Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (38 page)

“About what?” Penglis wasn’t hiding her interest in the lead. If her staff could jump the gun on the Major Crime Squad, she could use the kudos to get out of Poison Street Station and into one of the cushier suburbs. No-one actually wanted to work in Amberley Park any longer than they had to.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said, quite honestly.

“Oh, come on.” Moir rounded on him instantly. “Have you forgotten what we found in the bags?”

“I haven’t forgotten, Jane.”

“He’s hanging out in women’s toilets, scavenging—that was your word for it, wasn’t it?—for anything left behind. What’s he doing with it, do you think?”

The vehemence in her voice surprised him, left him feeling more than a little stung. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but—”

“Blood, excrement, hair.” She tapped them off on her fingers. “Toenails. Christ, Wey, its something out of a satanic recipe book.”

“You think it’s cult-related?” asked Penglis.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But either way, it freaks me out.”

“What else was in the bags?” Penglis asked them.

“Fluid. We think it might be water from toilet bowls, probably containing urine. We’ve sent some to the labs for testing, along with the rest—including a used band-aid. More blood. We’ll match it all against the victims’.” Moir rolled her eyes. “Then there was hair. And dust. I don’t know what
that
is.”

“Skin cells,” said Hollister. “Most of the dust in houses comes from our skin. It’s gray when it dies.”

“See? Maybe he’s making a voodoo doll. That’s why he wanted his social worker’s hair. He wants to control her, make her buy him more alcohol.”

“He doesn’t drink.” Hollister repeated Flavell’s revelation for Penglis’ benefit; it had surprised him too, until born out by blood tests.

“Then it’s pain killers,” Moir said, “or arthritis cures. Whatever.”

“Who’s this woman he talks about?” Penglis asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“None,” Hollister said. “It sounds like someone specific, but he hasn’t given us anything to tie her down. She could be an abusive mother, a lost sister, a deceased daughter—”

“She could also be a split personality,” said Moir. “Part of himself who does things he doesn’t like. You hear what he says about her. He’s more scared of her than he is of us.”

“Cloe Flavell hasn’t mentioned anything about a multiple personality disorder.”

“Flavell is an inexperienced, idealistic kid.” Moir shifted restlessly in her seat. “For God’s sake, Wey, don’t let her influence you. She thinks these people can be healed, but they can’t. It’s too late. Maybe if they’d been treated properly when they first became ill—”

“I don’t think we can ignore our responsibility just like that,” he interrupted. “We can’t write him off as crazy just because we caught him mucking around in a toilet. I mean, yes, he’s ill and I don’t say we should ignore him—but don’t paint him as a psycho, either. We don’t know
what’s
going on in his head.”

“Exactly, and I say we shouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. You let him go, and who knows what he could do? Maybe he
is
a lonely old geezer with nothing better to do than walk around all day. Or maybe he breaks into porn shops for kicks when no-one else is looking. Or maybe he kills people. We don’t
know,
Wey, and until we
do
know I say we keep him here, nice and safe, where we can watch him.”

“Guilty until proven innocent?” he snapped. “I’m disappointed in you, Jane. I thought you had more humanity than that.”

She retreated back into the chair, flushing, and he regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. In the year they had worked together, she had shown him nothing but humanity. But he couldn’t call them back, and she didn’t respond to them. He could only shut his mouth and wait for Penglis to break the silence.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, looking from one to the other. “You, Jane, think we should keep him here?”

“At least until we’ve gone over his place.” She glanced at Hollister, then back at Penglis. “Can we get a warrant?”

“If he’s living in a public space, we might not need one. But you, Wey, want to let him go. Is that right?”

“I didn’t say that. He has done something wrong, and he should be made aware of it. But I don’t think we have any grounds to do more than fine him. I mean,
is
it a crime to steal shit and used tampons?”

“I’m sure there’s a health and safety act to cover it.” Penglis forced a grim half-smile. “I’m with Jane,” she said. “He’s too much of a wild card to let slip so soon. If we let him go, who says he’s not going to disappear? I know it’s a long-shot, but suppose he
is
the Slayer? How would you sleep at night, knowing that we let him kill again?”

Hollister wanted to say that he didn’t sleep very well as it was and doubted old Jellyhead did either. “I don’t think that’s very likely.”

“But it’s not impossible, and we’re not here to take chances. We’ll charge him with something minor, put him in the cells overnight and see what that shakes loose. Who knows? Maybe he’ll decide to come clean in the morning. And if he does, and if he is the Slayer, I’ll personally—”

There was a knock at the door. Before Penglis could respond, it opened and the head of Penglis’ assistant poked into the room.

“This just came,” he said, thrusting a fax forward.

Hollister took it and passed it on to Penglis, catching the title as it went past. A surge of something very much like disappointment went through him, mingled with relief.

Penglis scanned the page once, then went over the relevant details again before speaking.

“They’ve caught him,” she stated dully. “They brought him in an hour ago.”

“Who?” asked Moir.

“The Amberley Slayer, that’s who.” She passed Moir the page and leaned back into her seat. Judging by the expression on her face, she was feeling much the same way as Hollister. “Well, shit,” she said. “That simplifies things, doesn’t it?”

~ * ~

The fax was well-thumbed by the time Hollister had a chance to read it properly. The Slayer had been arrested that afternoon by a large squad of police and detectives in his home in Croxton. His name was Aaron James Stanco. Stanco was an average-looking man of thirty-five who he worked for the Amberley Park City Council as a grounds keeper. By day, invisible in overalls, he had cleaned the streets while watching for victims and studying their habits. At night, he had struck. His house contained swathes of preserved human skin stretched like embroidery in wooden frames. Around one wrist, in plain view, he wore a bracelet made from stolen rings, studs and spikes.

Hollister watched the news reports on TV that night, from his couch. Photos of Stanco and the bracelet dominated the reports, but the media found time for shots of the triumphant detectives at various press conferences and other sites around town. The case was closed. People could rest easy—especially the young, endangered women in Amberley Park, although they were rarely mentioned. Good had triumphed over evil once again.

If only, Hollister thought, life was ever that simple.

They had charged Arnold Emes, a.k.a. Jellyhead, with loitering and minor property damage and warned him not try anything similar again. The old man didn’t seem to notice. He was more concerned that he wasn’t getting the contents of his satchel back. Cloe Flavell, who had returned from showing a junior constable where the old man lived, did her best to calm him down and said that she would take him home.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” she promised, apparently unfazed by having to take the trip twice.

“You won’t be the only one,” Moir said, her expression more threatening than her words.

“She will be hard,” said the old man softly, his expression one of despair and resignation. Hollister had thought he would at least be happy about being set free. “She won’t have any choice, now.”

“We all have choices,” Hollister said, drawn into the old man’s dementia against his conscious will.

“She is impatient.”

“What does she want?”

“She’ll want the bones, to finish.”

Hollister simply stared at him, feeling suddenly cold.

Then Arnold Emes was gone, whisked off to his mysterious home by the one person, it seemed, who actually cared about him—and for whom, even then, it was merely a convenient compassion. If Cloe Flavell got a better job elsewhere, would she return to care for one isolated old widower?

Moir looked at her watch and exhaled heavily. “It’s been a hard day, Wey. Fuck, it’s been a hard year. Go home and get some rest.”

“The report—”

“Can wait until tomorrow. That’s the last thing I want to do tonight.”

He did as he was told, although the last thing
he
wanted to do was go to sleep. Afraid of what might be waiting for him, he watched every news report he could find, and then a late movie. When that finished, he poured himself a large glass of port and went into the study. He performed sit-ups and push-ups in quick succession, then did star-jumps for as long as he could. The physical exertion helped clear his mind, although they couldn’t stop it working.

Two nights ago, in the middle of the night, Arna had said something about bones. Jellyhead had mentioned bones that afternoon. There was no possible way the old man could have known about Arna or what she had said; it must have come out of nowhere, a random comment that meant nothing except in the context of his dementia. Or—and here Hollister’s mind baulked at acceptance—it hadn’t come out of nowhere at all, and there was something connecting the two instances. Something he hadn’t seen yet.

He drained the port and poured himself another one. Something was going on. The silence of the house felt full of possibility, for a change, and the night wasn’t so empty. On other nights, that might have been an improvement. The Amberley Slayer was behind bars, finally—but that didn’t mean the world was any safer than it had been. If anything, it might actually be
less
safe, for at least the Slayer had been a known quantity. He had kept the nameless fears at bay. Who knew what might come along to fill his shoes, now that they were empty?

It seemed perfectly reasonable, to Hollister, that both Arna and Jellyhead’s mystery women were nervous of the dark.

~ * ~

He woke the next morning with the empty glass on the bedside table, phoned in sick, and went back to sleep. This time, he dreamed.

Arna was on her knees in her wedding dress, trying to piece together the sharp-edged fragments of a broken cup. She looked up with tears in her eyes and said: “I’m getting there, Weylin. I love you.”

Then she had smiled, and the cup was whole in her hands

He jerked awake at eleven. The bed was empty on her side, and he had a mild hangover. The fears and feelings that had kept him awake the previous night still nagged. He kept seeing Jellyhead at the Poison Street Station—so small and fragile in the grip of the legal system, yet so oddly resilient, defying every attempt to make sense of his behavior.

At one, he rang the station again and asked to be put through to the constable who had taken Cloe Flavell to Jellyhead’s home. Candice Greiner was in and on lunch break. Hollister felt guilty for disturbing her but, as it turned out, she was happy to talk about what she’d seen.

“It’s off the Weaver Freeway,” Greiner said. “You park in an empty block on Salisbury Street and go across the old tracks. Don’t go down the tunnel; the gate is padlocked, although I think people have been getting in anyway. There’s an access door to the right, around the edge of a concrete bunker. It’s stiff, but not locked. It opens if you push hard enough. On the other side is a maintenance corridor that leads to the dead line.”

She gave a detailed description of where to go from there. The way had been explored many times before by the Cave Clan and teenagers. She had seen stickers and graffiti, empty syringes and used condoms. But she hadn’t seen anyone else, not beyond a certain point. That was explained, she supposed, by the stench.

“It’s like a sewer,” she said, the experience portrayed vividly by her tone. “Foul. I don’t know how anyone could live down there.”

“Is
that where he lives?”

“Yes. There’s another maintenance way leading to an abandoned cellar. I don’t know what it’s under, but it looks more like it belongs to a house than offices or warehouses. It might be somewhere old that got built over and forgotten, then opened up again when the line went in. I don’t know. But that’s what he calls home.”

Hollister imagined Jellyhead shuffling through the urban wasteland, down ever-darkening corridors and tunnels, and finally to the forgotten space he had taken for his own. It still seemed appropriate, even though he doubted it was a kind of life anyone deserved—no matter how passionless, or empty. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing but rubbish. The room is quite big, really, and there’s stuff piled up everywhere. Papers, plastic bags, tin cans—you know. There are some rugs in a corner; I guess that’s where he sleeps. There’s also a tea chest full of old clothes, some candles, a couple of big, empty water bottles, and in the middle of the room there’s a table ...” She stopped as though remembering something.

“What is it?”