Grimoire Diabolique (38 page)

I patted his face a few more times. No response.

Then I took the needle-cover off the hypodermic I’d brought along. “Yeah, I knew you were the one. I knew you were the perfect dupe to take the fall.” The hypo was full of potassium dichlorate. It’d kill him in minutes and wouldn’t show up on a tox screen. I injected the whole thing into his IV connector.

Then Jameson’s eyes slitted open.

“You’re a pretty damn good cop, Captain,” I gave him. “You got any idea how hard I worked burying those bodies over the last three years? And there are twenty-one, by the way, not sixteen. You did a great job of keeping ’em out of the papers…until those last three. Just dumb luck for me, huh?”

He began to quiver on the bed, veins throbbing at his temples.

I leaned down close to his ear, whispered. “But that really screwed up my game when the victims started making the press. I thought I was gonna have to lay low now, get the junkie bitches from out of town. But you solved all that for me.”

I grinned down at him. His eyes opened a little more, to stare at me.

“Yeah, I knew you were the one, all right. The minute Desmond explained those profiles to me, and when I saw that picture of you with your father. No mother, just a father who died the same year. And, Christ, man! You were Desmond’s patient! The press’ll eat that up! Homicide cop seeing a shrink—homicide cop turns out to be the killer. It’s great, isn’t it? It’s perfect!”

See, after I dragged him out of that last bum bar, I shoved him in the passenger seat of his car. The drunk bastard had already passed out. I drove down Jackson when there was no traffic, cracked him hard in the head with the butt of my own piece, then shot him in the groin. I was aiming for the femoral artery, and I guess I did a damn good job of hitting it. He bled all over the place; I knew the fucker was going to kick.

Then I stuck the hand in his pants and shoved him out of the car.

The whole thing worked pretty well, I’d say.

“Don’t die on me yet, asshole,” I whispered, pinching his cheeks. “See, Desmond had it right with his profiles. Only it turns out the real killer was the least likely of the bunch—just a sociopath with a hand fetish.”

It was hard not to laugh right in his face.

Jameson’s hand raised an inch, then dropped. He was tipping out but I gotta give the old fucker credit. He managed to croak out a few words.

“They’ll never believe it,” he said.

“Oh, they’ll believe it,” I assured him. “What? You’re gonna tell them what
really
happened? Not likely. In two minutes you’ll be dead from cardiac arrest.”

“Lib motherfucker,” he croaked. “Pinko piece’a shit…”

“That’s the spirit!” I whispered. “Go out kicking! But—”

His eyelids started drooping again. This was it.

“Not yet! Don’t die yet,” I said, squeezing his face. “There’s still one more thing I haven’t told you, and it’s something you gotta know.”

Spittle bubbled from his lips. I could see him struggling to keep his eyes open, fighting to keep conscious just a few more seconds.

“Remember when I went back up to your condo to get my glasses?” I said. “What do you think I did to your wife, dickbrain? That hand they found in your pants? It was your
wife’s
right hand!”

Jameson tremored against his restraints. He shook and shook, like someone had just stuck a hot wire in him. Down the hall, I could hear the elevator opening, the crash team coming to take him up to surgery.
Don’t bother, guys,
I thought.

But just before Jameson died, I managed to tell him the final detail. “That’s right, I stuck her right hand in
your
pants, Captain. And her
left
hand? I got it safe, right here with me.”

Then I patted my crotch and grinned.

They took him up, and his obit ran the next day…along with everything else. Homicide captain investigating the Handyman Case, found with his own murdered wife’s hand in his pants? The same shrink he was seeing for alcoholism and sexual dysfunction corroborating that Jameson fit the profile?

Case closed.

And don’t forget what Desmond said about sociopaths. They’re skilled liars. They’ve had their whole lives to practice. They know what’s right and what’s wrong, but they choose wrong because it suits them.

That sounds good to me.

I’ll just have to bury the next bodies deeper.

— | — | —

THE SALT-DIVINER

PROLOGUE

The Onomancers had failed, and so had the Sibyllists. The Haruspicators came next, keen-eyed yet solemn in their blood-red raiments. One of them nodded within his flaplike hood, and then the young girl was stripped naked and lain on the onyx slab.

It was one of the geldings, who’d previously had his eyes sewn shut, that clumsily shoved the ivory rod into the girl’s sex. The slim naked thing’s hips bucked, and the shriek of pain launched out above the ziggurat as though she were shouting to the gods themselves. Blindly, then, the gelding held up the bloody rod for the Synod to see.

No doubt, a true virgin.

The gelding was summarily beheaded, his body dragged off by silent legionnaires. Next, the highest of the Haruspist’s slipped the long sharpened hook deep up into the girl’s sex. She flinched and died at once, a tiny river of red pouring forth. But the Haruspic priest was already at work, his holy hand a blur as the hook expertly extracted the girl’s warm innards through the opening of her sex. Barehanded, then, he hoisted up the guts and flung them down to the ziggurat’s stone floor.

The wind howled, or perhaps it was the breath of Ea himself.

But when the Haruspist gazed intently at the wet splay of innards….

He saw nothing.

The King’s jaw set; he seemed petrified on his throne. Only one recourse remained, and if it too failed, only doom awaited the King and his domain. He turned his gaze toward the last flank of robed and hooded priests—the alomancers. The King gave a single nod.

One figure stepped forward, face hidden within the hood’s roll. From one hand, a thurible swayed, a thurible full of salt.

He depended the thurible over the fire…until the salt began to burn.

Smoke poured from the object’s finely crafted apertures, and the figure leaned forth—and inhaled the holy fumes, one deep breath after another, until he collapsed.

The King stiffened in his throne; legionnaires burst forward to render aid. Eventually—thank Ea—the alomancer revived after a distended silence. Even the wind stopped, even the clouds seemed to freeze in the sky.

The alomancer shuddered. Then he gazed at the King with eyes the color of amethyst, and he began to speak….

I

It started when the salt spilled.

The man looked ludicrous. Black hair hung in a perfect bowlcut, like Moe. He stood at the rail, tubby and tall, with a great, toothy, lunatic grin. “Ald, please,” he requested. “It’s been eons.”

Rudy and Beth nursed cans of Milwaukee’s Best down the bar, Rudy pretending to watch the fight on the television. They’d made the rounds downtown, hoping to cop a loan, but to no avail. Then they’d retreated to this dump tavern, The Crossroads, way out off the Route. Rudy didn’t want to run into Vito—as in Vito “The Eye”—a minute before he had to. He felt like a man on a stay of execution.

“Are you the vassal of this
taberna
, sir?” the ludicrous man asked the barkeep. “I would like some ald, please.” “Never heard of it,” swiped the keep, who sported muttonchops and a beer-belly akin to a medicine ball. “No imports here, pal.” This is The Crossroads, not the Four Seasons.”

“I am becruxed. Have you any mead?
”

Rudy could’ve laughed. Even the man’s voice sounded ludicrous: a high nasal warble.
And what the hell is ald
?

“We got Rolling Rock, pal. That fancy enough for ya?”

“I am grateful, sir, for your kind recommendation.”

When the keep came down to the Rock tap, Rudy leaned forward. “Hey, man, who
is
this guy?”

The keep shrugged, tufts of hair like steel wool poking out from his collar. “Some weirdo. We get ’em all the time.”

Beth, frowning afresh, looked down from the no-name fight on TV. “Rudy, don’t you have more to worry about than some eightball who walks into a bar? What if Vito shows up?”

“Vito The Eye? Here?” Rudy replied. “No way.” The assurance lapsed. “Hey, maybe Mona could loan us some dough.”

“She barely has money for tuition and rent, Rudy. Be real.”

Women
, Rudy thought.
Always negative
. He glanced back up at the fight—Tuttle versus Luce, middleweights—but thoughts of Vito kept haunting
him.
What will they do to me
? he wondered.

The keep set down a mug of beer before the ludicrous man, but as he did so, his brawny elbow nicked a saltshaker, which tipped over. A few trace white grains spilled across the bartop.

The odd patron grinned down. Focused. Nodded. He pinched some grains and cast them over his left shoulder. “Blast thee, Nergal and all devils. Keep thee behind, and slithereth back into your evil earthworks.”

“We ain’t superstitious here, pal,” the keep said.

“To blind the sentinels of the nether regions,” the man went on, “who stand to our left, behind us. Dear salt, a gift from the holiest Ea, and all gods of good things. To spill the sacred salt is to bid ill fortune from heaven. It was once more valuable than myrrh.”

“Who’da hell’s Merv?” asked the keep.

“Beware the woman infidel,” intoned the patron. “Your paramour—”

“What’da hell’s a paramour?”

“A lover,” Beth translated, for all the good her education had done. “A girlfriend.”

“She is so named,” the ludicrous man said,
“…
Stacy?”

The keep’s pug-face tensed up like a pack of corded Suet. “How’da hell you know my girlfriend’s name?”

“I am an alomancer,” the odd patron replied. “And your lovely paramour, hair like sackcloth and teeth becrook’d, shalt be in a moment’s time abed with a man unthus known.”

The keep scratched a muttonchop. “What’d’ya mean?”

“He means,” Beth said over her beer, “that your girlfriend is cheating on you with a guy she just met.”

“A man,” the patron continued, “too, of a formidable endowment of the groin.”

“‘
At’s a
load of shit,” the keep said. “You’re a nut.”

This guy’s something
, Rudy thought. He was about to comment when someone tapped on his shoulder.
Oh…no
. Very slowly, then, he turned to the ruddy and none-too-happy face behind him. “Vito! My man! I was just downtown looking for you.”

“Yeah.” Vito wore a tan leather jacket and white slacks—
Italian
slacks. They called him The Eye, since only hi
5
right eye could be seen. A black patch covered the left. “Your marker’s due Friday, paisan. You wouldn’t be forgetting that, huh?”

“Oh, hey, Vito,” Rudy stammered. “I remember.”

“That’s six large. The Boss Man ain’t happy.”

“Barkeep,” Rudy changed the subject. “Get my good friend Vito here a beer on my tab, and one for this guy, too,” he said,
slapping the ludicrous man on the back.

Vito jerked a thumb. “I’ll be over at the booth marking my books. Come on over if you got anything you want to talk to me about.”

“Actually,” Rudy seized the opportunity. “I was wondering if like you could maybe give me a little extra t—”

“I ever tell you how I lost my eye? About ten years ago, I ran up a big marker on the Boss Man’s tab, and I made the big mistake of asking him for a little extra time.”

Rudy gulped. When Vito disappeared to the back booth, Beth jumped in to complain. “That’s great, Rudy. We’re nearly broke, you’re six thousand in debt to a mob bookie, and now you’re buying beers for people. Jesus.”

“Guys like Vito like to see generosity. Part of their machismo.”

“And now look what you’ve done!’ she whispered.

The inane, toothy grin floated forward; its owner took the stool next to Rudy. “Innumerable thanks, sir. It’s not ald; however, I’m grateful to you.”

“What the hell is ald?” Rudy asked.

“A high and might liquor indeed, and a favorite of the mashmashus. We invented it, by the way, though your zymurgists of today refuse to acknowledge that. You see, the great grain mounds would accumulate condensation in the sun. The dregs, then, seeped into pools of effluvium, which were squeezed off into the casks.” He sipped his beer, cross-eyed. I am Gormok. And you are called?”

Gormok? What kind of fruitloop name is that
? Rudy wondered.