The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter twenty-two

He texted Divya from the parking lot.

anything yet

Her reply came back quickly.

no prints

damn he wrote. 2nd offender?

patience

not my strong suit

She responded with a smiley.

He dithered a moment, then typed dinner?

Her reply to that was far slower in coming.

busy

He rubbed his eyes, started the car, began to back out. The phone rattled in the cup holder.

sorry she had written. maybe another time

Something to work with. He started to type hope springs eternal; told himself not to be an idiot. He erased that and wrote asking her to be in touch.

There was still no reply from 911 dispatch, not even an acknowledgement of his first two requests. He wrote directly to Mike Mallick, outlining the new developments at length and imploring him to intercede. Let Special Projects do some of the heavy lifting.

He ate his dinner, dogs and bourbon, sitting on the floor, a file open on his lap.

By eleven-thirty he had a tension headache and could no longer see straight. Trudging to his bedroom, he collapsed without brushing his teeth. To feel himself finally running out of steam brought palpable relief. For the present, at least, he was sane.

He itched.

Arm and back, neck and genitals.

It was a maddening sensation and he rubbed at himself and the itch regrouped elsewhere on his body, newly doubled in strength.

He looked down.

They were on him.

They were everywhere.

Beetles.

Swarming his body like a black coat of armor; twisting in his navel, the cracks of his toes, tiny feather feet whispering against him. He slapped at himself and they scattered in concentric circles, seeking refuge in his pubic hair, his armpits and buttocks, clogging his ears, tunneling up his nostrils then tumbling, wriggling, down to the back of his throat. The more he struggled, the worse it got. They were too fast, too numerous, sprung from an infinite source, burrowing into him, millions of tiny undulant bulges bubbling in the nonexistent space between skin and raw flesh.

He raked his fingers across his scalp, scraped in the crevices where they hid, screamed and screamed and screamed.

Then a sharp stone was in his hand, and he used it to flay himself, shins and elbows, the tops of his feet, peeling his stomach off in an unbroken sheet and still he itched, he would do anything to stop it and he turned the point of the stone on himself to stab and gouge; soon he wept from a hundred puckered mouths while the beetles continued to penetrate deep into his brain. He beat his forehead against a stony wall, yearning to crack his skull open.

He slit his own throat.

Reached his hand up between the ends of cleanly severed pipes, pushed his fingers through custardy matter to the very center of their squirming legions and closed his fist around them, knowing all the while that he was destroying himself in the process.

At four-thirty a.m. he lurched awake streaked red from clawing at himself in his sleep. Running down the hall, he plunged into a scalding shower until the nightmare burnt off, slumping cross-legged on the bath mat, heaving, slick, jittery with terrible epiphany.

He had missed something.

Crime scene photographers in the digital age could snap away without limit; their 1988 counterparts had the cost of film and development to contend with. There was no standard set of angles, and those in the Creeper file didn’t correspond between cases.

Jacob did the best he could, ripping off his rank bedsheets, layering the mattress with 8×10s, lining them up in a grid, comparing, blood punching through his brain.

He swapped out some of the photos, juggled others around.

What was bothering him was Inez Delgado.

Why drag her back to the bedroom to cut her throat?

Why not leave her where she fell, like with the other women?

Now he suspected that was wrong. Now he suspected they’d wanted Inez in her bedroom, just as they’d wanted Helen and Cathy and Janet and Sherri in theirs, just as they’d wanted Christa in her living room and Patty in her kitchen and Laura in her walk-in closet and Katherine Ann centered in her studio.

In some instances, they’d moved furniture.

In other instances not.

The constants: the legs were always spread, typical sexual assault positioning.

The backs were always bruised.

He projected himself into the killer’s script, knelt, grabbed hair, yanked, reached around.

What did he see?

He ransacked the photos for mid-range shots oriented along the victim’s body in the direction of the head. He found five that were perfect and four close enough.

Nine times, he looked at what the killer saw while drawing the knife.

Nine times, he was looking at a window.

By seven a.m. he could no longer contain himself. He picked up the phone.

Phil Ludwig said, “We need to establish some ground rules. I get to sleep in now.”

“It’s important. Listen,” Jacob said.

The detective listened.

Then: “Huh.”

“I reread the files,” Jacob said. “I wondered if anyone else had noticed it.”

A beat. “Obviously nobody did,” Ludwig said.

“Nobody.” Realizing how arrogant that must sound, Jacob added, “It’s not obvious.”

“Don’t patronize me, Lev.”

In the background, Grete Ludwig said Take it outside.

“So?” Ludwig said. “What’s it mean?”

“I have no—”

Phil. I’m asleep.

“Hang on,” Ludwig said.

Thwap of slippers, a door gently shut.

“I have no idea what it means,” Jacob said. “But it had to be deliberate. Inez isn’t running back into the bedroom. She’s trying to get out of the apartment, they’re trying to stop her. And something went wrong. For them. They stabbed her in the stomach — I’m thinking she managed to punch one of them, or kick him in the balls, and he just lost it and went off on her and gutted her. But that wasn’t the plan, all along they meant to put her in front of the window — that’s what they did with the rest of them, I can’t tell you why they did it but they did. So with Inez, she’s not dead yet, she’s dying, they go, ‘Fuck, let’s get her in front of the window before she goes.’ And it makes me wonder if some of the others were moved. I’ve been assuming any movement was due to an escape attempt but maybe that’s why they tied them up, to get them into position while they were alive, at which point they sliced the bindings. As to why windows, I don’t know. But Inez wasn’t tied up, so it’s worth thinking about.”

Silence.

“Phil? You there?”

Barely audible reply: “I’m here.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’ve had too much coffee.”

“I haven’t had any coffee,” Jacob said, annoyed.

“You’re talking a hundred miles an hour.”

“I feel like I might really have something here.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You don’t agree.”

“It’s not — look: good job, at least you’re working it.” Ludwig yawned, puncturing Jacob’s enthusiasm. “What’s your next step?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to process.”

“Okay, well, you do that. I’m going back to bed. Give a call if you need anything. After ten, preferably.”

Jacob said, “Detective? You were right about Denise Stein.”

A pause.

“Oh yeah?”

“She’s definitely not the offender.”

“Glad to hear it,” Ludwig said. “Before I forget: I’m still working on that bug you showed me. Nothing yet.”

“Thanks.”

“Take care, Lev.”

Jacob hung up, deflated. Ludwig’s reaction was justifiably cautious.

The victims had been positioned toward the window. So what?

Jacob resolved to calm down, couldn’t, resumed pacing his bedroom, rubbing the tips of his fingers together. He trotted to the kitchen, dumped out cold coffee, brewed a new pot, raised it to pour, noticed his hands vibrating, dumped out the new pot, too.

When in doubt, the computer. Nothing from 911, nothing from Mike Mallick.

His leg hopped and jigged as he typed out a lengthy e-mail to the Commander, detailing the conversation with Ludwig and restating his request.

A surfeit of nervous energy remained. He futzed around on the web for a while, then googled Mai.

Got a slew of hits about anime characters and recipes for mai tais.

Did you mean May?

He glanced out the window.

The white van was back.

He googled Curtains and Beyond.

Got an Australian company, its UK sub-branch.

Nothing Stateside.

He sat back, chewing his lower lip.

Glanced out his own window again.

Perhaps what mattered wasn’t the victims’ windows, but the view they gave.

He got dressed and wrote down the information he needed; grabbed the digital camera and went outside.

As before, the van was empty.

He took pictures of the interior, the license plate, the logo, noticing now that although the company name and motto were painted on the side, there was no contact information.

He fished out his card and scribbled on the back.

Hello, I would like to install some new curtains.

He trapped the note under the wiper blade.