Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) (16 page)

* * *

Her shadow seemed to consume him all
the way to the front desk.

Nikolai glanced over his shoulder into
Tatiana’s stony eyes. She perfectly embodied the reason why he
worked in isolation. He felt smothered by the notion of a partner,
especially one as obtrusive at her. There was nothing symbiotic
about their relationship.

If anything, she would hamper his
efforts to find the killer.

“
Detective,” the
receptionist noted. “I was just about to give you a
ring.”

Nikolai couldn’t mask the greedy
anticipation swimming behind his eyes. A call from the medical
examiner’s office could either spell disaster or be a boon to his
investigation.

“
Another body?”

“
Jezebel has something she
would like to show you in the autopsy room. She needs you down
there immediately.”

Nikolai’s heart skipped several beats
as a pair of automatic doors growled open. He barely remembered
uttering the words “thank you” before the receptionist’s window
slid shut.

Tatiana eagerly stood by the entrance.
The pearlescent corridors twisted and turned at jarring intervals,
but Nikolai’s feet knew precisely when to turn. It was a
mesmerizing journey he had traced many times throughout his career,
more times than any sane human should have to endure. He nearly
bound into the morgue at the thought of the revelations awaiting
him.

His heels ground to a halt when he saw
the nude, bloated body lying on the autopsy table. Her clothes had
been snipped away to reveal the dark complexion that sets in after
hours of decomposition. Her discarded laundry lay on the linoleum
floor next to the drain for bodily fluids.

“
He certainly is fond of
controlled environments,” Jezebel said, studying the scalpel in her
grasp. Tatiana thrust a pair of latex gloves into Nikolai’s hands
and marched defiantly into the room. “He puts an obscene amount of
preparation into elaborate, cruel devices. These are not the
inventions of a sane man.”

Jezebel lifted her eyes to marvel at
the exotic-looking woman who dared intrude on her realm.

“
Tatiana will be joining us
today,” Nikolai explained.

“
You thought I could use
the audience? How thoughtful, Nikolai.” Her morbid humor did not
rest well with Tatiana, who cringed.

“
I assume she wasn’t this
big when she was alive?” she asked, studying the foul-smelling
corpse.

“
Not even close. Natalie’s
medical records indicate she weighed approximately a hundred and
twenty pounds. Furthermore, she was physically active in gymnastics
and dancing. She even won a few first-place medals. As you can
imagine, having sewage pipes rigged to her digestive tract
drastically changed that. Sewage accumulated in her esophageal
tract, stomach, and lower GI. She died of asphyxiation.”

Morbid films of Natalie’s lungs
hovered in the dark, framing Jezebel’s figure like seraphim
wings.

A seraphim of death, Nikolai mentally
noted.

Sometimes he wondered if he would find
himself under her scalpel one day, all his secrets laid bare one
slice at a time. It was a cruel notion that taunted him every time
he lay down at night, and he could almost feel the chill of the
autopsy table as he rested his cheek against the pillow. As much as
he resented the truth, his secret phobia of death handicapped his
career.

His fear of what awaited him beyond
death laughed in his face every time the media bombarded him with
sensational police killings. Even the most cautious and coolheaded
cop could be gunned down in a sick twist of fate.

“
What is that?” Nikolai
asked, jabbing an anomaly on Natalie’s skull MRI. It resembled a
mesh of wire lodged in her cranium.

“
Angiostrongylus
cantonesis.”

“
What?”

“
Rat lungworm.” Nikolai
wanted to gag. “The killer is branching out of his comfort zone.
This is the first murder to take place outside of an abandoned
apartment. All of the victims have been selected from a five-mile
radius. That may soon change.”

Leaking fluids told Tatiana that
Natalie’s eyes and ears were in the grips of a virulent infection.
Large blisters mottled her skin from gases inhabiting the raw
tissue.

Tatiana craned over Natalie’s face.
The sores in her cheeks had turned a sweltering red from exposure
to sewage water. The gleam of her green irises was clouded under
the milky layer that so often accompanies death when tears cease
production. Something writhed under the cornea. She jerked back
when she saw the parasite’s tail in the colorless void.

“
So where is it?” Nikolai
asked. “The needle mark.”

Jezebel rotated the left hand to
reveal the perverse stigmata.

“
The killer also wrapped
barbed wire around her wrists and inserted a dental gag to force
her jaws open.” Nikolai gritted his teeth as he bit back the toxic
slew of profanity on the tip of his tongue.

“
We’ve seen the violence
escalate erratically with every successive murder,” he spat. “What
are the chances he’s under the influence of this mystery drug? Is
he even in control of himself or is he highly cunning and
intelligent?”

“
His actions certainly beg
the question, don’t they?”

“
There is no other
explanation for this cruelty. I truly don’t want to believe someone
can consciously do this to another person.”

“
I’m afraid you’ll have to
ask him for yourself. I don’t know if he is sane or not. Upon
further review of the substance in Krista’s blood, this drug has a
higher toxicity level than I previously thought. In fact, it rivals
the potency of cocaine.”

Nikolai rocked back on his
heels.
A substance stronger than
cocaine.

“
What are you babbling
about?” Tatiana demanded.

“
This drug is a tropane
alkaloid, just like cocaine. Even the smallest dose is extremely
concentrated in the blood. Chemical damage is rampant throughout
the cardiovascular system and the heart. The blood samples will
require further analysis before I can determine precisely what’s
happening at a cellular level.”

“
Did you collect a brain
biopsy?”

“
As a matter of fact, I
did. You can thank me for collecting one before you and Nikolai
arrived. Trust me, not everyone can endure the sight of someone’s
skull being sawed open.”

With that warning, Jezebel’s
diamond-like scalpel hovered above Natalie’s distended stomach.
Nikolai tensed. He could imagine the swarm of parasites that would
surge forth like hydras when the sterilized blade swept through the
subcutaneous layers of fat and muscle.

“
Wait,” Jezebel cried,
suddenly lowering the scalpel. “Before we begin, I need to show you
something.” Nikolai and Tatiana both relaxed.

“
Is it more important than
the autopsy?”

“
More or less. Follow me.”
Leaving the domain of the dead, Jezebel crossed the hall and
scanned her card at the door. She briskly entered the chemicals lab
host to post-mortem fluids.

“
I took the liberty of
collecting post-mortem blood and urine samples of Natalie before
you arrived. I couldn’t wait for you and Tatiana to show up. This
brings me to the other reason I called you down here…”

Nikolai glanced at a phlebotomist
carrying a rack of blood tubes. Her grip did not look steady, and
Nikolai certainly didn’t want to become acquainted with whatever
diseases might be swimming inside. A centrifuge whirred in the
distant corner, separating the red blood cells from
plasma.

Jezebel opened a blood bank freezer
and a tuft of mist hissed out. Once the coiling tendrils
dissipated, Nikolai could see the collection of blood tubes
inside.

“
I isolated Krista’s DNA
from her blood sample and examined the STR regions. I followed the
same procedure with the blood used in the messages on the wall. The
results are conclusive.” Jezebel rotated the chilled glass in her
hand, watching the light gleam through the crimson veil. “The DNA
profiles did not match. In fact, the blood doesn’t match Natalie
either.”

Nikolai stared accusingly at the glass
tube.

“
I have a foreboding
feeling this blood belongs to our killer,” Jezebel said, setting it
down.

Nikolai couldn’t imagine a serial
killer mutilating himself to write an ambiguous message on the
wall. But in that moment, he was willing to consider any
possibility.

“
Run the blood against our
offender index. I want to know immediately if you find any
matches.”

The roiling freezer breezed
shut.

“
I’m already on it. We
should have a match in less than seventy-two hours.”

* * *

Vivian looked solemnly at the notice
posted on the dilapidated door.

Condemned, Dangerous and
Unsafe, Keep Out

How strange that those foreboding
words stood between Vivian and her past. One twist of the door
would plunge her into the memories that cried out for
acknowledgement at the tip of her imagination. She had returned to
the outskirts the very next day, winding past boarded up shops to
her childhood home.

The foundation sagged into the earth,
and the windows gaped with teethed shards of glass. How she wished
Camilla would accompany her into this broken home. Unfortunately,
the newspaper called her away to investigate a church
arson.

How
ironic
, Vivian thought. The fire that
blistered through her house certainly fell under the definition of
arson, except the culprits would never face prosecution for their
crimes.

She pushed open the door without
meeting even a fraction of resistance. It seemed to will itself
open, ushering her inside a realm of infinite mysteries. Nostalgia
slapped against her like a heavy tide, carrying her away to distant
shores of younger days.

Beneath the ashes and residue, she
recognized a place where she truly belonged. Home had always been
anxiously waiting for her, separated by an ocean of time and
change.

She sidled in front of the dining
table that once hosted a plethora of steaming hot meals. Elegantly
carved duck, fried rice, plates of steamed dumplings, pork heels
dipped in a brown sauce, and soft-shelled turtle stewed with
chicken, mushrooms, and wine. Her lips ached to bite into those
succulent delights.

Now the napkins and silverware sat
idle under a tide of ashes.

Her sigh sent a blizzard of dust
rolling across the table cloth. Flames had charred much of the
interior, but someone extinguished the fire before it could raze
the entire neighborhood. She soaked in the sight of memoirs her
family left during that ill night; framed photographs bleached with
decay, a bookshelf cluttered with burnt pages, her grandmother’s
vase stuffed with peacock feathers.

As she glided up the
stairs, she lifted her eyes to a family portrait fused to the wall.
Her father and mother smiled warmly at her from beyond the glass,
sitting in the park with a much younger Vivian sandwiched
between them. Where her beaming face should have
been, she had been replaced by a black stain. Even her photographed
likeness did not escape the fury of the flames. Glass chuckled
beneath her heels as she ascended the steps and trespassed on
broken memories.

Her bedroom lurked only twelve paces
down the hall. Like a timid child approaching an animal, she
treaded lightly across the rotting floorboards. At last, she
crossed the threshold into a remnant of her past she wished didn’t
hold sway over her.

Her room was no more than an ashen
bloodstain sandwiched between the walls. Chalky residue coated the
plaster and ceiling in thick webbing. For all impressions, Red
Widow may have been born out of a mesh of chaos. The hollow air
felt charged with anxiety so palpable that Vivian felt her lungs
swelling shut. The speckled walls swam around here, peeling away in
layers.

She felt tempted to lie down in her
childhood bed among the debris and fall listlessly asleep. It took
all of her resolve turn around and latch the door.

As she retreated down the stairs, she
caught sight of something swaying above the front door. How could
she not have noticed this before?

Her fingers brushed against the
familiar Chinese charm suspended above the doorway. Her mother said
she hung the ornament shortly after giving birth to Vivian. The
gourd-shaped coin was inscribed with “fu” and “shou,” meaning
happiness and longevity. Five bats surrounded the character “fu,”
symbolizing the five blessings of longevity, wealth, health and
composure, virtue, and the desire to die a natural
death.

How many of those apply to
me? Hopefully the last one.

She flipped the coin over to the
reverse side.

“
Kill,” she murmured.
“Sha,” the Chinese character inscribed in the center of the coin,
translated into “kill.” “God of Thunder, clear out and kill the
ghosts and send down purity,” she continued, reading the
inscription. “Behead the demons, expel the evils and keep us
eternally safe. Let this command from Lao Zi be executed
quickly.”