The door opened and rattled the bells above the entrance. The stranger looked tired and a little confused. Ti tried to look welcoming, sexy and professional at the same time, and wondered if she looked creepy.
The woman looked totally unconcerned. She ordered a large house coffee, no, don’t leave room for cream, thanks, and dug around in her jeans pockets for cash.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s on the house,” Ti said, hoping to sound casual.
“Umm…thanks.” She dropped a couple of bills into the tip jar.
Ti took her time pouring the coffee. “You must live in the neighborhood. I see you around sometimes.”
“Something like that.”
Maybe she’s shy. “Well, I just wanted to say, I am a photographer and would love to take some black and whites of you one day. I have a studio set up in my apartment. Feel free to get in touch if you’re interested.” It was the spiel she used on all models, but she felt better just getting it out. Ti handed the woman her business card. She regarded it for a moment and took a sip of the coffee.
“I’ll think about it. Thanks for the coffee.”
Ti still felt a cold place in her stomach after that conversation, but at least the woman had her number now. She would leave it up to her.
There was an extended lull in customers after that, which was good in a way. It allowed Ti to calm down. She yawned and fought off a nasty bout of boredom. Tamara stood by the espresso machine and filed her nails. They both occasionally glanced up as someone walked past the window, half hoping for some business. Tamara tensed up noticeably when the tall, handsome guy who was becoming a regular waltzed in through the door.
“Hi there. What can I get for you?” Ti said as she grinned, and Tamara rolled her eyes.
The guy ordered and flirted a little with Ti while Tamara steamed half and half. She made the drink as quickly as possible and set it down in front of him.
“Thanks, ladies,” he said, and strolled out the door. Tamara said nothing.
“What's the matter with you? He's cute. Charming,” Ti said, almost in a daze.
“I know that guy. He's from around here. He’s kinda...creepy.” Tamara wrinkled her nose.
“How so?”
“Well...” Tamara looked around. The café was dead. “I was out at that bar, you know? X. We were doing shots, just cutting loose. He came in," Tamara said as she gestured dramatically out the door. "He was really charming, like you said. Anyway, we ended up going home with him, and I will tell you this: if my friend wouldn't have been with me, I wouldn't have gone with him. No way. But I figured it'd be okay since she was with me. Anyway, his house smelled really funny and he wanted to videotape us.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He kept persisting and," Tamara shook her blond curls, "it was weird. I finally convinced her to leave with me and we called it a night, but we were polite about it. You ever meet one of those people who gives you the creeps, but you can't put your finger on it?"
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I think he's harmless though," Ti grinned. Tamara rolled her eyes.
"Would you let him videotape you?"
"Oh my god, I don't know about all that!"
CHAPTER FOUR
Sophia: The Chaser is Chased
Sophia looked at the neat, bubbly handwriting once more. Who puts their name and address on a card and hands it out to people? There were many social norms she just didn’t understand at all. She stuffed it in her coat pocket and forgot about it. She definitely didn't want to call the girl and wasn't interested in posing for her, but wallowed in the compliment and the awkward affect she had on her.
She had about two hours to relax until Paul got off of work. Whatever it was that he did for a living kept him until around 8:00 in the evenings. She'd wait outside his apartment until he arrived, and then follow him if he decided to go out with Bubbles again. Bubbles…that was the nickname she'd thought up while watching the animated blonde bounce around in her seat the other night.
She needed to relax. Her mind was still occupied with the news article about the femur, even though months had passed. She remembered throwing it out there in a panic, thinking the strong Pacific tide would suck it up like a great hungry mouth and swallow it down into its depths. That was back when she hadn’t quite gotten the temperature and the concentration of caustic soda just right: it didn’t dissolve bones like it was supposed to. She just hoped they wouldn’t find anything else. She’d thrown a lot of partially degraded bones down there.
That had been weighing heavily on her mind, but part of her always wanted to be caught so she could blame it all on Claude. When she first started, she would go to the Baths early in the morning with a backpack tossed over one shoulder. She supposed she looked like a student to the few onlookers milling about the area, but when they were posing for photos or jogging off down the paths, she would casually throw the semi-dissolved bones off the ledge. It felt good, knowing this control and power she had while looking like an innocent woman. She picked such a popular place because discarding the remnants felt almost as ballsy as stabbing them while they were in the bathtub.
She fiddled with the lock on her apartment and it opened easily this time. She swung the door open and stopped as if slapped in the face.
Something was not right...someone else had been in her apartment. She could smell it. It was a strong feeling, almost the same as being followed or stared at from across a room. She quickly locked the door behind her and checked around the living room, ready to act if she found someone in her space. She opened the bedroom door and Argie bolted out, his meows repetitive like an alarm clock.
Nothing missing. Nothing out of place.
No, no, someone was in here...
Paranoia.
She downed the rest of the coffee she was holding and checked the old sewing machine, where she kept her hunting supplies. All there. It looked like the sewing machine had been untouched.
How did the person get in? What did they want? Her mind flooded with discombobulated thoughts as she searched for the answer. It was likely that they picked the lock, came in, found nothing and then left. Then again, they could have taken the stereo at least.
Or, they could have been snooping on me.
She thought about the girl at the coffee shop, and how curious she'd seemed. It might be time to move again. She thought about Claude and how brief and terse their interactions had been over the past few months. Her heart sank a little. What about Paul?
She pushed the weird incident at the apartment aside and decided to find Paul. Following or stalking people always made things right again, made her feel primal, in touch with her true self. She supposed it was part of the reason Argie chased strings around. It was all part of animal instinct, something that was impossible to repress. She wondered what Paul would be up to tonight.
Paul did, in fact, meet up with Bubbles again. Sophia followed him to a cozy café, sat across the room and ordered a tea. She damn near dozed off when she got a familiar funny feeling. She looked up and he was looking at her, dead in the eyes. His lips arched into a smirk. His date twirled her hair and talked, her movements exaggerated.
Instead of returning the smirk, she was alarmed. He wasn't supposed to notice her. She downed the rest of the tea, left a five for the waitress, and gathered her things. She felt Paul’s eyes on her the whole time.
This was no typical hunt. This was not like luring a dumb, unsuspecting boy off the streets, wining and dining him, getting him in the bathtub, cleaning him up and stabbing him in the heart. She was following this particular man because there was something so different about him. How was he able to spot me? Has he always known I’ve been watching him?
She thought about just approaching Paul and saying something cheesy—maybe, “hey, I’ve noticed you around.”
It all seemed so ridiculous. She thought about her past life in New Orleans and her few attempts to connect with men without attempting to get something from them. Those incident
s had not gone over well.
No. No, I'm not ready for him to see me yet.
* * * *
From Sophia’s Journal
Thomas disappeared. I never knew exactly what happened to him, but I have always had my suspicions. After about one week of not being able to find him, I gave up and decided (or hoped) that he didn’t want to see me anymore.
I remember a conversation we’d had. It still bothers me to this day. We were sitting on the banks of the Mississippi, just outside the French Quarter. It was a warm, windy day and the sun was dipping behind the St. Louis Cathedral. I stared at Thomas’ profile, sad and pensive in the fading light. Something was bothering him.
“What is it?” I asked, but I feared my tone was too flat and uncaring. He didn’t look over at me.
“You wouldn’t understand. I don’t…” He paused and looked up at the sky, as if holding back tears. “I don’t feel like myself. This body, this life, it doesn’t make sense to me. Not at all. I’ve thought about moving out to the west coast and starting over, but I don’t think that will help. Nothing will help.”
Then he did look at me. His eyes were wet and sad. “You flatter me. But it isn’t enough.” He got up. “I’ll see you later.” Then I was there on the bank, the smell of the rancid river forming a suffocating veil around me. I watched a rat weave in and out of the rocks. A homeless man murmured in his sleep behind me.
Sickening places, cities. I couldn’t blame Thomas for getting frustrated with New Orleans. It was only a few weeks after Katrina, and things were still so fucked up.
I never saw Thomas again after that. I was pissed. I just knew Claude had something to do with it. He’d gotten increasingly jealous and didn’t like me dating guys. I confronted him about it, but got nothing out of that conversation but a bloody lip.
Anyway, he said, we had a new business venture to concentrate on.
Claude led me to a bar located just outside the French Quarter. He said he had owned it for a while. He said this was our new cover to find “suppliers.” It would be perfect because we could run it at night, drunk rejects would come in, and we’d make extra cash. I could take clients upstairs to a bedroom and there was a large kitchen with a deep-fridge where we could keep leftovers.
I explored the bar on my own. It was dark, dank, like a cave. I liked it. As I looked around, I noticed a ladder off to the corner. I heard a faint din. Scratching on the ceiling. I followed the ladder up to a dark room where I noticed an abundance of odd stains. A cat lurked in the corner of the room...Josephine! Perhaps it meant Thomas was nearby.
I was confused, scared, but called out to the cat. She approached me reluctantly, her ears back. As I picked her up, her fur prickled and she hissed.
“Quiet!” I barked, but her hiss soon morphed into a yowl. I grabbed her by the neck, clasping it harder and harder. I could feel the tendons roll and pop under the fluffy fur. Josephine opened her mouth, but only a small peep emerged. Her eyes bugged. She slumped slightly, so I let her go. She hissed again and disappeared into the shadows.
For some reason the room took on a new life. Without another living presence, my senses intensified. I realized that the stains on the floor were blood and body fluids.
A deep, disconcerting feeling filled me. Claude had been killing for a long time. I slowly realized he did not just kill those who he deemed “suppliers”--it pretty much could be anyone. The faces of random victims flashed before my eyes. I remember thinking: I am turning into the same kind of person as Claude.
I started to leave, but Claude nipped right on my heels. I burst out of the bar, looked at the moon's luminescence and longed to be with Thomas. To be free. Claude caught me from behind and cackled in my ear. His embrace told me right then and there that he would never let me go.
I felt trapped.
“You're untamable,” he murmured. “You’re savage. Just like me. You’re not going anywhere.”
That’s when I knew I could never change.
* * * *
“Hey!” Sophia heard the familiar voice ring from down below. She had been sitting on the fire escape, writing. She quickly searched around to see who said it.
“What are you doing up there?”
“Who is that?” Sophia already irritated.
“It’s….Ti…from the coffee shop?”
Sophia frowned. Oh. The photographer. Shit.
“I was just walking home and noticed you up there. Sorry to bother you,” said the girl, and began to walk off.
Pathetic overkill.
Sophia sighed and looked up to the sky.
“It’s okay.”
The girl smiled and looked back. “Are you a writer?”
“Not exactly. It’s just a journal.”
“Oh, so…did you give any thought to the shoot?”
“Shoot?”
“Yeah, doing a photo shoot with me. What do you think?”
“I’m not into that kind of thing. Sorry.”
There was a long pause, and the woman picked up her notebook and pen again, hoping to deter the young girl.
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
Sophia sighed. Just what I need. “Sophia.”
The girl furrowed her brow. “You have a bit of an accent. European?”
“Something like that.”
“Cool. I’m originally from New Orleans. Where are you from?”
That was too much for Sophia. “I have to go. Goodnight,” she said.
It was abrupt, but Sophia didn’t care. The girl looked deeply hurt, but Sophia was not interested in getting up close and personal with this young, curious little thing.
“See you around,” Ti said, turning on her heel.
Hopefully not, thought Sophia. But now she knows where I live.
Sophia had never killed another female, but she often thought about it. Claude was the one who killed girls. Her victims were mostly people she was sexually attracted to. It was just more satisfying that way. The act of killing someone was like a climax in and of itself. She would often have wild sex with her victims, climax at the same time as her man du jour, and then kill him. It was really gratifying that way. She thought, at the very least, she was making them happy before they died.
Sophia thought she could make an exception to this rule. That little Ti girl was far too curious.
CHAPTER FIVE
Black: The Dark Buried Past
Robert Black peered into his bare refrigerator for quite some time.
“Goddamnit,” he said. He was tired. He grabbed a beer, cracked it open and wandered through a maze of unopened boxes and into the living room. He plopped down on his favorite recliner, the one that Rita insisted he get rid of because of its offensive pea green color, and sipped his beer.
The chair was still there. Rita was not.
Black still felt distracted by Rita’s absence. They moved into this apartment together. They had barely unpacked when he came home to the note. She had taken her unpacked boxes elsewhere. That was six months ago. Black frowned and looked at his own unpacked boxes. He couldn’t even remember what was in most of them, except the box in the corner with the photographs. He wanted to burn that particular box. He was afraid to look in it.
Black swilled the beer, which was a bit warm because he couldn’t get the setting on the fridge just so. He thought some more about Rita.
Rita told him she was leaving because he was pushing fifty and had no chance of a work promotion, but he suspected there was someone else. Of course there was. Things hadn’t been right since Jason disappeared. That was two years ago. Black looked at the box in the corner again, knowing the photographs inside would bring up a world of hurt. He and Jason shared the same eyes, the same sandy blond hair, and the same tall, lumbering build. Looking at those pictures would remind him of his own past, the mistakes he made, the pain he caused his so-called family.
He thought he and Rita would grow closer after their son disappeared. Pain could either tear a relationship to sh
reds or bring two people closer together, but their problems just got worse. He thought he could finally marry her after all those years together. Be responsible. Be a better man. Grow up. She said no.
For the first time in a long time, he admitted to himself that Rita probably blamed him for their son’s disappearance. Wasn’t she partially responsible? I had to work long hours. Why wasn’t she looking out for Jason? Why did it all have to fall on me?
He swilled the rest of his beer, wincing at the warm froth at the bottom. Why? Because you’re the man, Robert. You were supposed to be teaching Jason how to be a man, too. But he hauled ass at age fifteen, right when boys are on the cusp, right at the point when they’re becoming men.
Something like that wasn’t supposed to happen to a cop. Cops protected their families. He felt too fucked up to marry the mother of his son, though, and too sucked up into his own little world to pay attention to Jason. Now, two years later, Jason was still missing. He’d be seventeen now, Black thought.
Something beeped off in the distance. Black was confused until he realized it was his cell phone. He still wasn’t used to the little annoying gadgets. He cursed while he tried to locate it.
“Yeah?” he said gruffly.
“It’s Wong. You sleeping or something? Get down here. You need to see this.”
Shit, he thought. His partner always called at the worst times. Black hung up, cursed again, downed the beer and threw on some clothes to head down to the station. He caught sight of himself in the mirror on his way out. Five days’ worth of dirty blond stubble, hair that looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket, bags under the eyes. His once clear blue eyes were bloodshot. A beer gut had gradually taken shape.
“No wonder she left, you slob,” he said to the Robert in the mirror.
His partner was looking at some paperwork when he arrived.
“So, it’s definitely a human bone.”
“What?” Black needed some caffeine. He fumbled with the coffee maker.
Wong glared at him. “Robert! The bone that kid found at the Sutro Baths.”
“I could have told you that. Is that why you called me all the way down here?”
“Yes and no…. they found more. Tons. They did a search down there and found an underwater graveyard. Most of them looked partially dissolved. We had labs run and it looks like it could be from sodium hydroxide.”