A young Latina ran past him, after her brother. Their mother was at the end of the aisle, tumbling a load of clothes out of a green-enamel dryer.
The Son of Samael, still wearing his cop uniform, approached the man.
“Sir?” he said, stepping in front of him. There was a small, apologetic smile on his teeth, but it didn’t extend to his eyes. “I imagine you have a permit for that handgun?”
The man took a last long drag from his cigarette and let the smoky breath billow out over the top of his newspaper. “Yeah. In the car.”
The officer nodded, pursing his lips. “Which car?”
“The blue Impala.”
Samael stared through the plate glass window at the car pulled up almost fully beneath the overhang. It would be sheltered on three sides from watching eyes.
“You got clothes in the dryers?”
An edge of belligerence came into the man’s face.
“I’m not sitting here for my health.”
“Which dryers?”
“Those two orange ones. What’s this all about?”
Samael bent, snatching up the gun. “Let’s go have a look at that permit.” He looked to one side, seeing the Latina woman and her two children, staring in amazement at the confrontation. The man stood. “Look, it’s not in my car. I lied. But it’s at home.”
“Kneel down, sir,” Samael said. “Hands behind your back.”
“Oh, son-of-a-bitch! You’re not running me in. If you pigs did your work, we wouldn’t have to carry guns-”
“Ma’am,” said the Son of Samael to the Latina as he fit handcuffs to the kneeling man, “you’re going to want to get your children out of here. This man is the Son of Samael killer. Get at least two blocks away as quickly as you can.”
“What are you talking about?” shrieked the man.
“I’m not the Son of-”
The officer kicked him down, onto his face on the green and gray linoleum.
The Laundromat owner came in, a young, fat man, glaring. “What the hell?”
“Sir, this is the Son of Samael killer. Run. Get at least two blocks away, as quickly as you can.”
Nodding, wide-eyed, the man retreated, flinging the front door wide and not looking back. The Latina and her children were out as well.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Samael hooked a foot under the man’s gut and flipped him onto his back. He pulled his own pistol, stooped, put the muzzle in the man’s mouth, and fired. The frightened, furious eyes immediately went blank.
“For a guy who’s never had a tattoo before, you’re sure starting out big,” said David. He wore a ripped shirt over a wiry physique. Across his skin, tattoos wriggled like gray snakes. He had a sharp, feverish smell, the smell of youth and vigor. He held up before him a piece of paper that rattled dully in his hand. The page showed the outline of a human face, with eyes, nose, and mouth delineated. Between these features were Arabic letters distorted into flame-like patterns, covering forehead, cheeks, and jaw in a mask of violent black lines that formed a skull. “You sure you want this all over your face the rest of your life?”
“Yes.”
“I never seen this one. What is it? Some kind of oriental mask?”
“It’s the mask of a spirit.”
David nodded. He scratched a thinning patch of hair on his head. “Sure. Anyway, it’s probably gonna take a couple sessions.”
“I’ll pay you double if you do it all now.”
“Pay me half of that, and then when I get tired, give me the rest to keep me going,” David said with a laugh. He leaned over the needle apparatus, picking something off its point.
“Yes. Here. Here’s three hundred.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. You’re lucky I ain’t my cousin Jerry, or you’d be dead for the rest before I even got started.”
“You’re lucky I ain’t the Son of Samael, or you’d be dead the moment you finished.”
They both laughed at that.
“All right. Well, let’s get going. I’m going to wash your face with some alcohol, and then I’ll use some petroleum jelly to transfer the pattern in place. We’ll do it in pieces – cheeks, forehead, nose, chin…”
“Fine. In pieces, but we keep going. I want it finished if it takes all night.”
“We’re closed,” said the old, white-haired taxidermist.
“To everybody else, yes,” said the man with the demon mask tattooed on his face.
“Who the hell are you to tell me that?”
The demon man drew a gun, approached the old man, and held the barrel to his head. “I’m the Son of Samael.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Wh-what do you want from me?”
“Taxidermy. I want you to teach me how.”
“It takes a long time to learn.”
“It better take only the next eight hours or so, because this gun goes off in eight hours, and I’d hate to have it pointed at your head when it does.”
“Well, well, all right. I’ve got a long-haired rabbit I’ve just started on.”
“No. You start on these. I want two full-head masks and two pairs of gloves. Cut off the eyelids. I’ll use my own. What the…? God damn it, leave it. You can scrub puke after I’m gone, after your eight hours are up. Yes, get to work, unless you’d like to be the next mask and gloves.”
SON OF SAMAEL KILLS THREE IN A THREE-DAY SPREE
AP International
Photo and Story by Blake Gaines
The man known as the Son of Samael is responsible for three recent Chicagoland slayings, according to police.
An unidentified male, around 32, was slain at the Parkside Laundry in Berwyn in what police call a “heinous and audacious daylight crime.” According to one witness, the Son of Samael, dressed as a policeman, handcuffed his victim and cleared the scene. The body, with the name Samael written on its belly, was later found at the facility. The Son of Samael allegedly took the victim’s hands, head, wallet, keys, car-”a large gray Chevy from the early nineties” – and laundry.
“He killed a guy his size and got a whole new wardrobe,” said a police source.
A similarly dismembered body was discovered at the Skincredible Tattoo Salon in downtown Des Plaines. Coworkers positively identified the man as David Darrow of Wheeling. Photos of the man’s many tattoos aided identification.
A police handwriting expert said the hand that had written “Samael” on David Darrow had also written on at least ten previous bodies, including the Laundromat victim.
While police focused on that crime scene, the Son of Samael was apparently busy just across the street. The headless, handless body of Albert Terrence of Des Plaines was found in his taxidermy shop. A teenaged assistant to the taxidermist found the body. The youth indicated that numerous taxidermy tools and tanning chemicals were missing. Police from Des Plaines, Wheeling, Arlington Heights, Berwyn, and Chicago are planning a plenary session for all detectives working on cases that might involve the Son of Samael.
One police officer, who asked not to be identified, said, “He is honing his craft. He’s doing it better and more openly. He’s defying us to find him. He’s a killing machine.”
Yes. Get together. Talk about me. It sounds like a good place to learn who I am. I’m glad to have this cop uniform. And these new faces. And these new hands. It suddenly isn’t so bad not having an identity of my own, a history of my own. Not having even my own species.
How can they call it murder when I’m not even human? A bear or cougar would do as much, would kill to live. They call it murder only because they have been so long out of the food chain.
Welcome back.
TWENTY-THREE
Detective Donna Leland lay in St Mary’s hospital. She blinked. That was accomplishment enough after two months of coma.
The feeding tube that had snaked up her nose and down her throat had been pulled just this morning. The IVs still dripped their fluids into her veins. Catheters, too – she was invaded in half a dozen places but felt none of it. A two-month coma was plenty of time for her body to become accustomed to plastic and stainless steel and processed fluids and unregulated eliminations. It all felt completely natural. It all felt not at all.