Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [104]
I swallowed hard.
“Why?” Kimball was asking.
“Why . . . what?” I tore my eyes away from the footprints and stood up and placed the stories on a table that sat off to the side of the window overlooking the Commons.
“Why is it easy?”
“Because they’re impressed by me.” I shrugged. “They sit in a room and try to describe reality and they mostly fail and then I leave.” I paused. “I’m good at professional detachment.” I paused again. “Plus I don’t have tenure to worry about.”
Kimball kept staring at me, waiting for the lame interlude I imposed on us to reach its end.
I kept forcing myself to look away from the footprints.
Finally Kimball cleared his throat. “I got your messages and I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but you didn’t sound too upset and—”
“But I think I may have some news,” I said, sitting down again.
(but you don’t)
“Yes, that’s what you said.” Kimball nodded slowly. “But, um . . .” He trailed off, distracted by something.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked suddenly. “I mean, I think I’ve got a bottle of scotch around here somewhere.”
“No, no—that’s okay.” He stopped. “I’ve got to head back over to Stoneboat.”
“What happened in Stoneboat?” I asked. “Wait, that’s not where Paul Owen is?”
Kimball sighed heavily again. He seemed withdrawn, regretful.
“No, it isn’t where Paul Owen is.”
I paused. “But is Paul Owen . . . okay?”
“Yeah, he is, um . . .” Kimball finally breathed in and stared directly at me. “Look, Mr. Ellis, something happened in Stoneboat last night.” He sighed, deciding whether to continue. “And I think it changed the direction of the investigation that I talked to you about on Saturday.”
I asked, “What happened?”
Kimball looked at me flatly. “There was another murder.”
I took this in and nodded and then forced myself to ask, “Who . . . was it?”
“We don’t know.”
“I don’t . . . understand.”
“There were only body parts.” He unclasped his hands, opening them, revealing his palms. My eyes were drawn to Kimball’s fingernails. He bit them. “It was a woman.” He kept sighing. “I’ve been busy all day with this, and I didn’t want to bother you about it because the crime deviated from the theory we had.”
“Meaning . . .”
“It wasn’t in the book,” he said. “The homicides we investigated in Midland County starting this past summer—we thought—were ultimately connected to the book and, well, this one . . . wasn’t.” He looked over my shoulder and out the window. “This was a serious deviation.”
Immediately: I was cut off. I was on my own. Telling Kimball about Clayton wouldn’t mean anything. It didn’t matter now. It already seemed as if Kimball was dismissing me. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he didn’t trust the story line anymore.
The crime scene—the murder that shattered the pattern—at the Orsic Motel, just off the interstate in Stoneboat, was insanely elaborate. There were ropes and body parts positioned in front of mirrors; the head and the hands were missing, and the walls were splashed with blood; there was evidence that a blowtorch had been used at one point, and the bones in both arms had been broken before the skin had been peeled off, and a woman’s torso was found in the shower stall, and a huge drawing—in the victim’s blood—of a face adorned the wall above the gutted bed with the words—I’M BACK—also dripping in blood, scrawled below it. There were, again, no prints. “No one even knows how the room became occupied . . . The maid . . . she . . .” Kimball’s voice was fading.
It was getting dark in the office and I reached over and switched on the lamp with the green glass shade sitting on my desk, but it failed to illuminate the room.
As I listened to Kimball my heart was whirring erratically.
Though the crime scene had not been contaminated, the print man could not even come up with smudges or smears, and technicians found no signs of footprints or fibers, and serologists inspecting the spatter trajectories and the defensive wounds had found no blood samples other than the victim’s, which was exceedingly rare considering the brutality