Incubi

someone else worried about the bottles.

Light classical issued from the dilapidated stereo; it was all he could listen to without being distracted. Distraction was any investigator’s enemy. He wondered if love was too. How many marriages had exploded because of The Job?

Here is my love, he thought. He closed his eyes, to see it in his head, the neat red letters.

HERE IS MY LOVE

And the great star-pointed triangle.

Not an act of murder, an act of love. He remembered thinking that the instant he’d stepped into Shanna Barrington’s bedroom. Karla Panzram had verified this, but with trimmings he couldn’t imagine. The killer had taped her eyes so she couldn’t see what was coming, had tied her up so she couldn’t move. He’d adored her as he extracted her entrails.

Shanna Barrington had been scarified, but to what? What madness? Aorista, Jack mused. He’d looked it up in his paperback Webster’s but found nothing. The FBI’s Triple-I interservice link had reported back this afternoon: nothing. And nothing yet from Randy’s good squad. The Interpol run would take weeks, and even though Auxiliary Procurements had authorized his request for a researcher, there was nothing more on that either. Most murders were solved within forty-eight hours. After that, the apprehension statistics plummeted.

Suddenly he was staring at the portrait of himself. Veronica had painted it, an abstract mash of wedges and smears, the pieces of which formed his face. The likeness, now, was distressing — it looked like a man falling apart. He wondered whose face she was painting now.

When the phone rang, he jumped. The word Veronica echoed somewhere deep. Don’t be an asshole, he told himself. What reason would Veronica have to call him now?

“Cordesman,” Jack said.

“Hi, Captain. Your man’s jizz won’t type. He’s no secretor.”

Jack’s brow creased. No, it definitely wasn’t Veronica, it was Jan Beck from the Technical Services Division. “The killer’s you mean?” he asked.

“I’m not talking about Bullwinkle’s sperm, sir. And I’ll tell you something, this guy’s got a lot of love.”

Jan Beck’s voice was ashy, soft, which never fit with the way she talked. Talking to her was like talking to one of the guys, or worse.

“What do you mean, Jan?”

“He gave it to her like it was going out of style. Cum City up there. Only thing that doesn’t jibe is the timing.”

“He wasn’t in there long enough to do her a bunch of times.”

“Then your estimations are wrong, or he’s the fastest draw in the East. Average ejaculation’s four to six milliliters, up to ten after a long dry spell. This guy left more than thirty hung up past the minus ridge, and that’s not counting the wetspot, which looked about as big as the state of Alaska. My estimation, this guy blew eighty mils of the joy juice, probably more. I’d say she had ten guys in there with her, but the cum’s all morphologically identical. And this girl was ready for it. This was no aggravated rape.”

Willingness, Jack remembered, snapping a Camel. Karla Panzram said that willingness was a key word for Charlie. “You’re saying that the victim was willing, right?”

“She was definitely willing, Captain. Her lube glands were drained. Average girl doesn’t dry up till she’s been getting it steady for a couple of hours.”

“But there was blood in the vagina. Was it her period?”

“That was a cervical bleed,” Jan Beck said. “Not a rape-related abrasion. Last night Shanna Barrington was the best-lubricated woman in the county. You can’t argue with a chromatograph.”

“Maybe he—”

“No artificial lubes either; they would’ve been obvious on the source spectrum. And he didn’t use spit. It was all her up there.”

Jack gulped. This was getting gross, and, knowing Jan Beck, it would probably get a lot grosser.

“The blood was a capillary trauma. Ready for why?”

“No, Jan, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“The guy’s hung, and I mean hung serious. Average girl’s got about seven inches of loveway; Shanna Barrington had eight. Your man popped her cervix — I’ve only seen that a couple of times. This kind of bleed’s minor because of the nature of the capillary structures of the cervical cap. It’s common with girls who make these porno videos. They get all coked up can’t feel a thing, then some guy rams his schlong up her cooze — he’s got more schlong than she’s got loveway — and force-dilates the cervical cap. Tears some minor vessels. Like I said, it happens sometimes, but what doesn’t happen is the rest. Your man’s rod was in her cap when he came; he blew his steam right up into her ampullae, and that’s something I’ve never seen. The cervical channel is about a mil wide unless the girl’s preggers, and the uterine line is essentially microscopic. Both were filled with his stuff. We’re talking about a tremendous ejaculator. Dilating her cervix with his cock is rare, but this kind of seminal presence is downright unreal. Most pathologists would tell you it’s impossible. This guy blew his load all the way up her repro tract. He came so much even her infundibula were distended. The fucker filled this poor girl up like you fill your unmarked at the motor pool.”

Jack’s stomach was beginning to sink.

“Average erection’s about six inches. We’re looking for someone with more than twice that, and that’s very uncommon. I looked it up. We’re talking about less than one tenth of one percent of the male pop. Your killer’s a walking smokehouse, sir.”

“You have a lovely way with words, Jan,” Jack said. “Is the tox screen in yet?”

“Yes, sir. BAC was.01, she was buzzed but not shitfaced.”

“Drugs?”

“Zip. No coke, pot, PCP, skag, no nothing.”

What else did Panzram say? he tried to recall. “Did you run her blood for any synthetic morphine derivatives?”

“Of course. Zero. My spec is the girl wasn’t into drugs and never has been. Even recreational users have a pot history, and one look at the brain tells all. Lipofusial rancidity, we call it. Shanna Barrington didn’t have it. She had a clean brain.”

A clean brain, Jack thought. He could easily picture Jan Beck removing the victim’s cranial cap with a Stryker orbital saw, looking down, and saying, Yep, a clean brain.

“But there was one thing, sir.” Beck’s unearthly voice seemed to shimmer through a pause. “Was she a health nut?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know that much about her yet.”

“I mean her place. You find any vitamins, herbs, health stuff?”

“No,” Jack said.

“Her blood says she’s pretty healthy, except for the booze. Her liver looks like a moderate drinker. The only real deficient blood levels were B6, C, and magnesium, which is common for anyone who drinks regular.”

I better start taking vitamins, Jack supposed.

“We found something in her blood that’s not CDS. It looks like an herbal extract or something.”

“Maybe a designer drug.”

“No way, wrong chain. It’s something organic.”

From his seat on the bed Jack expertly flicked his butt out the window. “Work on it. Anything you got. There’s a real deadline on this.” What else? Olsher, yes. “Olsher said you were doing an n/a/a- scrape.”

“I’m in the middle of that now, I’m going to work all night. The resilience lines and entry patterns worry me. He’s using a funny shank, I mean. The scrape-spectrum’ll be in by morning. Come and see me.”

“Okay, Jan. Thanks.”

“Good night, sir.”