John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

It had been a mad dance. Hed pressed his body against hers, backing her against the tall chain-link fence. Behind her the Mississippi ran like a black artery in the moonlight. Terror radiated through her body and drained it of strength, muddled and paralyzed her brain. She could hear him softly chanting her name: Danielle, Danielle, Danielle With a breathless reverence, as if it were part of a religious ritual. Shed never dreamed he might be capable of this. Never!

She saw the glint of moonlight on the knife and struggled to speak. His body drew away from hers and the blade flashed sideways, leaving a cold trace of steel along her throat. Odd, she was sitting on the ground now, resting her back against the sagging fence. Something warm lay in her lap. He was smiling down at her, still holding the knife, and she understood that her throat was cut and hed backed away from her before the flash of the knife so he wouldnt get blood on his clothes. She tried to plead with him but couldnt suck in air. Her mouth formed a rictus and she could feel the useless bellows action of her lungs. Her hands fluttered to her throat and she touched the horrible horizontal gap, and her heart exploded with panic. Yet a tiny cold part of her brain remained amazingly calm and objective. Music floated from inside the building as her heels beat wildly against the blacktop, out of time, she noticed inanely, feeling herself drifting, weakening.

She was aware of him pushing her the rest of the way down, then rolling her body on its side so her blood ran along a slight incline toward the river, away from him. Very efficient, he was, as if hed done this many times before and had plenty of practice. Her cheek pressed numbly against the hard ground, she watched the dark spreading flow with a sad detachment, letting its slow current draw her into greater darkness.

She heard a shriek and she was falling.

Two three-awake!

Mary reached out a shaking hand, groping for the alarm clock. Its intermittent electronic scream was shredding her brain like jagged glass. Finally she found the clock, fumbled with its cool plastic case, and managed to silence it.

Reaching for it made her side ache where Jake had hit her last night. Pain zapped through her like high voltage, and she wondered if hed cracked one of her ribs. It had happened once before, a year ago, and she was sure the doctors in emergency at Incarnate Word hadnt believed her story about slipping and falling on the ice. Not a lot of imagination in that one.

Well, it wasnt their business anyway. Her business. Hers and Jakes. Intimate as her dreams.

Mary Arlington had dreamed again she was flying. Soaring near the lovely domed ceiling of a limitless room, almost touching pure curved whiteness, one two three, to waltz time, two three.

Floating in someones arms. It wasnt clear whose. Far below, faces strained upward, pale ovals with dark, staring eyes and gaping mouths, watching her trace elegant patterns whose lines might extend into eternity.

But morning had arrived. She worked her way up so she was leaning back in bed, supported on her elbows, then she slowly swiveled her body and dropped her legs into space, struggling until she was sitting slumped on the edge of the mattress. More pain. She heard herself groan, but the rib didnt act up. Hey, the day was starting right.

Mary moved her hands slowly and gingerly beneath her nightgown, gliding fingertips over smooth flesh, seeking sources of pain.

Theyd argued last night about the latest of Jakes unexplained absences. This one had lasted three days and two nights. Hed told her hed spent the time at the big Victorian house three of his buddies leased in the suburb of Webster Groves, and she knew he did go there at times, paying rent for one of the upper bedrooms. What he had no explanation for was the long-term airport parking ticket stub shed found in his pocket. This time maybe hed left St. Louis, not just driven a few miles to Webster Groves.

Jake had worked himself to a high pitch of anger. Then hed beaten her with the flat of his hand and then his fists.

This morning, early, hed kissed her ear and whispered he was sorry, he loved her, hed gotten carried away with the physical stuff. Hed make it up to her, he promised, he really would. Uh-huh.

Dont come back, shed told him, her voice hoarse from sleep. Not this time!

Sure, he said, and kissed her again. Whatever you say, Mary. Dont I usually try to make you happy?

Only wanting him to leave, she hadnt answered. Finally she heard and felt him roll out of bed. The bedsprings moaned as if sharing her pain.

Shed lain awake listening to the roar of the shower, then to Jake thumping around her apartment getting dressed. He was supposed to meet some guys from work this morning. To go fishing, hed said. Jake and his buddies; sometimes they were like a living beer commercial.

When shed heard the door snick! close behind him, shed fallen asleep again.

That was two hours ago, and here she sat with a numb mind and aching body.

Jake would be guilt-plagued, remorseful even in the way he moved. For days hed loathe himself for what hed done, an object of scathing self-pity. And, in Marys eyes, a man pinned by his agony, writhing in pain as intense as hers even if it wasnt physical.

Others didnt understand, she knew, and wondered why she stayed with Jake. But the abuse had grown gradually, creeping up on her love, engulfing it and leaving it whole and somehow undamaged, like the tender walnut, safe within its confining yet protective shell.

That was the problem, she loved Jake.

And she had no one else.

But she knew she had to be strong. This time she meant it, he wasnt coming back. She wouldnt let him.

She drew a deep breath, without pain, and stood up, leaning with a hand on the headboard for a moment while her dizziness passed. She had to leave for work in half an hour, and she had a dance lesson right after supper.

She hoped like hell she could move okay. Tonight was tango.

They knew Jonas Morrisy in the parish. The honest merchants, the con artists, the whores, the gays, the blues and Cajun musicians, and the grifters; they knew him and played straight with him, because he played straight with them. If he said hed crack skull if they didnt cooperate, he meant it, always. Hed been a beat patrolman there for twelve years before making sergeant, ridden in a two-man patrol car for five more years before becoming plainclothes. Now, at fifty, he was a New Orleans P.D. homicide lieutenant. The cop everyone had known twenty years ago hadnt changed: He was tough, shrewd, and persistent. And still honest.

He sat now behind his wide, cluttered desk in his office in Homicide, a sloppily dressed, shambling man sucking on a meerschaum pipe he never lit. His gray eyes were as bright and calculating as when he was a rookie, even if now there were crows feet at their corners. His hair was almost completely gray but still thick and unruly, and his lower lip still jutted determinedly. Perched on an off-center nose, the no-nonsense black-framed glasses suggested he was a man of decisiveness and violence. Thick and scarred knuckles added to the impression.

In his big hands he was holding a copy of the medical examiners report on the Verlane woman. Detective Sergeant Waxman, whod just handed him the report, was standing in front of Morrisys desk, neatly dressed as usual, his tie knot the size of a pea, his suitcoat buttoned despite the river delta heat and humidity that the air-conditioner wasnt quite coping with today.