The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter forty-eight

“Back at the station, Jacob said, “I’m an idiot.”

“Now, now,” Norton said. “Let’s love ourselves.”

“Rule number one. Value the crime scene. I didn’t.”

“The evidence said he was killed elsewhere. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the crime scene.”

“The head was there,” Jacob said. “That’s scene enough.”

Norton whacked the side of her laboring desktop. “Come on, you. Load.”

“I had his name at the outset. I met with his father.”

“You’re being a mite hard on yourself, don’t you think?”

“No. I don’t. Because it was his family’s house. I met the father. The father was a weirdo. I should have at least talked to the son.”

“I said load... Bloody BT.” Norton glanced at him, pacing behind her cubicle, grinding his fist into his temple. “Fancy a soda?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, then fetch me one, please.”

He found the squalid nook that served as the station’s snack bar, selected a minimally chilled cola. When he brought it to Norton, she was grinning and pointing at the screen.

Richard Pernath’s curriculum vitae, a neat capsule bio.

Combined BArch/MArch, UCLA, 1982.

MSt History of Design, University of Oxford, 1987.

Jacob said, “He’s an L.A. native. He met the other two here and brought them back. Now he’s cleaning house. What MacIldowney told us, Perry-Bernie — it’s a nickname. For Pernath. Perry, Pernie, or something like that. Look up Florack.”

“I’m typing.”

“Type faster.”

“You know what,” she said, abandoning the chair to him, “you take over, you’re going to shout my ear off.”

Jacob could feel his eyeballs vibrating in their sockets while the page loaded. “This is so fucking slow I want to put my head through the wall.”

“Don’t do that, please. Here we are.”

Terrence Florack: Freelance Draughting Services.

After graduating from Oxford with a second in fine art in 1988, Florack had worked for three years in the Los Angeles office of Richard Pernath, AIA.

“Yes,” Jacob said, punching the air. Then he looked at Norton, her mouth puckered.

“What,” he said.

It came out a challenge, far harsher than he’d intended.

“Not to tinkle on your parade,” she said. “But. Who’s the woman who phoned in your emergency?”

“Another partner. Pernath — he’s a delegator. These other people are disposable. For all we know he never touched the vics, just stood there directing.”

“Or your revenge theory applies to him, as well, and he’s lying somewhere with his head cut off.”

“A hundred bucks says he’s just fine. A hundred more says he, or someone he knows, was in Prague last spring, right when Reggie Heap was.”

“That’s two hundred dollars. Should I be writing this down or is your word good?”

Jacob hunched over, rubbing his head. “The period between 1989 and 2005 is an awfully big blank for a bunch of sexual psychopaths. I can’t see them just taking a vacation.”

“Agreed.”

“Be nice to know their whereabouts.”

Norton reclaimed the mouse, squinted at the screen. “London, in Florack’s case. His page still lists an address in Edgware.”

“What brought him to L.A. recently?”

“An airplane, I presume.”

“What’s the CV say?”

“For God’s sake, please, chill out. It doesn’t detail his every movement for the last twenty years,” she said. Then her expression turned grave. “I should contact Scotland Yard.”

As she reached for her desk phone, Jacob called Charles MacIldowney.

Des answered. “Hello, Detective. What can I do for you?”

“Do you have Reggie’s CV on file?”

“I’m sure we don’t.”

“Would you mind double-checking?”

Des sighed. “Well, only because you took away those hideous shoes. I’ll ring you back.”

“Thanks.”

From the sound of it, Norton was being shunted from department to department. Jacob knelt, took the mouse, clicked back to Pernath’s page. He opened up the LINKS tab.

Keynote address, North American Architectural Design and Drafting Society annual conference, 2010 (full text).

Priscilla was saying, “Quite so, sir.”

Jacob combed through Pernath’s speech, titled “To Bravely Face a New Dawn.”

Priscilla hung up. “They promise to get back to me in the morning.”

“Check this out,” Jacob said.

“Yes?”

“‘To Bravely Face’?” he said. “Sounds a little like To Be Brasher.”

“You think?”

“Fine, then this part: ‘A New Dawn,’” he said. “Every one of my vics faced east.”

“Mm. Could be.”

Detective’s reserve. A virtue, but at that moment it annoyed him, because he did not doubt: he knew, he could see the universe peeling back, see its warp and weft, his brain a gyroscope. He didn’t expect her to understand how amazing he felt. He could chew through steel.

Taking pains to appear casual, he found the architectural society’s website, moused over the mission statement (“to serve and promote the interests of the growing community of graphics professionals”) and the tally of membership data (fifty-seven thousand and counting, Manitoba to Mexico City and points between).

The 2012 conference was scheduled for August 10–12, at the Sheraton in Columbus, OH — three jam-packed days of educational workshops, networking, and vendors offering the latest technologies. Register before July 15 to receive the early-bird discount, plus a complimentary insulated travel mug.

There was a list of past conferences. He ran his finger down to the previous year’s and felt his spine light up.

2011: New Orleans, LA.

Tearing open his notepad, he found the page, thrust it out in triumph.

Lucinda Gaspard, New Orleans, July 2011.

Norton said, “Bloody hell.”

The webpage listed the location of the 2010 conference as Miami, FL.

Casey Klute, Miami, July 2010.

“Bloody. Fucking. Hell.”

The lack of a 2009 murder made more sense when he saw that the conference had taken place in Calgary, Ontario. He hadn’t looked outside the U.S.

“Where’s Rye in 2008?” Priscilla asked.

“Forty minutes north of Manhattan,” Jacob said.

Evgeniya Shevchuk, New York, August 2008.

The 2007 and 2006 conferences — in Evanston, IL, and Sacramento, CA, respectively — made him sit up and take notice. Again the thought haunted him that he had missed other murders that fit the pattern. In due time, he would have to ping the local PDs.

2005: Las Vegas, NV.

Dani Forrester, Las Vegas, October 2005.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Jacob said. “The three of them were there legitimately. Professional development, they’re in the same industry. They were also old school chums. Nobody would think twice if they were hanging out.”

“Reliving the bad old days.”

Jacob copied all the dates going back to 1988. Akron, 2004; Orlando, 2003; Providence, 2002... Every one of them would have to be checked and rechecked.

Los Angeles hadn’t played host to a conference since 1991. The nearest was Orange County, three consecutive years between 1996 and 1998. No matching murders. Maybe he was right about Southern California being too close to home, the memory of the Creepers’ victims fresh enough to warrant caution.

His phone rang. Priscilla grabbed it before he could. She listened, said, “Thank you,” and hung up. “That was Des. He can’t find the CV.”

A setback; Jacob barely noticed; he was on to the next thing, dialing Detective Maria Band in Miami.

“Favor to ask you,” he said. “Your vic, Casey Klute. Party planner, right?”

“Uh— I—”

“I know she was, it said so in the file.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so what was she up to, work-wise, in the couple weeks before her death? What was she planning?”

“It might be in the file,” Band said.

“I don’t have it with me. I need your help here.”

In the background, a man’s voice murmured impatiently. Band said, “I’m kind of tied up at the mom—”

“Please,” Jacob said. He was trashing Maria Band’s social life and he couldn’t care less. “I’m getting close.”

“How close is close?”

“Like, contact lens close.”

Band sighed. “All right, what?”

He told her to look for the names Richard Pernath, Terrence Florack, and Reggie Heap, or any mention of the drafting society.

“Who are they?”

“The A-Team,” Jacob said. “As in Asshole.”

“I don’t have the files with me,” Band said. “I have to go back to the office.”

“Call me as soon as you find out. Doesn’t matter what time it is.”

He made the same request of Volpe and Flores. Grandmaison in New Orleans didn’t pick up. Jacob left him a message.

“Hey there, friendo. I’ve been trying you for three weeks. I have your killer. You’re welcome.”

He clicked off. Norton was eyeing him.

“What?” he said.

“You’ve nothing to do but wait,” she said. “I think we should clear out of here.”

He allowed her to take him by the arm and lead him out into the street.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“My place.”

She lived a few blocks from the station, on the uppermost floor of a brick-faced row house, not dissimilar in style from MacIldowney’s house but a fraction its size.

Five feet past the front door they were clenched together on the thinly carpeted living room floor, her left leg curled around the back of his right thigh, a knuckle-bruising four-hand pile-up as they went for the same buttons, zippers, seams.

“I need to fuck you right now,” he said.

“Well, that’s the general idea.”

Proof of his newfound strength: he bench-pressed her, lifting her bodily from atop him, placing her on the sofa and then pouncing atop her while she shrieked and laughed and slapped at his naked back. She was hot and soft and intensely present, filling his hands and his mouth, her body perfectly imperfect that way that he always liked, a kind of pardon for his own shortcomings, helping rid him of thoughts of Mai and Divya Das. He tugged at her lip with his teeth, tasting blood; it was delicious and filling.

She took him in one hand, stroking urgently. Fixed his chin with the other so that he was looking straight into her cornflower eyes. “Go slow,” she said.

He meant to obey her. But as soon as he pushed in, her head snapped back and her torso went rigid and then melted beneath him, her eyes rolling backward to blank white, her open mouth taking no air.

Not ecstasy. Pain.

He shoved himself up and off her.

As soon as he had, her eyes dropped back into view, scared and confused, flicking across his face without recognition. Then her fear rose to terror and he heard it behind him, ten thousand demons howling, and turned and saw a black buzzing fist rocketing toward him.

He dove, rolling across the carpet and hitting his head on the leg of the coffee table as Norton began to scream.

He righted himself, groaning, and he saw it in high definition, a black beetle, without question the same one he’d seen again and again but now grown to an incredible size, and he did not move, could not move, dumbstruck by the immensity of the thing, watching as it attacked Norton, using its horn to ram repeatedly into her arms and chest and neck while she shrieked and flailed and tried to protect her face from the violence of the assault.

Get it off she screamed.

Her voice slammed Jacob into gear: he lunged, swinging at the beetle with an open palm, and it dodged and then focused its attention on him, buzzing his head. He could feel the downdraft from its wings. It flew around and around him in deafening circles, and he spun after it, his still-erect penis swinging and flapping like a carousel horse come unscrewed.

The beetle raced to the far side of the room and plopped down on the carpet, its forelimbs darning the air.

Jacob launched himself toward it.

Its shell parted and its wings shot out and it ripped away, dive-bombing Priscilla, hounding her around the apartment while she screamed and clawed at her hair.

Get it off. Get it off.

Jacob seized a paperback from the coffee table and hurled it at the beetle, which arced back, chittering and buzzing, a noise sickeningly akin to laughter. Enraged, he threw a second book, knocking over the floor lamp, leaving him and Norton stumbling around in semidarkness, forcing him to track the beetle by sound alone as it zoomed and raced and buzzed and giggled, hovering in one spot long enough for him to get a bead on it and swing a woolen throw blanket like a whip, then darting through his legs, grazing his scrotum.

Norton had begun to fumble with the window latch, saying God, oh God, come on.

The beetle rose up directly before Jacob, suspended in midair, louder than life, its wingbeat blowing his hair back as it floated, now smaller, nearly invisible but for enormous bottle-green eyes. He knew he should reach up and crush it in his palm, but he saw the oil-slick shimmer of its armor, the gossamer of its wings, and he knew that he would never, could never, destroy something so beautiful.

Norton had managed the latch but the sash was stuck. Come on.

The beetle drifted closer to Jacob, bobbing gracefully on a sea of air.

He felt warmth as it pressed itself to his lips.

Jaws opening and closing, a whisper of hard exoskeleton.

Breathing hot sweet breath into his mouth.

Then it backed away, regretfully, never taking its eyes off him until it turned and roared off, heading straight for Norton.

She heard it coming, screamed and ducked. The beetle cleared her by several feet, hitting the window and punching a hole clean through, disappearing into the night, one more black star among many.