Bed of Nails (15 page)

“A Magick place?”

“Right.”

“Like Ted Bundy’s house and the Thirteen Steps to Hell?”

“Could be.”

“Sounds crazy.”

“We’re dealing with a psycho.”

“Crazy fits.”

“Remember the Ripper? That psycho I told you about? The fellow who thought he was Jack the Ripper transported to modern times? Tarot Magick was his motive too. First, he hanged four women at specific sites in Vancouver to sign the occult cross. Then he lured a group of victims—including Alex and me—to Deadman’s Island to whittle us down to a single survivor, whom he would rip apart in a Magick place to sign the occult triangle. The Magick place he thought would launch him through the gates of time and into the astral plane was an ancient Indian burial ground hidden in a cave on the island.”

“Where’s the Ripper now?”

“Locked away.”

“So we have a copycat?”

“Possibly. Alex published a true crime book about the motive for Deadman’s Island. Could be that someone read it and—like our Ripper—set out to copy the key.”

“A copycat of a copycat?”

“It’s the Tarot. Dark minds have been mesmerized by the Devil’s picture book since the Dark Ages.”

“Your case in North Vancouver—the vic in that hotel? What made it a Magick place?”

“Don’t know.”

“Was the hotel built on an Indian burial ground?”

“Not that I’ve heard. But I’ll check it out. Until you came up with Ted Bundy’s house and the Thirteen Steps to Hell, I thought this killer had rejected the theory of the Magick place. Since he signified both the four points of the cross and the three points of the triangle in
how
he hanged his victim to mimic the Hanged Man, I wondered if that,
by itself,
had made the hotel a Magick place. Four times three equals twelve, and twelve’s the number of the Magick card.”

Two lumberjack breakfasts—sausages, bacon, eggs, pancakes, the works—were set down on the table. Ralph smacked his lips. “Remind me not to eat for a week,” he said, then wolfed into calorie overload as if this were his last meal.

“Opportunity,” Zinc said. “That should be our focus. Motive and means we may have. But opportunity?”

Ralph mumbled something with his mouth full that the Canadian didn’t catch.

“My take on what happened in Maltby Cemetery is that the Tarot killers—there must be two, from the exertion required—were hammering their cross together down in the pit with the sledgehammer side of the maul so they could haul up the headless body to mimic the Hanged Man. They were interrupted by the three young men, whom they then hacked to death on the steps.”

Savoring a sausage, Ralph wiped egg yolk up with a pancake as he nodded in agreement.

“You said Maltby Cemetery was erased from maps. From what I saw, the graveyard is unmarked, forgotten, and overgrown. Without you as a guide, I’d never have guessed it was there. So how did you find the bodies?”

“You notice the car at the side of the road?”

“The blue Toyota?”

“A sheriff’s deputy spied it and stopped to look inside. A severed arm lay on the front seat. He knew about the Thirteen Steps from trouble they’ve had there over the years, so he walked in to check the cemetery and found the four vics.”

“Whose car?”

“Thomas Cribb’s. One of the guys on the steps.”

“Was he local?”

“Seattle.”

“And the other two?”

“From ID found in their wallets, they were Charles Yu from Texas and Frederick Sanders from Rhode Island.”

“Opportunity,” Zinc repeated. “That’s what we need. How did the killers down in the pit and the three vics on the Thirteen Steps know the location of Maltby Cemetery?”

“I’m out of sausages.”

“So?”

“It’s barter time,” said Ralph.

“You know the answer?”

“It’ll cost you one of your three.”

The Mountie picked up the calorie wheel that Ralph had tossed down on the table, then spun it repeatedly as he muttered, “Sausages, sausages … Yep, there they are.” His eyes shot wide dramatically, and he dropped the weight-watching device. “Take ’em all, Ralph. The fat in those bangers will clog you.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Ralph spiked the sausages on his fork. “Next time I’ll order the ham.”

From the inside pocket of his houndstooth jacket, the buttons of which strained to hold in his expansive paunch, the homicide cop withdrew a pamphlet and passed it across.

“World Horror Convention,” said Zinc, reading from the cover of the program.

“We found a box of those in the blue Toyota. One lay folded open on the passenger’s seat. There’s a list of those attending the convention inside. You’ll find the names of all three vics hacked up on the cemetery steps. Thomas Cribb was also on the organizing committee. Take a look at the back pages.”

The Mountie flipped through the booklet until he came to the title “Spooky Seattle: A Ghost Tour of Haunted Sites.” His eyes ran down the short takes on the city’s famous ghosts. Princess Angelene, daughter of Chief Seattle, who haunts the Pike Place Market. The ghost of the little boy in the puppet shop who makes the marionettes move on their own. The man with the wax mustache who haunts the bank vault in Underground Seattle. The floating ladies in the Neptune Theater, adorned with heads depicting the god of the sea, complete with glowing aquamarine eyes. The hot spot of Northgate Hospital, which became Northgate Mall, the first shopping mall in North America. The tunnels under the parking lot are haunted by entities from the old morgue, and the homeless who later went in for shelter got lost and never came out. The printed tour moved on to ghosts outside Seattle and ended with a description of the Thirteen Steps to Hell in Maltby Cemetery, complete with X-Y coordinates from a survey grid.

“Opportunity,” echoed Zinc.

“For anyone who can read them. A grid map marked with Maltby Cemetery and a road map with that information transferred to it were left in the blue Toyota under that program, which had been folded back to the page on Maltby Cemetery.”

“So,” said the Mountie, “the big question is, did the killers use the same grid coordinates in the World Horror Convention program to locate the Thirteen Steps?”

“Most likely. The severed head seems to corroborate it.”

“At Bundy’s house?”

“Uh-huh. That’s a telltale clue. There’s an urban myth being spread that Ted Bundy once lined up four severed heads on the mantel in that house. He didn’t.”

“You think that’s why the head was spiked there?”

“It fits. A bus tour that periodically goes by the house uses the severed heads as a story to spice up the tour.”

“The killers took that tour?”

“And I think I know when. The bus went past the Bundy house on Thursday afternoon.”

“Why suspect that tour?”

“It was a private charter. I was about to check the charter party out when the sheriff called about the headless body hanging upside down in Maltby Cemetery.”

Zinc snapped his fingers. “The horror convention.”

“They chartered the ghost tour bus for the opening day. And guess what? The convention is still in town.”

“I wonder what goes on at a horror convention?”

“Let’s find out,” said Ralph.

“Just what the world needs,” Chandler said as they traversed the parking lot of the Captain Vancouver Hotel. “All its ghastly horrors convened in one place.”

Stein flipped open his cellphone and held it up to his ear. “I’ll call the military and ask for a nuclear strike. Level this convention and we’ll solve all the world’s problems.”

“The nerve of this hotel,” Zinc huffed with mock umbrage. “What right does an American inn have to usurp the name of
my
hometown’s patron saint?”

“Every right,” Ralph replied. “
I
was born in Vancouver.”

“You don’t look Canadian.”

“That’s Vancouver,
Washington.
”

“Oh,” said Zinc, scrunching his nose as if he smelled a pulp mill. “That pretender.”

“We were first,” Ralph said, putting up his fists.

“A ninety-pound weakling. A poseur. Which once had the balls to suggest that
we
change our name.”

“Plagiarists.”

In truth, Zinc Chandler stood on shaky historical ground, as Det. Ralph Stein proceeded to point out. In 1778, the legendary Captain Cook sailed to this coast, seeking the passage that was reputed to link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Fourteen years later, one of Cook’s crewmen, Capt. George Vancouver, returned on the
Discovery.
His assignment was to map the area, so he dispatched Lieutenant Puget down the sound that leads to Seattle and now bears his name. Mount Baker got charted in honor of another lieutenant, and Mount Rainier was named for an admiral of the British navy.

“Lieutenant Broughton,” Ralph added, “explored a hundred miles up the Columbia River and named a point of land for Captain Vancouver. That same point was renamed Fort Vancouver in 1825, when the Hudson’s Bay Company established it as the oldest permanent non-Native settlement in the Pacific Northwest. The fort became the center of the fur trade, and in 1857 it was incorporated as the city of Vancouver in Washington State.”

“Humph,” snorted Zinc. “A likely story.”

“Do you know where
your
city of Vancouver got its name?”

“From God?” wondered the Mountie.

“When your burg was incorporated in 1886, some railroad tycoon pulled the name out of thin air. So,” said the American, opening the door with one hand and sweeping the other around his girth in a poor attempt at a Sir Walter Raleigh bow, “welcome to the Captain Vancouver Hotel, named for
our
patron saint long before you low-down, snake-in-the-grass imperialists stole it.”

Their worst fears about what goes on at a World Horror Convention were realized as Chandler and Stein stepped through the door, for what they encountered in the lobby was a creature—that was the best word—from another world, an alien being who made Zinc imagine Cher on bad acid.

Black was the color of this demon’s garb. Her getup was tailored to sheathe her flesh with black leather skin, while tattered sleeves dangled, evoking a recent crawl from the grave. Her long nails were lacquered as black as vampire’s claws, and her facial makeup hollowed her cheeks and sank her onyx eyes. Her lip gloss glistened like licorice goo, and her hair, cropped close on both sides, was woven into a two-foot-high black Mohawk that reminded Zinc of the helmet of a Greek warrior condemned to guard the River Styx.

“Mom!”

A child’s voice.

The dark demon turned.

Slouched on a couch in the lobby was a five- or six-year-old girl wearing blue denim overalls and hugging a teddy bear. “What about me?”

“Sit there,” the demon instructed, “until I return.”

Zinc glanced at Ralph.

Ralph glanced at Zinc.

“That says a lot.”

“That says it
all.
”

The reception desk was to the right of the common area. The cops ventured over to speak to a black man in a blue blazer with dreadlocks down to his shoulders.

“Bet the management loves this convention,” Ralph said.

“Yes,” the clerk agreed.

Stein scowled. “A
horror
convention?”

“They’re well behaved. The WHC has a good rep in the industry. The Shriners—now there’s a horror show. They get drunk and piss in all the corners.”

“So what’s that?” Ralph asked, cocking a thumb at the creature in the leathers.

“Pariah.”

“No doubt.”

“That’s her name. She’s a performance poet. Poets are usually the most outré of any creative group.”

The clerk directed them across the common area and along a hall to the left. Opposite the doors through which the cops had entered, a boisterous bar ran the width of the lobby and served a scattering of tables that overlooked a swimming pool through the glass beyond. The turquoise pool was surrounded by several hot tubs for intimate bubbly soaks, and on the other three sides of that recreational square were four tiers lined with individual hotel rooms. The central court had a skylight canopy. By looking up, the cops could spy aircraft landing at and departing from the nearby SeaTac Airport, but the soundproofing built into the hotel was sufficient to kill the engine noise.

“Into the valley of death,” said Ralph.

Judging from the hubbub spilling out into the hall, a contentious event had just wrapped up at the convention. A flood of dark-side aficionados engulfed the cops, most of them “normal-looking” people heading for the bar to argue and debate the undertones of whatever they had witnessed. Two fellows stepped aside to let the surge ebb. They paused long enough for the cops to eavesdrop. The shorter man had snow-white hair that cascaded over his shoulders. He sported a black T-shirt emblazoned with a white skeleton and the red words “Dark Delicacies, Burbank, CA.” The tall man, lean and fit, wore all black with sartorial elegance. In his hand was an invitation to the all-night Borderlands Speakeasy, sponsored by the San Francisco bookstore.

“Those two hate each other,” Dark Delicacies said.

“Word is, they used to be partners,” Borderlands replied.

“Writing partners?”

“Law partners.”

“Something sure went wrong.”

“Professional rivalry.”

“If looks could kill, huh?”

“How are they doing at your table?”

“
Halo of Flies
is outselling
Crown of Thorns
four to one.”

“Same with us.”

“The GOH is pissed.”

“I’d be too if everyone was saying I should be Wes.”

“Round two coming up.”

“Yeah. What time’s the panel?”

The tide had depleted, so the men walked on.

Three-quarters of the way along the wide hall, a registration table was set up against the wall. The young woman staffing it sat on a chair facing an open doorway across the corridor. On the board tented outside to lure in traffic were the words, written in big black letters, MORBID MAZE.

Zinc froze in his tracks.

“Y’ okay, buddy?”

Ralph didn’t get an answer.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Zinc shook his head, gaping at the young woman.

Alex? he thought.

If the supernatural was going to slip into his life, what better place for it to happen than at a horror convention? Was that the term for this? Doppelgänger? The ghostly counterpart or double of a living person? But what if that “living person” was dead, and it was the ghostly double who was sitting here in the flesh? Would that make Alex the doppelgänger of this woman? It wasn’t just the hair, wayward and blonde. Nor was it the eyes, as blue as lagoons. It was also the way she moved, with a ballerina’s grace. From what Zinc could see from this far away, everything about her was the spitting image of his lost love.

“Are you with me, Zinc?”

“Huh?”

“Snap out of it, buddy. Yeah, she’s good looking. But I don’t see the snakes it takes to turn a man to stone.”

“Sorry, Ralph. Momentary lapse.”

“You had me worried. I thought it was a heart attack. If a healthy guy like you drops dead, what hope is there for a fatty like me?”

You’re right, thought Zinc.

It is a heart attack.

Punctured by Cupid’s arrow, Zinc’s scarred heart pounded wildly in his throat as he and the detective narrowed the gap between them and the siren seated at the registration table. The natural pout of her lips. The slightly turned-up nose …

“Know who she reminds me of?” Ralph said.

“Who?”

“A young Kim Basinger in that film with Mickey Rourke. What’s it called? The one where Kim does a striptease to ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’?”

According to the tag encased in the square of plastic strung around her neck, Yvette Theron was the woman’s name. With Gothic black the color of choice for most conventioneers’ clothes, she stood out like a lightning bolt cleaving the night. Her top was electric blue and picked up the hue of her eyes.

“You’re cops?” she said when they walked up.

“Yes,” replied the Mountie. Zinc flashed his badge, and Ralph did too.

“We’ve been expecting you.”

“Oh?” said Stein.

“First, the head spiked upside down outside Ted Bundy’s house—a house our ghost tour passed on Thursday afternoon. And now, according to the radio, the rest of the body found hanging upside down in Maltby Cemetery, the graveyard in our program. We placed bets on how long it would take you to come looking for suspects here.”

“This isn’t what I expected.”

“No?” said Yvette.

“I thought there’d be rabid fans running about made up like their favorite monsters.”

“So did one of the networks. They were going to tape the con but chickened out when they heard we aren’t Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Marilyn Manson clones.”

“Biting the heads off chickens?”

“Bats,” Yvette corrected him. “Ozzy bit the head off a bat onstage in his prime.”

“Why so staid?” said Zinc.

“Us, you mean? Except for the locals, for whom it’s cheap, a trip to the con by fans from around the world costs the price of an airline ticket, four nights in this palace, meals, transport, and the program itself, all in Yankee dollars. It’s a fun-loving group. Practical jokes. Gallows humor. Drinking folks under the table. But for that sort of money, the fans who come want juicy discussions with meat on the bone.”

“Discussions like …?”

“Take your pick,” Yvette said, reaching for a WHC program and folding it open to the list of today’s panels. She held it out for Zinc to peruse while Ralph read over his shoulder:

Though Zinc tried to focus on the print, his eyes kept flicking back to Yvette. True, he was face-to-face with a woman in her own right, but the features that his imagination superimposed on hers were those of his lost love, Alexis Hunt. His psychology—and he recognized it himself—was similar to that of the Hollywood director who was devastated by the murder of his Playboy Playmate love by the boyfriend who had “discovered” her and was unhinged by jealousy. In the end, the director married his love’s sister, and the rumor was that he tried to remold her with plastic surgery. The rumor may have been false, but if not, Zinc understood, for that’s what he was doing in his fantasy world.

Love hurts.

And lost love cuts like a knife.

“Your nerves good, Ms. Theron?” the Seattle detective asked.

“We’re at a horror convention.”

“It’s a photo of a dead man.”

“I’ve seen worse. One of the presentations here is ‘What Happens to Dead Bodies?’ An autopsy film.”

A digital camera was ideal in murder cases like this. By capturing the severed head found spiked outside Ted Bundy’s house on a memory card that was then fed into a computer, the police photographer was able to manipulate that image. The picture had been cropped to eliminate the stake and the sliced-through neck, then digital finagling had removed the ring of nails. In the same way an undertaker cleans up a deceased for viewing, so the tech had softened what began as a hardcore X-rated beheading into a PG one.

“Recognize him?”

“No,” said Yvette.

“He didn’t register at the con on Thursday or Friday?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Would you know?” Ralph asked.

“Only if he registered while I was at the table. We work in shifts. Tickets are sold all day.”

“Were you on the ghost tour?”

“No. I was here.”

“Is there a list of those who were?”

“You’d have to ask Mort.”

“Mort?”

“Mort Montgomery. Head of the convention.”