Cordesman was astonished.
She’s serious.
The whole place stood up—Hair & Fibers, Toolmarks, Photo Unit—and faced him, giving him the eye. Some of them were pretty big guys and Cordesman wasn’t terribly big himself. They were glaring at him like he’d just said something about their mothers’ sex lives, and there was Brock, the red-bootied queen bee calling the shots.
Of course, she’s got a point.
He quickly put his Camel back in his pocket. “Lighten up, will ya? Jesus. You guys need a vacation.”
Brock and her crew returned to their duties, milling about like surgeons with their intricate tools, their UV lights and anthracene and luminol sulfate. But the scene remained. At one time, Cordesman could’ve looked at something like this and not cared, could’ve been more concerned about a Yankees game. Psychical detachment was mandatory. You didn’t see dead
human beings
lying there, you saw dead something else. Dead meat, dead matter—nothing you could assign a soul to, or a history. Nothing you could ever conceive of as having once been a baby happily shaking a rattle, having parents who loved them. A bright-eyed infant squalling “ma-ma, da-da,” etc. You had to reduce it to meat or else you’d eat yourself up.
Cordesman wasn’t having too easy a time just now.
It was only glimpses he caught, or flashes in the photographer’s snaps with the Nikon F with motor-drive. But the glimpses sufficed.
Maybe I’m just too old to do it anymore,
Cordesman thought.
I can’t hack this shit.
“Much of this appears to be self-inflicted,” Brock said, her back to him as she leaned over her Hair & Fibers man.
Cordesman supposed his gulp was an agreement. Two corpses still had knives in their hands—they were too far apart to have done it to each other; no bloodfall could be seen between them.
They…gutted themselves.
One appeared to have gouged out chunks of his own flesh.
Had he died from shock or loss of blood?
Had the other one—the bald one—gelded himself and then removed his own organs?
It appeared so. Cordesman winced, then averted his eyes when he noted that the bald one’s facial expression was a grinning rictus.
“So what do you make of it, Captain?”
Good question. Cordesman saw more of the scene in strobic visions like a nightmare of jumpcuts: the photographer was “flash-painting” the perimeter—sequential time exposures backed up by specialized electronic flash units.
A flash of truncated innards. A flash of a blood pool so large his belly flip-flopped. The slim one lay procumbent; in the split-second flash of light, Cordesman saw that he’d been burned: his back, buttocks, the backs of his legs, even the bottoms of his feet reduced to crisped char by some unknown heat source. The decedent looked like something taken off a spit, severely overcooked. Yet another flash showed a fourth victim, eyes wide open, their whites turned blood-red. His hair and beard seemed to have been flamed off his head and…
Fuck…
A clipped coat hanger stuck out of his urethra. None of this could Cordesman quite calculate but particularly this fourth victim.
What could compel a man to cut himself up like a pork end and then jam a coat hanger up his dick?
“I see you’re not exactly a fountain of theories,” Brock said.
“Oh, what do I make of this?” he finally answered. “It’s fucked up. How’s that for crime-scene analysis? What? A mass-suicide, a cult thing?”
“I wouldn’t think so. These guys are rummies, Captain. Bums, homeless, whatever you want to call them. This old church was obviously their coop. They came in here to party.”
Cordesman turned away from the remnants of this seemingly self-inflicted slaughter fest. “Some party, glad I missed it.” He noted the commonplace signs of a homeless “coop”: excrement, trash, lots of booze bottles like Thunderbird and Mickey’s 40-ouncers—the cheapest stuff. “Wait. Right there, next to the skinny one.” He’d only been able to look for a minute, to the side of the corpse with the roasted back. “A crackpipe.”
Brock nodded. “And?”
“Bad crack. It happens. The Jamakes don’t give a shit if they kill people. Sometimes they use the wrong kind of solvent when they bake the shit into rock. So these rummies all take a hit and—presto—instant psychotic episode.”
“Maybe.” Brock was still hunkered down, her back to Cordesman as she paid very close attention to her technician, who was plucking at the large one’s groinal area with forceps. He wore a hat-light like a miner.
“Look, Jill, I don’t want to sound insensitive but this one’s all yours. I’ll give it to 2nd Squad. These bums got nothing to do with my major gig.”
“The Infamous Multi-Precinct Red Female Hair Case, huh? No time for dead rummies, is that it, Captain?”
Cordesman smirked. “That’s right, that’s my major case right now, and I ain’t gonna take time away from it for this gross-out clusterfuck.” Besides, the smell was killing him.
Don’t they have ventilators for things like this?
“So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go back to the squadroom and smoke a couple of cigarettes. Later.”
“Got it,” the H&F tech said, slipping his Allis/Miltex evidence forceps from a custody bag.
“How many total?” Brock asked him.
“Six, ma’am. Let me check the others. I’ll bet we pluck a bunch.”
“Do it,” Brock ordered.
“What, uh, what’s that?” Cordesman asked, peering over through a helpless curiosity.
Brock brought several of the tiny plastic evidence bags over, each imprinted with a CHAIN OF CUSTODY INDEX label.
“Looks like this is the same thing, Captain.”
“What?”
Brock held up the flap of bags, waving them. “Of course I’ll run the scale counts and blood-type of the hair-root cells back at the shop, but I can tell you already they’re all the same.”
“What are all
what
the same?” He liked Jill, but she could really get on his nerves sometimes. Like most women. “What’s in the ev-bags?”
“Hairfall, Captain. Pubic hair.”
Cordesman’s gaze closed, bringing wrinkles to the corners of his eyes. “What color? Not r—”
“Red, Captain. We got red hairs all over these 64s.”
(iii)
Locke couldn’t quite recall but hadn’t Lethe said something about a small get-together when they’d spoken on the phone yesterday? No matter, Locke guessed it was better this way, just a little…well, weird.
Like a lot of things around here.
Lethe faced Locke from one end of a twenty-foot-long Georgian Revival dining table, pure veneered mahogany with satinwood bandings and scrolled brass footcaps. There was no table cloth, a fact which stirred a little trepidation in Locke.
Don’t spill any Potage a’ Saint Germaine!
The stark white dining room’s high ceiling carried their voices. Locke was stunned, first by the table settings and overall appointment of the room, and next by the menu. “It’s a pity you don’t speak French, Mr. Locke. Such a rich language not to mention a rich cuisine. I like things rich.”
The driver entered; Locke did a double-take.
This has got to be some kind of a joke. I really feel sorry for this guy.
The driver had lost the cap and driving accouterments, and replaced them with traditional butler’s garb. The black cutaway coat, the bow tie and white pleated shirt, morning trousers and, of course, white gloves. He carried in an odd pear-shaped bottle of wine with a desiccated label.
“Since this is such a special occasion for me,” Lethe announced, “I’ve summoned one of my best bottles. A brisk Conde Dontatien Burgundy. It was de Sade’s favorite, and as I’m sure you can imagine, I paid quite a price for this particular bottle which was corked in 1814—the year of de Sade’s death.”
But it was not this shocking tidbit that gave Locke cause to turn a brow. He noticed, as the wine was poured, that the driver was wearing a black-satin eye-mask tied behind his head by a silver string.
“But one of my many indulgences, Mr. Locke,” Lethe exclaimed. “The
bal masque
of the end of the Bourbon reign serves to amplify the mood, don’t you think?”
“Uh, yes, sure,” Locke blathered.
It’s your party, buddy.
The driver poured a thick, amarelle-colored wine into a porcelain goblet. It tasted strong, tart—rich.
Don’t chug it, you asshole!
Locke tried to warn himself.
This shit’s probably a thousand bucks a sip.
“Even our utensils are French,” Lethe informed him, “from the Limoges workshops, contemporary Romanesque, popular amongst the nobility of the 1300s.” This was not silverware but goldware.
I’m eating with a seven-hundred-year-old fork,
Locke realized.
I’m impressed!
Lethe had announced each course in French, and was kind enough to translate, which all made Locke feel stupid. “Salade Verte avec Courtes de Roquefort.” A simple salad was placed before him. “That’s Green Salad with Roquefort Toasts.”
The masked driver appeared and reappeared as if on some premonitory demand. When Locke finished each dish, the guy was there, uninspired mug and all, a smug robot. Locke wondered if the guy’s name was James or Hollingsworth. What followed were Haricots Verts a la Vapeur (steamed green beans), and Poulet au Vinaigre a l’Estragon (braised chicken with vinegar and tarragon).
Locke ate in considerable awkwardness. The finest meal he’d ever consumed—more than likely—in his life, not to mention eating it with gold utensils that were three times older than the nation, and, lastly, wine that probably cost mid five figures.
A good spread,
he thought,
but why am I here?
This weird palace? The masked driver? And Lethe himself about to lay ten grand on him for writing a single edition book of poetry?
Lethe’s fine salt-and-pepper hair shined in the chandelier light. He ate daintily but with a strange voraciousness, sucking each chicken bone of every fiber of its marinated meat. At one point—
crunch
—he even cracked a thigh bone with his teeth, then picked out the marrow with what appeared to be a diamond stickpin. “A bit of elaboration is in order, I suppose,” he said. He’d only sipped half his first glass of wine, while Locke was on his third. “The obvious elaboration of my home’s exterior. I’m afraid I’m security minded, and I’ve always believed in the power of appearances.”
At last Locke could comment on something. “Oh, I get it. If the house looks like a dump on the outside, burglars will be less likely to think there’s anything good inside—” But then Locke bit his tongue.
Dick!
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Lethe laughed. “Your honesty—your
verity,
Mr. Locke—is what I like about you, aside from your poetry, of course. But the mansion
does
look like a ‘dump’ on the outside, for precisely the reason you hinted upon. But, I must add, if the appearances don’t suffice, I’ve a top-notch alarm system.”
Locke nodded. “Of course,” and then he felt tongue-tied again. How did one make dinner conversation with such a host? “Oh, I forgot to ask. When we arrived, there were some other people coming in, a painter, I believe?”
“Yes, Martin, a post-neo abstractionist you might call him.” Lethe dipped his fingers into a dish of lemon water, then flicked them dry. “He’s been up before; I’ve commissioned him to do some work for me. An odd one, and a trifle wild, which you could probably surmise by his cast of current girlfriends.”
Locke remembered the pierced, mohawked character and pair of…tramps. He wondered why Lethe hadn’t invited them to dinner as he had Locke.