“Course, there’s no guarantee there’ll be a phone number in the file. Might just be names and tax dates. And there’s no refunds here.” The old man held up the bill, brows raised. “Yes or no?”
“Just get the file,” Jack said.
“What are you doing!” Faye whispered when the man went in back.
“Lubing a palm to cut through some red tape. Every plot of land in the state is filed here, along with the name of whoever pays the property tax. If there’s a dwelling, there’s usually a phone number too.”
“You’re bribing a public employee, Jack. Aren’t you in enough trouble as it is?”
Baby, there’s never enough trouble, Jack felt like saying.
The recorder returned from the stacks. “Tough luck, son. Like I said, no refunds.”
“There’s no phone number in the file?” Jack asked.
“No phone number. Just the taxpayer’s name.”
“I already know his name. It’s Khor—”
“Herren,” the recorder said.
“What?” Jack said.
“Fraus Herren, Line 2.” The recorder scanned the open file. “Funny, though. You say there’s a dwelling on the plot?”
“Of course. They don’t put addresses on vacant lots.”
“I know that. But there’s no construction date. Date of the building license should be here, and the closing date, tax dates. When you put a house on a piece of land, the prop tax goes up. All that should be here, but it ain’t. Someone forgot to amend the file.”
“Fraus Herren, you say?”
The recorder showed him the file. “Fraus Herren. Sounds kraut. Lotta German developers buying up the waterfront around here.”
Who the hell is Fraus Herren? Jack wondered. Why isn’t the deed in Khoronos’ name? “Thanks for your time,” he grumbled.
“Don’t thank me, thank Ben Franklin.”
Yeah. He took Faye back out. “I just paid a ball note for goddamn nothing,” he complained.
But Faye was looking at him funny, shaking her head.
“What’s the matter?”
“Jack, someone’s really pulling your leg here,” she said. “First you got a guy named Philippe Faux, and now you’ve got another named Fraus Herren.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I already told you. Faux, in French, means false. Fraus Herren, that’s German. You know what it means in German?”
“What?” Jack asked.
“It means false man.”
False man, Jack thought. He got out of his unmarked and headed into the city district station. Philippe Faux. Fraus Herren. Both mean fake. It was almost like a deliberate joke, and the joke was on Jack.
Faye had left for LOC already. Jack thought he’d stop by the office and see how Randy was doing. He also wanted a little more time to decide what to do about Khoronos. Should I go there myself, or just give Stewie the address and forget about it?
Randy was hanging up the phone when Jack walked in the office. “This place hasn’t collapsed without me?” he said.
“I miss the lingering aroma of Camel smoke,” Randy told him. “Really. We’ve been grilling Susan Lynn’s boyfriends all morning. Not a weirdo in the bunch, and they all had alibis that washed. Jan Beck came in earlier with the TSD workup.”
“What’s she got?”
“First place, the pubes. We got two different kinds of pubes. Unusually long, she said.”
“Just like the first two,” Jack added.
“Not like. They were the first two. The hairs matched and the semen matched. They also wrote the word — Aorista — twice this time.”
“In their own blood, right? Not hers?”
“You got it. And the subtypes matched the first two 64s. In other words, one guy did Shanna Barrington, the other guy did Rebecca Black, and they both did Susan Lynn.”
Jack poured coffee, contemplating this.
“And they really did the job this time,” Randy went on. “It takes a lot to turn Jan Beck’s stomach, but this did it. Says she never found so much jizz in a 64 in her life. Her whole repro tract was ruptured with it. Says the whole bed was a wetspot, and they gave it to her up the ass too. Beck was talking cc’s; she said she pulled the equivalent of eight nuts just out of her tail. These guys left more wax than a twenty-man gang bang.”
Jan Beck’s stomach wasn’t the only one turning.
“There’s more,” Randy said. “Beck thinks this is the last one.”
“Why?”
“First two, the perps went out of their way to disguise themselves. They wore the black wig. Beck didn’t find a single wig hair this time.”
“Which means they don’t give a shit anymore about being recognized. And that means they’re either ready to stop or they’re ready to leave town, just like Karla Panzram said they would. But I don’t think Susan Lynn is the last one. I think there’ll be one more murder.”
Randy looked at him inquisitively.
“Faye, the state researcher, found out a lot more about the ritual protocol. These guys worship some medieval demon called Baalzephon, some sex demon or something, an incubus, she called it. Once a year this cult would try to incarnate Baalzephon by a specific rite. They’d sacrifice three girls, one for each point of the triangle, then they’d do a fourth, to finish the rite. Everything she’s dug up so far syncs with what’s already happened. So that’s my guess. There’ll be one more 64 before these guys book.”
“That’s very imaginative, Captain Cordesman.”
Jack knew the voice at once. How long had he been standing here listening? “Ah, Noyle,” Jack said. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your face buried in the commissioner’s ass.”
Noyle frowned in the doorway. “I’m a trifle concerned that you haven’t yet enrolled yourself in the county alcohol program. Please do yourself a favor, Captain. Posthaste.”
Posthaste. What a dickbrain. “Why’d you shitcan Faye Rowland?”
“Because her services are no longer integral to this case.”
“They’re not, huh? Well, what have you come up with, besides handfuls of your own shit?”
“You’re a very profane man, Captain.”
“You’re fucking right I’m profane, especially when a no-experience little IAD weasel yanks my homicide investigation and fucks up a week’s worth of hard work. Faye Rowland found out more about these assholes in three days than you’ll find out in a year of hobnobbing around, running rap checks on a bunch of dance-club scumbags and bar cockhounds. Don’t you even want to see the information she’s compiled on the aorist cult?”
“The aorist cult,” Noyle repeated with a reserved smile. “I’ve read your preliminary reports, Captain. They’re quite…amusing. Fortunately we’re a modern police department; we have no interest in devils. What we’re concerned with are two highly dangerous chronic psychopaths, and we will proceed in the effort of their apprehension by following the standard investigative procedures, and maybe if you had adhered to the same standards you would not have turned this case into the biggest embarrassment in the history of the department.”
Jack stood up. Randy rolled his eyes.
“Listen to me, you little buttplug,” Jack said. “These guys are not psychopaths. If they were psychopaths, we could’ve caught them by now. They’re rational, calculated devil-worshipers. The only thing crazy about them is their beliefs and the only way you’re going to bust them is to research their beliefs.”
“Sit down, Jack,” Randy suggested.
“Their beliefs are irrelevant, Captain,” Noyle said. “We don’t investigate beliefs, we investigate crime and the perpetrators thereof. You might’ve solved this case by now if you’d spent more time on the suspects and less in the bars.”