by Kiss of Evil
The bay is large, perhaps ten by fifteen feet, and stacked ceiling to floor with the detritus a man acquires in forty-some years of life: a rusting band saw, mismatched golf clubs, a delaminated poker table. Along the back wall are Dolores’s things. Hatboxes, white-handled shopping bags stuffed with clothes, along with a few big boxes from a ladies’ retailer whose name Paris hadn’t heard in years.
The space smells of mildew, mice; the damp ennui of shelved memory.
Within ten minutes or so, by the light of the single forty-watt bulb in the ceiling, Paris had sifted through all the musty books and folders and papers on the desk. Nothing pertinent to any investigation Michael had been working on. Nothing that leapt out at him. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to pull open the small floor safe serving as a stand for Michael’s old Remington manual typewriter. The safe did not open, but, after a few long-unpracticed turns of a bent paper clip, the bottom right-hand drawer on the desk did.
In the drawer is a solitary item: a nine-by-twelve envelope.
Paris removes the envelope, opens it. Inside is a black-and-white photograph of a corpse, the mutilated, naked body of a man lying in a gravel parking lot. There is a white brick wall to the right, the wheels of a big Dumpster behind the man’s right shoulder. The man is horribly disfigured, slicked with blood nearly head to toe. With disgust, Paris can see that pieces—large pieces—of the man’s midsection are missing; chunks that appear to have been torn away, eaten, as if animals had been at the body.
But it is the appearance of the man’s head that runs a cold finger up Paris’s spine.
The man’s head is completely wrapped in barbed wire.
The photograph looks like a standard police crime-scene photo but is not marked in any official way. The yellowing edges and slightly sienna whites tell him the picture is old. Fifteen, twenty years maybe. In the upper-right-hand corner is an address, handwritten in faded blue ink. An address on East Twenty-third Street.
Paris flips the picture over and what he sees on the back tricks his eyes for a moment, then comes swimming back into focus.
It is a sentence. A simple, handwritten, five-word sentence that should not be written on the back of a picture in a dead man’s desk, a man who had not drawn breath in two years.
Scrawled in red, from the coldness of his grave, Michael Ryan says:
Evil is a breed, Fingers.
Two
∼
Spell
14
BELMONT CORNERS, OHIO
THIRTY YEARS EARLIER . . .
The woman waits in the emergency room at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital on Greenville Road, her face a mass of swollen tissue, her womb a capacious medicine ball beneath her dress. It is New Year’s Eve and the woman’s ex-husband had stopped by the trailer at around five-thirty that evening, supposedly to drop off a late Christmas present for his daughter, but what he really wanted was what he always wanted. Drug money. The scene had escalated so quickly that the woman had not even had time to lock her daughter in the bedroom for her own protection, although the man had never once laid a finger on the little girl.
The little girl’s mother was far too satisfying a target.
Lydia del Blanco is twenty-seven years old, an unlicensed hairdresser of moderate skill, a folk singer of unexplored talent, a slender young woman with clear amber eyes. But today her eyes are a muddied rust; her skin, a rough topography of distended, yellowing welts. Anthony del Blanco had taken a belt to her, one of his favorite weapons of intimidation.
To Lydia’s left sits her four-year-old daughter Fina, a slight, dark-haired bundle of worry who seems, for the moment at least, to have abandoned her circuitous route around the waiting room, her sobbing and her flopping-around in oversized blue rubber galoshes. Since she had been a toddler, Lydia had not been able to fool her daughter about the beatings, although they had come in decreasing frequency since Anthony had left the trailer and moved in with one of his never-ending parade of whores.
But Fina knows who her father is, and what he sometimes does to her mother. Still, she is far too young to hate him. She just wants the yelling to stop and her mom to be happy.
And so she cries . . .
When her name is called, Lydia rises slowly to her feet and approaches the frosted glass window. Amid the usual details, the usual lies, she tells the woman that her ex-husband is dead; which, in Lydia’s mind and heart, he is. But it is Anthony del Blanco’s violent act of rape eight months earlier that gave seed to this formerly restless child in her womb, this child Lydia del Blanco had alternately hated and loved, this child who had not kicked her for more than three hours.
As Lydia is helped to a wheelchair, her daughter begins to cry again, her tears now thin, meandering streams down her cheeks. She dutifully walks alongside her mother’s chair until they reach Examining Room One. Then, without tantrum, her utter exhaustion preventing such a display, she stops as they lift her mother onto a gurney and wheel her away.
A pleasant young candy striper named Constance Aguillar takes Fina’s hand and leads her over to the vending machines, where she buys her a Snickers and a Coke.
But before the little girl can take a single bite, she crawls onto one of the padded chairs and, within moments, falls fast asleep.
At the stroke of midnight, the moment when just about everyone living in the eastern standard time zone of the United States is popping champagne corks in celebration; the moment when Anthony del Blanco is taking carnal pleasure with a prostitute named Vickie Pomeroy in Room 511 of the TraveLodge on Cannon Road; the moment when four-year-old Fina is asleep and dreaming of a place where her father doesn’t raise his voice or his hand, Lydia screams in agony, just once, a long, solitary call of admonition to all those who would harm her or her family in the future.
And Lydia del Blanco has a baby boy. A healthy, seven-pound-five-ounce boy born of a brand new day, a brand new year.
A boy, Anthony del Blanco would one day discover, born of violence.
15
The dead woman’s name was Fayette Martin.
At the time of her murder she was thirty years old, never married, no children. A graduate of Mayfield High School on Cleveland’s far east side, a real computer buff when she wasn’t raising prize-winning orchids in her spare time; this according to a phone interview Paris had conducted with her brother, Edgar, a resident of Milwaukee, her only living relative.
She had been identified through the Department of Motor Vehicles. Her late-model red Chevy had been parked a few blocks from the Reginald Building, where her body was found. Prints taken at the scene matched prints found in the car, and the ID was made. She had worked at a florist shop in suburban Chesterland for the past twelve years.
The official cause of her demise would be recorded as “blood loss due to severe head trauma,” but that would tell only part of the story. What really happened to Fayette Martin was that someone took a very large, very sharp knife—a machete, perhaps, or a hefty steel saber—and sliced off the top of her head. One clean blow. The coroner found no serration on the woman’s skull, no evidence of sawing. And there is a good chance that the woman was engaged in intercourse at some point either before or during the bloody event, but not after. Reuben says during, but has decided to keep that opinion unofficial for the time being.
Paris finds small solace in the fact that, on top of all this, they are not chasing a necrophiliac.
Generally, when there is evidence connecting the methodology, if not the motive, of two murders, there is some similarity in the victims: college girls, prostitutes, insurance salesmen. But this time, the two deceased could not be more disparate:
A dead black man found in a room at the Dream-A-Dream, robbed and castrated.
A dead white woman found in the Reginald Building on East Fortieth Street, the top of her head lopped off, her brain removed from the scene.
What makes them kin, in death, is that both victims had a strange symbol of a bow and arrow carved somewhere on their bodi
es. A symbol as yet unidentified.
As of two days before Christmas, the official position of the Cleveland Police department is that these killings are not related.
Three photographs are taped to the chalkboard in the common room on the sixth floor of the Justice Center. Around the trash and file-strewn conference table sit three police officers: Detective Jack Paris, Detective Greg Ebersole, and Sergeant Carla Davis of the Sex Crimes Unit.
Carla Davis is black, thirty-five, a stunning six-one, with broad shoulders and dark green eyes flecked with gold. Even if she wasn’t married, most of the guys in the department would be far too intimidated by Carla to have the guts to make a move on her. She looks like a big sexy forward in the WNBA, a woman who took no shit when she worked vice—where she was the undisputed queen of the prostitution sting—and takes even less now as second in command of the Sex Crimes Unit.
The past twenty-four hours have yielded a forming of this task force, as well as a shifting of assignments.
All police officers believe that there is something special about being the very first investigator to physically step into a crime scene. The smells, the sounds, the very feel of the air, the position of the body, the possibility that, in many cases, the last person to have stepped out of the room is the killer.
And while it is true that, if another detective takes over the investigation, and ninety-nine percent of the evidence is conveyed through witness reports and affidavits and photographs and videotaped interviews, there is still that one percent held dear by detectives everywhere, and having a case yanked is never pleasant.
Although, this time, Paris is clearly getting the better deal, if there is a better deal to be had here. He wasn’t anxious to poke around in Willis Walker’s life, any more than he was anxious to poke around the man’s pants.
The trade is not lost on Greg Ebersole. Or his demeanor. Greg’s vast array of drug connections were working against him. He’d take over the Walker investigation for the time being. Paris got Fayette Martin. Carla Davis will liaison with Sex Crimes.
At eight-fifty, Captain Elliott enters the room and the task force meeting begins.
Paris at the chalkboard, notebook in hand. “We have a dead male black, one Willis James Walker, forty-eight, a resident of East Boulevard. Mr. Walker’s body was found in Room 116 of the Dream-A-Dream Motel on East Seventy-ninth Street and St. Clair Avenue. The coroner’s office says Mr. Walker was struck on the back of the head by a heavy, flat object, but that is not what killed him. Nor did the large quantity of Rohypnol and alcohol in his system. The cause of death has been ruled to be loss of blood resulting from the removal of Mr. Walker’s penis and testicles, none of which were recovered at the scene.
“What was found was an unlicensed twenty-five-caliber semi auto, discharged twice. Both slugs were recovered. There is no evidence that anything human was struck.
“We also have one female white DOA, a woman named Fayette Martin, thirty, formerly residing in the Marsol Towers in Mayfield Heights. Ms. Martin’s body was discovered in an abandoned building at the corner of East Fortieth and Central. The coroner believes Ms. Martin was partially beheaded by a large knife or machete-type weapon. Her brain has not yet been recovered. In both cases a body part or parts was missing. In both cases a symbol, a carving, was left behind.”
Paris points to the first two pictures. One is of the symbol carved into Willis Walker’s tongue. The second one is of the symbol carved into Fayette Martin’s back.
“Reuben says that the mark may have something to do with the religion of Santeria, or one of its darker offshoots. I’m following up on that now. He believes that the mark on Mr. Walker’s tongue was made post-mortem. The mark on Fayette Martin’s back was made before she died. But minutes before she died.”
“Who found Willis Walker?” Carla asks.
“Cleaning woman,” Paris says.
“And the two kids who found the woman?”
“Neighborhood kid and his girlfriend. The girl is the one who called it in. Greg got their statements.”
“What do you have on Martin’s family, friends?” Elliott asks.
“Both parents deceased,” Paris says. “She had a brother in Milwaukee. He’s flying in to claim the body. She worked at a place called The Flower Shoppe in Chesterland ever since high school. According to her brother there was no boyfriend. As far as I can tell, Fayette Martin and Willis Walker did not know each other.”
Paris meets the eyes of everyone in the room, sees no further questions. He sits down.
“Greg?” Elliott says.
Greg Ebersole remains seated. To Paris, he looks like a man on the verge of physical collapse. “Willis Walker was married and had—are you ready for this?—eleven children. Five different women. Two of them had the brief privilege of being called Mrs. Willis Walker. Three of Willis’s progeny are doing hard time, one of them in the Ohio pen. Willis was co-owner of Kinsman Products, a print shop specializing in calendars, letterheads, business cards. He also fronted a record label called Black Alley Records. But mostly Willis Walker was in the business of getting away with petty crime. Twelve arrests, two convictions, both misdemeanors. Never spent more than forty-eight hours behind bars. No connection yet to anyone into voodoo or anything like that. Willis wheeled and dealed, so the possibility that he owed, or was owed, a large sum of money is extremely likely.”
Greg flips his notebook shut.
Elliott says: “Obviously, the last thing we want here is the FBI, people. Let’s try and clear these. Also, let’s look into the gangs, especially the Latino gangs, see if we can match this to some kind of initiation rites. Let’s check the index of gang tattoos, see if this mark means anything. Carla?”
Carla Davis sits up straight, crosses her legs. Today she is wearing a red wool skirt, cut just above the knee and a white silk blouse. All three men do their very best to look her straight in the eye. “Sex Crimes will look into the tattoo freaks, as well as the guys who like it in public. If Fayette Martin was having sex in that doorway, right before she was murdered, maybe this guy has done this before, and this time it got out of hand. Also, anybody who’s shown a propensity for recreational carving.”
“That happen a lot?” Paris asks.
“You’d be surprised,” Carla says.
“Doubt it.”
“Had a guy, few years ago,” Carla continues. “Creepy crawler. He used to prowl Tremont in summer, looking in windows, watching girls undress. His thing was sneaking in after the girls had gone to sleep, chloroforming them, then carving a series of numbers on their foreheads with a hat pin.”
Paris and Ebersole exchange a glance. “And that’s how he got off?” Greg asks.
“Well, he used to masturbate while he carved. Never raped any of them. Did it five times.”
“Please tell me he’s in Mansfield now,” Paris says.
“Oh yeah,” Carla says, standing, collecting her papers. “And are you ready for what the numbers meant?”
“What?”
“It was his locker combination,” Carla says. “His damn high school locker combination.”
“Jesus,” Greg says.
“The worst part is that he’ll be out in eighteen months and there are five women walking around Cleveland with this asshole’s locker combination written across their foreheads in scar tissue.”
No one in the room feels it would be appropriate to laugh, considering the serious nature of the crime. They are professionals and they take the violation of a citizen under their watch very seriously. Laughing would be unprofessional.
So, instead, they grab their papers and coffee and cigarettes and head for the door as fast as they can.
“Are you Detective Paris by any chance?”
They are in the Justice Center lobby. It is noontime, crowded. Paris turns to see a young man of his height, nice looking. A Nikon hangs around his neck.
“By every chance. You are?”
“Julian.”
Paris arches a
n eyebrow, waits for more.
The man continues. “I’m sorry. Mercedes Cruz is my sister.”
“Ah, yes, okay,” Paris says, extending his hand. “Jack Paris.”
“Julian Cruz,” he says, shaking hands.
Julian is clean-cut—khakis, suede hikers, leather flight jacket, tortoiseshell sunglasses, trimmed mustache—and perhaps a few years older than Mercedes.
“Nice to meet you,” Paris says.
“Same here. I called upstairs but they told me I just missed you.”
“Yeah. They have to let me out sometimes. Union thing.” Paris buttons his coat, smoothes his hair, anticipating having his picture taken with little notice. “How’d you know it was me, by the way?”
“Believe me, my sister described you to the last detail. She’s awfully good at detail.” He unsnaps the leather case around the Nikon and holds it up. “I’ll make this as quick and painless as I can.”
“Where do you want me?”
Julian gestures to the huge windows overlooking Ontario Street. “Light looks good there.”
They walk across the lobby. Julian positions Paris, steps away, focuses, says: “You know, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but Mercedes is awfully taken with you.”
“Is that right?”
He snaps a picture. “Well, maybe taken is the wrong word. It’s just that this is the biggest assignment she’s ever had. She just is glad to be working with such a professional.”
“Well, it’s my pleasure.”
Snap. “I love her very much and I hope she sets the world afire. That’s all.”
“I have no doubt she will. I hope I can help,” Paris says.
“Don’t tell her I said anything, okay? I don’t know if you’ve gotten a taste of that temper yet. She’d kill me.”
“I understand.”
“A few more?”
“Sure.”
Julian snaps a third, fourth, and fifth picture, then caps the lens. “Thanks. All done. I’ll make sure you get copies.”
