dozens upon dozens of swelling insect bites. Botfly larva were already wiggling in her wounds. She knew only agony and misery and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Only nature at its fiercest and a channel filled with unnatural things. This is what the moonlight showed her in the water: the piranhas.
Hundreds and hundreds of them surrounding the overturned skiff. Just waiting. Row upon row of them breaking the surface, their jutting jaws wide open. Greening things, bloated things, wormy things, glaring evil skulls. They were not alive and had not been in some time so they did not need to swim to force oxygenated water through their gills. The leaking chemicals from the biotech ship that poisoned the school also resurrected them. Once they had been alive, filled with a rapacious vitality. Social creatures that lived to defend the school. Not truly dangerous to man except in the dry season when food was scarce. But now they no longer mated and swam for the glory of the school. Now all they had left was an insatiable appetite.
And this is what they offered Elise: their appetite. Serrated rows of triangular teeth activated by powerful jaws. The sort of jaws that could bite through fishing nets and steel hooks. It was all they had and they offered it to her now.
Elise looked down at them surrounding her little island. Like loyal subjects surrounding their queen. And they were loyal. She did not doubt this.
They waited.
They knew she would come to them.
Finally, staring out across those yawning, tooth-studded jaws gleaming in the moonlight, all open in her honor, she said, “Please, I hurt so bad, so terribly bad…let it be fast.”
Somehow, she knew they would make it so.
She thought then of Peruvian cattle herders. Jack had told her how they would sacrifice a cow downstream in the dry season to the hungry piranhas so that the rest of the herd could cross safely upstream. Elise knew then that she would be such a sacrifice.
Sucking in a breath, she slid into the water and submerged amongst them and they accepted her. And true to their promise, as the water gushed red with her blood, it was mercifully quick.
The skiff drifted on upstream.
A giant otter splashed in the distance.
And in the treetops, a pygmy owl screeched.
THEY WALK BY NIGHT
1
When the phone rang I was sleeping like a body in a freezer, cool, dead, and easy. When it finally jarred me awake, I bolted upright, my heart pounding, my head full of spun cobwebs. How long it had been ringing I didn’t know. I seemed to remember dreaming about phones. Maybe for hours.
My hand fumbled it off its cradle. “Steel here,” I said into the receiver, my voice full of sand. “Make it good.”
“Vince? Where the hell you been? I been calling you all goddamn day.”
I knew the voice. Knew it well. It was everyone’s favorite homicide detective, Tommy Albert. Tommy and me went way back. Years ago, before I picked up my private cop’s license, I’d been on the force with him. He didn’t call me unless it was important.
“I’ve been sleeping, I guess. I like to do that sometimes.”
I looked at the clock. Christ. I’d been out for almost fourteen hours straight. Not surprising, really, when you took into account that for the past three weeks I’d been chasing an errant husband and his twenty-year old mistress throughout the tri-state area. And for those three weeks I bet I hadn’t slept more than three or fours hours a night. The entire case was a comedy of errors, a comedy with me as the lead clown. Not exactly duck soup but I’d brought the duo in and it had paid off in heavy green. Good or bad, it was how guys like me made our meat.
I cleared my throat. “What the hell’s so important? You know I gotta get all the beauty rest I can.”
“And then some,” he said. “I was about to send a couple uniforms over there, have them kick in the door and drag you over here.”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
Tommy went on to tell me he’d been calling me just about every half-hour all day long. “It happened this morning,” he went on. “Our boy…surely you remember the one that decided his wrists would look better laid open with a razor? Yeah, well, guess what? Guess what happened this morning?”
“You remembered you were engaged to him?”
“Ha. No, and let’s keep that between us, shall we? No, I’m afraid our boy disappeared from the morgue.”
I was awake now. “What do you mean disappeared?”
“Just what I said.”
It hit me hard. Like a hammer to the skull. “You telling me those county ghouls lost him?”
“Yup. Either misplaced him or someone took him. Unless you think he might’ve wandered off on his own,” Tommy said. “But you gotta remember how sweet he was on you, Vince. Probably out dragging his dead ass to a florist, buying something special for you.”
The man we were talking about was named Quigg. And he was sweet on me like I was sweet on razor blades in my shorts. He hated me and I hated him and wasn’t the world a beautiful place to live?
But let me tell you about this guy.
It was a homicide case. Strictly something for the precinct boys, definitely not the province of a private dick like me. I got pulled into it when the sister of one of the victims hired me to do what the police weren’t doing: tracking down the killer. And, somehow, killer, doesn’t seem to really cut it here. Maybe a better word would be maniac. Our boy here, you see, was a cannibal. Yeah, he was killing ‘em with a knife-post mortem knife it turned out-just as sharp as you please, slitting open their throats like the bellies of hogs and having himself a spot of cold lunch when they were down and out. I saw a few of the bodies. Tommy Albert showed me the crime scene photos of the others. It was enough to put you off red meat for life. The bodies were all the same-young women, throats slit, meat from their bellies and thighs cut free with a knife, throats and faces and wrists chewed-up. The bodies were generally drained of blood. Thing that we never did understand is why he cut the hearts out. No other organs, just the hearts. Maybe he was eating them. That was the general presumption. But even then, I didn’t believe it.
I’d been on the case a month when the eighth and final body in as many weeks turned up. I had narrowed down my cast of revelers to three men by then-one was a former mental patient, another just a big mean bastard with a history of sadism, and the third, a mild mannered guy who just happened to be a professor of anthropology of all things. It turned out that our boy was Quigg, the professor. I caught him in the act. I got there too late to save the girl’s life, but at least I stopped him from carving her up like the Christmas ham at grandma’s house.
I’ll be the first to admit that I worked him over pretty good before I called in Tommy and his boys. When the black and whites finally rolled in, Quigg was in need of some prolonged dental care. But the fact that this twisted, sick piece of shit was even breathing when the bulls slapped the bracelets on him was testament to my self- restraint. Given what he’d done, I should’ve made him the suck the end of my. 45 like a 10 cent lollypop before I urged his brains out the back of his skull.
Anyway, Tommy’s boys took him away. His lawyer-some hot shot greaseball garbage-eater with all the morals of a child molester-tried the insanity plea, but Quigg was convicted and sent upstate. His first night there, he opened his wrists and the angels sighed.
And that’s all she wrote.
Or was it?
“Who the hell would spring a stiff?” I said.
Tommy said, “Who knows? But I’m just bringing you up to speed here. All that happened twelve hours ago, chum. It’s what’s happened since that’s yanking my chain.”
