The Tease (The Darling Killer Trilogy) (15 page)

I settled back into the sofa. “That’s odd,” I murmured. “She wasn’t wearing jewelry, was she?”

He shook his head. “Not that I saw,” he said.

But I knew that already, because her sapphire pendant showed up on my doorstep that horrible day.

“The word ‘darling’ was written along her clavicle,” he said, adding tiny letters. “Here.” He tore the page out and handed it to me.

I compared it to the picture of Katie. “And there was no jewelry near Katie.”

“No,” he said, and shuddered. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started another sketch. “I think this one was your friend.”

I recognized Lisa’s pose, her wavy hair, her merry widow and shoes as they emerged from his drawing. Guilt fought with relief as saw how good his proportions were. He could have been sketching Lisa from my memory. He added her folded clothes, her mouth gaping around the stocking, and the glittery necklace she wore.

“Wait,” I said, summoning my mental image of Lisa. She had still been wearing her gaudy necklace and earrings. “She still had her jewelry on.”

He nodded.

“That’s so odd,” I said. I looked closer. “Her mouth isn’t as distorted as the others.”

He frowned, staring at it. “That’s right,” he said.

“There could be a lot of reasons,” I murmured. “But fishnets tend to get kind of puffy when you take them off. Maybe if someone else was wearing pantyhose – I’m sorry.” I stopped myself at his sickened expression.

“They kept asking me where the other stocking was,” he said.

“Now that’s weird,” I said. “He took a stocking and left her jewelry?”

Kevin nodded. “And then…” he drew a close-up of her forearm in the lower right hand corner of the page. “He wrote the word ‘darling’ differently. I wish… I’m sorry, I can’t remember exactly what was different from the other pictures, letter-wise. It didn’t look like pen.”

“He used her blue eyeliner,” I said.

“Different medium,” he said. “So that might be why it looked different. It’s a lot harder to write small in eyeliner than pen. The point isn’t as fine as pen, so the letters would smudge together.” He looked critically at the picture and then tore it out, extending it to me.

I accepted it and placed it on the coffee table with the others. “I know that was hard for you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

He set the sketchpad and pencil down and then sat back, rubbing his eyes. “If knowing more makes you feel safer,” he said, “I want to help.”

I hugged him again. Aslan sighed contentedly and stretched out, sprawling his long body over both of our laps. We sat together for another few minutes. I sat up when drowsiness made my eyelids heavy again.

Kevin walked me to my car. “Text me so I know you got home safely?” he asked.

“I will,” I promised.

I drove home, blaring music as loud as I could to keep myself awake. When I parked the car, I looked around the parking lot, but I didn’t see anyone lurking around. Not that I would. I took a minute to work up my nerve and hurried to the door, scanning the inside of my lobby.

The lobby was empty. I ran up the stairs and into my apartment, which was empty except for Caprice, who stretched and complained about the interruption to her nap. I texted Kevin to let him know I was home safely and somehow managed to sleep.

I
f you have a credit card number and a willingness to look at a lot of things you can’t un-see, you can find a lot of fucked up crime scene photos on the Internet.

I woke up early enough that Caprice just shot me a dirty look and went back to sleep. I had to admit it was too chilly for satin, so I pulled on a black velvet robe and stumbled to my kitchen to make coffee. Kevin’s scent was still strong in my nose that morning: cotton, soap, skin. It was far too early to text him.

His sketches still lay on my desk where I had set them the night before. I stared at them for a while and then started following links online. Some led to sites determined to sell me software or infect my computer. Some led to old photos.

A very few actually had Darling Killer crime scene photos. I learned several things from them. First, Kevin was an excellent visual artist. Second, he had protected me – or perhaps himself – from the bruising and the dead eyes. Lisa’s bruises were still magenta when I saw her. The crime scene photos showed ugly, purple bruises around the victims’ necks, because most of the women weren’t discovered so soon after their times of death.

Darcy’s vacant eyes were almost entirely red, and also had red spots underneath them. It’s called petechiae, which is what happens when capillaries rupture. She also had scratch marks from her own fingernails on her neck from where she tried to pry his hands away.

Darcy was also the only victim found posed with jewelry, and the only one posed with such apparent tenderness. She wasn’t in a strange sprawl; rather, she was curled up on her side as if napping.

She and Katie were both murdered in their homes. That, and the blue eyeliner, led me to wonder if Lisa was an impulse murder. Maybe he had been practicing to perfect his bizarre ritual, and violating a woman in her own home was most satisfying to him. Lisa was still wearing her jewelry, which bothered me. None of the other women were. The word “darling” did look different on her, but as Kevin pointed out, it was a different medium. It looked like pen on the other women. Maybe he hadn’t planned Lisa; maybe something triggered him.

Why now?
I wondered.
Why did you start practicing on women five months ago?
There must have been some sort of stressor. Some reason his mind broke—

When was the snow incident?
I wondered. Max mentioned that his girlfriend broke up with him after he asked her to lie in the snow, and a rejection like that could be the trigger. I’d have to remember to bring it up in our next session.

After two exhausting hours, I texted Kevin to thank him for a great date, and then spent a solid twenty minutes panicking until he texted a reply. My pleasure, it read. I’ll call tonight? I bounced up and down a few times, sent him a nonchalant OK with a smiley face, and then settled down to watch burlesque videos on YouTube until I had to get ready for rehearsal with Grant. I needed to see women vibrant, powerful, and alive.

Red Hot Annie. Dirty Martini. Immodesty Blaize. I drank them in, grateful for their irreverence and grace. When watching dance, I was a lot like Caprice when she watched birds: leaning forward, mouth slightly open, occasionally making an involuntary sound.
I want that. I want that.
Not to possess them sexually, but to invoke that alchemy of charisma, fluidity, and precision that transforms a dancer into an icon.

• • •

I made it to Grant’s right on time. He lived in the Humbolt Park neighborhood, where you could see a completely gentrified building set back from crack vials on the sidewalk. Poor Walter dutifully recited facts that totally failed to register with me all the way.

When Grant let me in, I stopped two steps in and stared.

He lived in a garret apartment. Not a top floor apartment; the place demanded use of the word garret. An upturned coffee table and rolled-up rug lay on a green sofa shoved back against the wall to my left, surrounded by framed paintings and black-and-white photographs. Lautrec’s dancers, carnies, Ziegfeld girls, jazz musicians, Beardsley illustrations, vaudeville acts, and the Rat Pack rioted on the walls and up onto the sloped ceiling. Bookcases crammed with a chaos of novels and sheet music lined the wall to my right. A piano sat across the room from me underneath a round stained glass window. A folding chair and strange parade of musical instruments leaned against the wall around the piano, propped each other up, or gazed drunkenly at the photos: a guitar case, a tambourine, a washboard, a keyboard, a small wooden hexagonal case, a doumbek, and others I couldn’t identify.

“Do you play all of these?” I asked.

“Not well,” he grinned. “I hope this gives you enough room.”

“It’s perfect,” I said. I tossed my gig bag on the upturned coffee table. “I’ve been practicing to the recording you made me.”

“You look great today,” he said.

I flushed. “Thanks.”

His keen stare almost flattened me to the wall. “It’s not something you’re wearing,” he said. “You look lighter. Happy.”

“I was out on a second date last night,” I said. “It went really well.”

He grinned. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “I hope he’s good to you.”

“He is,” I said. His response seemed genuine; no flicker of surprise or hurt. Maybe I was imagining that he flirted with me before.

“Do you need to warm up first?”

“I do,” I said. “Come on, you can warm up with me.”

He looked at me skeptically. “All I do is sit there.”

“With constant leg flexion,” I said. “And your shoulders and hands never get tired? It’ll be good for you.”

He sighed. “Ok, but you’d better not take any pictures.”

His range of motion was a little limited because he wore jeans, but he was a good sport about it. When we stood up from the last stretch, he turned his head from side to side and said, “Wow. That does make a difference.”

“See?”

“Why don’t you teach that?” he asked.

“Teach warm ups?”

“Yoga,” he said. “Doesn’t your dad teach yoga? You could work for him.”

Huh. He knows me better than I thought.
I shrugged. “I guess I’m stubborn,” I said. “I really wanted to show that I could do things on my own.”

“Speaking of which,” he said, “I have some ideas about the piece, but I don’t want to tell you what to do.”

“And I don’t want to be predictable,” I said. “Fire away.”

He sat down on the piano bench. “I hoped you might sit next to me on the bench at some point. If you had your back to my shoulder, and draped your legs over the side like this…”

I struggled not to laugh at him in a pin-up pose. “I like it,” I said.

“And then there’s the part towards the end, with that one high note,” he said. “It’s this key, here.” He plinked it. “You do this one pose I really like, where you’re resting your elbow on your other arm. I was thinking that you could drape your downstage arm like this,” he demonstrated. “And then you could lean over and hit the key at this second. I can put a little sticker on it if you want.”

“You really pay attention,” I said.

He grinned again. “Like there’s something better to do than watch you all dance?”

A chill ran down my back.
Please don’t flirt with me
, I thought, and then,
I’m overreacting. He said “you all.”

It might have just been a matter-of-fact compliment, though, because he continued. “And then – did you bring a bra? I mean—” He blushed and looked at the piano keys. No one had ever
not
looked at my breasts so pointedly. “—like to wear over your clothes?”

“Sure I do,” I said. I got it from my gig bag, which also contained panties, a corset, a boa, opera gloves, a fan, and my battered practice heels. Sometimes you don’t know where the song is going to take you.

“I was thinking if you were here,” he gestured to the floor near the bench. I hooked the bra over my shirt and stood there, and he put his hands on my shoulders, subtly creating the angle he wanted in my body. I was surprised by how gentle but effective his touch was. Lots of tall guys don’t know their own strength.

“Can you do a three-step turn past the piano bench on this count?” He clapped out a beat.

A three-step turn is a way to spin a hundred and eighty degrees as you travel in a straight line or arc in – you guessed it – three steps. He studied me as I obliged.

“Can you do it again from that spot? From here.” He played a few bars on the piano.

I spun again, and when I stopped, my bra was unhooked.

“Wow,” I said. “You did that one-handed? I didn’t even hear a break in the music.”

“Sleight of hand,” he said.

“That’s amazing,” I said, re-hooking the bra.

“Not really.” He tapped out an idle melody. “I was too shy to ask girls out, so I spent a lot of time alone. I got pretty good at piano and card tricks.”

My inner therapist spoke up, but I squelched it. “It’s a great trick.”

I had been worried that working with Grant would be a little awkward, but it felt surprisingly natural. I don’t know if my dancing was great or awful; it was probably a mix of both. The memory of Kevin’s skin was strong on mine. Sometimes it made me feel goddess-like and sensual, and sometimes I was just distracted and missed the cues. That all mingled with an undercurrent of guilt. Lisa was dead, Katie was dead, and there I was playing with bras and heels. I knew I would tell a client that death is a part of life, take the good with the bad, life goes on, and all that other crap that makes no difference when it’s inside your own head.

One part of his song was perfect for a twenty-count spin, and spins are great moments for unhooking and removing things. The audience knows something is happening, but they can’t see it until you’re ready for the reveal. I selected the garter belt. As I spun, I hooded my eyelids, let the room become unfocused. The trick to not getting dizzy is to avoid focusing on anything that’s not spinning with you. As we practiced, I started getting a little light-headed, so I spun in the opposite direction to re-set my inner ear. There were so many paintings on Grant’s walls, blurring into a carnival around me as I spun. The portraits on his ceiling morphed into the sordid crime scene shots in the corners of my eyes, strangled girls with stockings in their mouths tumbling through carnies and showgirls and strange instruments.

She’s dead. She made it, but now she’s dead.

I stumbled, staggered to one side, and whacked my hip against the piano. Grant stopped playing. “Anna?” he said.

I clapped a hand over my mouth and ran in the direction I thought his bathroom would be. I made it to the toilet, threw up, and then knelt, dry-heaving, sweat trickling down my throat.

“Um… Anna?” Grant’s voice came from the hall. The door was slightly ajar, but he wasn’t looking in.

“I’m ok,” I managed. I spat into the toilet, blotted my lips, and flushed, slamming the lid shut. Charming.