House of Skin (21 page)

“It’s not important.”

“Goodbye then, Herr Doctor,” Spider said. “We won’t see each other again, I’m guessing.” His grin deepened. “What’s the old nursery rhyme?
Run to bed children, before it gets dark?
Yeah. Take my advice, Doc. Run away. Get the fuck out of here. This isn’t for you, but if you keep nosing into things, you’ll be taking a trip to the other side. You won’t like it there.”

She broke off the session and went to the door.

Behind her, Spider said,
“Before it gets dark.”

She stumbled out of there, visibly shaken, creeped out in ways that surprised even her. There was something happening here. Something unnatural and eerie and she was scared. The next thing she knew, she was falling and Fenn’s arms caught her.

Later that night.

Fenn and Lisa were in her hotel suite, staring at plates of room service. The filet mignon was thick and simmering in pink juices, the baked potatoes steaming with butter and sour cream, the salads crisp, the bread fresh from the oven … yet, they did little but pick at their food. Fenn was distant, beyond words. Lisa was trembling, both inside and out.

“Spider’s dead?” she said for the fourth or fifth time. “I just can’t believe it. What he said to me was true then, wasn’t it?”

Fenn nodded. “He must’ve been planning it.”

“It was more that. That nursery rhyme he kept repeating. It had some relevance, I’m sure of it. My mother used to say that before we went up to our rooms for the night, ‘Run to bed children, before it gets dark.’ I know what she meant, but what did Spider mean?”

“You’re probably reading too much into it,” Fenn explained to her.

“Maybe.”

There was no point in arguing, Lisa decided, because he was essentially right. Any sane person would have come to the same conclusion. But she was certain Spider’s words were important somehow. They had to be. In some mad way she could never hope to divine, it was the summation of everything he’d told her. The final parting shot.

“A guy like Spider has a big ego, Doc. He can’t just die gracefully, he has to make a dramatic exit complete with prophetic last words,” Fenn said. “You know how guys like him are.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I wish I could. You were the last one to talk with him. He was alone for less than an hour. Gaines went down to give him a going over and he was dead. Simple as that.”

“There’s nothing simple about it,” she reminded him.

He nodded. “The question remains: How did he do it? How the fuck does a guy with one free hand cut his own throat and then hide the razor?”

“The razor’s got to be somewhere.”

“If it is, we have yet to find it.”

“He seemed so certain the Sisters were coming for him,” she said, almost as if she were surprised they hadn’t.

“Well, they better pick his ass up at the morgue then.”

“You think that’s all bunk?”

“Don’t you?” Fenn said. “You can’t actually believe in any of that shit. You’re a psychiatrist for chrissake, you’ve heard it all before. Just another nut with another nutty tale.”

She nodded, as if in agreement. But she didn’t agree. She was starting to wonder about the whole thing herself. Everything about this entire situation was just getting too damn weird. Eddy and Spider linking up. Gulliver’s sighting of the Sisters. What she’d seen in the house. Spider’s convenient suicide with a razor that couldn’t be found. And Cherry Hill’s sudden appearance. It was all circumstantial and terribly confusing … yet why did she feel certain there was a common thread that would link it all together?

“We have to concentrate on Eddy right now,” Fenn said.

“I suppose.”

“If what Spider said is true, then Eddy will keep killing until we stop him.”

“I have no doubt. It’s just that I’d like to know more about Spider. I mean, for God’s sake, we don’t even know who he was.”

Fenn chewed his lip. “It is a little incredible, isn’t it? In this day and age with all our technology and databases, we still can’t identify one man.”

“How about his things?” she asked. “Isn’t there something at his apartment that could help us? A bill, a letter, anything?”

“No, not a goddamn thing. Spider appears to be a man without a past. He had plenty of junk, all right, but nothing we could use. Not even a fucking library card. And the books. Christ, there must be a couple hundred piled in that damn rathole.”

“What sort of books are they?” She wanted to look at them, but she didn’t want Fenn to know.

“Lot of stuff on witchcraft, the occult. Historical stuff. Criminology texts. Religion, mysticism. You name it. Quite a few written in foreign languages, some bound in leather. Moore knows something of books. He says some of them are worth a bundle.” Fenn shook his head as if trying to make sense of it. “But most important to us are the anatomy texts. He had quite a few. Apparently, he’d been studying his craft for some time. We found other books on surgery, forensic pathology.”

“Quite a student. I wonder what the occult and religious books have to do with this.”

“Who can say? You’ll have to figure that one out.”

“I guess.”

He pushed his plate away. “I can’t eat. I’m too goddamn stressed out.”

She agreed. She took the bottle of wine they’d ordered and sat on the sofa with it. They drank it in water glasses until there was none left. They spoke very little. There seemed to be little to say.

Fenn was sitting close to her and she knew what was coming. When he kissed her, she didn’t object. When his hands sought her breasts, she didn’t stop them. He did what he wanted and it was only his gentle ways that made her intervene.

“You don’t have to be soft and tender with me,” she instructed him, unzipping his pants and freeing his erection. She took it in her hands and then between her lips.

She peeled off her blouse, then dropped her skirt. “I like to be fucked good and proper,” she told him. He came at her with the sort of hunger she liked to see in a man’s eyes. He squeezed her nipples and licked them.

“Bite them,” she panted. “Yes … oh yes …”

He grabbed her roughly by the thighs and thrust into her without warning and her eyes rolled back in her head. Their tongues found each other, but only for a moment. She wanted to see, she
needed
to see his cock ramming into her. When she did, she began to shake and moan.

“Fuck me,” she cooed in his ear. “Fuck me like you hate me.”

And he did, pounding into her until her body tensed and she came violently, her nails scratching down his back and her teeth biting into his shoulder. Then she pushed him on his back and finished him with her mouth. When it was done and his taste was in her mouth, she felt better.

She only wished he’d used his fists on her.

Dear Eddy,

Wonder and enlightenment.

Two states of being.

I experienced both that night. I was constantly in awe and wonder of you. When that greasy bastard in the parking lot started to fight, you were there in an instant, hitting him over the head with that empty beer bottle. What a sound that made! Hardened glass impacting with flesh. He was a tough one, wasn’t he? Throat slit, bleeding like a pig, and still strong enough to take eight or ten good shots from that bottle. The top of his head looked like hamburger by the time he went down. It was incredible. My, but they hang on to their miserable lives, don’t they? It’s practically a crime.

I suppose I was taking an awful chance by having you lay him across the seat while I worked on him. Ah, well.

I didn’t mean to take his head off. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I become a slave to the violence and addict to the blood. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit how death and blood get me off. I think when I pulled his head free, I came. It was just too much.

But where was I? Oh yes, wonder and enlightenment. The aforementioned things filled me with a sense of wonder. But enlightenment. That came when I realized what our purpose was. You and I. We had a purpose that we could only fulfill together. Alone, we were just two threads, but woven together we formed a rope. We became a noose that was hungry for necks to stretch. And we found them, didn’t we? Oh yes, we certainly did.

Yours,

Cherry

“When was the last time she ate?” Stadtler inquired.

Zero grinned. “It’s been some time, I think. It’s part of her conditioning, you know. She’s fed only when I fear lack of sustenance might cause her physical damage.”

The three of them were watching Gina through the two-way mirror. She looked terrible: thin, wasted, eyes blank. She was curled in the fetal position on the floor amongst her own waste.

“It’s disgusting.”

“Perhaps,” Zero said. “But we’ve broken her now, don’t you see? Her mind belongs to us, ready to be molded to our own liking. Who she will become now is up to us.”

Grimes said, “Now things get interesting.”

“She was very strong,” Zero said. “I never dreamed it would take this long to break her. But now I know that it can be done. That’s the important thing: The knowledge that the human mind can be destroyed, wiped clean of memory. The next step is to replace what she lost.”

“You still think you can do it?” Stadtler said.

“More than ever. I’m sure of it, in fact.”

Stadtler shook his head and lit a cigarette. “Any sadist can break a mind given time. There’s nothing unusual about that.”

“But so completely?” Grimes wanted to know.

“Yes. It’s just a matter of brutality.”

Zero looked angry. “How about you, Stadtler? Can your mind be broken?”

“Of course. But it would take you years.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Stadtler never caught the look that passed between the two men. If he had, some of the trouble could have been averted.

Fenn’s first marriage lasted seven years; his second, less than three. Both had lacked something. Some indefinable thing he hadn’t been able to put his finger on. Until now. Both relationships had lacked passion, had lacked desire. Through familiarity, he and his former wives had gotten bored. There was never any sexual experimentation. Lights off, missionary position. It became terribly boring after a time. He knew there was more to a relationship than sex, but it was an integral part of a union. And when it went, it led to the disintegration of the more important things until there was nothing left.

He could never imagine that being a problem with Lisa. Marriage wasn’t something he was thinking of quite yet, but when the time came, he felt he could enter into it knowing she would never fail to excite or interest him. Such a creature of beauty, grace, and intelligence on the surface … but beneath, when the lights went down, an animal. And what man could ask for more?

Fenn was at his desk, musing over these things, a huge smile on his face. Even when Gaines walked up, looking very grim, he still smiled.

“Bad news,” Gaines said.

“What now?”

“Spider’s apartment. It’s been robbed.”

“What?”

Gaines shrugged. “Somebody broke the seal and went in. Robbed the joint.”

Fenn felt his face falling. “What did they take?”

“Books. Not all of them, just a dozen or so. And everything in the refrigerator. All those jars of shit he had in there.”

“That’s all?”

Gaines nodded.

Fenn looked angry. “I thought all those jars were removed for analysis?”

“They were going to be this morning. The DA said they weren’t relevant the other day, so we didn’t bother.”

“Jesus H. Christ. Why wasn’t I told about any of this? That bastard’s been sticking his nose in my investigation and you didn’t bother telling me?”

“Shit, Jim,” Gaines said apologetically, “I thought you knew. Besides, those jars were just full of dirt and powders and crap.”

Fenn’s smile was light years away now. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”

“Sorry, Jim, I—”

Fenn couldn’t believe it. Gaines knew anything and everything at a homicide scene was important. What the hell was he thinking? And what the fuck was the DA doing this time? But he knew, God yes, he knew. Seigersen, the DA, had the knives and he had Spider’s confession. His case was wrapped up now. Another maniac off the streets. More political points scored. As soon as Eddy was brought in, it was all done from an investigatory standpoint as far as he was concerned.

Christ, the system sucked.

His cell jingled and he put it to his ear. “What?” he snapped into it.

“Fenn? This is Dr. Roget. We got big trouble here.”

What the fuck now? “I’m listening.”

“Spider’s missing.”

His face was falling again. This time it hit the floor.
“Missing?
”

“Gone. His body’s gone.”

“Christ in Heaven,” Fenn said under his breath. “What the fuck do you mean it’s gone?”

Roget proceeded cautiously. “It was put in a locker last night. This morning we went to get it for the post and it wasn’t there.”

Fenn felt like crying. “It was snatched for God’s sake?”

“I’m only stating the facts. It’s missing.”

“How could that happen?”

“I don’t know. It must’ve happened last night some time. That’s my guess. There’s only one or two technicians on duty Sunday night.”

“So somebody slipped in and stole a fucking body under the noses of your boys?”

“I assume so, yes. It’s rather doubtful it walked out under its own power.”

“Well, Doc, we’re really in the shit then. The newsies haven’t found out about our missing Jane Doe yet, but when they do and hear about Spider … Seigersen will have all our asses. You better find that stiff, goddammit.”

Roget grunted. “And where do you suggest I begin?”

“I don’t really care, but you better find it.”

Fenn hung up. First the Jane Doe, now Spider. Coincidence? Not fucking likely. Eddy Zero had to be behind this some how. He just had to be.

Fenn’s headache was starting again.

And then Gaines came through the door. “We got another one,” he said.