Jericho's Razor (3 page)

“I can start some coffee if you want.”

I said that coffee would be great, but I eyed the small square-shaped lump in the chest pocket of Rourke's uniform. I asked to bum a smoke and he handed me a Winston. Not my brand, but I wasn't going to be picky. I fired it up, letting the harsh hit of nicotine fill my nose and lungs, kissing like an old flame. Rourke left me there, sitting in a tiny room with in a hard chair and waiting to be grilled by a team of detectives.

The interrogation room was a contrast to all that I had ever described in my books. Usually, I wrote them as being dimly lit, cramped spaces that stank of stale cigarette smoke and urine and fear. This one was brightly lit with clean white walls and off-white tile floors. It smelled of disinfectant and Pine-Sol. The requisite large mirrored glass took up the east wall. I tried to ignore it. I shifted my chair so that my body was turned in the other direction, but still it was there, large and intruding.

Ever since my sixteenth birthday, I have been unable to look in mirrors. The technical term is
catoptrophobia
. It's not the mirror itself that put me at unease, but rather the image staring back. I had none in my apartment—not even in the bathroom, which is fine since I hate shaving and rarely bother. The rearview mirror had long since been removed from my car, a violation I occasionally had difficulty explaining to patrol officers. With no other focal point in the room, the mirror stared at me, daring me to stare back.

Forcing myself to think about something else, I smoked the cigarette to the filter, trying to find a plausible explanation for the night's events. Someone was obviously messing with me, although not so much as they were messing with whoever was the headless corpse in my building. At book signings and other appearances, I often ran into fans who, at best, could be classified as “borderline.” While I had only one modest fansite, Christian Black had over a dozen. Roaming cyberspace were thousands of fans who studied, discussed, and critiqued the homicidal acts of my recurring character. Sitting in an interrogation room, having witnessed an all too real manifestation of one of Christian Black's more noteworthy exploits, I considered the possibility that one of those crazed fans had taken their obsession to the next level.

Rourke knocked sharply on the door, came in, and set a ceramic coffee mug on the table. He also left me another cigarette and a plastic lighter.

Fans.

The young officer disappeared as I lifted the steaming mug and took a drink. The brew lived up to every cliché about horrible police station coffee. Maybe that was why you always saw cops at Starbucks. My knuckles rapped on the battle-scarred table. Keeping track of time was something that the design of the room prohibited, but my best guess was that I had been waiting for at least an hour. Probably longer. My body was approaching shut down. Four weeks removed from my breakup with Katrina, I was still lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night, fueling myself with coffee and nicotine. With nothing to do but wait, I decided to take a nap, not caring that it would make me look guilty as hell. My chainsaw was sitting beside a dead body, the body was sitting in my building, and I had no real alibi for the time of the murder. Getting caught sleeping was the last thing I should worry about.

I woke to the sound of the door slamming. A detective walked in, a clean-cut Hispanic man in his late thirties. Young, but didn't look it. Not the way Rourke looked it, doe-eyed and unsure of himself. By the way he smelled, I could tell he had just come to the station from my building. The smell of death was on him, although I caught a whiff of cologne, as though he had splashed some on after leaving my building to try and cover the stench. He stretched, cracked his neck and took the seat opposite me. His posture was slightly sagged, but he still carried himself like somebody who was used to being in charge. I stole a glance at his watch and saw that it was Four-thirty in the morning. I had been stuck in the room even longer than I thought.

“My name is Eddie Torrez. I am the lead detective of this investigation. The purpose for this interview is to get your formal statement on the record. You are not currently under arrest. However, you do have the right to have counsel with you for this interview. Would you like to have a lawyer here?”

“No.”

“Your decision.” He said, his tone indicating he thought it was a bad one. “Have a good nap?”

“Not bad.”

“Nice shirt.”

I knew what I was wearing—it was the same shirt I had been wearing for the past two days—I but looked down anyway. It was a black T-shirt with
I'M ALREADY GOING TO HELL, NOW I'M JUST TRYING TO GET A GOOD SPOT
written on it. It was a dig toward my parents who used religion to justify their homicide. I always thought it was funny. However, it was probably not the best impression, given the circumstances.

“I read in an article somewhere that you were an atheist.”

“I am.”

“Which means that you don't believe in Heaven or Hell.”

“Exactly. That's why it's funny.”

“Right. Because the very best jokes are the one you have to explain.”

Torrez got to business by asking me to state my full name, address, and occupation. It's how cops always begin interviews, because it gets the person across the table in the habit of their answering questions. They ask your name, where you live, and then toss out a zinger like “Have you killed anybody lately?” It's shameful how many people fall for it. It's why you are never supposed to talk to cops without a lawyer.

He was writing my answers on a yellow legal pad. “You go by Jericho?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Middle name is Thomas?”

“That's right.”

“And you go by Sands? Not Sandborn?”

Sandborn was the name I was born with, the name synonymous with murder in the name of religious extremism. Two decades later, it still followed me. Especially on those times when I had to talk with the police.

“I had it legally changed when I was eighteen,” I said.

“Why?”

“If your last name was Manson you might consider changing it to Mann. It makes it less awkward when people introduce you at parties.”

“But everybody knows who you are. Your career depends on it, right? You cash in on your name, regardless of whatever you shortened it to.”

I decided right then that I hated Torrez, even though technically he was correct. While true, it was not a concept I even considered when I was eighteen. All I wanted at the time was to be somebody else, and a name change was an easy step in that direction. It was not until much later that I realized I would always be me, would always carry my DNA no matter what I called myself or where I went.

“Your date of birth is January nineteenth, nineteen seventy seven.”

“Yep.”

Torrez set the pen down on the notepad. Straight up and down. Middle of the page. It was the sign of an ordered mind that valued control and reason. Add to that the obvious dislike for sarcasm, and I figured that his would be the desk I saw that looked like it was vacuumed on a daily basis. Meaning his partner was the slob. Must be a fun pair. Torrez made me recount the events of the past twenty-four hours, all while taking notes and flipping pages like a writer in the middle of brainstorm. He asked his next question without looking up.

“This video message was sent to your cell phone?”

“I received it on my phone. It was sent to an email account.”

“How many people have access to that account?”

“Pick a number. It's posted on fan pages. Anybody could have it.”

“You don't screen these things?”

“No.”

We stared at each other from across the table.

“Your dog is making quite an impression.”

I smiled. Before being taken to the station, I left Doomsday with a topped-off food bowl and instructions not to maul any of the officers who would be snooping around the apartment. There was no doubt in my mind that the dog would do as he was told. But the people he eyed like lunch would not be so sure.

“I told him to stay. He'll stay.”

“I'm sure he will. But he made some of the crime scene people uneasy.”

“I would think that the decapitated corpse would make them uneasy. If they can handle that, my dog shouldn't worry them.”

Torrez nodded.

“Good point. You don't seem too shaken up by it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, in all candor, Jericho, that is the sickest fucking shit I have ever seen. I had to bring in five-gallon buckets for the cops who were barfing just from the smell. The unlucky bastards who saw that massacre didn't make it to the buckets, making the job of preserving the integrity of the crime scene a real nightmare. Hell, my partner almost barfed a few times and she is tough as they come. But you ... nothing. In fact, you were fast asleep when I came in.” Torrez shrugged. “I don't know. It must be the genes.”

I didn't need a lawyer to tell me not to respond to that one. Torrez seemed surprised that I did not swing at such an easy pitch down the middle of the plate. So he threw another one.

“You look just like him,” he went on. “Your hair is longer, and the five days' growth hides it a little, but you really are his spitting image.”

“So I have been told.”

“That must be why you don't like mirrors. It must bother you to look so similar to a monster.”

“Do you have an ID on the victim?”

“You didn't recognize him?” Torrez asked.

“No. The missing head made recognition difficult.”

Torrez sat back. “His name was Sean Booker. He was mostly into drug dealing, but he also dabbled in the sale of illegal firearms and stolen property. An all-around asshole.” He looked at me from across the table. “Still doesn't ring any bells?”

“No.”

“That's funny. Because …” Torrez rummaged through a file, ostensibly searching through a stack of documents. He found the page he wanted and placed it on the table. “Two weeks ago, he was questioned by robbery detectives regarding a break-in at a local nightclub, the Blue Note. This took place on the fifteenth of this month, which would have been a Wednesday. I assume you are familiar with the crime I am talking about, since it was your bar.”

“It's not my bar.” I told him. “But yes, I am familiar with it.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“You have it right there in front of you.”

“I'd like to hear it from you.”

I shrugged. “Somebody threw a brick through the window, grabbed whatever he could carry, and ran out.”

Among the stolen items was a black Gibson Les Paul autographed by Slash. The musician had stopped at the bar after a concert downtown and played a few impromptu sets with the house band, even inviting me to sit in. The instrument he left had been placed over the bar, along with photos of me playing back-to-back with the guy most responsible for me picking up a guitar. Slash was a genuine guy. Upon hearing about the robbery, he immediately sent a replacement. But I was still pissed.

“It says here that surveillance videos were unable to provide an identification of the perpetrator.”

“That's right. The guy wore a sweatshirt with a hood and kept his head down. He also wore a ski mask. Low-budget, but effective.”

“Must have been aggravating. Someone breaking into your place. Taking something so personally valuable. Irreplaceable, really.”

I took a deep breath, not allowing the detective to get me riled up. Not an easy task considering I had been awake for roughly nineteen hours and was suffering a crash from severe caffeine and alcohol withdrawal. I was going to need either a pot of strong coffee or twelve hours of sleep when they let me out of here.
If
they let me out of here.

“You really think I would kill somebody over a guitar?”

Torrez shrugged.

“I've seen people kill for all kinds of shit. I once arrested a guy who killed his neighbor because he could hear his alarm go off at four thirty in the morning every day through the wall. He finally got sick of it, knocked on the guy's door and stabbed him sixteen times with a kitchen knife.”