. III .
Eileen had spent the better part of the previous night reading ravenously, gluttonously, as she always did. The book that had so captured her attention had been given to her by her assistant CSI, Dom Jones. Now, driving in her car, face grim with the expectancy of her first interview of the day, it rested on the vinyl passenger seat beside her. The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot) by The Master Therion, alias – Aleister Crowley. She had always believed the long-dead Crowley to be some sort of hocus-pocus magician at worst, and some perverted high priest of the profane at best. The pedantic, unassuming Jones, however, had insisted that the man was a genius, an enlightened prophet, an inspiration. Who just happened to have written a book on the tarot.
This book – The Book of Thoth – was not one of those tomes that one so easily finds in the religious/spiritual/occult section of one's local bookstore. It was not tawdry, it was not spurious, it was not flowery or ostentatious. It was dense, almost to the point of unreadable. It dealt with the arcane in an academic and specific manner – as much as such subjects could be approached. It was also highly mathematical.
In short, it was just the kind of book that Eileen Harsaw loved to read.
Her car ground to a halt on the dirt track just outside the motel. Now she felt equipped. Now she felt she had ammunition. Now she felt prepared.
With the slightest of smiles, she donned her sunglasses and got out the car.
Remy was sprawled out on the floor of the room, playing solitaire (aptly, she thought), weighing up the cards in his hands with an overstated consideration. Eileen sat quietly in the chair to his left, looking on. He looked almost like a schoolboy, sullen, silent, begrudging. Not for the first time she felt the strange electrical currents playing off and around him. Odd, to say the least. She ignored it. That wasn't why she was here.
"Where's Anna?" she asked him, her voice breaking into the quiet so clumsily that it felt sacrilegious; damaging, indeed, to the precision of his game.
"Gettin' lunch," he muttered, laying down a card. Ten of Clubs over Two of Hearts. "Still gotta eat in this godforsaken cesspit, neh?"
"Is that really her real name?"
"How should I know?"
"You're lovers."
He grunted, whether as an assent or as a negation she did not know.
"As far as I know, it's a nom de guerre," he replied, shortly. "She ain't told me otherwise. She's never told me her real name. 'Some t'ings should stay personal' [1], she said t' me. Why should she start tellin' me t'ings now?"
"I see."
Silence.
"So, did you know Lizzie Brown?" Eileen queried.
"Nope. Didn' even know her name till you CSI's started shoutin' it round everywhere." Eight of Clubs over Four of Diamonds.
"So you never knew her."
"Non. Why should I?"
"We can verify that, you know?"
"Go ahead. Dis Cajun's got not'ing t' hide."
Silence again. Eileen leaned in to watch his game better. The cards – red, white and black – were a pattern of harmony, of colour, of symbol, of algebra. He touched their edges with the reverence of a priest consecrating bread and wine.
"Do you own tarot cards?" she questioned him softly. He paused, stiffening, the King of Clubs held in mid-air.
"Non," Remy answered at last, placing the card down carefully.
"No?"
"I was brought up a Roman Catholic," he rejoined matter-of-factly. "Tarot cards, horoscopes, ouija boards, crystal balls, scryin'…Dey all evil, chere. Evil, an' fortune-tellin'. I may not be a practisin' Catholic, but de habits o' childhood, they die hard, right?" His tone was laced with sarcasm. "If mon père had ever caught me handlin' de tarot, most likely he woulda beat me."
"You were brought up with the Creoles," she persisted, obliquely.
"Superstitious people, oui, but god-fearin', none de less. More so than I ever was." He paused, glancing at her askance. "Voodoo magic was their domain, 'Eileen', not mine."
"But the cards, the playing cards…They hold a special meaning to you, don't they?"
Again, he paused, before laying down another card. "I owe de cards my life [2]. In dat, dey mean somet'ing t' me. But at de end o' de day, I throw them away. Blow 'em up, and throw them away."
Nevertheless his voice was oddly repentant. Wordlessly he completed the game, gathered up the cards, shuffled them up with an expert hand. Eileen sat back, lifting her arm to rest along the back of the chair.
"Did you know that our modern playing cards are derived from the tarot?" she said at last. He did not look at her, his hands still busy shuffling. The cards were a blur between his fingers and she could not help staring on, fascinated.
"What's dat s'pposed t' mean t' me?" he asked sourly.
"A tarot card was found by the dead body," she answered.
"Heh. And you t'ink I was de one who left it dere?" His grin was wry. "Jus' 'cos I play wit' cards?"
"No. Because you use them as weapons."
He stopped. His eyes were suddenly gleaming a fiery red. He leaned forward and set out the cards for solitaire again, but said nothing.
"The card that was left by the body was the Queen of Pentacles," Eileen continued steadily. "In the modern pack, she equates to the Queen of Spades. Each card in the pack has a certain state, a certain condition, circumstance or personality trait attributed to it. The Queen of Pentacles – or Spades, whatever you want to call her – represents a certain type of woman. In her positive aspect she is generous, secure, liberal, opulent. In her negative aspect she is suspicious, fearful and full of mistrust." She halted, seeing that he would not look at her, and her anger and impatience flared. "I'm going to ask you again, Mr. LeBeau – did you know Elizabeth Brown?!"
At the words he swung round at her, eyes flashing in that unearthly glow of theirs and for a moment, Eileen drew back, stunned.
"I didn't know de fille!" he hissed. "You can check my background all you want, you can insinuate all you want, I didn't know her! An' I sure as hell didn't kill her!"
He turned away again, jaw clenching and unclenching, eyes glaring at the cards down below as if he'd burn right through them. For the first time Eileen stood, uncertain. What did she truly believe? Did she truly believe that he was the murderer? Just because of some cards? He was holding one of them in his hand right now. The Queen of Diamonds, a single, woebegone card amongst many. She did not know. She simply didn't know.
"The murderer is going to kill again, Remy," she spoke quietly. "And he's working in a pattern, I just can't tell what it is yet. The cards mean something to you. If you think of something…"
His face was suddenly still and calm. He laid down that solitary card in his hand with a kind of resignation.
"I don' know what de cards mean," he returned at last. "I only know what dey mean t' me. I'm sorry. I can't help you."
Eileen watched him a little while longer, until she realised that his eyes kept wandering over to the clock and that he was waiting for Anna.
Without saying any further words, she turned and left.
Rogue returned with lunch to find Remy standing at the end of the bed with his back to her, looking down at something that she couldn't see. His stance was considering – legs slightly spread, arms akimbo, head cocked to one side. Not wanting to disturb his thoughts, Rogue quietly placed the food on the small table and turned. Still, he didn't acknowledge her.
Her body ached. For years they'd spent their time dancing around one another, clashing into one another, pushing one another away again. Every single moment of their acquaintance had been passionate, whether in love or anger or bitterness, it didn't matter – their relationship had been nothing if not emotionally torrid. But now, it hardly seemed fair that she should be able to touch without being afraid, and that he should back down and keep her at arm's length. And it wasn't even simply that. It was that he had changed. There was no passion left in him. And for a man who had constantly exuded sexuality ever since she'd known him, it was somewhat disconcerting.
Her body ached.
For the first time she'd been so sure about the meaning of them, and he wouldn't allow her to express it.
Still, Rogue had never been one to give in without a fight. Her wants, her needs, too long suppressed, had made her bold, impetuous, and moreover, selfish. Without a further thought she crept up behind him and slid her arms around his waist, nuzzling against the back of his neck affectionately.
"Whatcha doin', swamp rat?" she asked him.
"Thinkin'," he replied absently. There was something in his tone that made her look up and over his shoulder. Spread out at the end of the bed were the four Queen cards. Red, black, red, black. Queens, garbed alternately in their variegated finery of geometric, outrageous colour; plump as if they had feasted on fresh bloody flesh; eyes tranquil, impassive; the spindly stems of make-believe flowers clutched like swords in their hands. Neither looking at the other. Rogue shuddered involuntarily.
"Remy…?"
"There's gonna be four murders, Roguey," he stated, cutting her off.
"How d' you know?" she whispered.
"They found a tarot card wit' de body. One o' de Queen cards. One outta four, chere, jus' like in my pack."
"Ah know. They're all talkin' about the 'Tarot Card Killer' outside. It scares me, Remy. It seems so…so strange." She paused, looking down at the cards again. "But your cards are different. They ain't the same as the tarot."
"Our friend Eileen Harsaw t'inks otherwise," Remy replied grimly.
"Eileen? She was here?"
"Yeah, came jus' a few minutes ago, while you were out." He appraised the cards again, chewing his bottom lip. "Rogue? D'you happen t' know what de other three suits o' de tarot are? Apart from de Pentacles, dat is?"
She frowned, gazing up at his profile in consternation. Why was he so bothered about this?
"Ah dunno…Swords, Cups…an' Wands, ah think. But ah ain't never been into that stuff, sugah. Ah'm probably not the best person t' ask."
"Hmph," he frowned. "Where de hell are Sage an' Bishop when you need 'em?"
He was barely listening to her. Her body ached. Her patience broke. She couldn't help but lose her temper. With a sudden strength that had once come so easily to her, she pulled him round to face her, away from those horrible, horrible cards.
"Remy, stop thinkin' about this goddamn awful murder, will yah? Ah know Eileen suspects yah, an' it's botherin' yah, but ah know you didn't do it, that you just couldn't do it, so you got nothin' t' prove, okay? Ah know you couldn't have done it, because…"
She stopped, unbidden; he stared at her quizzically.
"Because…?"
"Shh. It don't matter anymore," she murmured, nestling her face into his shoulder. "We got each other; none of anythin' else matters anymore."
She wanted them both to feel it; for both of them to feel the thing they had somehow unaccountably lost upon the way. She no longer wanted these furtive touches, these stolen caresses, these lies made in the dark, in the slumberous hours near sleep or the torpid inaction of drunkenness. What she wanted was brutal and simple, brave and brazen connection. For waking skin to touch waking skin, in terms as absolute and explicit as that burst of birdsong at dawn, the sighs of some lovelorn lover, or the immutable tick-tick-ticking of a clock.
With feverish fingers she plucked the shirt from his belt; he looked down at her, not questioning the action, nor even the reason – just simply his response, and her response; an interplay of responses, each more combustible than the one that went before it, like a trail of gunpowder leading towards its inevitable and explosive conclusion. Her fingers were not shy but curious as they climbed the taut contours of his stomach and chest; it had been such a long, long time, you see. A lost art, perhaps, except that her hands were as artful and disarming as they were always intended to be. She watched him watch her feel him; this was what she wanted. The unmistakable language of the eyes, where she could see that she disarmed him the way he used to disarm her; where she could see that she pleased him. For the first time in weeks she saw the interest, the lust, the passion kindle in his eyes. Her breath quivered with expectation. Imperturbable as always, his breath simply misted the eager softness of her lips.
Don't say no to me, you can't say no to me, I won't see you denied, say nothing.
Until she reached the scar that Vargas had marked him with, and traced it with the lightest of fingers. Then he drew back quickly, wincing, eyes inexplicably drained of all expression.
"Remy?" She clenched her hands, held her fingers tight in her palms, not knowing why. The feel of him still tingled on her fingertips. It seemed imperative to her that she did not let go of it.
"Not now, chere," he muttered, hand to his heart.
"Does it…does it hurt?" she asked. It took a moment for him to realise that she was talking about the scar on his chest.
"Non. Non, not that." He turned, suddenly making for the door. Her stomach lurched.
"Where are you goin'?"
"Need some fresh air," he replied, not looking at her. "I need t' take a walk."
He pulled the door open.
"Ah'm sorry," she called.
"S'okay, chere. It wasn't de scar dat hurt. It's…it's just me, okay? Jus' me."
He left. What he didn't know was that she had meant she was sorry for disappointing him by not letting him die.
Anna Raven turned, and slowly picked up the Queen cards that still rested, like whores, upon the bed. Anna Raven calmly put them in order, and placed them at the bottom of the pack. Then she sat, and ate lunch; every so often she'd glance outside the window, waiting, waiting for something she did not know, because Anna Raven didn't really know who Anna Raven really was.
All that Anna Raven recalled was this – that she'd once had a father and that her father had hurt her. That she'd learnt how to use a gun. That she was supposed to be sweet on a boy named Cody Robbins, not a man named Remy LeBeau. Because – she reasoned calmly to herself – if she was so hung up on this Remy LeBeau guy, she would've ripped up all those cards and flushed them down the toilet. Someone else was hung up on Remy LeBeau, and that someone else could fly at sonic speed, pick up a truck with one hand, and – worst of all – leech off other people's souls. And Anna Raven didn't have any of those powers, did she?
No, no, no, Anna thought to herself angrily. Cody's just a boy, and ah, ah'm a woman. And ah love Remy LeBeau. Ah love him so bad it's hurtin' me.
There was pang in her chest, right where her heart was. She moaned softly, putting her hand – the hand that still tingled with the feel of him – against her left breast. The ache dulled, but it did not subside. That was how much her love hurt. Heavy, constant. Like some inescapable load.
What's the matter with me, am ah goin' crazy?
The fish shifting underneath her skull were quiet.
Curling up into a ball, Anna and Rogue both wept together.
Remy had decided, long before he'd left the room – long before Rogue had even returned, in fact – that he was going to take a walk in the woods that separated the motel from the bar. The sun had already been out for half a day now; it had travelled to that midway point in its course when its heat is most unbearable. Insolent, insufferable heat! Remy felt the sun on his skin as if it stood right beside him, dogging him everywhere he went with an intolerable intimacy. That it should be at its furthest point high in the sky was something of a mockery to him. He was glad for the shade of the trees. He was not so glad to see that the cops and crime scene investigators were still swarming round the cordoned off area where Lizzie Brown had first met her brutal end.
The wood was not a dense wood. If the murder had occurred in broad daylight, most likely someone in the small town would have seen it. Just beyond its outskirts lay the bar. He could see why Lizzie would have cut across through the trees to get to the motel. It made sense. It wasn't far to go. The trees weren't daunting. As far as he could tell, it was the murderer who'd been taking the risk. Anyone could've come out of the bar and seen him commit the crime.
Like Remy for instance – if he'd been sober.
He put that thought away immediately.
A man had seen him, standing on the fringes of the crime scene, and was now approaching him. It was too late for Remy to slink away, so he just stood there. The man was youngish – probably about Remy's age – rather plain-looking, with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. It was the kind of look Remy had thought out of fashion for the past four decades or so.
"You're Remy LeBeau," the man stated, when he was near enough on the other side of the police cordon to speak to him.
"An' you might be?" Remy replied disdainfully.
"Dom Jones, CSI," the man answered evenly.
"I see. So you're friends wit' 'Eileen'?"
"She's my boss."
"An' I s'ppose she's been tellin' you stories 'bout my guilt, right?"
"It's a well-known fact that the murderer often returns to the crime scene," the other replied stoutly.
Remy snorted. "Gimme a break," he scoffed.
"I know," Jones returned levelly. "It isn't evidence. Not like your shirt, for instance. We recovered it from the laundry this morning. And in case you're thinking that you washed all the evidence off, we still have ways of finding out. Luminol, for instance. It can detect blood even when it's been washed off. Makes the stuff glow in the dark, bright as daylight."
Remy stared at the man, disbelieving. This Jones – whatever his first name was, Remy couldn't even remember now – was actually threatening him? He looked like the kind of guy who could walk through life invisible. No one on the street would pay him a second glance. He was the very antithesis of Remy, in fact. In almost every way. And he had the balls to threaten him?
"I don't have anyt'ing t' hide," he growled.
"We'll see." Jones' smile was sly, lop-sided; it didn't even look like it belonged on his face at all. "And while you're here, there's a question I'd like to ask you. You were in the bar the night of the murder, right? We spoke to the bartender, and he said that you mentioned something strange not long before you left."
"I was drunk," Remy answered dryly. "I prob'ly said a lotta t'ings dat were strange, homme."
"Probably. But the bartender said you asked your girlfriend a question. Something like, was she your Queen of Hearts or Queen of Diamonds? Pretty strange question ask, don't you think? Especially considering the amount of 'Queens' we're seeing round this parts right now."
Remy gazed at the man narrowly. Of course he remembered asking the question. He'd been asking it to himself on and off for the past couple of weeks, in one way or another.
"There was a song playin' dat night," he rejoined, after a moment. "'Desperado'. De song…no, de words…dey were catchy, y' know? Dey kinda made sense."
Jones stared at him blankly.
"Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy, she'll beat you if she's able; the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet." He paused, his mouth lifting into a grin of self-deprecation. "Some people call me Gambit, 'cos I always win each game I play, no matter what. But wit' my woman, seems I drew a card an' I don't have a clue how t' play it, b'cause I ain't even sure what it is yet. Game's on hold until she makes her move. Or until I can figure out de truth myself."
Jones' face was silent, watchful. He seemed to be weighing up Remy's words carefully in his mind, as though they meant something more than what they entailed on the surface. He seemed almost touched.
"She hurt you," he stated softly.
"Women do dat sometimes," he replied, passing the man one of his old, teethy grins. "But o' course, you wouldn' know anyt'ing 'bout dat, would yah, branleur?"
Jones glared at him.
"Sorry," Remy continued jovially. "But I ain't got not'ing t' do wit' dose hocus-pocus tarot cards – dis Cajun's too simple in his tastes for pretty cards like dat. Only upmarket t'ings he likes are fine wine an' fine women. Tarot though – evil an' fortune-tellin', mon ami. Evil an' fortune-tellin', jus' like dis goddamn murderer's mind."
He walked off, a grimace on his face, a swagger in his step.
All Jones could do was stare after him, biting viciously into his lower lip.
An hour or so later, and Remy returned, a small smile on his face.
"Where've you been?" Rogue asked him. Her face was white, but all about her eyes were red. He knew it was heartless of him, but he was in such a pleasant mood that he decided to ignore it.
"Nowhere in particular," he answered with a short smile.
"Y' look happy," she remarked. Her tone was soft, but there was a querying note to her voice, as though his smile were a miracle.
"Not'ing like fresh air, mon coeur," he grinned. He didn't know why he was feeling like this. Not happy, not exuberant, not energetic, just somehow released. Free. Liberated. He'd forgotten the four Queens that he'd left lying on the end of his bed. He'd forgotten the pain in his heart. He'd forgotten how he felt so dislocated from the world and everything in it. He simply felt like the most ignorant, most blissful of somnambulists.
And Rogue smiled. She actually smiled, and it was like the first time he'd ever seen her smile.
An hour later they sat on the bed together, watching TV and munching on chips, huddled together comfortably for all the world like little children staying up too late to watch their favourite program.
And that was when the knocking had come, and what the fortune-teller had predicted finally came true.
Victim #2 – a local woman named Dottie MacKenzie, 54 years of age, a widow and a grandmother eight times over. In medieval England – or indeed during the infamous trials at Salem – she would've been the first that any sane, upstanding citizen would have marked out as being a witch. She had lived a thrifty, hermetic life on the edge of town, like bread sealed in tupperware and gone stale. People said that she had never got over the death of her husband of twenty-six years; whenever the locals saw her, she was always dressed in black – the fact that she was in mourning simply seemed to enhance the witch-like aura that she exuded. Time and seclusion had lent her bitterness; bitterness had led to a penchant for the malicious slander of neighbours, bigotry against blacks, Jews, trailer trash and mutants, and a puritanical priggishness that extended even to her own family members.
She had been found nude and spread-eagled, raped (necrophilically) just like Lizzie Brown, and quite dead, of course; her wrinkled, defiled body had been found lying in a grass verge just off one of the lesser-used town roads, and had scared a couple of children going for a piss in the bushes.
Dead approximately 3-4 hours, Dottie had been strangled, the air squeezed out of her so viciously that it was as if her attacker thought that the air in her body was a poison to be expelled from her forever. Pity that her life had to go with it. Up into the sky it had fled, like a helium balloon. The marks about her neck were a dark and angry purple.
The Queen of Swords had lain, like a last elegant eulogy, underneath her crumpled left hand.
"There must be two killers at work here," one of the investigators said, shaking his head sadly as a father would shake his head at the misdemeanours of his wayward son. "His MO isn't the same as with the first vic. Serial killers don't change their MO, not as drastically as this."
"This guy ain't a serial killer yet," returned the officer in charge, chewing on his gum as if he'd never stopped since the last murder. "We only have two vics."
"All due respect, sergeant, but this killer isn't going to stop here," A CSI said. "The profiling said the bastard's gonna carry on doing it, and looking at the state of these women… he's not gonna be able t' stop till his 'urge' peters out, the sick son of a bitch."
"But ritualistic serial killers don't kill one broad with a knife and then strangle another one," another cop persisted from the sidelines. "Not unless he has an element of the previous killing in the second. Okay, if the guy strangled the old woman, then took a knife to her throat, that'd clinch it – then it'd be the same motherfucker all right. But this…"
"You're all wrong," Eileen Harsaw spoke up. Behind her shades her cool blue eyes were on the staring face of Dottie MacKenzie. "The killer's MO isn't in the method of his killings. It's in the tarot cards that he leaves behind. The ritual is in the tarot."
"What, in those hocus-pocus cards?" the officer in charge exclaimed dubiously.
"The killer isn't just telling us what kind of women he's targeting," Eileen continued gravely. "He's telling us exactly how he's going to kill them."
"How?" Jones asked from close beside her. Two bulbous eyes were reflected in her sunglasses twice over as he stared at her in silent consternation.
"You're the expert, not me, Jones," she returned wryly. "Look – each suit of the Tarot represents one of the elements. The Pentacles represents earth for instance – Lizzie Brown was found with a piece of earth in her mouth. The Swords, however, represents air – and now we have Dottie MacKenzie, strangled; the air effectively taken out of her."
"Which means we're left with?" the police sergeant spoke expectantly.
Eileen's mouth twisted.
"Death by fire and water."
Later, in the dark, Remy lay there reminded of lavender.
He wondered, even now, why they shared the same bed, finding his answer in the once-thought of having warm arms about him. Sometimes the sweetest moment is simply in the embrace, that curious impasse, that motionless fulfilment of all that bears the name of 'love'. But they had not held another like that in a painfully long while. She was his Galatea, arms as smooth and cool and white as milky marble. He, Pygmalion, was bound to worship but no more. To touch her sent the iciest, most agonising of tremors through his heart. To touch her was to remain forever unquenched.
Rogue's fingers were wandering like piggies going to town. Her back was pressed against the length of his left arm, too close, too intimate for what he knew she was going to do. Her breath was light yet laboured. It quivered in the night some silver bell ringing: 'I love you, I need you, why won't you hold me?'
Pure desolation.
He lay quite silent, quite still and listened. Pretending to be asleep. Torturing himself and loving it with every passing moment.
Her breath quickened.
A drop of blood slid across his chest.
He sat up abruptly, switching on the light. She started like a deer under headlights, shifting upwards against the headboard; and he saw, momentarily, that her fingers were now clasping the duvet to her bosom.
"Remy?" she asked. Her voice was still trembling as though her breath and her voice were one and the same. How strange the sound.
"Not'ing," he replied, sliding out of bed. The clarity of his voice betrayed his sleeplessness to her. Galatea's cheeks now blazed.
He, nevertheless, strode into the bathroom, tugged at the light, locked the door and stood with his back against it. Vargas' scar was bleeding. Two drops of blood had formed like tears on the fringes of the fleshy pink scar tissue, only to streak downward silently.
Blood, blood dripping, one, two, over still-warm flesh…
"Merde," he muttered darkly. "M'sieu Bête, I thought you'd healed dis."
Blood on his fingers, bright and fresh as her crimson cheeks.
Old wounds are re-opening. He buckles over and staunches what he can with reams of snow-white tissue paper.
[1] In the righteous Gambit #16
[2] Gambit #6