I plugged an ear against the deafening roar. I trailed in back, my nose wrinkling at the twinge of death on the air.
I followed the rest into a bedroom. The smell was getting riper, the screeching roar digging, drilling into my skull.
I scoped the scene, seized by the image before me. My jaws clenched and my innards twisted. The image overwhelmed me, my eyes protesting as much as my bombarded ears. Decibels drowned out all thought.
Two beheaded bodies were propped on a mattress. One on all fours, the other kneeling. Mounting. The bodies posed for an assfuck. They looked like mannequins, their skin shiny like polished plastic. But the smell. The smell left no doubt this was real flesh and bone.
The ship’s roar faded, replaced by a ringing in my ears. Drawing closer, I could see they were dickless, with meaty red gashes where their genitals should be. A meter-long spike ran through the two of them, pinning them together like a toothpick through a stuffed flatbread. It ran through the lower back of the kneeler, into the anus of the one on all fours, then protruded out the crotch wound, the single spike making a reasonable facsimile of both their missing hard-ons.
They wore their badges, the pins running through their right nipples. Froelich and Wu.
“What the hell are we dealing with?”
I didn’t realize I’d asked the question aloud until Josephs responded. “A fairy. One fucked-up fairy.” His voice sounded distant over the hollow ringing in my ears. “He actually cut their dicks off,” he said to himself as much as anybody. “Heads and dicks both. Beheaded ’em two times.”
My arm twitched with the firsthand memory of the killer, teeth sunk into my flesh, reptilian eyes reflecting back inhumanly.
Maggie moved up for a closer inspection. “How are they staying upright?” She was over the shock, her mind already reasoning, analyzing. She tapped one on the arm with her flashlight, a solid clink sounding back. “They’ve been dipped in something like varnish.”
Deluski rushed out. Nobody tried to stop him.
Josephs snickered. “Punk’s got weak knees.”
I didn’t let Josephs’s words penetrate as my mind struggled to inch forward, wheels slowly turning with the need to make sense of the senseless.
Froelich and Wu had been here before, in this very room. They’d investigated Franz Samusaka’s death and ruled it an accidental OD. They said his missing member was munched away by lizards postmortem. And they got a powerful family like Samusaka’s to accept it.
I couldn’t fathom why Froelich and Wu would cover for this cock-chop bastard. Why sweep away Samusaka’s murder with lies?
Froelich knew Samusaka. They had matching tats. Friends? Lovers?
Nothing made sense. Nothing.
“The killer craves attention,” Maggie said.
“Cocksucker’s got flair,” responded Josephs. “I’ll give him that.”
I nodded my head in silent agreement. The killer reveled in his work. He must’ve been pissed when his killing of Samusaka was passed off as a bullshit OD, his art tossed in the trash as idle scribble.
He wanted attention, wanted everybody to know who he was, what he was capable of. He’d been ignored before, and Froelich and Wu had to pay for showing such disrespect. He’d brought what was left of their corpses back to the site of their crime. And in doing so, he’d retroactively claimed credit for Samusaka. He was erasing all doubt, doing his best to get the attention he deserved. His head-tossing, child-killing, assfuck-posing best.
We’d returned to the living room, Maggie, Josephs, and I. We’d come to escape the smell, but the stink of my mutilated crew members stayed with me, in my clothes and nostrils.
Josephs shined a light through the window. “You out there?”
Deluski stepped into the beam, hand over his eyes. “Yeah.” His voice didn’t sound right, like he was out of breath. He wiped his cheek on his shoulder.
“You cryin’?” asked Josephs.
Deluski turned his back. The kid had finally cracked, like his newfound freedom had set him free to feel. I wished I could console him. But that shit wasn’t me.
Josephs swung his light on me. “Why are you and your boy cryin’ all the time? What kind of pussy-ass show you runnin’?”
I let his words pass through me. Not in the mood.
Maggie moved her light around the room. O pipes. Chewed leather shoes. An empty box of rubbers. “The killer must’ve spent significant time here. He’s dropped bodies here twice now. This place is important to him.”
“Maybe he was slumming here.”
“Or he’s a student. There’s a prep school ten minutes downriver.”
“Is that where you went?”
She put her phone to her ear and asked for San Juan Diego Academy. To me, she said, “No. It’s for the troubled kids. Uniforms and curfews.”
“Hey, boss,” called Deluski from the window. “Come check this out.”
I stepped over and leaned through the broken-out frame. I tried to get a good look at the kid, see if he was still crying, but couldn’t see more than a shadow. His light was aimed at a tree. “You see it? Right there on that branch.”
I saw it. An iguana, eyes reflecting like little pools of molten brass. Over the eyes stood row after row of don’t-fuck-with-me spines. The spines ran halfway down his back like a cape of thorns. “What about it?”
“Is that the kind of lizard the killer turned into? See the rust-red stripes on his cheeks.”
“No. Our guy didn’t have spines.”
“Do you remember how many stripes?”
I couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to. Steel teeth clamped down. Flesh ripping, tearing off the bone.
“Well?”
“Quit bugging me with this shit.”
“Don’t you want to know why he shifts into a lizard?”
I shook my head and swung around. Maggie was off the phone, waiting for me. “Franz Samusaka was a student at San Juan Diego Academy. Graduated two years ago.”
I bit my lip, gnawed on the new fact. This place was a hooky haven. A place for troubled kids to get in more trouble. The killer could’ve been Samusaka’s classmate.
Deluski rapped on the wall. “Somebody’s coming.”
I stopped breathing and listened, the distant buzz of an approaching outboard motor sailing through the broken window. Instinctively, I reached for my piece. But I had no piece. Or a hand.
Maggie and Josephs fared better, lase-pistols drawn and already moving for the door.
We stepped outside. Deluski kept his back to us. “I think there’s two boats.”
Josephs pounded his way to the porch’s edge. “Who are these bastards?”
Maggie pressed her flashlight into my chest. “Go inside. You too, Deluski. We’ll tell whoever it is that this is a crime scene.”
I squinted at the dark, my eyes straining to see the approaching boats.
“Go inside,” Maggie insisted. “We can handle this.”
Deluski headed inside; I still couldn’t see his face. He tugged my shoulder, and I let him guide me, allowed myself to be backpedaled inside the door. He pulled the door most of the way shut, and I stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, watching the boat lights through the cracked door until the lights disappeared under the plane of the porch. We moved to a window and stood on opposite sides. I watched and waited, broken glass under my shoes, shards pressing into my soles, jagged breaths puffing out my mouth. I kept my eyes zeroed on the rope ladder, half-hitches wrapped around rusted cleats.
Maggie and Josephs stood outside, their backs silhouetted by dim haloes. Maggie tucked her weapon into a pocket. Josephs dropped his to his hip and gave us a wave. I breathed easier. Whoever had arrived wasn’t a threat.
I could see Maggie and Josephs talking, their hands gesturing, but I couldn’t hear their voices, the sound swallowed by motors.