A Blood of Killers Read online

  And when the body had settled, its death like smoke rising from the burning ghats, signaling the end of a karmic turn he felt had taken him on a long journey only to come to the beginning of still another path, Max looked over to the man who’d been watching all along: the American, he remembered. The one who’d laughed at a little boy jumping out a window to avoid the certainty of that same smoke, that same death.

  “Quite a repertoire you’ve got there, son,” the American said. “What’s your name?”

  “Max.”

  “Nice. Simple. I like that. How old are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Huh. You look about eighteen to me. What kind of accent is that? It ain’t from around here.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could pass for some kind of American.”

  Max didn’t answer. He didn’t know if the man was playing with him.

  “You look familiar.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a younger brother, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s fine. A mommy or daddy near abouts?”

  “No.”

  “Even better. I take it you’re kind of like these chandal fellows around here, the shit cleaners and corpse carriers, right? Untouchable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we have some work for you. Here and there. Got a little project in Nam I could use you in. Interested?”

  “Why should I work for you?”

  “We pay better. We can offer legal status, rights, safe harbor, absolution. You know, like what they do with those Bengali tigers. Build a sanctuary around them. Protect them in the wild.”

  The man stood. Drifted toward the doorway. Max saw that he was armed, underneath his suit jacket and pants, but he was sure he could cover the distance between them before any shots were fired.

  “What do you need?” the man said, glancing out into the hallway before fixing Max with a quizzical eyebrow raised.

  “A woman,” Max said, listening to the rumbling purr of the dreaming Beast.

  The man smiled and waved his hand for him to come over, and when Max did, he put an arm over his shoulder and led him to the stairs. “Don’t we all, brother, don’t we all. You sure you’re legal?” He burst out laughing, slapped the banister, and went down. “Come on, son, let me show you how to have a good time.”

  Max followed, eager to learn.

  A BLOOD OF KILLERS

  Standing over my father’s big body stretched out dead on the parquet floor. Night presses against my shoulders. Father faces down, arms stretched out to me in supplication. Submission. The house is still. Chipped wooden furniture, cracked walls, windows broken with that terrible night flooding through the jagged glass edges, pushing me towards the body. Looking down, the corpse is gone. Walking, feet floating over the floor, moving like a barracuda through a sunken wreck, searching for the body. Treading darkness …

  Paul heard about the killing from his carpool partner, Nate.

  “Hardly got any damned sleep with all those sirens and lights and people poking around last night,” Nate mumbled as he slipped into the front seat. He waved back to his kids, Neil and Melody, standing at their front door. Melody, the older at four, had her arm around two year old Neil, who was wiping away tears. Their mother, pale and haggard, wearing a faded yellow house dress instead of her normal business suit, stood behind them with a hand on their shoulders. They looked like the model of suburban American family values, touched by dread.

  Paul was frankly sick of the entire wholesome lot.

  Paul grunted, then leaned out of the way as Nate tossed his briefcase into the back seat of the Lexus. “At least you don’t have nightmares,” he said softly. He pulled out and headed for the highway, shaking off the fleeting memory of his own terrors from the past night. Paul’s wife, Beth, was away on a business trip. She took many these days. Their kids didn’t need adults to shake them awake and tell them they had to get to college classes or part-time jobs. Not that they had ever waved good-bye to him as he went off to work when they were younger. Everybody did what was expected of them in his little family, no more, no less. Mom and Dad earned the money, the kids went to school and kept their grades relatively high, and when they worked, their jobs were steady if low-paying and dead-end.

  The family vacations were exotic and the cars were nice. They might have been wholesome once, a long time ago. For a very brief time. They were just average, now.

  Nate didn’t see that this was happening to his life, too. But then Nate was a lot younger, if only a step below Paul on the corporate ladder. Nate had time to discover the pain lurking behind the hint of dread in his family’s expressions. There was time for the dread to creep through his life like a numbing plague, wash out passion and joy and leave a gray wash of routine survival. If there was any justice in the world, he’d have Paul’s nightmares in a few years.

  Paul glanced over at Nate shifting his muscular body only a few years removed from college football. The other managers had the kid pegged as a smooth, aggressive comer. Everything was going his way for now. In the next few years, though, Nate and his wife and kids would lose touch with each other. The quick, cold currents of television and mall culture would snatch the kids away as they grew up. Mom and Dad would be busy chasing their careers, but sooner or later they’d reach a ceiling and become frustrated, bored. They’d wake up next to each other one day and discover strangers. Nate would wonder what had ever happened to his young, solid body. His wife would wonder, too. He’d look at his thin, graying hair in the mirror and debate whether or not he looked worse than his wife.

  Dreams, the private ones about starting his own business, or studying music, or traveling beyond the tourist meccas to where real people lived different lives, would atrophy and die.

  Ambitions centered on acquiring power and shaping even a tiny part of everyone else’s life would be crushed and twisted by the terrible truth of one’s own personal failings and limitations. The ambition would metamorphose into pathetic little fantasies to be acted out with women paid to be attentive for an hour or two.

  Paul understood; he was living through it all. Paul wished he could be there to see Nate begin to understand his life, begin to experience fully and every day the tiny sliver of shadowy terror that had just cast a pall over his family’s expressions.

  A door opens. Floating into my mother’s kitchen, the old refrigerator rattling in its corner, the broken oven door ajar, finding a butcher’s knife on the black and white tile floor. Mother giggles outside the house. A shadow flickers across the open window over the sink. She’s dancing naked on the lawn, under the moon and stars. In the night. Night blows its cool breath across my face. Shivering, I fall out of the kitchen, back through the door, through darkness, drowning, sinking into sudden light …

  “—got in through the kitchen window,” Nate was saying as Paul shuddered his way out of a nightmare fragment. “Broke the glass while the woman was in the basement washing.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Paul grumbled, honking the horn at a driver cutting ahead of him in his lane. He didn’t even remember getting on the highway.

  “Plumber’s wife on my block? Killed yesterday?” Nate shifted in his seat, stared at Paul. His shoulders blocked the side view mirror. “Man, you’re in worse shape than my wife and kids. At least they had an excuse, putting up with those detectives and media types all day and night.”

  The mention of murder coupled with the blackout frightened Paul. He had lost control of his reality, and the next thing he knew, someone had been killed. A chill passed through him.

  “Anyway, this tabloid guy, he tells me he figures the killer waits for her to come upstairs, then bashes her head, rapes her, cuts her arms and legs off. Cops think she still might have been alive at this point, but not conscious. Shock kills her while he’s doing his thing: planting her arms and legs all over the house. One arm in the kitchen, han
d holding a coffee cup. The son of a bitch even made coffee, filled the cup. Another arm in the bathroom, her fingers around a toothbrush topped off with paste. A leg in the bedroom, in hose and heel. The other leg propped up on the exercise bike. Like everything’s normal, like she’s doing all the things she usually does. All at the same time. The head and torso he just leaves in the hallway. Drops behind the Sears tools he used on her. Footprints show the guy had on those plastic one-piece spacesuits, like they wear in asbestos removal jobs, with elastic booties covering the shoe sole. And the shoe size is too large for the weight. Typical trick. Sick son of bitch.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Paul whispered. It was too much like the dreams. Blood, bodies. Terrible things happening in silence, in darkness. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “It gets worse,” Nate said, chuckling.

  Paul winced as Nate started up again, arms waving, hands gesturing, barely able to control his energy and enthusiasm. Nightmare images bubbled in Paul’s mind.

  “This tabloid guy—I don’t know if I believe him, but what the hell—he tells me a few years back there was a murder just like this one. In Arizona. Only get this, it was the second hit the family took. First time, some serial psycho they called the Dust Devil rapes and kills a young girl in the house. Leaves dust in her mouth, other places, too. Few months later, the mother gets it. Pieces all over the place, just like the plumber’s wife.

  “Newspapers called the killer Mr. Homemaker. The old man, he can’t take it and kills himself. They had a son, young, got placed in foster care. Last year he gets killed crossing the street in a hit and run. Pretty wild, huh?”

  “Yeah, real wild.” Paul turned on the radio. He found a station with loud, fast music and turned up the volume.

  “Hey, are you nuts?” Nate protested with a wince. He swatted Paul’s hand away from the controls and turned down the volume. “I’m still half-asleep, and you want to blow me out of the car? Anyway, I’m getting a guard dog for the house and the kids. And an alarm. Showed my wife how to use the pistol again last night, too. And I’m getting myself a shotgun.”

  “Husband probably did it,” Paul said. Instantly, he regretted continuing the conversation. He didn’t want to talk about the murder. His reality was frayed enough as it was, worsened by the nightmares still reverberating in his head. The anxiety building in his gut over the coming day’s meetings and deadlines and reports were no help, nor was the fact that he was riding with the man who would probably become his boss in a couple of years. Talking about death striking in their own neighborhood with such savage intensity just made him feel even more unreal.

  He sighed and shook his head as he thought about the shadow he had seen over the faces of Nate’s wife and kids. Their expressions had had nothing to do with the lives they were going to lead. Their dread had had everything to do with absence of joy and passion, pain and misery. The shadow he had seen belonged to death.

  “No, the plumber was working on a contract in another state. Besides, he and his wife were tight. Though, you know—”

  “Enough,” Paul cut in. “It’s too damn early for this crap, Nate. Let’s just get to work in one piece, okay?”

  Nate scoffed and settled back into the seat. “You know,” he whispered, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a bigger pussy than my wife.” He closed his eyes, cracked his knuckles and then settled his hands on his thighs.

  The crying is ragged, desperate. A wailing storm of hunger and pain. It calls me to the crib that stands alone in a barren room. Light pours down from the ceiling, night leers from the open windows breaching three walls. Darkness pushes me from the threshold towards the crib. The wooden handle is cool in my hand. Infant reaches out for me, fingers searching, clutching air. Eyes fix on me, open wide. Mouth yawns, tongue sticks out. Scream erupts. Baby waves frantically. The knife’s cutting edge comes to rest gently on baby’s soft cotton, lace trimmed top.

  Where did the day go? Paul wondered suddenly, standing in the middle of the night on the driveway leading to a darkened house. And how did I wind up here? Another black out? He shivered.

  A cool breeze ruffled Paul’s hair as he took in the block of houses, all dark, and the mass of trees at his back screening the highway from the neighborhood. His car was the only one parked on the block. Down on the next street, window lights blazed like airport beacons. A car, headlights piercing the darkness, turned on to the street in the distance, then turned again and disappeared among the trees. Paul suddenly recognized the area. Nate’s house was on the next block. The car had taken the same ramp he took to get on the highway on the days he was scheduled to drive the car.

  If this was Nate’s neighborhood, his street, then the house was … the house was

  The house belonged to the plumber whose wife had been murdered. The fact fit neatly into Paul’s mind, along with the day’s numbing catalog of meetings and reports and conversations with coworkers. For a moment, Paul was relieved as his life returned to him and he remembered driving home from work and dropping off Nate, dinner with his disinterested kids, a brief check-in telephone call from his wife, a cable movie, going to bed, dreams. Nightmares.

  Nightmares, and then getting up at a three o’clock in the morning and driving to the plumber’s house. To watch.

  But what was he watching? Paul shivered as the breeze gusted. He had on sweat pants, sneakers and a tank top: too light for late September. Never mind the watching; what was he doing out here? Paul turned away from the house and headed for his car. He was relieved he had not lost a part of his life. But he was losing control of it. The blackouts filled with nightmare were taking over. Maybe a shrink—but no, nothing was wrong with him, really—

  “Hell of a thing,” a gravelly man’s voice said from behind a hedge.

  Paul jumped, whirled to face the speaker, then took a few tentative side-steps towards his car.

  A figure came out from behind the wall of greenery. The beam from a small hand light flicked on, illuminating a gold badge and police ID. The figure held the light on the badge for a few moments. Paul froze in place. He gasped for breath as his heart raced. The light flashed in his face, then darted over his body before finally turning back on the figure.

  The large, round moon of a face staring back at Paul contained narrowed eyes, a wrinkled, faintly glistening forehead, a broken nose and a thick-lipped mouth twisted into an expression of knowing amusement. The body that followed in the light was tall, thick, dressed in a two-piece hooded sweat suit. A shoulder harness was visible for a brief moment as the breeze picked at the man’s open hooded jacket.

  Paul nervously smoothed his tank top over the bulge of his belly.

  The man laughed and pressed his hand into Paul’s. “Detective Kessler, from County.” He cocked his head back at the plumber’s house. “Did my time in the city. Figured I’d come out here, get away from the weird stuff. Guess it followed me out. You’re from the next town out; picked up your partner in that house on the next block yesterday morning. Had your plates checked. We were watching then, too.”

  “What are you doing here?” Paul asked, and immediately felt foolish. There was only one reason for the police to stake out a murder scene. Paul wanted desperately to go back to his car, to go home.

  “Well, I guess I’m playing the tourist, myself. Getting paid for it, too. People think, a detective hiding out, he’s probably hoping the murderer comes back to look things over. Works in the movies, maybe. Wish those Hollywood types wouldn’t make things so simple. You never really know why someone stands around and watches. There’s reasons underneath the reasons, know what I mean?” Kessler chuckled, stopped suddenly. “What are you doing here yourself?” The detective turned to Paul.

  “I—I don’t know, really. I just got up, restless, took a drive.”

  Kessler grunted. “Another tourist. Nothing to be ashamed of. People been driving by here all day and night. Heard some saying one guy did this. One sick guy. It’s a terrible thing to think, that a man
’s life could get so bad, or his head so twisted, that he’d believe doing something like this made sense. But we all believe it. One man. A madman. Makes things simple. You catch some bastard, and it’s over. Shrinks analyze him, movies make him into a monster, books talk about what an abused child he was.”

  “Yes,” Paul said, frightened by the man and his steady, friendly chatter about death and madness. “Well, I—”

  “But why just one guy?” Kessler asked him, putting a heavy hand on Paul’s shoulder. Paul felt a shaft of fear pass through him, pinning him to sidewalk.

  “You know how many cars and trucks came through here yesterday? Kids on bikes? Could have been one of them. Maybe two, three, four. Lookouts, a break in guy, a cutter, another to do the weird stuff, a driver. Scary, huh?

  “It’s not something we like to advertise. Bad enough the neighbors went on long vacations thinking just one killer’s on the loose.”

  “That can’t happen,” Paul protested, his voice sounding faint. “People notice, don’t they? It’s too much, isn’t it?” His words came back to him as if someone else had spoken them.

  “You notice a UPS or cable truck? A guy who missed getting on that highway ramp up the block?” Kessler’s laughter was a rumbling wave crashing over Paul. He put his other hand on Paul’s shoulder and shook his head from side to side. “You think that’s crazy? There’s times when more than one family member gets it. You see it in the city a lot: fires, random shots, car rundowns, rapes, all happening to one family. Wipes them out.”

  Kessler paused, his smile fading. His gaze bore into Paul. “Why? Is there some kind of competition going on? Let’s see who can knock off the most people in a family? Or do a bunch get together and see who can top who for technique and creativity. Who keeps score? What’s the prize? Are there newsletters for this kind of thing? Computer bulletin boards? Conventions?