“I’m afraid so,” Eva eluded.
The boy went over to take an order from a girl with an impressive green Mohawk.
Eva lifted her glass. She took a sip of deliciously cold vodka.
33
“No, really sorry, beautiful,” answered the man in the black latex T-shirt stretched tight against his muscular chest. “I’m not from here. I know nobody.”
His face glistened with sweat. He ran the back of his wrist across his cheek, smearing his mascara even more. He smiled at Eva-revealing prominent fangs-before walking away from her and diving back into the crowd, into the chaos of music and moving bodies.
The last band had finished its set awhile earlier, but the decibel level had not decreased, and the Hells Bells was still full. Some unseen DJ had taken over, spinning one hit after another. They were heavy, repetitive songs, and now the ghosts were swaying, their eyes closed and their centers of gravity very low. Like strange and sensual zombies, they were absorbed in their own inner worlds.
Eva let herself drop on an unoccupied sofa and brought her vodka to her lips. She had lost count of how many glasses she had drunk. But she did not feel tired. She was frustrated more than anything else. All night, she had been observing the motley group here. She had projected herself inside these young men and women, inside their chests filled with wild magic and reckless youth, where there was no such thing as consequences. And the more she profiled them, the more she felt like an intruder. Even here, among misfits, she was the biggest misfit of them all. It was not even irony. It was fact, and it had the taste of despair.
She thought about the corpses the Salavilles had left behind and tried to establish a link with the profiles of the people here. She found none. The brothers had chosen their victims from a variety of backgrounds. Of the twenty-four, eleven had listened to rock or metal, but that was representative of the general population. Who knew how the killer was selecting his victims?
She had hoped to find some clue that would help her track the murderer down or at least give her some sort of lead, but she was beginning to conclude that she wouldn’t be that lucky in this club. She would have to start from scratch. Again.
Lost in her thoughts, she did not notice the two girls coming her way. They were holding hands like a couple, and both of them could have been Barbara Meyer clones. Or Bettie Page. They were slim and no more than twenty years old, with retro bangs and ’50s makeup. Both were in polka-dot corsets. One was wearing a skirt so short, her panties showed. They were pink, with an image of the Virgin Mary on them.
Amused, Eva stopped staring at the girl’s panties. She realized that she was pulling along her friend, who was really a teenager. Her friend looked sullen, obviously reluctant to be led where she was going. “Hey,” said the girl in the pink panties.
“Hey,” said Eva, raising her glass. “Good evening.”
“My name is Marian, and this is Alice,” the girl said, pointing at her sullen friend. “Can we sit with you?”
“Sure.”
She waited for the girls to get comfortable before saying, “My name is Eva.”
“Lobo told us you’re a cop. You don’t look like a cop.”
“Lobo?”
“The tough-looking guy, military cut, with a “Front 242” T-shirt? You asked him about Barbie earlier. Is she in trouble?”
Eva nodded yes. All those nicknames building the mythology of this alternative culture. It was fascinating when you stopped to think about it.
“You know her well? Barbie?” she asked them.
“Of course,” Marian said. “She comes here all the time, and we have classes together in college. What’s happened?”
“She died.”
“Oh shit,” Marian whispered. “How did it happen?”
“She was attacked in her apartment last Tuesday.”
“Fuck,” said her friend, Alice. Her voice was as dull as her face.
“But we were with her last Tuesday!” Marian cried out. “We came together to the electro ball, and…” She put a hand to her head and said, “My God, it really happened? I mean… Oh, shit… I can’t believe this.”
Eva set her vodka on the table beside her.
“I really am sorry. Were you together all evening?”
“Yes,” Marian said. “I mean, during the time she was here, at least. She left early to catch the last metro.”
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen? Was anyone hitting on Barbie maybe?”
“Dickheads are always hitting on us,” Marian said. “This is a club.”
“There was that weird chick,” Alice said. “The chick with the mask, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Marian said. “She looked real screwed up, that’s for sure. She spent the whole time in the corner, staring at us. Actually, I think she left at the same time as Barbie.”
“And she was wearing a mask?”
“Yes, she was,” Alice said. “One of those white porcelain masks, just the upper part of the face.”
“I know the kind. So, that girl, you never saw her here before?”
“Never,” Alice said.
“No, never,” Marian added.
“And you haven’t seen her again?” Eva asked. “She’s not here tonight, for instance?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“All right. Apart from her mask, what did she look like?”
“Slim, normal height, black hair,” Marian said.
“It was a wig, if you ask me,” Alice said. “And she wore a full-length dress.”
“That’s right, an old-style dress,” Marian added. “I actually thought it looked like one of those period costumes, like in the movies.”
Eva took in the information. All of it corresponded with the profile. If some psychopath really believed she was Countess Bathory, would she be screwed up enough to actually go out dressed like her? Better not get carried away, though. It might be a coincidence.
“Listen,” she told the girls, “your testimony could be extremely useful to me. Let me give you my card. I’d like you to think about that girl. If you remember any detail, anything that looked odd to you, or if you ever see that person again, call me immediately, okay? Let me have your phone numbers too.”
“You think that chick killed Barbie?” Marian asked.
“I never said that. But you’re saying they left at the same time. So that girl is a witness. That’s why it’s important for me to know who she is. You understand?”
Marian nodded. She snatched the card Eva had set on the table and slid it into her bra-triggering a glance from Alice and a spark of jealousy in her gray eyes.
Then she got up and said, “I really need a drink. I promise to call you if I remember anything, okay?”
Eva watched the two girls walk away, Marian still pulling her girlfriend along. Or maybe it was her little sister, who knew?
Eva was thinking.
In here, a masked killer would easily blend with the decor.
Eva was thinking that she could do with another drink too, when a slender angel appeared and granted her wish. He set two pints on the table, both overflowing with foam.
“A little beer to cut the vodka?” The barman blew away the braids that had fallen in his face. “I promised
