over, he aimed the pen he was holding at the new victim’s back and the laddered A symbol.

  “We got a definition back on that. The closest seems to be ‘essence’ or ‘quintessence,’ although there’s some disagreement about the symbolic meanings. That, combined with some of the other symbols suggests that he sees his role as a ‘purification.’ It might be why he leaves the heads in water. Salt water, especially, has a purifying quality, it is believed.”

  “The hot tub?” I said, frowning. I didn’t follow his pointing pen back to the corpse. “Kind of a stretch for purification.”

  If Mozar noticed me avoiding looking at the corpse, he didn’t comment on it.

  “The vic used salt in his hot tub to clean the water,” he explained. “Not chlorine.” At what must have been a puzzled look from me, he gestured vaguely with the pen. “It’s all the rage now. Better for your skin, apparently.”

  I nodded, not sure if he was kidding or not.

  I looked at Nick, who was frowning at me.