Ch. 8 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask
In the dream that was also half a memory forgotten, Booker ascended the ramshackle steps of a condemned industrial building, sidearm drawn. Overhead, a kaleidoscopic swirl of stars and eyeballs bobbed and rolled and sank into viscous cosmic black. Only the quiet sounds of his own footfalls disturbed the silence. He ascended. Every ascent—
He stood on the second story landing, a square of smooth, often-stained concrete. The bubbling audience above hissed static. Down the corridor ahead, Detective John Bowman Booker heard something slap against meat. He heard something slap. His breath shook. As he entered the dim hallway, the walls around him unraveled. They scratched and scraped away into nothingness. A wet slap echoed into the void. A whimper.
Sweat beaded his brow. He walked forward, sidearm held low.
A silhouette like a purple-black slug squished out of the only doorway that still existed in the sprawling, wall-less hall. Shadows wisped off of it like steam. It bloated and surged, sliming forward, violet and ultraviolet and white and black and gray and purple, shimmering and shifting. A second slug followed, tumbling out behind the first. A third, a fourth, a fifth…as they multiplied, they grabbed the edges of the threshold like bloated, slimy fingers. Like something trying to pull itself through.
A wet slap, a whimper. A wet slap, a whimper.
Booker approached, breath bated, sweat slicking his brown cheeks, sidearm held low but with a thumb on the safety…
A slap. A whimper. The slugs arched into boneless knuckles, shivering.
Booker inched toward the threshold.
Slap, whimper, slap, whimper…
(a lock and a key)
The vile creatures, oozing and heaving, didn’t react to Booker as he neared them. They strained, struggling to haul something out of the lightlessness beyond. Booker couldn’t control his breath. His hands shook.
He turned to meet the monster, pistol raised.
YOUR DUTY IS TO APPREHEND
“John?”
Booker jerked awake, Castellanos’ hand on his shoulder. The dream that was also a memory forgotten faded, sinking back into the silt bottoming his brain. He blinked and peered up at his partner. “What?”
“We fell asleep.” With a mug of coffee in each hand, she gestured to the broad table, the splay of cold case documents across it.
Blinking again, Booker found his glasses resting on top of an old crime scene photo next to him. He donned them and found a small drool stain newly printed on an old witness’ statement. He tried to wipe it away with his shirtsleeve. “Shit.”
“I already talked to the Chief,” Castellanos continued, setting one mug of coffee in front of Booker as she walked around the table. Her own coffee went down next her puzzle box, now half-finished. “Brought him up to date on everything we’ve found so far.”
“Which is nothing,” Booker said.
“The subject is a male, of average height and weight, wearing a mask. Probably white.”
Booker sighed, giving up on the old witness statement. “Which is just about nothing.”
Castellanos racked a multi-colored column around the puzzle’s axis; set the box aside. “Did anyone ever tell you, you mumble in your sleep?”
“What, you spying on me?”
“I tried. You never know what comes up in someone’s head when they’re sleeping. But I really mean ‘mumble.’ You don’t so much say words as make sounds. Syllables. You toss and turn and slur out parts of words, but just parts of them.”
“You watch me sleep?”
“I heard you sleep.”
“Whatever.” He shook his head, chuckling despite himself. “And do I snore?”
“No. You don’t snore.” She grinned.
“Yeah, well, you do.”
“I do not.”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“Are you spying on me, now?” she retorted.
He shrugged. “I tried. I mean, you never know, right? What comes up in someone’s head.”
Castellanos chuckled softly, leaning forward. Arms crossed over layered paperwork, she made the end of her laughter somehow the obvious end of the banter. The glint in her eyes changed. Booker’s amusement faded, too. “So what do you think?” she asked.
He took a deep breath, trying to coax his brain into remembering their research from the night before. He picked up the mug of coffee and sipped. A pleasant “Huh” wafted out of him unbidden. “This is…fresh,” he added.
“Just brewed,” Castellanos responded. “But now…what do you think?”
Booker sighed. “Honestly? This shit’s flimsy. The cold case has some similarities to ours, sure, but nothing we could build a lead out of.”
“Both killers wore masks.”
“That’s not much. None of the witnesses from the seventies or the nineties could even describe the thing.”
“None of our witnesses could, either.”
“Not yet,” Booker replied. “We got two more coming in this afternoon to interview.”
Castellanos picked her puzzle box up from the table. “What about the…facial violence?”
Booker folded his arms, palms cupped to elbows. “What about it? Our guy cuts the faces off his victims and then puts them back on again.”
“He only did that with the judge.”
“He got halfway through cutting the—the kid’s face off, too.”
“But he didn’t reattach it,” Castellanos pointed out.
“He didn’t have time.”
“He did. He chose to push the kid out a window, instead.”
Booker frowned but nodded. “Maybe. In the cold case, though, the killer just destroyed the faces. Slashed and stabbed them until there wasn’t anything left. All the victims had to be ID’d through tattoos and birthmarks…”
“Maybe this is how he—or she or they—escalate. Maybe this is the next step.”
“I don’t think so. Besides, 1976, 1992, 2020? If this is one killer escalating, he’d—or she’d or they’d—have to be, what? Sixty, give or take?”
Castellanos racked and rotated the puzzle box. “What if it isn’t one killer?”
“Then we have a whole different problem on our hands,” he replied. “And the best way to solve it is to catch the guy we’re after now.”
Castellanos turned her focus to the puzzle. She twisted and turned the box around in her palms. After a few seconds, she glanced back over at Booker. “Maybe we’ll learn more when we talk to the new witnesses this afternoon.”
But that afternoon, they got the call. The witness would have to wait.
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