Authors: Donn Cortez
The Closer (8 page)
Jack showed her some ID, told her what he was doing there. She wished him a merry Christmas and left.
He waited for another half hour, then called home.
No answer. He got voice mail after four rings, and hung up on the sound of his own voice. He tried again and got the same thing. Weird; he chalked it up to the snowstorm and the fact it was Christmas Eve. Overloaded lines, probably.
He waited another thirty minutes before he accepted the fact that Liebenstraum wasn’t coming. Either he couldn’t get a cab or he’d just been jerking Jack around the whole time; Jack didn’t know whether to be pissed off or disappointed.
Neither, he decided as he got into the car for the long ride home. It was Christmas Eve, goddammit, and he was going to spend what was left of it with his family, drinking eggnog and listening to his father’s bad jokes and having a good time. Poor Liebenstraum would be stuck thirty thousand feet in the air, eating rubber chicken and watching
Home Alone 4
while a stranger snored on his shoulder.
He turned on the radio, found a local station that was playing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and started singing along. He made excellent time on the way back, and by the time he pulled into the driveway at home he was in a pretty good mood.
The front door was slightly ajar.
PATRON: What creates great art?
DEATHKISS: Great artists.
PATRON: Precisely. But what creates great artists?
DEATHKISS: Training. Perseverance. Talent.
PATRON: Sadly, no. There are many artists with all of the above qualities who produce merely
goodart.
Something more is needed to make that leap from the competent to the sublime, from the ordinary to the inspired. If you don’t know what it is, I’m sure your prisoner does.
DEATHKISS: Pain.
Jack knew, even before he stepped inside.
He had that kind of paranoid flash everyone gets from time to time, especially when hearing about a car accident or plane crash in the news; the utter conviction that a friend, a lover, a parent is now dead. It strikes the brain like lightning—and then rationality takes over, soothing the nerves, taming the fear.
Jack went through this entire process in an instant, but this time the fear would not be tamed; it snarled and leapt and devoured logic whole.
Hand trembling, he pushed the door open slowly. He could hear Bing Crosby crooning “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” inside.
His mother was the first thing he saw. She hung from the stairwell that led to the second floor, suspended by a string of Christmas lights that wound around her neck and lashed her wrists to her ankles. The lights blinked off and on, turning his mother’s bulging eyes and protruding tongue blue, green, red, yellow. She turned slowly in the breeze from the open door.
PATRON: Pain. Exactly. Such a simple word to encompass an infinity of variations. On a biological level, it’s nothing more than a warning system—but when we consider the emotional realm, it becomes something else entirely. Emotional anguish is a fuel, one that can power many engines: fear, lust, rage, ambition.
Creativity.
He ran forward blindly, down the short hallway, past the living room and into the kitchen. When questioned by the police later, he couldn’t tell them why he went into the kitchen first, or how he’d gone right past the living room without noticing what was in it.
His father was sprawled on his back on the kitchen table. He’d been dressed in a Santa Claus suit, the front left unbuttoned to expose his disemboweling. Blood dripped off the fake white beard and the ropy loops of intestine hanging over the edge of the table. Jack could smell blood, shit, and roast turkey.
DEATHKISS: You’ve mentioned Easter twice. Is that when you killed her?
PATRON: Yes. The photo doesn’t show it, but there’s a pot of milk chocolate bubbling on the stove. Smell is such an important component of memory; I wanted to fix the
experience
of Easter morning firmly in Salvatore’s mind. He will never see the crucifix again without seeing his mother’s corpse, nor will he take a bite of chocolate. I have entwined the two events together in the very depths of his being….
Jack was in shock. He moved through a world he did not understand, could not comprehend.
There seemed to be no urgency, just a disjointed kind of momentum that kept him moving forward.
Janine was in the living room. She’d been used to decorate the tree.
Jack was starting to see everything in tightly focused snapshots, single details in frozen bits of time. A severed finger, balanced on the halo of one of his silverware angels. A bare foot, still wearing the red nail polish he’d applied himself, hanging near the base. Her heart, wrapped in bloody tinsel, resting on a branch.
Her head, impaled on the very top where the star was supposed to go.
Everything suddenly went very far away, without moving at all. It was the strangest feeling.
DEATHKISS: What, no Easter Bunny?
PATRON: One can only take a metaphor so far.
DEATHKISS: You said Torigno was a success.
Why?
PATRON: Because he survived. I have struck twenty-one times, each time choosing someone I believed had potential and destroying the person or persons nearest to him. Of the twenty-one candidates I selected for this process, five have committed suicide, three are alcoholics, one is addicted to heroin, four are in psychiatric hospitals and two are in prison. Five have channeled their pain into their art, with varying degrees of success; one of them won a Turner Prize two years ago.
Many members of The Pack claim that what they do is art. I do not create art.
I create artists.
He came back to himself slowly, by degrees. He was sitting slumped in the hallway, his arms around his knees, staring at the wall in front of him. He couldn’t remember how he got there. He could hear Mel Torme singing about chestnuts on an open fire.
There was something he had to do, something that nagged at him. Something he dreaded.
He had to go upstairs.
In the end, it was hope that made him edge past the slowly twisting body of his mother and up the stairs. Hope that maybe the killer had spared Sam. That maybe Sam’s body wasn’t waiting for him up there, that somehow his son had gotten away or even been kidnapped. It was a very small, fragile hope.
It didn’t last.
His son’s bedroom had been turned into a nativity scene. Life-size cardboard cutouts of the wise men, Joseph, and Mary were grouped around Sam’s bed, which had a small wooden manger placed on top of it.
Sam was inside. His arms and legs had been amputated to make him fit. They were never found.
DEATHKISS: Your list only totals twenty.
PATRON: One is still undecided. Of them all, I thought he had the greatest potential; while many of my subjects lack focus in the beginning, he never did. With him, it was simply a matter of redirection.
DEATHKISS: But he’s turned out to be a disappointment?
PATRON: I’m still not sure. He may yet live up to my expectations.
DEATHKISS: Careful. Expectations are dangerous.
A neighbor finally came over to check on the wide-open door. She took one look inside and screamed.
The police found Jack inside, kneeling beside his son’s bed. He didn’t resist when they took him away in handcuffs; he didn’t say anything at all until they asked him to give a statement. Then he told them what had happened in an emotionless monotone and exacting detail.
The same neighbor that called the police, Mrs. Krendall, had received an odd phone call at just after seven o’clock. A man claiming to be Jack’s brother had asked her to come over to the Salters’ house right away; when she’d knocked on the door, there had been no answer.
Another neighbor, out shoveling his walk, had seen Janine wave good-bye to Jack from the front door at five. Jack had talked to the female officer at his studio at around six-thirty, and the coroner put his family’s time of death between seven and eight
P
.
M
. There was no way Jack could have committed the murders; he was released.
No hard evidence to support the existence of “Mr. Liebenstraum” was ever discovered.
DEATHKISS: With such a distinctive style,
I’m surprised the police haven’t linked any of your crimes together.
PATRON: Art is not something the constabulary appreciates—thus, my motives are invisible to them. My kills are spread across the country, done with a different technique every time, and my victims are of every gender, race and age. While I have a certain fondness for holidays—the rituals are so firmly ingrained in our society that they continue to resonate year after year in my artists’ minds—I do not always go after the candidate’s immediate family. I have killed lovers, best friends, teachers, and students. I have killed aunts, uncles, cousins, and even a long-lost twin.
The police see only who might benefit from a murder; no one notices the bereaved artist in the background.
DEATHKISS: I’d like to see what else your candidates have produced.
PATRON: Certainly. Here’s a piece by the Turner
Prize–winner I mentioned—and then you can share what you’re doing to your captive, hmm?
The Patron tapped a key, sending a file of a painting he found especially moving. It depicted a child lying in a meadow, head pillowed on his arms, staring up at a blue sky alive with his daydreams; knights on winged horses jousted, while cartoon monsters played baseball in the clouds.
Below his smiling face, the child’s body was vivisected: bones and muscles and organs clearly visible, hungry insects already burrowing into the exposed flesh.
Yes,
the Patron thought.
The Closer should appreciate this….
INTERLUDE
Dear Electra:
I need your advice. Let’s say a certain hypothetical boy asked out a certain hypothetical girl. Not on a date, exactly, but not on
not
-a-date, either, if you know what I mean. Am I making any sense here?
Oh, screw this, Electra—if I can’t be honest with you, who can I be honest with?
Bobby Bleeker asked me out. Kind of.
I guess I should tell you about Bobby. He’s my age, has short blond hair, and blue eyes with really long lashes. He’s got a nice smile, and he’s tall. He’s sort of cute.
Okay, he’s
really
cute. And he asked me if I was going to the mall later, because his friends were going to do a pizza and he wanted me to come because he knows I like pineapple and so does he but his friends never let him order it because they think pineapple is gross, so he wanted me there to vote for pineapple.
That’s a date, right? Electra?
MORE DATA REQUIRED.
Okay, so I asked Jessica to ask Belmont (that’s Bobby’s friend) if he thought Bobby liked me, and Belmont said he didn’t know, but Jessica thought he was covering up.
INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION.
No kidding. Anyway, I didn’t say yes or no, and now I don’t know what to do. Or what it means if I
do go, or if I don’t. I don’t
anything,
Electra. Help me out.
PLEASE DEPOSIT ANOTHER FIFTY CENTS FOR THE NEXT THREE MINUTES.
Oh, I get it. You don’t know any more about this than I do, do you? Don’t know why I thought you would—you’re just a bunch of electronics.
AND YOU’RE JUST A BUNCH OF HORMONES.
What? Electra, I’m
shocked.
That’s not very polite.
YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE.
Well… maybe. I have to admit, I did think about what it would be like to kiss Bobby.
AND?
Halfway through the kiss, he turned into Uncle Rick.
DANGER! DANGER! RED ALERT!
I know, I know… I just couldn’t help it. And now I feel guilty, and I’m not even sure
why
—is it because I thought about kissing Uncle Rick, or because I’m thinking about going out with Bobby? This is all messed up, Electra.
I HAVE A POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
I’m all ears. And hormones.
TRANSPLANT UNCLE RICK’S BRAIN INTO BOBBY’S BODY.
Hmm. That way, I’d get Uncle Rick’s personality, but I could still date Bobby’s body without gettting into trouble. Electra, you’re brilliant!
Of course, it would have to be
our
secret. I’d be the only one who’d know. I’d have to help Uncle Rick adjust to being a teenager all over again, and
tell him which clothes he could wear without looking dorky, and teach him about music and stuff— though most of the stuff he listens to now is pretty cool. Except the jazz.
There’s only one problem, Electra—aside from the obvious one of finding a brain surgeon willing to work cheap. I don’t know how to say it, but…
I still want Uncle Rick’s
body.
WARNING! WARNING! POSSIBLE INFORMATION OVERLOAD!
I can’t help it, Electra—maybe it’s wrong, but that’s how I feel.
I BELIEVE THE TECHNICAL TERM FOR WHAT YOU ARE FEELING IS: EXTREME STUPIDITY.
I know, I know… God, what am I going to
do?
This is driving me crazy, Electra, it really is.
I went down to Uncle Rick’s studio yesterday. He promised to show me the new piece he was working on, even though he
never
shows
anybody
a piece until it’s finished.
His studio is in a loft in a cruddy part of town, but I guess the rent is cheap. I took the bus to get there, after school.
I really like his loft. It’s in an old warehouse with bare wooden walls and all these huge rusty pipes and oak beams running across the ceiling, which is about twenty feet high. There’s a row of dusty windows all the way around the top of the loft that probably haven’t been cleaned in about fifty years. I offered to wipe them down once, but Uncle Rick wouldn’t let me—he says he likes the quality of light they let in.
So I knock on the door, which is this big slidy metal thing that Uncle Rick really has to yank on to get open. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a dirty white T-shirt, he’s covered in sweat, and he’s got grease marks on his arms and face. Disgusting, right?
God, he looked sexy.
I swear, my brain just seized up. He told me to come in and I didn’t say a word, just stumbled inside. It was a really sunny day, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust—at first I couldn’t see a thing. I just stood there, trying not to breathe too hard. I could smell hot metal and freshly cut wood. And him.
When my vision cleared I saw this form in the middle of the room. It was a sculpture of a bald woman leaning over a bowl she held in her lap, her head down. It was made out of metal—aluminum, I think. Her skin was like scratchy chrome.
“Just a sec, I’ll turn it on,” Uncle Rick said.
When he did, water started to gush from the woman’s head. All of a sudden, she had this beautiful liquid hair. And it didn’t just fall straight down, either—there were some glass parts sticking up that I didn’t notice at first, that made the water kind of swirl as it fell.
It didn’t flow into the bowl; it funneled into glass pipes on either side of her chest, wound around each other so the water flowing through them looked like shimmery braids. The pipes connected to the bottom of the bowl, which slowly filled up with water.
I got closer and saw that the woman was studying her own reflection in the bowl of water. He’d
painted the bottom of the bowl silver, turning it into a curved mirror.
“It’s
fantastic,”
I said. Maybe it was just my imagination, Electra—but I think the woman looked a little like me.
Uncle Rick shook his head and lit a cigarette, and I could see sunlight sparking off little metal shavings stuck in his hair.
“Nope, not yet,” he said. “There’s something missing.”
I know just what he means.