What Lies Within

by Clare de Lune

  “You’re kidding,” he said as he nearly dumped coffee grounds on the pristine kitchenette counter. “Lye?”

  “I’m not kidding. Caustic soda can dissolve bodies. Mexican mafia uses it all the time. Looks like what was out near the Sutro Baths are male human bones, but we haven’t placed all of them. We found a few pelvises. Make some extra coffee.”

  “How many bodies we talkin’?”

  “I’m not sure. Quite a few.”

  “Interesting.” Black mused for a moment. He chewed the inside of his cheek pensively. This could be a good case. Good enough to get him promoted. And good enough to get his mind off of Rita and Jason. He took a seat next to his partner.

  “What else we got?”

  Hours passed before Black realized the sun would be up soon. He hadn’t worked this hard on something in years. Combined with the seven cups of coffee he’d had, the feeling was strangely exhilarating.

  “Shit,” Wong sighed. She looked tired and haggard, yet oddly beautiful as the early morning light from the small office window illuminated her face. Black continued to stare as if listening to her thoughts. Her black hair was peppered with grey, but her skin was still golden and smooth—she was only ten years into homicide, so it wouldn’t be long before the stress caught up to her. As it has with me, he thought, glancing down grudgingly at his gut.

  "You're thinking of something. Share."

  "Who would be ballsy enough to dump a body out there? Why are we finding so many bone fragments that match up with male skeletons? Could be male prostitutes or something like that,” she mumbled as she flipped through files.

  “It’s the Pacific. We’re lucky to have found as much as we did. I’m surprised most of them haven’t been washed out by the tide.”

  “It’s strange…it suggests that they were just dumped right over the cliffs or something.”

  "Well, they were." Black poured more coffee and thought about it. "But there's really no consistency. There are a few women here, too. All different ages. Maybe it's a gay serial killer, like what's-his-face..."

  "Gacy?"

  "Yeah. But who knows. Let's see which dental records match up with missing persons reports and dig up what we can..." Black trailed off. Missing persons. Jason would be on that list. Are you here? He thought as he looked at the tagged bones lined up like soldiers on the table.

  "Robert, it’ll be fine." Wong looked at him with a clearly defined look of sympathy spread across her face, the same look he got from most of the people in this department when they couldn’t locate Jason. I’m sick of people feeling sorry for me.

  Wong huffed and swiped up the records. He guessed his lack of response left her feeling disgruntled. Who cares? He thought as he watched her plant herself at the computer across the room, switch on the monitor and squint at the screen. They’d been partners for about a year now, back when Black started showing up to crime scenes with his shirt untucked or on backwards. On his worst days, he’d show up completely hammered. So he got a partner. A woman. He knew Wong could tell he resented her, and he felt like he had every right to resent her. She’s a fucking babysitter.

  Black chewed the inside of his cheek as he thought. Lots of tourists constantly flowed in and out of the Sutro Bath area. It was a busy spot. There was no way. He thought about stationing himself up there to watch. No, stupid. The papers were already out about the femur. No one would be dumb enough to dump there again.

  Or would they?

  He walked over to Wong’s computer and lurked over her shoulder. She clicked through the missing persons database.

  "We don't have much to go on until the dental records come back."

  "I'm going down there. I seriously doubt we'll see anyone else dump anything after that news article, but it's possible some of those kids who hang out there may have seen someone. Can you stay here and keep looking, see if anything stands out?"

  He saw her head move up and down. She didn't say anything else. Neither did Black. He grabbed his coffee to go and hit the slick San Francisco streets.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ti’s Visitor

  Ti’s pink sock-covered feet bobbed on top of the coffee table as she watched an old Elvira movie. She’d seen this one too many times but always re-watched it as if it were brand new. She watched it when she needed a diversion from life. It was a good movie to get her gears switched. The rest of her body had comfortably sunk deep within the depths of her old green Papasan chair.

  Today was one of those days. Danny had been popping in and out of her mind all damned day. She refused to let the memories wash over her. It had been almost three years now. She needed to get on with life. Danny’s face was now frequently replaced with Sophia’s. That didn’t make Ti feel any better—much worse, in fact. She felt that Sophia was too far out of her reach.

  She was so lost in thought that it was a shock to hear a knock at her door. With her nerves still glued to the chair, she wondered who on earth it could be. Tamara was her only regular visitor, and she was at work today. Mail delivery? The wrong pizza? She wondered if it was worth getting up for.

  Ti got up and smoothed her hair and tugged at her clothes. She hoped it would just be the mailman, but a small twinge of desire hoped it would be Danny, back from the dead, or Sophia. Neither was likely.

  It was true, though. Here stood the woman she had been obsessed with since day one, even though they had only exchanged about ten sentences that weren’t about coffee. She had been fascinated with the feral, gaunt look framed by Sophia’s lustrous, black hair. Ti had masturbated to burned-in images of Sophia’s face and lithe body, all while hoping she would randomly call her or show up at her doorstep.

  “May I?”

  “Um…what?”

  Sophia laughed, and it sent icicles down Ti’s spine. The sound was eerie and detached somehow.

  “I’m sorry. Please, come in.”

  The woman’s lips stretched out into a strange smile, and Ti furrowed her brow for a moment. The woman entered the apartment cautiously, as if looking for something that might attack her. Her grey eyes darted around the room.

  “I’m here to talk to you about those photographs after all.”

  “Oh? Interested in modeling?”

  “Not quite. I’m interested in architecture. I was wondering if you could take a few black and whites of the neighborhood for me, if you’re into that sort of thing. I need something new to dress up my place. I’d pay you.”

  Ti was disappointed, but she agreed. She wanted lasting images of Sophia, something to replace the once-faded images in her head.

  The woman seemed a bit skittish after the agreement, as if she wasn’t sure what to do next. It dawned on Ti that she might be similar to her in personality, and then she quickly tried to empty the thought out of her mind. Sophia was way too attractive to be a loner. She probably had five dates a week and men falling all over her. Maybe she was acting fidgety because she wanted something else. At any rate, the experience was giving Ti a strange feeling.

  “Do I make you nervous?” Ti asked, although she was surprised to hear herself say it. She was thinking it, but hadn’t meant to say it out loud. The woman stared at her as Elvira undulated on the television next to her. Sophia’s face was expressionless, quite the contrast against Elvira’s flirtatious, suggestive body language.

  “It’s not just you. People in general make me nervous,” the woman responded. Ti wasn’t even sure she saw her lips move. The comment hit home, familiar like the movie playing in the background.

  “I know what you mean,” was all Ti could muster. She wanted so much to verbally resonate with Sophia, to make her feel more comfortable, to show her that they were alike. Sophia stood up.

  “What is this you’re watching?” she asked.

  “You’ve never heard of Elvira?”

  “No. I don’t own a television.”

  Ti was confused, but got up to walk her guest to the door.

  “I’ll call you and explain what I want in
detail. Enjoy your movie.”

  Ti watched the woman walk down the stairs.

  “Goodbye,” she called out faintly. She felt unexpectedly drained, exhausted, as if she needed caffeine. It was only 6 o’clock in the evening, but she felt like turning in. She crawled into bed and dreamt of Sophia, but when she woke up, she felt oddly embarrassed and unable to face the world. She mostly just wanted to crawl under a rock and die after that visit from Sophia. She was starting to really understand where that phrase came from. But she really wanted some validation from Sophia, some minute sign that she was interested. The only thing she could gather was that Sophia only wanted the pictures: strictly business, nothing more. That disappointed Ti tremendously, but she was grateful for the opportunity to interact with her on some level. She’d take anything, even a business relationship. Any opportunity to talk to her was good enough.

  Still, she wondered if seeing her was only making it worse. Ti was starting to wonder if she should move away, back to New Orleans, then quickly negated that idea. No. Memories of Danny still lingered there like a heavy, suffocating fog.

  She didn’t remember this much pain with Danny, probably because she had eventually won Danny over and had slept with her. This thing with Sophia proved itself to be a much different animal, one that Ti felt she wouldn’t be able to cage. She most certainly doesn’t like women, Ti thought as she slowly edged herself out of bed and rubbed her eyes.

  Here we go again. A day didn’t go by where Ti didn’t think about her. It was torture, but a strange, bittersweet one.

  Love, she thought.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sophia: Sated and Stalking

  Sophia was pleased. She looked forward to seeing that girl again. She licked her lips and smiled now, feeling much better just by being in the girl’s presence. She had so much nervous energy! Perhaps it was her youth and abundance of curiosity, but it didn’t take long for Sophia to feel rejuvenated after the visit.

  She knew it wouldn’t last for long. Just long enough to carry her through the rest of the evening, until she could find another supplier. A huge order had just come in from Frankfurt, and she was running low on fat.

  Tonight, she thought. It has to be tonight.

  Something about the commotion at the Sutro Baths unnerved her, scratched at her psyche like an unfiled fingernail. It was irritating and left her faintly marked.

  She felt weak, as if she needed to kill again to get a fix. She often made a blood mask from her kills, and she swore it made her skin feel more supple, detoxed. She imagined someone like Ti would have dark red, untainted blood that would give Sophia a whole new semblance of youth and vigor. Perhaps Claude was right. Perhaps she should start thinking about using girls as suppliers.

  From Ti’s apartment, she hiked up the streets back to her apartment to prepare for her ritual. No club hopping for her tonight. Tonight, she’d lure a young street punk of some sort with promises of food, sex, and money. This was one of her favorite games. By filling little punks’ hearts with hope, they took on a new outlook on life. Their emotions grew deeper and appreciation ran thick. They were also eager to please her.

  Transporting the bodies back to the warehouse from her apartment was always an interesting challenge, but doable. Especially if they’d been on drugs for some time.

  She dressed in a form fitting black dress with black stilettos, painting her face thickly with lavish makeup. She adorned her pale neck and bony wrists with eye catching, antique jewelry. She remembered Claude buying it for her at one of the shops out here in San Francisco.

  The clouds in the sky, pregnant with rain, threatened to burst at any moment. Sophia knew this would only help her. Punks always wanted to get out of the rain, no matter how tough they seemed.

  Sophia maintained a love/hate relationship with the Haight District. Every weekend, tourists flocked like lemmings to this area to gawk at the Haight Ashbury intersection, as if it was still something to marvel at. True, some of the original shops from the sixties were still there, but it wasn’t the same. Sophia’s mother lived in Santa Cruz in the sixties. She always told Sophia how news of the happenings in this area trickled down the coastline, but she kept her distance from San Francisco in those days.

  Her first stop was near the grocer just past Ashbury. As usual, she saw him hunched over inconspicuously, a thin figure cloaked in black who just looked like he might have been waiting for a ride.

  “Maus,” she said. She kept her voice quiet.

  He jumped and turned to her. “You’re late,” he quipped, but winced just a little after the comment, as if he expected her to smack him. “I’m sorry—it’s just, I have other clients, and Roofies are always hard for me to get.”

  “Right. Here.” She held her hand out, palm down, and passed him the money. He eyed it with a creased brow.

  “It’s all there, plus a tip. Do I ever short change you?”

  “No,” he said, his voice barely audible as he handed her the bag of pea green pills.

  “Good. I’ll call you when I need more.”

  She felt his eyes on her as she continued down Haight.

  At the very end of Haight Street near Golden Gate Park, the smell of potent cannabis, green, piney and tangy, hung in great heavy puffs in the night air. Many of the punks in this area were transients in the city: they were usually friendless, hungry, drunk and/or strung out on a variety of the strange drugs that flowed up and down the arteries of the coast.

  One young boy, probably only twenty, instantly made eye contact with Sophia as she approached. He looked near starved. His bones jutted out in strange angles through his clothes, his green Doc Martens looked too large for his chicken bone legs.

  The boy was probably handsome at some point. He had long, golden blond hair and brown eyes that looked like they had seen too much, and downturned lips…beautiful and sensual, like a feline’s mouth. Sophia approached him and smiled slightly. She crouched down so she could meet him at eye level. The boy smelled faintly of soap tinged with greasy food. Sophia’s nose detected a slight indication of some kind of chalky pill coursing through his veins. Probably pain killers. Sophia guessed he hadn’t been out on the street very long. He had hunger written all over his face, yes… but it was a hunger he was not quite used to just yet, a hunger that suggested he had only been away from the warm comforts of a roof over his head and a cooked supper for a short period of time. Sophia liked that. That meant he’d be desperate, and that some meat and fat still clung to his muscles. He hadn't been on the streets long enough for his blood to acquire that drug-tainted, medicinal taste.

  “How would you like to come home with me?”

  The boy's eyes flickered with hope. Sophia’s heart fluttered with anticipation. She curled her right hand up into a little ball, her sharp fingernails creating delicate little half-moons into her palm.

  “I’ll give you something to eat. A place out of the cold and the rain.” By now, the other punks were on to her and were whooping and hollering. The boy eyed her necklace.

  “You rich or something?”

  “Or something. Come with me,” Sophia’s voice sounded gruff and pushy, but she guessed the boy didn’t notice or care. She held out her hand. The boy took it, and she helped him up with a strong arm.

  Back home, Sophia watched with interest as the boy wolfed down fine loaves of fresh sourdough bread, rich cheeses and meats that she had just purchased earlier that day. He gulped down half a bottle of red wine.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, not really caring.

  “Portland.”

  “I used to live there.”

  “Yeah? It’s boring.”

  The boy inhaled the last bit of food, and with a still full mouth, asked her, “So, um, what is it you want me to do for you?”

  “Do for me?”

  “Um, yeah. That’s why you picked me up, right?”

  Sophia couldn’t help but laugh. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. I like my boys to be nice and clean be
fore we begin.”

  That should have been a hint for the boy, but he wiped his hands, picked his teeth, and followed through the living room.

  “I thought you said you weren’t rich,” the boy said, still sucking bits of cheese and meat off his fingers.

  “Depends on what you mean by rich.”

  “You have a lot of nice shit. Where did it all come from?” the boy asked as he marveled at the lush, baroque-themed room. The primary colors of the room were gold, off-white, black and dark blood red, creating a warm, turn-of-the-century Gothic vibe. Sophia had collected paintings from around the world, which she’d had framed in elaborate imprinted vegetation and flowers of brassy gold.

  “Is that you?” The boy nodded to one particular painting of a woman sheathed in a velvet black drape, her burgundy red lips standing out against the off-white backdrop like rubies.

  “That’s me in France,” she answered, amused at the boy’s impressed reaction. “This way.”

  Sophia gently cuffed the boy’s bony wrist with her fingers. She glanced down and admired the intricate little blue and lavender networks of veins underneath the taught, pale skin.

  Sophia looked deep into those brown puppy dog eyes and smiled.

  The boy was attractive. Sophia really noticed this as she watched him bathe. He did indeed have muscle still clinging to his bones. His long hair was still shiny and silky. She watched as he wrung it out, a thick, strong damp rope of dark blond. His wet skin looked delectable, the color of it in and of itself was so inviting: rich, dark maple. Sophia licked her lips and moved to uncross and cross her legs. As she did so, she could feel her panties shift between her legs, a slight little tease as the thin strip of fabric pressed up against her clit.

  “You look like a surfer kind of guy. You sure you’re from Portland?”

  The boy laughed, revealing an even line of white teeth. “Yeah. I swam. Maybe that’s what you’re picking up on.”

  “Maybe.” Sophia moved to taste his lips and the boy cooperated. They tasted like soap and remnants of the sandwich and wine.

  The boy definitely did the trick. She slept like the dead, despite Argie's occasional after-dinner commentary.