A Cruel Season for Dying (13 page)

“Liberation could be part of it,” he said, “but the ritual is definitely connected with angels. The letters above the beds
spell out names of fallen angels.”

“Fallen angels.”
She echoed his words. “I’ll have to think about that…. What’s the sexual assault?”

“None that’s apparent.”

“It’s possible he’s impotent or masturbating later. Is he taking souvenirs?”

“Not body parts. There’s no mutilation except for the incisions to insert the wings. He could be taking clothes or something
else, but so far there’s no indication of anything missing.”

“You need to check carefully on that,” she said, “but my guess is he’s taking pictures. Maybe even video. He’s an artist.
He’s going to want to record this in some way, to help sustain the fantasy.”

“I should have thought of that.”

She fell silent again. Then, “Do we know what the symbol is on the chests?”

“Not a clue.”

“You still haven’t told me how he’s killing them, Sakura.”

“Injection with potassium chloride. He’s stopping their hearts.”

“God … that’s a new one.”

“So’s his whole MO,” he said. “I’ve talked to Lawrence at the field office. There’s nothing even close in the computers, and
that includes all the states that keep records.”

“I can’t believe he hasn’t killed before,” she said. “Serials this organized take time to get up to speed. Where the hell
did he come from?”

He had no answer.

“Jimmy … what is it you’re still not telling me?”

He smiled at her sudden intuition. “Did I forget to mention that he’s injecting the victims with LSD before he kills them?”

There was an indeterminate noise on the line. “You didn’t forget to tell me that.”

“Maybe I was afraid when you knew, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.”

“Bastard.” She was laughing now. “You think I’m that obsessed?”

“I need your help, Willie.”

“Injecting them with LSD. I can’t believe it.”

“What I need to know is
why
?”

“Right.” She had caught his soberness. “I can imagine one reason,” she said after a moment, “but it’s really out there. You
need to give me a little time to think about it. And fax me your reports … and the VICAP forms. Hell, fax me everything you’ve
got. Forget the conventional wisdom that a profiler can have too much information.”

“So you wouldn’t mind giving me a little help?”

Her laugh rang again on the line. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Sakura.”

Gothic spires, needles penetrating the pillow of darkness, soared above the exoskeleton of flying buttresses. Beneath, vaulting
arches doubled and tripled upon themselves, competing in a controlled but maddening race toward the heavens. The whole structure
was an exercise in opposing forces, the impossible resolution of an exquisite geometric conflict.

Michael Darius stared at his work, his intense blue eyes surprising in his naturally tanned face. His Greek Welsh heritage
made for an interesting, if not conventionally handsome, combination. He ran his hand through his dark wavy hair; then with
all deliberateness his fist came down hard, skin split on impact. Shadow, wood, table, shimmied, but the cathedral remained
intact. His model possessed the same engineering integrity as the original in Chartres.

He sucked at his wound, tasting the iron in his blood, inhaling the scent of raw wood that flavored the rough skin of his
carpenter’s
hands. It was an unorthodox test, but one he executed each time he completed one of his models. Of course, there was risk
in what he did, but that instant before his fist fell was as exhilarating as it was frightening. Walking the tightrope between
success and failure always made him light-headed. But it was his pain, not his victory, that gave him the giddiness of a first-time
drunk. The pain was real, more substantive and more important to him than the building. It made him human.

From the adjacent bedroom a bubble of blue illumination, a flickering ghost from the television set, spilled into the dark
corners of the workroom. The reflection danced in his peripheral vision, accompanied by the droning libretto of late-night
news functioning as a kind of mantra, pieces of his environment sensed rather than seen or heard.

It wasn’t until the disembodied voice spoke the name he himself had spoken hundreds of times that he became fully aware of
what he was hearing. He froze, forgetting the pain, willing his brain to register exactly what the reporter was saying….
Serial murder… homosexual victims… task force headed by Lieutenant James Sakura.

A large bead of sweat ran from his hairline down the center of his face. He walked over to where he’d left the remote lying
and hit mute.

It was then he heard the knocking. For a moment he considered ignoring it, then walked to the entrance. Jimmy Sakura was standing
at his door.

“Jimmy.” He moved back into the living room.

Sakura closed the door.

“It’s after eleven.”

Sakura nodded in agreement.

“You been home today?”

“Not yet.”

“Hanae can’t like that.”

“Hanae understands.”

Darius smiled. “Does she?”

Sakura walked to a chair but didn’t sit. “Have you been keeping up with the news?”

Darius almost smiled again. “If you mean the serial killer … the answer is no.”

“I like order.” Sakura’s face remained expressionless.

Darius smoothed his hair back from his forehead. His widow’s peak make him look like a vampire. “Now there is chaos,” he said.

Sakura nodded.

“The universe is a very nasty place”—Darius moved to a stack of his jazz CDs and began reading titles—“and unpredictable.”
He turned. “Go figure, my partner of three years, a man of infinite taste and judgment, is a lover of heavy metal.”

Sakura ignored the comment. “Three bodies. No connection,” he said.

“They were all gay.”

Sakura shrugged.

“What’s the M.E. giving you?”

“As many questions as answers.”

“The lab boys?”

“Negatives.”

Darius turned back to the CDs. “You would think you’d prefer classical.” He moved a couple of the cases. “So what have you
got, Jimmy?”

“Nude bodies with no sexual assault. Taped, gagged, but no sign of struggle.”

Darius reached for a specific disc. “Willing victims …” He tested the logic of his words. “What about cause of death?”

“Induced heart failure. Injected them with potassium.”

“Why didn’t he just slit their throats?”

“He could have. He had a knife. But he was after something else. It seems he also injected them with LSD.”

Darius looked up. “What’s this guy into?”

Sakura pulled photographs from the folder he’d been holding.

Darius set the CD back in place, reached for the pictures. He looked down. In an instant his face went wide, then closed in
on itself.

“It can all be fixed….” Sakura broke the silence.

Darius glanced up. “What can be fixed?”

“Your coming back. They’ve made it clear I can have anyone I want.”

Darius tossed the photographs onto a table and walked over to a gym that took over most of the space near the windows. He
squatted
on the bench, grasping the handles of the horizontal bar, pulling down until it touched his trapezius muscles.

“Hanae says I need you on this case.”

Darius began to pump the bar, controlling the weight, letting his lats do most of the work. “You really ought to get one of
these, Jimmy. Put some muscle on that skinny body of yours.”

“He’s going to kill again.”

Suddenly Darius released the bar with a slam, and for a few moments it swung crazily back and forth like an empty trapeze.
It seemed he’d forgotten that Sakura was even in the room as he looked down at his fingers splayed across the padded seat.
Then he raised his right arm and made his hand into a gun, aimed, and fired.

“Hudson was nothing, Michael.”

Darius slowly lowered his arm. “Nothing is nothing, Sakura. Now get the fuck out of here.”

It was very late, but for the moment the man was enjoying how the moon threw the outline of the long row of windows onto the
hardwood floor. He closed his eyelids and inhaled deeply. His obliques responded, tucking themselves higher inside the wall
of his chest.

His scent was even stronger when he worked out. Rotating his head, he sniffed the damp of an armpit. Then he ran a hand between
his legs, pulling up on the moist fleshy sac of his testicles. Bringing his fingers to his nostrils, he noted that the odor
of his groin was slightly different. The smell of his sex seemed essentially more organic.

He walked away from the windows and moved to a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Behind him, in the moonlight, the massive hulk of
his exercise equipment crouched like an alien beast. Chrome glittered like eyes. He flipped a light switch. The sharp contours
of his body were instantly excited by the cool fluorescence overhead. He saw a skeleton overlaid with taut muscle. Pale, hairless
flesh held the neat assemblage together. It was an attractive, well-disciplined package, this body bag. Except for the scar
that ran from the Vastus lateralis to the Vastus medialis of his right leg, he might have considered himself a perfect specimen.

He flexed his chest, admiring the ladder of muscle that descended from pectorals to waist. He’d always used his body to great
advantage, especially in his youth, in that second decade after the war in Southeast Asia. In the eighties, he had been part
of an elite special ops unit, whose goal was to kidnap members of the Vietnamese politburo and coerce them into revealing
the truth about American MIAs and POWs. Although the mission failed, he had gained invaluable knowledge and developed remarkable
skills in the service.

It still seemed ironic he’d ended up in the army after he’d dropped out of college. The last place he figured he would have
set course was the armed forces, since his stepfather, a man he hated, had been military and had ruled his life with an unyielding
authority until he was gratefully shuttled off at eight to his grandfather.

His eyes moved back to the whiter ribbon of flesh that was the scar. No matter how desperately he tried, it was impossible
without examining the photographs he’d taken to remember how wonderful life had been those few precious years before the accident.
That singular horror of the head, rolling across the floor of the car, eclipsed all other memories.

He touched one of his pale nipples. Since his awakening he’d begun to suspect that there was more than an element of capriciousness
in the cycle of death and rebirth that the Fallen had to endure. And he wondered if, in another lifetime, he had been a woman.

But this was to be his last lifetime on Earth. His hand reached out to the image of his face in the glass. “Gad-ri-el …” He
drew out the name, moving as he did to the bathroom, to the medicine cabinet, to the vials lined on the shelf like small soldiers.
He reached for one, and a package containing a fresh syringe. He tore away the paper and angled the needle into the cap of
the bottle. In moments the LSD would take effect, take him down, down into the dark, now-remembered abyss.