The Damned Don't Die

by Jim Nisbet

  The copy of Brandish he was holding had a lurid, colored-newsprint cover, which depicted a pneumatic, orange-haired woman, wearing lipstick and an open kimono, partially enwrapped by the tentacles of a sort of hairy, lonesome-looking red squid, three or four times her size. The monster was so big that he obscured part of the title of the magazine, and his tentacles modestly covered those parts of the woman the kimono should have. Windrow opened the magazine to Cam Bastion’s story, entitled, “Power of Attorney,” and read the first line.

  Mother, she hasn’t been able to leave her room, high up in this old, weathered mansion, for ten years now. I’ve had to do everything for us, her and me. The food, the bedpan, the TV. Old bitch.

  Windrow replaced the magazine on its shelf. He looked again at the typewriter, and the single line on the page it held.

  I’ve always wanted to skin a woman.

  The little metal window above the ribbon was aimed at a new line, at least four blank lines below the first line, and beginning directly under the I of I’ve. Gingerly, Windrow tested the carriage of the typewriter. It moved easily to the right and stopped, so that the window centered on a space less than an inch to the left of the I, about an inch from the lefthand edge of the clean page. Had Trimble typed the first line, double spaced, indented, and stopped? Windrow pushed the TAB bar. The carriage slid to the left, until the metal window focused on the space four lines directly below the letter I in the first sentence, as before.

  Gleason hung up the telephone.

  “This guy is a writer,” Windrow said, almost to himself. Gleason stared at him.

  “No shit, Sherlock.” He held up one finger. “That’s the first reason he’s probably off his nut and walking the streets with a meat cleaver and a bone saw.”

  Windrow looked up from the page in the typewriter and at Gleason. “Yeah? What’s another one?”

  Gleason swept his arm to indicate the rest of the room. “He was a student of death, couldn’t get enough of it. They found his ex-wife, your client’s client. Says he got so interested in the subject he quit his job, two years ago, to devote all his time to it. Then, after they’d moved to the city, he got so weird she threw him out. Says she hasn’t seen him since. Wanna guess what that job was?”

  “Assistant Curator of Amerindian Artifacts, Pamela Museum, Palo Alto.”

  “Oh, a smart guy.”

  “Yeah. So he was a museum curator. So what?”

  “So he was fascinated by dead things to the exclusion of normal pursuits, like home and wife. He’s sitting all by himself in this crummy apartment for six months, all worked up on the subject of death. He’s handled buried objects, ancient stuff, been in tombs, measured and excavated burial sites, fingered the bones. But he’s never actually witnessed the snuff. Better, he’s never actually engineered a snuff. So finally he thinks he’ll go out and get a little first-hand experience in the matter.”

  “He didn’t go very far.”

  “I think he went way too far,” said Gleason grimly.

  “Then there’s the hemostat, you found it yourself. Surgical instrument.”

  “Hm? Oh, yeah. That’s the fourth reason, I guess. The hemo-what?”

  “Stat. Stauncher.”

  “Yeah, nice. Well, I guess he didn’t bother to take it with him next door, judging by the look of things over there; but the fifth reason is, he played the cello.”

  Windrow raised one eyebrow.

  “Yeah, the cello. It’s in the closet. Highest suicide rate of any desk in the orchestra. A very Edge City tribe, the cello-persons.”

  “Do you have any vacation coming, Steve?”

  “Job’s too fascinating.”

  “Come on, Stevie, you got any evidence? Remember evidence?”

  “There’s an APB out on the guy. Armed and rabid.”

  Windrow sighed. “Right, what more do you need.”

  Gleason shrugged. “Been next door?”

  “You know I haven’t. You didn’t even let the press in.” Though not looking forward to it, Windrow had been waiting for this invitation. He was the only man in town who called Petrel Gleason by his first and proper name. This accorded Windrow certain privileges, if you call standing knee-deep in the gore of a fresh murder a privilege.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Gleason looked at him.

  “‘Cause it’s a fucking mess,” he said. “That’s why not.”

  Chapter Three

  THE UNIFORMED COP AT THE DOOR STEPPED ASIDE FOR Petrel and Windrow, permitting himself a fluid elision from an indifferent nod to Petrel through a barely noticeable sneer for Windrow, back to sleepy boredom as he stepped into position again between the front door and a small crowd of neighbors, two reporters, a photographer, and a UPS driver. This small tableau loitered thickly in the hallway between Herbert Trimble’s and Virginia Sarapath’s apartments.

  Once inside, Martin Windrow immediately regretted his having anything to do with Herbert Trimble.

  Blood was everywhere, but mainly it clotted a thick dark channel that ran from under the bathroom door to the center of the living room. Some of the fluid had been tracked into the kitchen. There were smudged red handprints and fingerprints on the bathroom door and jamb. Cops were everywhere, or those who worked for the cops.

  Glen Miller played “Pennsylvania 6-5000” jauntily, not too loud, on a radio in the sunny kitchen.

  Most of the men and even one of the women present smoked smelly cigars. Many of them wore thin latex gloves. The windows were open, and there were flowers wrapped in newspaper on the kitchen table.

  Petrel Gleason spoke briefly to one of the other officers and then looked significantly at Windrow. “No trace of Trimble ble yet.” He jerked a thumb toward the bathroom. “Wanna see the set?” He didn’t wait for “Not particularly,” an answer Windrow considered offering.

  “In here.” Gingerly avoiding the wet carpet, Windrow followed Petrel into the bathroom. Twisted between the toilet bowl and the tub, extending into the center of the room was a lumpy sheet under which the red river ended. From the end nearest the door extended an ankle and a small, slippered foot. It looked like a badly wrapped present. A small gold chain, with tiny links and a heart-shaped clasp, encircled the leg where the ankle became calf. Except for a lavender cover on the toilet seat and a small pair of sepia curtains on the window, most of the bathroom was white. The walls were painted white, the tile floor was white, the porcelain fixtures were white; with these the blood contrasted brightly. A bloodied straight razor with a black handle lay on the floor of the bathtub.

  “She crawled in here, maybe even walked, though I guess she was pretty weak, and got the razor out of the medicine cabinet over the sink. …” Gleason’s voice trailed off. A different, more clinical voice from behind them took up the narrative. “It’s hard to tell, but her wrists were cut, could have been self-inflicted. The rest of the damage … no way.”

  “The rest of the damage?”

  “A lot of bruises, some of them sexual-type bruises. But her breast … Her wrists she could have cut herself, and it looks like the razor did the wrists no matter who did it, but the breast … Here.” The man who had been speaking inserted himself into the room between Gleason and Windrow and picked up a corner of the sheet. The floor beneath the sheet was covered in blood, as was the forearm exposed by the medical examiner’s movements. The shoulder was pure white, almost as white as the tile underneath it might have been, though tinged with the slightest gray. Though her black, curly hair was matted in blood, her face had not a mark on it, and though the tongue had swollen behind the clenched teeth, Windrow thought that she must have been very pretty.

  But the medical examiner pointed to where Ms. Sarapath’s left breast had been.

  “The left breast has been removed,” he said, for the benefit of any blind people who might have been present. He swabbed at the dead woman’s chest with a small flat sponge. “See? The job seems to have been done within the last twelve hours; there’s no scar tis
sue. No sutures, either.”

  Petrel Gleason exhaled through pursed lips. “Clean as a whistle,” he said with an obvious air of disbelief. He turned away. “No air in these joints,” he said and left.

  The coroner’s assistant, still holding the corner of the sheet up in the air with one hand and squatting next to the body, looked up at Windrow. Windrow ran his tongue along the sutures in his cheek, counting them absently. When he got to six he started his tongue back toward the front of his mouth, where his eyetooth had started the gash.

  “If you were to skin this woman, how would you go about it?”

  The coroner’s assistant’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed a second time.

  “Like a deer?” Windrow persisted. “Would you cut her like you’d cut a deer, or a rabbit? Up the belly to the throat?”

  The young man replaced the sheet and shook his head, but said nothing.

  “Would you?”

  The young man stood up. “Who the fuck are you?” he said. Though there were no sibilants in it, he managed to hiss the question.

  “Windrow, private.”

  The young medical examiner stared at him a moment longer, then said, “Yeah. I guess I would. If I was to want to skin her.”

  “Any sign of that?”

  “None.”

  Windrow turned and walked into the living room. His first step squished discreetly in the wet carpet, and he sidestepped the next one. He found a dry place on the carpet and scrubbed his foot on it.

  “So, still like the smell of police work, eh?”

  Windrow looked up from his sawing shoe into a sour, fat face full of wrinkles and said nothing.

  “Once a cop, always a cop, I guess, no matter how bad,” said the face. Windrow continued to scrub his foot in the deep pile of the beige carpet. The shoe left red streaks.

  The face didn’t let up. “Who let this apple in here?” it demanded in a loud voice. No one said anything. Two technicians continued to quietly dust the kitchen countertop, a duplicate of the one in Herbert Trimble’s apartment across the hall. The radio muttered.

  “Petrel,” shouted the face, still watching Windrow.

  Gleason, who had been standing next to the face, watching Windrow’s shoe go back and forth in the carpet, said, “Yeah, Max?” in a quiet voice.

  “Only police personnel on a homicide, Petrel.”

  “Right.”

  “So who’s this?”

  “Thought it might be a tie-in, Max. He was serving split-script to the kink next door.”

  “Process server, big deal.”

  “Well …”

  “But he’s no help, right?”

  “Well …”

  “But we’re doing all we can, right?”

  “Sure, Max, but …”

  “His butt, Petrel. Out the door. His this time, next time it’ll be yours.”

  Petrel sighed. “Let’s go, Windrow.”

  Windrow walked past Max, who said, “So long, apple,” over his shoulder as he headed for the bathroom. As Windrow approached the door, still looking at his shoe, he ran into a woman.

  Her face was a mess, not because of her looks, but because she’d cried all over her makeup, and she was scared. She was tall, dressed sharply, blonde, and her eyes were black, sad, and alert.

  Windrow stopped. She was undoubtedly Sarapath. A cousin. Or her mother. But a different sister altogether. She had lines that ran back from her eyes, and features slightly puffed from more than crying, from drinking, maybe. From behind her sadness her eyes focused on him and sized him up, from his eyes down to just above the knees and back again.

  “You’re about a hundred years off,” he said.

  “Sic transit, buster,” she said immediately.

  In spite of what he felt had to be the worst circumstances of her undoubtedly interesting life, and the general smell of death, Windrow felt a tiny, dimly familiar thrill. He jerked his head toward the room behind him. “Sister?”

  Her eyes misted again, and she looked hard at him through the water. No answer.

  “I’m sorry,” Windrow said and strode through the door Steve Gleason held open for him.

  In the hall two men immediately dogged his footsteps.

  “Hey, Windrow!”

  Windrow kept walking. He could see the stairhead, halfway down the hall.

  “Windrow!” One of the men turned in front of him and stopped blocking his path.

  “Windrow what’s happened in there? What’s your connection with this case? That a dead whore in there?”

  “Nothing, none, and no.” He started forward again.

  “Listen, man, a woman’s been murdered …” The man put his hand on Windrow’s shoulder and pushed. Windrow, whose habitual stride caused him to look down just in front of his feet, stopped. He looked slowly up under the brim of his hat into the man’s eyes, then slowly moved his eyes to the man’s hand, still on his shoulder.

  “I guess they could wire that pencil to your wrist,” he said.

  After a slight hesitation, the man dropped his hand and moved aside.

  Chapter Four

  MARTIN WINDROW WALKED DOWN THE STREET UNTIL HE came to a bar. He went in and had a drink. The Scotch still felt good on his stitches, so for the second time that day, he did not take one of the pills the doctor had given him. Instead, he had another Scotch.

  The Toyota started. At the first traffic light it stalled, and it started again. When they got to Windrow’s office, one of several in a building downtown, a few blocks south of Market, the car switched itself off as it drifted into a parking space.

  Upstairs, it was three in the afternoon. Time to finish off the day with a few phone calls and a couple of drinks, then dinner and some television. Nothing uproarious, nothing dangerous, nothing exciting. With that part of the doctor’s prescription he could go along, at least until the rib healed. The least bit of excitement, like slouching in an aisle seat in an adult movie theater, caused the broken rib to sting and pinch deep inside him. No excitement for a month. That was okay with Windrow, although, he supposed, he had a few ribs left.

  He eased himself down into his old swivel chair and pulled a bottle out of the lower drawer, and a glass. When he tried to put his feet up, the stitches in his behind tugged at their moorings, and the rib jabbed. Easy does it. He poured himself a drink, sitting upright, and pulled the telephone answering machine close enough to reverse the tape and switch it to audit.

  “Windrow, where the fuck are you? Call me,” the first message said. It was Emmy Cohen’s voice, the lawyer retained by Mrs. Trimble.

  “Win a free electric steak knife. Subscribe to the Chronicle or the Examiner for just six months and win a free electric steak knife. Our new computer subscriber service is waiting to take your call. Just call us at 666-3434, and leave your name, telephone number …”

  Windrow looked out the window. Three whores stood in the doorway to a grocery store across the street, looking in three directions. A police car sat in the bus zone on the corner. A Cadillac cruised slowly past the store.

  “Windrow. Can I call you Marty? Give me a call at 626-9981. Marilyn Sarapath.”

  Windrow raised his eyebrows and turned to his desk. Her voice was husky, just a touch slurred. A drinker for sure. He switched off the machine and used the telephone directory. He dialed a number. The other end rang twice.

  “Hello?” The voice was husky and peremptory.

  “Hello, Mrs. Trimble?”

  Silence.

  “Mrs. Trimble?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Trimble, I’m Windrow, the man assigned to deliver the subpoena to your husband? You know, your divorce?”

  “What do you want?”

  Some good advice, Windrow thought. And a small loan. But he said, “Well, ma’am, I’m having trouble locating your husband, and—”

  “The police were here an hour ago.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I wouldn’t worry yourself about that.”


  “I’m not worried about that. What my husband does with his free time is his business.”

  That’s a liberal thing, Windrow thought, for a divorcée to allow her ex-husband.

  “But that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Trimble. What I need is a recent photograph of your husband, so maybe I can—”

  “Why don’t you ask the police? They’ll have a good one any time now.”

  “Oh, that may be correct, Mrs. Trimble, but if I can get to him with this subpoena first, why, then your case will have precedence in the courts over any case the police might want to press against him.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Not that I think the police have anything on your husband. …”

  “Oh, yes? What do you know about it?”

  Windrow moved the mouthpiece of the receiver enough to take a sip of Scotch. “Nothing, ma’am. I’d just like to get to him first, in the best interest of my client, who is working in the best interests of yourself.” The stitches were almost numb now. The voice on the other end of the telephone sighed.

  “The police already took away the best shot I had, but I think I can find something a couple of years old around here, or at least a wedding picture.”

  “How long ago were you married to your husband, Mrs. Trimble?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Well, that’s just fine, Mrs. Trimble. I’ll drop by and get the pic from you. Would this evening be all right with you?”

  “I’ll be home all night, Mr. Windrow, but please don’t come by too late.”

  “I’ll be there before eight, Mrs. Trimble.”

  She hung up.

  Windrow got a dial tone and dialed another number. The phone rang six times.

  “Yeah.” The voice was hoarse, but no thicker than before. Windrow could hear the years, the bad men, the booze in it.

  “Windrow.”