House of Skin

APPETITE

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.