She hates this. She didn’t become a cop to stand in front of cameras and journalists popping up and down from their seats like groundhogs with questions, and Luke’s words in the back of her head. Threefer.
‘Did the killer choose Daveyton specifically?’
‘At this stage, we don’t want to comment,’ she says, sticking to the script the mayor’s office gave her.
The camera flashes going off make her feel like she’s having one of those paparazzi experiences you can rent for your prom or your wedding. Red carpet, limo, men with cameras chasing after you. Pop-uprazzi.
‘Is it true that the body was mutilated?’
‘I can’t comment on that.’
‘Is this a serial killer?’
‘So far, this is a once-off.’
‘Where are the parents? Are they suspects?’
‘They’re in mourning,’ you asshole, she thinks but doesn’t say, but it comes through clear enough. ‘They’ve released a statement, which we’ve printed out for you to collect at the door.’
‘Should we be closing the schools? Are our children safe?’
The mayor’s aide, Jessica diMenna, steps in, smooth as a single malt, with hair the same honey color. ‘The mayor’s office is meeting with all district schools and community leaders. Humboldt Middle School will be closed for a week to allow the faculty and students to process this tragic loss and to attend Daveyton’s memorial service. We’re confident that our police force will bring the monster who did this to justice. I’d like to emphasize that it’s so important that we remain calm and that we continue our lives as usual. I think it’s what Davey would have wanted.’
Gabi studies the floor. She suspects that what Daveyton might have wanted is a chance to have a fucking life.
‘That went okay,’ Jessica smiles, posing for one last set of photographs, one hand on Captain Miranda’s shoulder, one on Gabi’s. The model of confidence that everything will be alright.
Gabi can’t stand it. She excuses herself as soon as she can. She thinks about texting Stricker – maybe a quickie will get the anxiety out of her system. But they’re not talking outside of the detectives’ briefing room at the moment because she’s still angry with him. Worse, he might be right – maybe they are grooming her. She can still feel Jessica’s hand on her shoulder. Screw Stricker, she thinks – metaphorically, if she can’t in person. And screw them all for putting her in this position when she’s just here to do her job.
Boyd’s car is parked outside the taxidermist’s house, a neat little two-bedroom in Livonia, across the highway from the strip mall.
‘How was feeding-time at the zoo?’ Boyd asks, the window sliding down to release the witchy aroma of coffee.
‘Messy,’ Gabi says. ‘Did you happen to—?’ But Marcus is already leaning over to hand her a takeaway cup. She reaches for it gratefully. ‘Oh, you can definitely stay, Sparkles.’
‘Sorry, it’s got a bit cold.’
‘Yeah, sorry I kept you waiting.’
‘We were too scared to go in without you,’ Boyd says, ringing the doorbell. ‘Hey, what did the taxidermist say to the cops?’
‘I don’t know, what?’
‘Get stuffed.’ Which is the moment Maxie Lautner opens the door.
‘Oh, hi! I thought I heard voices.’ She does not look like a taxidermist should.
For starters, she is cute. Early twenties, petite with blonde hair and one of those bull nose-rings, which Gabi has always thought were the stupidest of all piercings. It would be easy to grab and twist it, bring her to her knees. Cop-think: all the ugliness in the world.
The girl clops ahead on wedge boots like hooves, leading the way into her living room. It’s a tidy little house, if you can look past the creepy dead critters everywhere; rabbits and mice, mostly, although there are several deer heads and a young kangaroo poking its head out of an embroidered denim pouch with the words ‘home is where the art is’ cross-stitched in gold.
Sparkles bends to examine the glass display case full of little skeletons. There is a two-headed rabbit under a glass dome, standing upright, one paw raised as if pointing at something just behind her head. Gabi resists the urge to turn to look.
‘It’s all legal, before you ask,’ the girl says.
‘Why would you say that?’
Maxie glances warily at Marcus’s uniform. Her voice does that up intonation, which makes every sentence sound like a question. ‘I’ve had problems with the cops before. I guess it was my own fault. I was working on an adult kangaroo in the garage and there was blood running down into the street, and my neighbor must have freaked out. Next thing I know the cops show up and walk into my garage, and I’m holding a scalpel over a bloody corpse? The one cop starts squealing, “Oh my God, I can’t handle this right now.” Like what is she going to do if she finds an actual murder?’
‘Where the heck did you get your hands on a kangaroo?’
‘Mostly I buy dead frozen rabbits on the Internet, but my friends will call me if they spot fresh roadkill, and this guy knew a guy who worked at a zoo? So when their kangaroo died, he arranged to ship it to me on dry ice.’
Actually, Gabi reckons, the most unbelievable part of the story is that the neighbors called it in at all. Most people can’t be bothered. Blind eyes, like the glazed glass beads staring out of the two-headed rabbit.
‘Did they book you on a hygiene violation?’ Marcus asks.
‘Nah,’ Boyd says. ‘Hunters are allowed to process meat at home. Long as they got a license.’
Maxie brightens, eager to show her credentials. ‘I have a taxidermy license, issued by the Department of Natural Resources. It’s somewhere.’ She opens a drawer in an old-fashioned roll-top desk, and digs around. ‘Covers domestic animals and roadkill. Only thing you can’t do is endangered. Like this guy phoned me to ask if I would do a bald eagle for him and I was all like, that’s a federal offense? You could go to jail for ten years for that, it’s a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar fine.’
Boyd gives a low whistle. ‘That’s a lot of green.’
‘I know. You’d have to be so stupid.’
‘I like your two-headed rabbit.’
‘Oh thanks. I’m proud of that one. The art is in making it as lifelike as possible, but sometimes it’s fun to play around and create gaff animals. Like the Feejee mermaids from the Barnum Bailey circus? They’re my favorite. Half-fish, half-monkey.’
‘You hear of anyone doing humans? Someone’s granny or grandpa?’ Boyd asks.
‘There are those realistic toy babies,’ Gabi says, thinking of Luke’s story about the dolls in the basement. ‘They’re popular with women who have miscarried or lost a child. You ever hear about someone who does that with real babies?’
‘Oh man, that would be so sad.’ Maxie sits down on the couch, clasping her hands in front of her. ‘Having your own baby embalmed and taxidermied? No, that is seriously illegal. Way more illegal than a bald eagle. You have to be a registered mortician to work with human bodies.’
‘And you don’t know anyone doing that?’
‘Okay, taxidermists are into twisted humor. And the weird stuff sells, you know? There’s a shop in San Francisco that keeps bugging me to do more two-headed rabbits. Or mice in Victorian clothing with teeny parosols. But I’ve never, ever heard of someone doing anything with a real person.’
‘You know anyone who specializes in deer? Or deer gaffs?’
‘Oh, everyone does deer. They’re boring. I like working with small animals. They’re very tricky. Pretty much every class I teach, someone pokes the mouse in the stomach and it explodes. You have to make such a small hole to get the skin off. It’s like peeling an orange. A really gross orange.’
‘What do you do to keep the shape?’ Gabi asks, thinking of the newspaper they pulled out of Daveyton.
‘Well, you can either make a plaster cast of the body and fill it with foam rubber or, what a lot of people are doing now, especially with smaller animals, is you
just make a little mummy out of tape or string in the same shape as the animal, and then ease the skin back on. Use a little embalming fluid on the paws and the nose to keep them from cracking and you’re done.’
‘How about the seams?’ Boyd asks. ‘You use superglue, something like that?’
‘No, you stitch it. Very, very carefully, from the inside with fishing line. With most animals the fur covers it up. If you were doing a reptile or a fish, you’d cover it with clay and airbrush it.’
‘But you could use superglue?’
‘If you didn’t know what you were doing. I guess so. Oh, but you were asking about deer gaffs. I think I might have seen a picture of a fawn with dove wings on the Internet.’
‘Do you think you could find that again? Identify the artist?’
‘I think it was someone in Croatia. He does a lot of beautiful gaffs.’
‘I’m going to show you some photographs now,’ Gabi says, moving into formal mode. ‘You have to be aware that this is part of an active investigation, and that you are not to disclose any information about this to anyone.’
‘That’s heavy.’
‘It’s a murder investigation. Do you agree to these terms?’
‘Sure, of course. I said on the phone. It’s like being a doctor, right? Total confidentiality.’
Gabi does not point out that a DNR license is not quite the same as a medical degree.
‘It’s very graphic. I’m warning you.’
Maxie shrugs. ‘I work with roadkill.’
Gabi hands her the photographs. She’s picked them carefully. None of them show Daveyton’s face.
‘Woah,’ the girl says, paling, which makes the holes in her nose flare red. ‘That’s fucked up.’
‘Does this look like the work of anyone you know? The guy in Croatia?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Definitely not.’
‘Anyone doing anything similar? With monkeys or rabbits? Practice runs?’
‘No. Not like this. This isn’t the work of a taxidermist. You’d never cut through the body like this – halfway through? You slit the skin down the back, along the dorsal muscle, or do a ventral cut down the stomach to peel it. You’re not working with the meat.’ She shudders.
‘What if he was in a hurry?’
‘No way. It’s going to rot. The whole point of taxidermy is to try to get as much of the flesh out as possible. You want to keep the first couple of layers of skin, because it dries around the follicles and stops the hair falling out, but not more than that. This guy isn’t a taxidermist. He’s not even trying to be. I mean, you could watch how-to videos online. This person didn’t have a clue.’
Faygo and a Gun
The nightmares have been coming every time TK gets some shut-eye. God’s way of prodding him to think about his family more, if he held any truck with God. So even though it’s only been a coupla weeks since his last visit to his momma, he goes again. He has a whole ritual he follows: he takes her a mini bottle of Jim Beam and a Faygo Cola, has one sip and pours the rest out on her grave. It doesn’t count as breaking your sobriety if you’re honoring the dead. Hard to believe more than forty years have passed. Still feels as fresh as yesterday.
He wasn’t called TK then. He was Tommy. Or Tom or Tee. The night she died, he’d taken his little brother and sister out trick or treating. It was Florence’s first Halloween, dressed up like a ghost in an old floral sheet. When she complained, he’d told her that girl ghosts wear flowers. Leroy was a vampire with a cape made from an old sweatshirt TK had cut the sleeves off, and two smears of red lipstick at the corners of his mouth. They’d even wandered up to a white neighborhood to see the decorations and knock on the doors. The candy was better, but they also got some ugly looks. So he was in a bad mood when they got back to the house. He saw the door standing open, and he knew, he just knew, something was wrong.
The little kids were bickering over a Snickers bar. ‘Wait here,’ he told them.
‘But I’m tired,’ Florrie said.
‘I said, wait here. Or I’ll confiscate your candy. You won’t see none of it.’ Florrie started crying, that high-pitched whine of hers that turned into big gulping sobs. But he couldn’t do nothing about that. He went inside to find his momma half on the floor, half on the couch, blood everywhere – on the white fluffy carpet she was so proud of, soaking through her clothes. He had to scream at Florrie and Leroy to stay the fuck outside, like I tole you, goddammit.
He tried to pick her up, but she was like a sack of sawdust. There were bubbles of blood on her lips. She whispered, ‘Love you, my baby, love you.’
‘What happened, Momma?’
‘Ricky,’ she said. His name shouldn’t have been the last thing in her mouth.
Her twin sister’s boyfriend. That was some soap-opera bullshit. Got the wrong woman. Killed the good twin. Only his momma were bad, too. Both of them, fucked-up women hanging round evil men, having more kids than they could look after.
He carried a piece since the age of nine so he could be her protector, fetch her from the bar where some man would be making demands that he weren’t willing to pay for. TK learned to dread the screech of the payphone in the hall or some kid calling his name from down the block, Tommmeeeeee. But he headed down there anyways, .38 tucked into his pants at two in the morning to negotiate with some drunk-ass nigga who was getting too hands-on.
Leroy tried to poke his head in to get a look-see. ‘Go to Uncle Lewis’s,’ TK shouted. He went to get the gun from behind the photo albums on the shelf.
‘Where you going?’ Florrie said, clinging to his pants as he locked the door and tried to walk down the steps. ‘Don’t go, Tommy.’
‘Gonna get a grape Faygo down the store,’ he said, pushing her away. Some part of him believed it, too.
‘Don’t go! Don’t leave us. What about the candy?’ She set Leroy off too. Both of them standing there bawling, but only thing he could do was just keep them out the house.
‘Go to Uncle Lewis,’ he repeated, but he didn’t stay to see if they followed his instructions.
He didn’t make it to the store. Got to Ricky Furman’s house – he knew where he lived – and stood outside, watching the back of his head as he sat in front of the TV like nothing had happened. The Munsters. The theme tune still makes his blood rush away. The front door was unlocked. He walked right in, grabbed him and pulled him backwards over the couch, tipping the whole thing over, and shot him four times, right there in his living room. He don’t remember any of that. It’s all dark red, like looking at the sun through your eyelids. Like coming up after a seizure. He was the one who called the cops.
I think I just shot someone.
Only it wasn’t just someone. It was the cocksucker who stabbed his momma again and again, until all the life ran out of her.
The can of Faygo he brought last time is lying in the grass next to her grave, under the shade of the paradise trees. He tried to get Leroy a plot nearby, but by that stage it cost too much. He had his little brother cremated after he died of a heart attack three years ago, and sprinkled the ashes on his momma’s grave, so they could be together.
He sets the can on top of the grave and borrows a bust-up deck chair from a few gravestones away. No-one will mind if he uses it, long as he puts its back where he found it. He lowers himself down – his knees ain’t what they used to be – and the canvas protests like it might rip, but it holds.
‘See, Ma,’ he says, ‘my higher power’s still lookin’ out for me.’ He tries not to think about the chairs clustered round him in the storage room at the church. Circling the wagons.
‘How you been, Ma? Florence sends her love. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday. She’s not working for that telemarketing company any more. She used to memorize the scripts, but now they say you got to use the exact wording for legal reasons, and that it’s too expensive to print Braille manuals. I told her she should sue them for discrimination, but you know what Florrie’s like. Too sweet to litigate.?
?? He nudges the can with his toe, thinking about how Florrie smiles with unmoderated joy, because she can’t see that most people bank their happiness like it’s something you might run out of.
‘Still working on getting a house, still putting something by, and waiting to hear if I’m gonna get that grant. The city works so slow, Ma. I got my eye on a place that’s real torn up. I reckon I can fix it, given a year and some helping hands – and then I’ll move Florrie down, out of that home for the blind in Flint. Have to do it over the summer, though, when the weather’s better.’
He rips up some of the more obstinate weeds. ‘I feel a lot of weight, Ma. On my chest. Not like a heart attack, don’t worry. I’m looking after myself. I ain’t gonna go the same way as Leroy. Sometimes it feels like you’re carrying the whole world, you know? Guess you don’t. You were just a dirty whore who didn’t care about no-one but yourself. But you’re still my momma. Never loved and hated someone so much at the same time, Ma.’
He sinks into quiet and swipes at the can with his foot with none of the violence he feels. ‘Anyway, thought I would come by.’ He stands and folds the deck chair. ‘You look after yourself. Leroy, too. And don’t you worry about me, Ma.’
On his way home, he takes a leisurely stroll down through Delray, where the prairie is sweeping in between the houses guarded over by flat-painted angels. World needs more angels, even plywood ones. A yellow dog barks at him from behind a chain-link fence, all possessive ferocity and no damn balls. Just like the gang-banger kids. They think a pistol equals cojones. That’s why they tuck them in their pants. But a man should think with his guts, not his junk.
He crosses over to get away from the dog, heading toward the shuttered-up brick cube in pastel pink that is the only building left standing on this block. The rest is broken cement and grass and weeds and trash people have dumped here. Always tires. And usually a kids’ scooter. Pretty much guaranteed. He’ll poke around to see if there’s anything salvageable. One day, he thought he’d found a human leg bone. Even called the cops, who were as freaked out as he was until the detective arrived and identified it as a cow bone. ‘You thought maybe André the Giant died in this field?’ TK didn’t feel so bad about it because the officers had been scared sick, too. They bought him a burger afterwards and laughed about it.