The Delilah Complex (25 page)

T
he bad news came at noon the next day, like it always does with a phone call.

“Shit,” Perez said with such vehemence and anger that Jordain had no doubt what had happened. “Shit, shit, shit. Damn.”

“Another one?” Jordain asked.

Perez nodded at his partner as he continued on the phone. “Don’t go anywhere, we’ll come there.” He hung up. “That was Douglas. Young got another package this morning. We’re gonna have to let Lessor go.”

“He could have mailed them before we got him.”

“Nope. The lock of hair isn’t just in a bag. This time it’s wrapped up in a nice little cut-out of today’s
New York Times
article saying we have a suspect in custody.”

Jordain felt sick to his stomach, but there was no time for that. Grabbing the bottle of Pepto from his top desk drawer, he unscrewed the cap and chugged the viscous pink liquid while Perez waited.

“Where was Young last night?”

“Home all night.”

Jordain threw the empty bottle into the garbage pail and they left.

T
he detectives spent the afternoon examining the photographs that Betsy Young had received that morning. Every detail of these new shots matched up to all the previous ones. Five portfolios of brutally graphic images of five men who had been defiled and killed.

How?

That remained a mystery.

Why?

They didn’t have a single clue. In fact, the list of the unknowns was one hundred times longer than the list of things they knew.

Louis Fenester was, like the others, laid out on a hospital gurney. The light source hit him evenly so that there were few harsh shadows, but that did nothing to soften the hard edges of the man’s angular physique.

He had been thin enough to start with—his girlfriend had delivered photographs of him eight days ago when he hadn’t come home after going to the gym. Now his ribs were protruding, his cheekbones arched over deep hollows in his face. He looked as if an overeager sculptor had gouged out too much of the marble with his chisel. Fenester
no longer looked human; he could have been a stone effigy on top of a sarcophagus. His skin was like white marble, without the luminosity.

Around the man’s wrists and ankles were the same rings of green-and-blue-and-purple bruises that all the men had exhibited.

Like the four others before him, plus Paul Lessor, Fenester had the identifying tattoo on his right foot. But what did that mean? Lessor had steadfastly refused to tell them anything about the mark.

Fenester lay in what seemed to be the same room with the same dull gray backdrop behind him that had been in all the other shots. Nothing revealed the nature of the chamber of horrors beyond that sweep of even, toneless color.

The pallor of death had overtaken Fenester’s body so that although it was a color photograph, there was none in the man’s skin. The only vividness in the shot were the number 5s on the man’s feet. Bright red. The same hue as the leaves that were decorating the park and the city streets that time of year. What did Young call the color in all her articles?

Jordain tried to remember.

She never just said red, she was more specific.

Yes, scarlet.

When Officer Butler came in, both detectives looked up. She had a satisfied smile on her face. After the deep disappointment of the day’s events—of having to release Lessor, of knowing that Young wasn’t looking like a suspect, either, of having to inform Fenester’s girlfriend and family of his grisly murder, of dealing with the fury of their boss that they were back to square one—Butler’s expression buoyed them.

“You have something?” Jordain asked. “What is it?”

She nodded as she approached the table, littered with photographs of the dead man, and put down a computer printout that had squiggles of blue ink all over it.

“We got Fenester’s phone book keyed into our ever-growing database and we have one number that is showing up in all six.”

“The restaurant?”

She nodded. “It’s called S’s in one. Shel’s in one. It’s in Lessor’s phone book but he had it listed in the
P
’s and identified as ‘Pete’s friend’s place.’ Now, in Fenester’s PDA, it’s listed under S. No notation. Just the number.”

“So you checked it out?” Jordain asked, leaning forward, fingers frozen on the desk, body rigid, waiting.

“It’s a cell phone. Listed to Pine Realty. We’re working on getting the billing information.”

“Give me the number.”

Jordain punched the speaker button on his phone and dialed.

The three of them listened to the hollow sound of the phone ringing twice and then they heard a click. Butler’s sharp intake of breath was audible in the split second between the phone being picked up and the announcement starting.

“There’s no one here right now, but please leave your name and number and someone will get right back to you. Appointments and schedules of events can also be found online.”

Jordain hit the button to end the call.

“Appointments I can understand from a realty company. But events? What kind of events?” Perez asked.

“Open houses for other real estate agents?” Butler offered.

“Neither of you actually think that is a real estate office, do you?” Jordain asked.

“How long will it take to get the name and address of whoever pays the bills?” Perez asked Butler.

“About an hour. If we are lucky.”

“Well, let’s not bet on that. We haven’t been lucky so far. Not with one damn thing,” Jordain complained. “We have had five corpses, no idea of where they are hidden, a man with a mental disorder whose glee at the killings makes my blood run cold and who refuses to help us with one piece of information. Oh, I almost forgot, we have a red tattoo that links everybody up to one another.” Jordain got up, walked to the window and opened it. He leaned out, pressing the palms of his hands into the rough surface of the brick sill.

Horns honked, people shouted, cars roared by. The afternoon traffic was at its peak. Even though the air was tainted with the city smells, it was fresher than what was inside the office. He breathed in. Deeply. The end of October was usually colder than this. Or was it just that the air wasn’t even close to being cold as compared to the case?

Ice.

He was not used to coming up short. But he couldn’t think of a single case he’d ever worked on without a body or a crime scene. That was where leads came from. The body and the place the body was found.

Once you dealt with the concept that the victim was a man or woman who had a job, a family, a spouse, sibling or child who would be bereft, whose life would from this day forward never be the same, once you swallowed hard a few times—even though you’d been through this so many times you should be inured to it—you dealt with the
clues. The hair and fibers. The skin trapped under the fingernails. The weapon. The blood on the floor. Or the sheets. The bullet casings. The contents of the victim’s stomach. The note in his pocket. The torn picture in her purse.

You could get somewhere with just one find. And you had a hundred places to make it.

But this insanity? Photographs and hair in sanitized plastic bags that mothers slipped sandwiches in, that were sold in every damn supermarket in the whole United States? Manila envelopes that couldn’t be traced because every office supply store in the damn country sold them?

“Hey, look at this,” Butler said, interrupting Jordain ’s thoughts. She was leaning over and examining one of the shots of Fenester’s midsection that had been enlarged.

“What is it?”

“He’s got some kind of shadow on the underside of his left thigh. Or is it a shadow? Whatever it is—this is something I haven’t seen before.”

Jordain went back to the table, bent over her shoulder and looked down at what she was pointing to.

It didn’t look like anything in any of the other shots. One deviation from the exactness, but, just to make sure, he picked it up and carried it the length of the photo-papered room, holding it up and comparing it to the other shots taken from the same angle.

To him, the collage of death-scene shots didn’t look macabre—he was used to it. But to anyone who might have walked in who wasn’t with the department, the wall would be something they would never forget. There were hundreds of photos of male body parts. The same section in a dozen different magnifications. Some recognizable, others enlarged to the point of abstraction.

“No, nothing like this on any of the other men’s legs.”

Returning to Butler, he put the photograph down and pointed at the oblong irregular pattern she’d noticed.

“I don’t think it looks like a bruise. But it sure does look strange. What’s wrong with it? What is that splotch?”

Jordain picked up two other shots at random, turned them over, and used the blank white paper to create a frame around the area so that there was nothing distracting them from it.

All three of them stared down.

“What the hell is it?” Perez asked.

Jordain squinted. He put his hand down and moved the white frame in just a little closer so he could focus even more clearly.

“Holy shit,” Jordain muttered.

Butler looked up.

T
he dosage of Thorazine had been easy to administer. Pills crushed in water. Water taken greedily. Zombies willing to lie down and sleep. Everything about them subdued. The walking dead. The sleeping dead. The dead. Nothing woke them. That was right. Nothing could wake the dead. But the dead would strike fear in the hearts of those who knew about them. The dead would warn the living to stay away. To be better than these men had been. To behave.

Behave.

Such an easy word. Such a luscious concept.

Easy, the photographer thought, everything had been easy. Blessed. The whole plan had been blessed. The men did not see a stranger waiting for them. You do not fear someone whom you know. They came willingly. Too willingly, in fact. They were actually accommodating.

There was nothing to worry about. The monitor was on. If anything went wrong, the photographer would hear it.

But what could go wrong with the sleeping dead?

Each man had been a study in color, shape and form. To light each of them, to capture the image, to get the angles right, to develop the film carefully had taken talent.

The result had been professional, even though the photographer was only an amateur.

Arrrrg
.

A sound?

Arrrg
.

A moan?

Arrrrrrrg
.

What was wrong?

Work tools, dropped without thought. A splatter of red spilled on the floor. It didn’t matter. Not now.

Arrrg
.

Run, faster. It was so many steps from the studio, through the hall, down the steps, through the cool bricklined room, past the thick steel door built to withstand invasions and hold a family of six for days or weeks.

Arrrrrrrrrrg
.

Getting closer. Closer. Closer.

The man writhed on the stretcher. Beat against the restraints. His face was pale, sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes. He was screaming into the gag.

It had been important to memorize the side effects of Thorazine in case of emergency. Few were serious. Only one was deadly: a heart attack. And the photographer knew what a man having a heart attack looked like. He looked like the man strapped to the gurney.

Fingers fumbled to unbuckle the restraints.

It had been hours since their last cocktails. His drugs would just be wearing off. Why would the attack come now? It didn’t matter.

“Can you get up? Let me help you up.”

Arrg
.

He was moving, sitting up. In pain and slow, but thank God he was standing.

“I’m going to take you to the hospital. You’ll be fine. Hold on to my arm. Let me help you.”

Prayers? Yes, prayers said silently that the man would be able to traverse the distance from here to the car. He was walking. Doubled over in pain. Slow. But putting one foot in front of the other. Lifting his legs. Step. Up. Step. Up. Prayers said silently that the man would be okay during the ride to the hospital. Because the man couldn’t die. That would be murder.

M
y appointment with Nicky and Daphne was a welcome interruption to my week. Since the resurrection of my argument with Nina the day before, I was uncomfortable at the institute. We’d had two—no, three—fights in as many weeks, and each pushed us further apart. I found myself staying in my office. Avoiding walking in the halls. I knew sooner or later we were going to have to figure out how to work out our differences and that my avoidance of her was cowardly and childish, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to confront her. To do that, I would have to confront how I felt about Noah Jordain. And I wasn’t prepared to do that. Not yet.

At least in the car, I’d have forty-five minutes to clear my head on the way up to Connecticut.

I took the North Street exit off Merritt Parkway, drove for ten minutes, took one turn, then another, drove five minutes, and finally pulled up in front of Daphne’s house. I was fifteen minutes early, but I didn’t care.

I parked in the driveway.

There were orchards to the right of the house and I didn’t think that anyone would mind if I took a walk.

Everywhere I looked, a tapestry of leaves obliterated the grass and changed the distant landscape into a fauvist painting.

As we get close to death, we lose our color, we lose our beauty. I had seen my mother, sickly and thin, her hair stringy, her once peach-colored skin gray and ashen when she had become unconscious.

As leaves die, they alone become more beautiful. As they perish, they offer up a palette of screaming colors.

The wind blew and hundreds of lemon-yellow aspen leaves took wing, dipping and soaring on the breeze, flying around me, as colorful and as graceful as butterflies.

It had been slightly overcast when I got out of the car, but the cloud cover had blown away and the sun shone now and illuminated the landscape around me and the house beyond.

I walked toward it, getting closer and closer until, with the sun shining like that, I could see right into Daphne’s studio. There were several large canvases on display. About three feet away, I stopped. No, that’s not accurate. About three feet away, the painting I saw through the glass stopped me.

The portrait on the easel was of a man. Naked. Sitting in a chair. His head lolled to one side. His expression was slack and lifeless. His flesh fell in folds.

The painting was darker around the edges and lightened as it came closer to the center, so that there was a brightness on the man’s midsection. At the very center of that spotlight, displayed the way a diamond is exhibited in one of Tiffany’s windows, was the prize—the most detailed and lovingly painted part of the canvas: the man’s flaccid and very small penis.

Something was familiar about the composition. What?
Where had I seen it before? I looked at the next easel. Another portrait of a naked man. He was standing, leaning really, against a wall. His shoulders slumped. He looked out, imploring, begging for help.

Daphne was more than accomplished. She was masterful. She captured emotions and intentions as well as any artist whose work hung in a gallery.

Like the other painting, this one employed a halo effect so that, after being assaulted by the man’s expression, I was drawn to the dead center of his body. His penis was wrinkled, red, shrunken. Impotent.

Overall, Daphne’s style was luminous and detailed, but nowhere on the canvases did she lavish more detail and time and create as much grotesque beauty as with the genitalia.

That was when I saw the third painting.

The nausea rose quickly. I didn’t expect it, so I didn’t have time to prepare myself for the violent way the image struck me. I put my hand out, reaching for a tree branch, and held on while I vomited on the newly fallen leaves.

And then I ran toward the house.