There was another curse and a woman stepped out into the light after him. She raised her hands—male hands made feminine with acrylic nails so long they resembled talons.
“Jesus, fuck. Can’t a lady make a few dollars around here?” Her seal-colored micro mini was hiked up high on her thighs, and she tugged it down, glaring at Bella like she’d had a million pistols pointed in her direction before.
Bella grunted as all the air pushed from her body. What an idiot. What a complete idiot. She lowered her gun and stuffed it back into her holster. If this wasn’t a sign that she needed to take her sleep seriously, she didn’t know what was.
“What the hell, Officer? Can I go? What the hell? You can’t be pulling your gun out whenever you feel like it. We weren’t doing a damn thing ain’t everyone does around here.”
Exhaustion washed over Bella. The woman continued berating her, the smudged red of her lipstick blending into the shadow of the beard poking out from beneath her layers of makeup. Bella mumbled something. It might have been an apology, it might have been something more official. She couldn’t have known. The adrenaline was gone, and she felt like she was locked under a frozen lake, staring up at the world above as the icy cold dragged her down.
Chapter Eleven
There was a graveyard of dead flies molding away in the bathroom light fixture. She sat on the toilet, fully outfitted in her office attire with her knees drawn up to her chin. She’d been taking that posture unconsciously more and more these days. Sometimes her lower back screamed at her with pain like an echo when she finally unraveled herself. Only then would she realize the length of time she’d been sitting and staring.
“It can’t be him.” Her voice echoed aloud in the stall. This was new, too, this talking out loud. She continued to stare up at the flies. One was still alive, and it turned lazy, hopeless circles around its dead companions. She should be at her desk, she knew that. She should be facedown in the world’s most impossibly boring file and preparing the reports she knew were due at the close of the week. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
She could stare at the papers—she was good at that-but she couldn’t comprehend them. Instead, she spent her time half listening to Kyle’s conversations and pressing him for whatever pieces of information he had time to share with her. It was like being back in high school, passing notes about boys back and forth under the teacher’s watchful eye.
Only this boy… this boy…
“It can’t be him,” she mumbled again, rubbing her cold fingers over her lips. She’d begun to question her sanity after she’d almost shot a transvestite hooker in an alley a few days ago. She’d been so convinced it was him. She’d practically heard his voice right behind her. She’d been convinced enough to pull her firearm—the biggest wake-up call of all.
But surely, he must be at least in his early sixties by now? Even when she was eight, when she knew him, all the rancid intimacy of his body had seemed old to her. Salem Ross, the real Salem Ross who ruled his kingdom of broken televisions and dog shit like a pharaoh, he’d be dead by now. Liver failure, suicide, alcoholic hemorrhage—there was no way any human body that corrupt could still be alive.
It was all in her head.
Captain Brooks was right: she shouldn’t have anything to do with this case.
Bella unwound her legs from where they were tucked under her sharp chin. Her body ached again, the muscles of her hips protesting. She focused on her Converse, still rebelliously poking from the polyester of her boring pants. She was here. Bella Cruz. She was real. She was a survivor. That was all she needed to know.
The door rattled and swung open. She’d trained herself years ago to be silent, and although she gasped on the inside, she made no sound. Her red-piped, snow-white toes retracted up to their former position on the toilet seat, and she held her breath.
There was the click of a man’s heels on the broken tiles. No one came to this bathroom. She’d sourced it out years ago as one of the only private places in the ancient building that housed the department. God knew how many tears had been shed in this place, how many liquid lunches had been expelled into the tan porcelain. The only window in the place was cubic with the institutional wires that were strung between the panes. This was her sanctuary. No one knew she’d be here.
I would though, duckling. I know everything about you. I know your noises, the taste of your breath. I know your fear. I can smell it.
She watched as a pair of man’s shoes appeared in the space between the stall door and the floor. The fluorescents reflected off the shine so clearly, she could see the flies reflected.
She knew those shoes. Only one person would polish them to that kind of gleam.
Before she knew it, she’d pulled back the slide lock on the door and extended one leg to kick it open.
Detective Kyle jumped, his perfectly polished brogues lifting off the floor for a few seconds. He looked younger than ever, his hand going to his heart like an old woman. For a moment Bella could see his heritage clearly. His mother, a Southern queen in all her glory fussing over her all-American, liberty-loving, corn-fed justice squad, would’ve fluttered her hand to her heart in the same gesture.
“What the hell?” he managed. Even his slight accent was audible. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”
“Bejeezus?” Bella was strengthened by her sarcasm. “Isn’t that one of the lesser order of demons? Is it a Southern thing?”
“Shut it. I knew I’d find you here,” Kyle said with instant recovery. That was one of his charms.
He stepped back, allowing his partner to uncurl herself from the unopened toilet and step out into the bathroom proper.
“Can’t a girl powder her nose in peace?” Bella hoped her cheeks weren’t too red. It wasn’t every day she leapt out of a toilet at her partner.
“When the actual modern, working bathroom specific to your gender is, like… steps from her desk? No, she can’t.”
Bella took a quick look at herself in the mirror, more to stall for time until she composed herself rather than to check her appearance.
Her body was tingling with energy. There was a reason he was here. He had something.
Something for her.
“What?” she said, turning to face him.
“It’s just…”
“What?” Bella said again. “You’re killing me here. No way you’d search for me up here if you didn’t have something good.”
“Isabella.”
He never called her by her full name. She stopped the whirlwind of impatience in her head for a few seconds.
Kyle met her gaze. “We got the prints and the swabs back. It’s confirmed.”
Bella’s stomach dropped into those stupid shoes of hers. She didn’t bother to pretend she didn’t know. Of course she knew.
“It’s Salem Ross,” he went on. “His fingerprints were all over the girl and that poor kid he butchered. He didn’t even bother with gloves. Or with discretion in any way, for that matter. It’s like he wants us to know.”
“It can’t be.” Bella had spoken without her own permission. Her body was so hollow she wondered if she would have to grab at Kyle before she floated toward the fly graveyard above her. She was repeating the lies she had told herself, like the victim she was.
His eyes. His shutters were open, but the lights shone warm inside. “It is. I’m sorry.”
There was a silence wherein neither of them breathed.
“We have a witness to the last killing,” Kyle continued, fidgeting. “A woman—a hairdresser that works out of her home somewhere in Suburbia Portland—she was taking out the garbage and saw the kid talking to a man at the bus stop outside her home. He’s an exact match.”
“It can’t be him,” Bella repeated, more to herself this time. “There’s no way.”
“We already checked her out this morning, and she’s straight. It’s Salem, Bella. I know it’s rough, but it’s him.”
The hollow feeling inside of her filled wit
h a determination heavier than concrete. She met Kyle’s eyes without flinching. “Can you give me the address?”
“What?”
“I won’t get you in trouble. No one will know but you and me.”
Kyle shook his head. “You’re going to get yourself in deep shit if you don’t have those Williams reports done.”
“I don’t care. Give me the address.”
“Isabella.” He paused, his oversized eyes meeting hers. “We’ve already checked her out, and everything is in order. Her statements are on lock, and we’re moving forward already.”
“It’s not him.” She was surprised to hear her voice crack. “It can’t be him. I don’t care about fingerprints. Just… Give me the address, Kyle. That’s all I want. I’ll do my work. I’ll write a fucking master’s thesis on what’s-his-name Williams and whatever he did, but just give me the address. Please.”
There was a pause where the partners stared at each other. Above, Bella heard the faint buzzing of the fly as it vibrated its wings for the last time.
Kyle reached into the pocket of his discount designer jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper.
Chapter Twelve
A collection of garden gnomes lined the walk that led up to the woman’s house. They peered out of the overgrown lawn and from under rhododendron bushes covered in wilted, rusty blooms. Their painted pupils were faded to nothing, watching her blindly as she made her way up to the patio. For someone who worked out of her home, the place was a disaster.
Bella wondered about her clientele. She gave the house a critical once-over as she mounted the stairs, taking in the less-than-professional details to give herself a better idea of the witness’s credibility. There was an American flag hung in the front window instead of curtains, sagging and just as timeworn as the gnomes. Mail spilled out of the rusted metal box beside the door, falling into a wet pile beneath.
She leaned over and picked up the pile, the wet paper slippery and pulpy like cold skin. With her other hand she opened the screen door. The screech of the rusted springs was warning enough of her arrival, but she knocked anyway.
Silence.
Bella stepped back to take another look at the house. The roof of the small arts and craft bungalow was so coated in moss it resembled a hobbit house more than a hair salon. She could see areas where the roof was sagging under the weight of the small ecosystem that had developed over the years. It might have been a beautiful house once, but the economy of the neighborhood, Portland’s near-steady rainfall, and its tenant’s lack of interest had caused any of its Edwardian charm to mold and rot. Bella could smell it from the outside.
She knocked again, louder this time, until the chipped wood door shook under her fist.
There was a noise from deep inside the house. Bella stepped back again in a short hop, an old cop’s habit. God knew what was dragging itself out of the chaos inside and readying to answer the door. The tightness of her holster against her side was a comfort, and she put her hands on her hips. It was a pose she’d picked up from the captain early in her career. The way the casual stance worked off the glimpse of a firearm always managed to deliver the desired level of respect.
There was a weary clicking noise and the door creaked open. A smell slipped out, like it’d been waiting at the door all day, dreaming of freedom. Bella had been in enough of these kinds of feral homes to recognize it straightaway—it was the scent of old newspapers piled on top of wet towels, then wrapped around shamefully dirty underclothes and peppered nicely with cat litter. It was the natural smell of a hoarder.
A woman’s face followed the smell out of the crack in the door. Bella was struck by the faded blue of her eyebrows. They’d been tattooed once and badly, two mismatched commas above two red-rimmed, suspicious eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” The voice that trickled from the crack was layered with as much age and neglect as the smell.
Bella pulled her badge from inside her jacket pocket and presented it to the woman. “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Detective Isabella Cruz. I know you’ve already had a visit from us, but I’d like to ask you just a few more questions if I could.”
The door opened a bit wider, and more of the woman’s face came into view. She was younger than Bella had initially thought, her overgrown roots and thick layers of cosmetics making her look decades older. She squinted at the badge, the wrinkles around her eyes seeming to suck the flaking black eye makeup deeper into her puffy face.
Satisfied, she pushed the door open wide.
“Well, I’d tell you that you can’t ask me any more questions, but I got a feeling that wouldn’t sit too nice with you, would it?”
Bella gave her most winning smile as she stowed her badge away.
“Well, we sure appreciate your extra help. Mrs. Zelkova? Is that right?”
The woman leaned against the doorframe. It was dark in the house behind her. Bella could make out a wide staircase winding up to an impressive landing. The rest of the space was nothing but a jumble of boxes and shadows.
“Miss,” the woman said, crossing her arms. She was wearing a T-shirt announcing some 5K race in town, but it was so faded it could have been from years ago—judging by her extra weight, this woman hadn’t exercised in years. Bella was surprised there was no moss gathering on the top of her blonde head. “I stopped being a ‘Mrs.’ years ago.”
“Miss, then. I’d like you to take me through what you told the officers that came to see you the other day.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I told that young man everything I know. You know what the strangest thing was, and I noticed it right off. As soon as I opened the door and saw him, I says, ‘you look just like the boy that ended up dead.’ I thought it was him, too. Gave me a helluva start when he showed me the picture of that poor boy’s body. They shouldn’t ought to do that, you know. Stuff a picture like that in someone’s face.”
Bella struggled to soothe her impatience. It was apparent this woman had very little intelligence to speak of, and like most people in her experience, was defensive about it, too. The last thing she needed was to piss her off in any way; she’d shut down and slam that warped door quicker than Bella could flash another smile.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Miss Zelkova. It was necessary, though, for the greater good. You’re our only witness, and we need to be sure we’re bringing in the right man.”
“Sure as shit,” she said. “I knew the kid as soon as I saw the picture. Recognized the guy talking to him from his shot just as quick. You don’t forget a guy like that.”
Bella’s heart skipped a beat. There was a flap in her jacket beneath where she kept her badge, and she’d felt its contents since leaving the station. It was almost like having him in there, pressed against her body, glowing with a menacing phosphorescence in the depth of her pocket. She’d avoided thinking about it, but the time had come to pull him out of his cage.
She took the photo of Salem out of her jacket and passed it to the woman. She watched her face. Miss Zelkova’s eyes flickered across the mug shot and then, bored, returned to Bella.
“Yup. That’s the guy. You don’t forget a face like that, you know? He was so tall. I noticed that right off. You see the view?” She took a few ungainly steps onto the porch and pointed through the gate to where the bus stop sign stood. “You couldn’t miss him. He looked like some kind of alien, right? You know those shows when they’re all gray and skinny? He was stooped. The way he hung himself over that poor kid, it was like he was fixing to suck the life right out of him.” She was jabbing her finger toward the stop, the fleshy wing under her arm jiggling. “I saw him talk to that kid for like, fifteen minutes. By the time the bus came, they were gone.”
The speed of her recognition of Salem had left Bella breathless. Her heart thumped so loud in her ears for a moment, she entertained the idea of sitting down, staring back at the fungus-covered gnomes long enough to calm down. She smiled instead. Ignoring the fear in her head tha
t screamed at her, she continued.
“And you say you recognized the boy on the news that night?”
“Right away,” she said. “I was sitting down for dinner, and there he was—missing kid. I picked up the phone right away and called it in. That’s it. That’s all I got for you.”
“And you haven’t seen the man since?” Her hand tingled as she took the photo of Salem back. “He hasn’t come around or had any contact? You’re sure of this?”
Miss Zelkova looked at Bella like she was an idiot. Her features, so small in the swollen mass of her skull, curled up as she sneered.
“You don’t think I’d remember a face like that creep’s?” She shuddered, sending her own body into tiny ripples of motion. “No, ma’am. I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t want to see him again. Especially after what that young cop showed me he did. I’ve barely slept a whole night after seeing that.”
Before she could stop herself, Bella motioned to the photograph again. It was him—it was obviously him—but although her every nerve was screaming at her to believe this woman, she couldn’t force herself to accept it.
“This man. You’re…” Bella faltered, hearing her voice start to break under the thump of her pulse. “You’re sure that it was him? Dead certain?”
“How many more times do I got to say it? Yes, it was him.”
Bella nodded. Any hope of this being a misunderstanding had dissolved. How long had she been clinging to that stupid little shard of hope? Now that it was gone, her entire body took the opportunity to remind her just how exhausted she really was. Her legs felt weak and her throat suddenly dry. She could taste the stench of the woman’s house on the back of her tongue.
“Thank you very much, miss,” she said, steadying her voice. “We appreciate your help, and we won’t be bothering you again.”
She directed her legs to turn, and she began to make her way down the steps. He was back. All of this—all of this death and mutilation was an invitation for her. To do what? To play, right? Wasn’t that what he wanted from her? To play?
Kill Game: An Unforgettable Serial Killer Thriller Page 6
