“I really dislike foul language from a woman.”
“She doesn’t care what you like, Ed. She doesn’t want to date you.”
Merci, breathing deeply and letting the anger clear her head, caught the flash of meanness and pride in Ed Izma’s gray eyes.
“Something like that, though — right, Hess? A little temptation?”
“She’s my partner.”
“You’re a lucky man, then. Sit. Please. I wiped these chairs off just for you.”
The chairs in question were two white plastic patio chairs. Merci looked hard at the seat, wondering what the giant had had to wipe off.
Izma lumbered into the other room and she heard the suck of air and gasket, then water running. Tricky bastard, she thought. He wore a white singlet and a pair of very tight shorts, a swimsuit probably, that made him seem even bigger than he was. The swimsuit was yellow with white piping. His legs were trunklike and pale and mostly smooth, with an occasional patch of very dark hair. His feet looked enormous. He wore the kind of cheap rubber thongs that click when they hit the bottom of a heel.
Merci felt the hair on her neck rise.
Luck. Peace. The nine.
She took a deep breath, then another.
Hess was seated well away from her but close to the huge bed that sat against the wall. He was looking at the bed. His legs were crossed and his hands were folded over one knee, and Merci saw him for the first time as a calm and strong man, a man you wouldn’t want to mess with, and she was happy to see him this way. He looked at her but said nothing and his eyes asked the same of her.
She felt trapped in the dismal room and her palms were still damp but she could feel her reason coming back. Hess’s level stare helped. She nodded, gazed around. There were indentations on the carpet at the midway point along each wall. They looked to Merci about twenty by twenty inches, the size a TV set might make, or a small nightstand, or a file cabinet. They were a darker shade of yellow than the carpet around them — no sun on them.
What had been there, and why had Izma moved them?
The light diminished as a body darkened the doorway and moved toward her with a glass of ice water.
“Just kidding,” he said.
“You’re a crack-up.” She took the glass.
He chuckled quietly and moved away. He sat at the foot of his bed.
Then he arched his back and hiked up his feet and walked himself backward across the bedspread on feet and hands. His legs were spread and his hips raised high. His genitals slopped out from behind the mesh liner of his bathing suit, and he smiled at her over his groin — a bloated, four-legged, upside-down spider dragging melons across a web.
It only took about three seconds. It was the single most vulgar thing Merci Rayborn had witnessed in her thirty-four years. She had no idea if Hess saw it because she refused to look anywhere but back into Ed Izma’s happy gray eyes.
“Now,” he said. “What can I do for law enforcement?”
He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress with the pillows behind his back and his back against the wall. His hands were in his lap and Merci could see that he could move his trunks aside and flash her whenever he wanted.
She looked to Hess in appeal. He was already looking at her, with a bland, admonishing expression on his face.
Up both of yours, she thought.
“We’ve got a guy who’s taken two women, Ed. He’s got them somewhere — home on ice, preserved in a storage unit — we’re not sure where.”
Izma’s head angled to Hess. “Preserved how?”
“We don’t know that yet, either. But we found chemical.”
“The Ortega Highway women. They were nice-looking babes, from the TV pictures.”
“Nice women, Ed.”
Izma said nothing. Merci watched his small still head and wondered what was arcing between the poles of his brain. Then he was looking at her. She could see his hands doing something down in his lap but she wouldn’t offer him the satisfaction of discovering what.
“Ed, put your hands to your side.”
She had never heard this tone of voice from Hess. There was a threat in it and it was a threat that she would have taken seriously. But it was calm. Izma was staring at him.
“But I’m not—”
“—Hands at your side or I’ll hurt you.”
The big arms flopped to the bed.
“There. There you go.”
The giant sighed and his head pivoted and he gave Merci a look of contempt.
“Keep them there, Izma,” said Hess, his voice still flat with latent violence. Merci wished she could get a tone like that, although, Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole? had worked just fine.
“So, Ed,” Hess continued, “we got to thinking about this guy out in Ortega. He seems to like women, like you did. He’s keeping them with him, like you did. He’s probably making sure they’re in good shape, like you tried to. So I thought to myself: Ed Izma might be able to tell us something about him. Ed’s a bright guy, tested in at just under genius. Maybe he understands this guy, can help us understand him too.”
Izma sighed and seemed to relax. His hands moved from the mattress onto his lap again. He looked down at them, then put them back on the bedspread. He looked at Merci, then to Hess.
“The difference is, he’s not man enough to deal with them alive. Like I did. I always wanted Lorraine to be alive. I wanted Lorraine alive and happy. But I needed her in every sexual way, constantly. I was quite a virile young man back then.”
“She had come to your door selling... what was it?”
“Cutlery. TrimCo. I’m Lorraine Dulak with TrimCo? is what she said. And sometimes, well, everything just comes together for a man. Inside a man. You know what I mean. I had to invite her in. The DA didn’t believe I could truly love a woman after knowing her less than two minutes. I disagree. I mean look at what happened. You don’t do something like that to a woman you don’t love.”
Merci looked down and she wondered again what had left the square dents in the carpet, and why Ed Izma had removed them from her view. She looked at these things and knew the whole time that Izma was looking at her. She disliked being held captive in someone else’s thoughts, someone this close and this hateful. It was like being fucked by his imagination.
Hess’s voice seemed to rescue her. “Okay. This guy isn’t man enough to deal with them alive. I think you’re right. But now what?”
“He wants them lifelike. So, maybe a freezer. Not parts, though. Whole. A guy who would cut a woman into parts to freeze her isn’t a real man at all.”
“Why keep them? Why not just use them and let them go?”
“Because that would be just like letting them run away. This is about love, Hess, not just sex. He really loves them. That’s why he wants to be with them. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you. You don’t just discard it. I mean, when you get right down to it, us special types are awfully sentimental.”
Merci felt her throat tighten and her stomach shift. “Especially vile and disgusting, is what you are,” she said.
“You could have her de-barked.”
Hess’s lethal voice again. “Look at me, Izma. Not the woman. What’s he looking for in them? Why take one but let another go?”
“It’s just his needs. They’re different for all of us, what makes things come together for us. I noticed the faces on the TV. They’re both very beautiful women.”
“But what else, Ed? What’s he see that makes things come together for him?”
“Well, they were both extremely sophisticated, you could tell. They had intelligent faces. Now to me, when I see a woman that intelligent and educated, with that kind of look on her face, I want to smash it. I prefer humble women. I like women who work with their hands. I like no-frills women, but they’ve got to be pretty. Blue collar. Peasant stock. Like Lorraine. Or Merci.”