City of Heretics (18 page)

He thought about looking under the bed, but it would have required slinking through the mess of blood and gore and he wasn’t sure he was up for that. There was less than four inches between the floor and bottom of the bed anyway.

He stepped back and looked at Faith. Her eyes were open, staring blandly at the ceiling.

He felt a lot of things all at once, but pushed them away. There was no time for any of that. Faith had a small vanity table next to the bed, and he pulled the chair over from it and sat down and thought.

Opened up, parts of her pulled out. Just like Patricia Welling. Just like Jezzie Vitower. And just like fourteen other women he didn’t know, would never know. Victims of Peter Murke.

But it didn’t have to be Murke. Just because the MO was the same wasn’t evidence that Murke had done this. He had buddies, old Peter did, buddies that rescued him from the transport van and Vitower’s wrath. Buddies that went after anyone who got too close. Maybe one of them did this.

Crowe wondered if Faith was being slaughtered at the same time he was fighting Goth-Boy. He couldn’t see or smell any signs of decay, so it had to have happened fairly recently.

He stood up, took a step toward the bed, and placed his fingers on Faith’s eyelids. He gently closed them.

Her face was clean and unstained by the blood that covered everything else. Which was lucky, because otherwise he never would have noticed the symbol carved into her temple.

He bent over to get a closer look, being careful not to touch anything.

It had happened after death, and hadn’t bled much. A small cross, it looked like, small enough that a regular knife wouldn’t have been able to slice it in such detail. A razor blade then, or an exacto knife, something like that. The arms of the cross bent downward, and it was topped by what looked like a heart-shape, balancing at the top of the cross like a fat man on top of a pole.

It nagged at the back of his brain. He’d seen that symbol before, he was sure of it. But he couldn’t remember where.

   He let his anger take charge then, if for no other reason than to smother the guilt.  In the closet, he found a large wool comforter and took it to the bed and covered Faith’s body. He’d have to call the cops. After he’d gotten far away from there, of course.

Someone pounded on the front door, hard.

He went cold and his hand reached for the revolver in his coat pocket. He didn’t move.

There were a few seconds of silence, and then more pounding. “Open the door, Crowe,” Detective Eddie Wills said. “I saw you go in, you sonofabitch. Open the goddamn door.”

Crowe went silently into the living room, eyes peeled on the front door. He heard Wills in the hall outside, huffing impatiently, and could see him in his mind, that long sad horse face, that booze-ruined nose, and big gnarled hands ready to knock the goddamn door down if he had to. Like he’d said, he wasn’t the sort to worry about due process.

Crowe could let him in. Close the door to Faith’s bedroom, act like everything was normal, play it cool. But Wills was an observant bastard, and if Crowe could spot the bloody shoe-print outside the bathroom, he could too.

Wills pounded again. “Crowe, I will knock this fucking door off its fucking hinges if you don’t open it right now.”

He would’ve known Crowe had nothing to do with this: it was the kind of work that took time. But Crowe didn’t trust him.

He went back into the bedroom, closed the door behind him. Despite his best efforts, it clicked shut audibly and Wills pounded harder on the outside door.

Crowe moved across the bedroom to the window, opened it up. Faith lived on the second floor. There was a drop of about fifteen feet to the icy grass below.

Normally, Crowe wouldn’t have had any qualms about it, but in his current state it made him nervous. No matter what, the landing would hurt.

But what the hell. He had a pocket full of pain killers, may as well use them.

He could still hear Wills through two closed doors. “Fine, Crowe, that’s how you wanna play it,” he said, and then he was smashing at the door. Crowe heard the lock rattling hard, the muted sound of Wills’ shoe kicking the wood.

Crowe eased himself through the window, and heard the front door giving way with a terrific crash.

“Crowe!” Wills said, and Crowe heard him storming through the living room.

Crowe jumped from the window.

He landed on his feet and rolled left, trying to minimize the damage to his right shoulder. It hurt like a bitch regardless, and so did the wound in his back, and he had a split second of not wanting to move once he’d come to rest on the cold earth.

But he made himself stand up and risked a glance up at the open window. From the bedroom, Wills voice boomed, “Jesus fucking Christ!”

Crowe ran. From the corner of his eye he saw Wills’ head sticking out the window and Wills screamed, “Freeze, Crowe!” but of course Crowe didn’t.

He scrambled around the side of the building and toward the parking lot where he’d left his car. A young couple pushing a baby stroller got in the way, and Crowe shoved the man aside, causing him to nearly fall into his wife.

“Hey, what the hell, man, take it easy!” the man said, and the baby started screeching. The wife yelled at Crowe’s back, being pretty creative about his anatomy and what he could do with it.

He had his keys out when he reached the Jag, started to unlock it, when the side view mirror shattered and the crack of a gunshot echoed across the parking lot.

Wills stood at the far end of the lot, just in front of the apartment building, about fifty feet away. He was in classic shooting stance, the kind they teach you in police training, and his pistol was leveled at Crowe. It surprised Crowe that the cop remembered anything from his training.

“Don’t move, Crowe, or so help me I’ll put the next one in your head!”

The woman stopped yelling at Crowe and started yelling at her husband and they grabbed the baby out of the stroller and ran in the other direction.

Crowe got in the Jag, started it up. Another bullet shattered the glass in the rear passenger window.

He ducked low, threw the Jag into gear and pushed the gas. The tires screeched on the blacktop and the Jag shot forward. Wills fired again, but if the shot went anywhere near, Crowe couldn’t tell. He jumped the median that separated the two sections of parking lot, jerked the wheel to the right and between two other parked cars, and accelerated toward the street.

Wills was running hard toward him, gun out, firing. Crowe heard two bullets hit metal before he made the street, took a left, and sped away. He glanced back just once, saw Wills shoving his gun back in its holster and making a break for his car. As big a loose cannon as he was, he’d still call for back-up on this one, and Crowe knew he could expect cops to swarm any minute.

He hit Union Avenue, merged his way into traffic heading west, back toward downtown. His fingers were tight on the steering wheel. He pushed the Jag up to forty-five, as fast he could risk it, weaving in and out of slower traffic like one of those assholes you see during rush hour who think shaving a few minutes off the drive-time is worth risking lives over.

But in this case, it was definitely worth it.

A police cruiser sat at the corner of Union and Manassas, and just as he passed it he saw the driver eyeing him, talking into his radio, and starting his engine in a hell of a hurry.

The cop hit his lights and siren and pulled out after him.

Crowe banked hard to the right, cutting off a Honda Civic, barreled into the mouth of a narrow alley. He kept it at about forty miles an hour. If someone decided to pop out in front of him, that would be pretty goddamn unfortunate for them.

Nobody jumped in front of the car, though. He cleared the alley, cut right again, and wound up on Madison.

He cursed under his breath. Madison wasn’t a straight shot; it angled off and bled right into Union, where he’d just come from. He had to stop driving randomly, work out some sort of plan. He’d been away too long and didn’t know the lay of the land as well as he should have.

More sirens wailed from somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see them. He got stopped at the light, just in time to see another police cruiser speed by, heading west. The light turned green and Crowe turned left, back in the direction he’d come from. There was a chance that the first cruiser hadn’t seen him cut into the alley, although how the cop could have missed it was beyond him.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, the fumble would actually buy him a little time.

He drove fast up Union, risked staying on it for two miles. He didn’t see any cops, didn’t hear any sirens. It was a lucky break, but the luck wouldn’t hold. He had to get rid of the Jag, right away.

At the next light, he took a right, and then another right, and a left through another alley and wound up on Sam Cooper, heading north. A sad-looking strip mall occupied the next intersection he came to. He pulled into it, found a parking spot between two SUV’s, and cut the engine.

For about a minute, he sat there and listened for sirens. Didn’t hear any.

He got out of the car, tossed the keys on the seat. The strip mall parking lot wasn’t exactly heavy with pedestrians. An old man was just coming out of a Greek restaurant, jingling his keys. He nodded at Crowe as he passed and Crowe nodded back. A group of teenagers, being rowdy and hilarious, were getting out of a tan Ford Taurus and heading toward the video game store. They didn’t look at him.

Crowe waited for the old man to get in his pick-up truck and pull out, and then he started perusing the parking lot for a suitable vehicle.

He settled on the Ford Taurus. It was a pretty inconspicuous car, and he had the advantage of knowing the teenagers wouldn’t be coming out right away. They’d even very thoughtfully left the door unlocked.

He got in, popped the ignition, got it going in about twenty seconds. He put the car in gear, backed out of the space, and headed for the road. After driving the Jag around for a couple of days, the Taurus felt stiff and unresponsive, but beggars couldn’t be luxury car drivers.

He turned onto Sam Cooper and headed north, not feeling near as anonymous as he wanted to be.

When he was well into the suburbs he found a quiet residential street and pulled into it. It took only a couple of minutes to find a suitable car parked at the curb. Feeling conspicuous as all hell, he glanced up and down the street, took a screwdriver to the parked car’s license plate, and switched it with the Taurus’.

So that was one precaution seen to. The other one: the bandage on his face. The cops would be looking for that. He wasn’t certain the wound was ready to go without bandages, but he didn’t see any other options.

A grimy service station restroom served as medical station. In the smudgy mirror, he carefully pulled the bandage off, washed his face as thoroughly as he could with the pump soap, and examined the wound.

The scar didn’t look as swollen or traumatic as before, or maybe he was just more prepared this time. In the strange fluorescent light it looked gray and unreal, as if his face was made of clay and someone had furrowed a line right through his left eye.

He’d have to get used to it. No use moaning.

Hello, Crowe. How you liking Memphis so far?  Time of my life, brother, time of my life.

It wasn’t quite noon yet, which meant he had more than seven hours before he had to meet Radnovian. The apartment was out, obviously. And he couldn’t contact him by phone to set up a new meeting place—whether he liked it or not, Rad would be part of the effort to bring Crowe in now.

Fine, Crowe thought. He’d just have to set up a more
spontaneous
meeting.

By twelve-thirty, he checked in at a mid-line motel, one of the chain places, clean and nicely bland. He took a long shower, shaved, cleaned out and changed the bandages on his other wounds. He swallowed another pain pill. He made a point of not thinking, not on any conscious level.

Not that he was entirely successful. The guilt kept rearing up, the ugly knowledge that Faith was dead because of him.

The strange symbol carved in Faith’s temple—for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, bothered him more than what the killer had done to the rest of her.

But he pushed it back down whenever it popped up. Better to let it simmer, let his subconscious work it out. He set the little digital alarm clock on the nightstand for 5:00 pm, not really thinking he would fall asleep but just as a precautionary measure. He stretched out fully clothed on the bed, arms behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. He felt something in his jacket pocket, something crinkly. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper—the Church pamphlet from the Welling’s house.

He crumpled it up into a ball and tossed it across the room. It bounced off the wall and rolled to a stop near the nightstand.

Fuck it, he thought. He closed his eyes, and within minutes he’d fallen asleep.

The dreams that played out in his head were scattered fragments. But the Ghost Cat wandered through them, the way a real cat wanders from room to room. In some rooms, the Cat was whole, it was alive and healthy, but in other rooms it would come through the door and pieces of it would be gone, blood would be matted in its fur, bits of bone would be sticking out of it.

He was a boy again in the dreams, but not
himself
as a boy. He was someone else. He was a boy who was afraid and elated and shamed all at once. He was a boy holding a kitchen knife, and blood, someone or something else’s blood, was hot on his face.

The beeping of the alarm clock woke him and he opened his eyes and stared at nothing for a full minute before reaching over to slap the clock quiet.

Radnovian lived in a refurbished old apartment building on a pleasant little street near the University campus, and by five-thirty Crowe was in his neighborhood. The sky was already going pale but the temperature didn’t seem to be dropping much. This whole winter business was starting to get to him; he couldn’t remember Memphis ever being quite this bleak and cold and gray before. Or maybe it was just him.