CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (36 page)

C
HAPTER 47

____________

Friday, October 24

Rhesus feels safe now, soothed by the familiarity of the place. He slows the car, rolls down the window, and breathes in the brisk air of the night. The stars are out and the temperature is chilly.

He thinks of his burning home, the price he had to pay. It will be hard to resist the temptation to go back and scavenge the debris once the fire’s out, looking for a shiny LAPD badge. He’ll have to be patient and wait before he can collect his prize.

Rhesus smiles. Such damn luck the cop went back for his gun. He couldn’t have hoped for a better turn out. He’ll claim defective brakes on the car and collect the insurance money on the house. The money will buy him a new life, with Elizabeth by his side.

A moan from the back shakes him out of his reverie. “What is it, my darling? Too much of a bumpy ride for you?” He stares in the rearview mirror and laughs. “You can scream as much as you want, my love. Nobody will hear out here.”

The rim of the Santa Monica Mountains is a wavy black line against the deep blue of the night sky. Frazzled tamarisk shrubs whisper in the breeze, as they overlook the illuminated valley. Rhesus parks in his favorite spot and gets out of the car. This is where it all began, where he killed his first prey and collected his first trophy. There’s a comforting sense of peace coming from repetition, a liturgy renewed through the same actions. Rhesus looks down on the valley and stares at the geometric quilt of blinking lights.

“We have an audience tonight,” he says, sliding his gun out of the holster strapped around his thigh. With a press of his thumb, he releases the empty magazine and inserts a loaded one. His fingers are nimble, his movements dictated by a well-rehearsed ritual.

Rhesus racks the slide to chamber a round before topping off the mag. He smiles, the sound giving him a thrill of excitement.

He brings the pistol to his nose and inhales. Metal, nitrate and gun oil. He walks to the back door and opens it. Diane lies on her back, her eyes fiery with hate. Her mouth is gagged and her hands and legs tied, and yet she looks nothing like defeated. Her glare is a load of spite. Rhesus grins, a wave of desire bulging in his pants. “My precious prize.”

He clutches the grip of the gun and slides over her, pressing the barrel against her side. “Be good, now Diane,” he croons in her ear, his free hand unbuttoning her shirt and sneaking into her bra. “After all, we’ve done this many times already.”

The bang on the roof almost makes him lose the grip on the gun. He topples over and Diane is quick to slam her bound feet into his stomach. “Bitch!” He smacks her, sinks the barrel into her throat and cranes his head out the window. Darkness.

“Who the fuck’s out there?”

The thought that there could be somebody out there unnerves him. He scrambles back behind the steering wheel and turns the engine on. His headlights wash onto ghostly trees surrounded by bushes. “Fuck!” He shifts to first gear and makes a U turn, holding the gun against the steering wheel. The tires skid on gravel, his foot pressed against the gas pedal. Diane wriggles and kicks the back of his seat with her bound feet. Rhesus hits the brakes and swerves. The thrust makes Diane slam against
the back of his seat. He turns and smacks the butt of the gun in her face, splitting her cheek open.

“Fucking bitch!” he yells at her.

The right wheels are stuck in the runoff. The more Rhesus gives gas, the more the tires skid, throwing off gravel and dirt. His frustration flushes down the side of his face in heavy drips of sweat. “Damn it!” he bellows, slumping against the back of his seat. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and stares through the windshield. “What the—”

CHAPTER 48

____________

Friday, October 24

As soon as the car got stuck, I pulled away from my hiding spot. Lights off, I gunned the Dodge ahead, jerked the steering wheel to make a ninety-degree turn, and blocked the road. I slid out, ducked behind the hood and yelled, “Get out of the car, NOW!” I flew two rounds and put his headlights out.

Silence fell. I couldn’t see inside the vehicle and didn’t know whether or not Diane was alive.
She wouldn’t be in the front seat
. I fired again. The driver’s side window shattered into pieces.

“Drop your gun or I’ll kill her!” he bellowed. His voice came from the back of the car.

“You squeeze the trigger and you’re dead. Either way you’ll be dead. You lost, asshole.”

Seconds slugged by. I held the gun steady and clenched my
teeth.

“OK,” he cried. “I give up.”

I waited. “Open the back door and toss the gun.”

The door opened slowly. Something flew out of it and hit the dirt with a thud. It glimmered like metal, but I couldn’t be sure. I held my ground. “Let Diane out,” I ordered.

The car gave a few jolts. She emerged, at last. Gagged and bound, she bent backwards in an unnatural way. I flinched and saw it, the gun pointed to her head. Rhesus shielded himself with her body, a hand clutching her waist, and the other wrapped around the grip of the pistol.

Son of a bitch
.

“Changed my mind,” he said. “I may lose, but you won’t have her either.” He paused, his dark eyes fringed by Diane’s locks. They glimmered slyly. “Last chance to save her and be a hero, dick.”

I inhaled.
We meet at last, Rhesus
,
king of Thrace
. No longer an epic character, a metaphoric inbreeding between what I knew of him and what I’d imagined. This Rhesus was real, and I loathed him. I loathed the gun he held against Diane’s head, the way his eyes lingered on her, the smell of his body, how his voice vibrated in my ears.

I smelled the adrenaline in his sweat—a wild excitement enthused by ancestral chemical signals, both sexual and aggressive. When Ulysses came out of the Trojan horse and lowered the gates of Troy to let the Greeks into the city, the soldiers walked through the streets burning, looting, and raping. The drive to kill mixed with the sexual desire—same hormones, an identical ancestral call.

I loathed Rhesus’s thirst for blood because in it I recognized my own. His smell was muddled with Diane’s fear. Her eyes were sprang open, her head tilted, exposing the veins pulsing in her neck. There was dried blood on the right side of her face and smeared on her forehead. She was no longer fighting.

Rhesus bristled. “Drop the gun, you fucking cop! You fire, I fire, she’s dead. Don’t you get it?” A shrill of frustration wavered in his voice. The barrel shook against Diane’s temple.

“You’re dead,” I hissed, my finger itching around the trigger.

“You wouldn’t risk her life.”

“Try me.”

In the low light of a half moon, a drop of sweat glistened against the side of his face. I was no longer looking at him, though.

I was staring at Diane, a multitude of what-ifs fogging my mind with their meaningless existence.

Shoot
, her eyes told me.

I could kill you
.

Shoot. Now
.

The bastard kept his head hidden from me. There was one way only to finish him: shoot him in the head. Any other spot, even if mortal, he would’ve had the time to pull the trigger and kill Diane.

The strain of holding Diane in that unnatural pose finally paid off. Rhesus shifted backwards, the gun in his hand faltered, and his face came in full view. I fired.

Time mocks you, Detective
.

It took an eternity for the bullet to strike. A whole eternity during which I envisioned Diane’s blood splattered all over Rhesus’s face, her eyes accusing me. Or worse, hating me.

Diane let out a shriek through her gagged mouth. She fell forward against the car and onto the ground. I smelled blood, but it wasn’t hers. Rhesus staggered backwards. The gun dropped from his hand. I leaped over the hood and fired four more rounds, all to his chest. Rhesus collapsed, quivering like fabric caught in the wind. I watched him die and kept on watching long after that. His looks defied the image of him I had concocted in my mind. Even in the grimace of death, Rhesus was surprisingly handsome.

The sharp edges of his face were softened by a goatee, neither sparse nor thick. He had small, gray eyes underneath dark eyebrows, and his black hair—sleek with hair gel—curled loosely on his neck. A small hole wept from the middle of his forehead.

His body stopped jerking and yet his eyes remained open. On me.

Diane gave out a loud moan. My body was numb, my legs
heavy with exhaustion. Sirens wailed in the distance, then lights wobbled uphill, towards us. I left the Glock on the ground, crouched by Diane’s side, and loosened the knot keeping her mouth gagged. As soon as I freed her, she let out a deep sob, cracked like the edge of a broken glass. I went on working on the ropes on her wrists as she kept making the sound, neither of us speaking a word. Rhesus’s blood had sprayed all over her. The headlights of a vehicle washed on us, a second one followed behind, its roof throbbing in red and blue. I heard car doors open and close, voices, radios. Satish ran by my side and helped me free Diane.

“Fucking punctual,” I grumbled.

“Thank the FID guys. They had an all-points on your car. We would’ve never found your location.”

We freed Diane, helped her roll over and sit up. Her wrists and ankles were bloody and swollen. She was hyperventilating. “I’ll help her to the cruiser,” I told Satish. “Tell the guys to take her to the hospital.” Satish nodded and walked over to the officers. They were staring at Rhesus’s body and initiating the calls to the station.

As I picked her up, Diane leaned her head over my shoulder and wept. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she sobbed. “I thought he loved me.”

I didn’t say anything. I had enough trouble blaming myself. I’d led Diane straight into the lion’s mouth, running back for my gun instead of protecting her. And then I pulled the trigger. I could’ve killed her, yet I pulled the trigger.
You’re so full of hatred you don’t have a speck of heart left to love a stupid woman who’s fallen for you
.

I delivered her to the back seat of the cruiser and brushed the back of my fingers on her wounded face. She was scraped, bruised, exhausted. And beautiful. “I gotta go,” I said.

She clutched my shirt and pulled me closer. “Where?” Her voice was coarse and pained.

“I’m in a jam with the FID. They’re looking for me.”

“Will you come back?”

I knew what she meant. I didn’t know the answer, though. “I’m dangerous, Diane. I could’ve killed you. I—” I didn’t have the guts
to voice the rest.
I would’ve killed you
.
I’m so full of hatred I would’ve killed you in order to kill him
.

She laid a hand on my face and smiled a sad smile. “I’ve always liked to play with fire.”

I kissed her wondering whether I would ever kiss her again. Every kiss should be like that. Those are the ones that leave a knot in your throat and keep you awake at night. I watched the cruiser back up and roll away, the siren and pulsing lights lingering behind a moment longer.

“The FID are on their way,” Satish said, behind me. I nodded, my eyes watching the blinking lights get smaller and smaller. “How’d you know you’d find him here?”

We walked back to where the body was. “This is where he brought Huxley. Predators are methodical with their hunting strategies.”

I gave Satish a brief and partly confused account of what happened.

The coroner’s retrieval cruise arrived, together with two more cruisers.

Lastly, the two FID detectives made it to the scene. Tires crunched the gravel, and doors opened and slammed closed. I heard the stretcher rattle along the road ruts and a familiar voice ask where the hell I was.

Satish gave me a friendly nudge on the shoulder, before joining the cruise.

I sent one last look to Rhesus’s sprawled body, then turned around and walked away. As I went, I slid the badge wallet out of my pocket and tossed it on the ground. 

“You lost something, cowboy,” the familiar voice said from behind.

I turned to face the FID dick whom I’d met over the Carmelo shooting and who loved my guts so much. He was holding my tin.

“This your car?” I pointed to the silver sedan next to the ambulance. He smiled sheepishly, holding up my badge as if I hadn’t realized it was mine. I opened the back door. “Keep it,” I said, hopping inside the vehicle.
I no longer deserve it
.

The FID detective mumbled something into his radio. His colleague appeared, holding the gun I’d dropped by Rhesus’s body. The two confabulated, their hands pointing to the car to confirm my presence inside. They finally ambled over and started the engine.

“Looks like it’s going to be another long night,” one of the two mumbled, half serious, half mocking.

Another fucking long night.
Tonight, the monster won over the human. I did not gather my trophy, this time. Inhaling his blood was my victory
.

I had not chosen my existence. Unlike the Proteus kids, I had nobody to blame for the mistakes encoded within my genes. Unlike Jerry White, I had nobody to take my revenge on but myself.

Life is a constant struggle to understand who we are.

The cruiser wobbled along the dirt road, the million lights of the valley shimmering under a dome of yellow. I stared at L.A., my home and my harshest judge.

Tonight, my victory has the bitter aftertaste of defeat.

~ THE END ~