In Laymon's Terms

Rain Graves

IVE BODIES LAY nude and glistening on a tiny, maggot-infested sand clot that gently tugged at polluted fingers of the Potomac River. Four were nondescript men of equal size and height, blonde hair and complexions, with fine manicured hands that bore no callus, no strain or blisters. The fifth man was tall and handsome, black hair and bronze skin with the hands of a man who worked wood and steel for long hours under a hot sun. His hand was outstretched, pointing east, and his jaw was open, suggesting a word or phrase had caught him just before death.

There was no evidence of a fight, and the bodies had not been tossed carelessly over the Maryland cliffside to land haphazard on the small inlet. They had been carried in the rough current by some water vehicle that was careful enough to navigate the rocks and treacherous current. It seemed almost impossible, since rowboats would not have borne the weight of five men, six including the killer, or seven if he had help.

Kayakers seemed the only ones able to navigate the current at that part of the river, and it had been a kayaker that had found them. Not without a handful of horrified people at the top of the cliff on the Virginia side of the river. Firemen in training, ready to reppel down the rocky sides.

The bodies had been arranged like mocking dolls, heads bent raggedly on each other’s shoulders, arms creatively posed so that rigor mortis would keep them up, down, offering like mannequins, for at least forty-eight hours in the early morning humidity. Each had an erection, seemingly an afterthought—but it was the erection that had gotten them into the predicament of death. That much was clear. What wasn’t clear, was why...or even how, when, and where. Or the offset of the fifth man...about a foot-and-a-half away from the others, merely holding hands with the nearest blonde victim .

There were neatly stitched wounds over each man’s heart, and a strong settling of blood along the lower half of the testicles, suggesting each had worn a cock ring well into death. The rings had to have been cut somehow. There were tearing signs of intercourse, possibly rape, in each anus, but no blood, nor semen other than the victim’s own had been found within the orifice. Almost as if it had been smeared there as a joke.

A check into their histories showed they were all affluent businessmen with somewhat seedy or perverted pasts. Nothing out of the ordinary...except...the fifth man did not fit the profile of the others. He’d been a carpenter working on the restoration of the Capitol building. Almost an afterthought.

The coroner held up something that looked flat, plastic, and flexible, covered in postmortem slime.

“Will you look at that?” he said, turning it over in his hands.

“What is it, Harry?” Nick said, eyebrows arched inquisitively.

“It’s a playing card,” Harry said, flipping it over to show him the picture.

“An Ace,” said Nick. “Where’d you find it?”

“It was attached to the heart of the first one, with a fishing hook.” Harry picked up the bloodied hook, and simulated how it may have been inserted and attached, while holding it up in the air.

“Well,” Nick sighed, “better open up the other ones. See what else we got.”

“Allrighty. This may take a while. I’ll give you a call when I’m finished, with the results.”

“Ok. I’ll be following up on some stuff—maybe get a line on where the hook was purchased, so if you get the machine, ring the cell phone.”

“Got it.”

Nick held up the plastic playing card, turning it over several times in the light to catch the leering face of the Joker, over and over again. There were too many variables to make sense, he thought, looking over the coroner’s report, wondering what the significance was. Each blond man had an Ace from a single playing deck fish-hooked to his heart, but that hadn’t been all of it. The sex angle was disturbing, but not enough of a lead to go on. It was almost haphazard, this killing...He’d scoured the Block in Baltimore, looking for a sex club that might somehow give him a connection among the four men. Nothing came up. They’d each visited every strip club in the city, and were repeat customers, though neither business nor friendship connected them.

It had to be the sex, he thought, over and over, but fingering the Joker he knew he was dealing with a lot more. He was sitting at the LuckyLust, a strip joint near the harbor, watching the happy-hour crowd leer at a less-than-attractive blonde woman gyrating onstage. She had frizzy, bleached hair, and the same blank stare as the rest of them, cellulite lining her legs and buttocks. The men were glassy-eyed, sipping over-priced beers and waiting for the right moment to let her know they were thinking about her. The floor was sticky. He felt a little sick, and a little embarrassed when his cellular phone rang. It only generated a handful of stares.

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“Another five bodies were found at Seven Locks. You’d better come down.” Officer Briggs had a rough voice, and even Nick could tell he was nervous.

“Anything different?”

“You could say that...”

“Same guy?”

“Definitely—but he’s building an interesting M.O.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got a problem...”

“What kind of problem?”

“I can’t really talk about it on this line. You really should come down.”

“I’m on it...One question—”

“Yeah?”

“Did he do them on the river?”

“Yep.”

“I’m on my way. Make sure the news doesn’t get ahold of it.”

“I don’t think it’s the news we’ve got to worry about, this time.” The phone gurgled static and went dead. Nick took a last glance at the woman dancing, before leaving. He knew the only kind of trouble that wasn’t the press, had to be the Feds.

Mara kept digging into the meat of the fish with her thumbs and a sharp cleaning knife as the talk radio crooned on in tones of monotony, various political issues flooding her small barn in Frederick, Maryland with background noise. The pond had been good to her today. Her hands were tired and her fingers were sore, blisters forming where there once were calluses to mark her lily white hands, now darkened with a day’s tan, mingling with bits of blood and fish gristle...tainted. She clawed with her fingernails, scraping at the sinewy fibers, pulling out guts and innards much more anxious than she had been angry before—always angry in the beginning.

Cleaning fish reminded her of the government, and the game laws. Her muscles flexed, and she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her oversized hands. She was proud of them, what they could do for her. How they could feed her.

Mara was hungry...hungry for attention, hungry for validation, vindication, vestal purpose. Most of all, she was hungry for the truth.

She found her way in beneath the bone. Her diligent scraping had paid off, and she smiled wildly at her success—a smooth pocket engulfed her index finger, rubbery and slick. The tail still twitched, and the head still moped with a mouth that opened and closed, even though it had been removed from the body already. Catfish were so damned hard to kill, she thought.

The feeling of warm fish-skin along her arm was warm like the sun on her face when she woke up for the first time, realizing the entire corruption, all at once. It was symbolic and frightening—the awesome plan that had been in motion for more years than she cared to admit, far beyond her study at the University of Maryland, or Johns Hopkins. It was American University that really stimulated her appetite for knowledge...her appetite for politics. But to become a senator or a house official was not enough; she could not waste her time that way. She was far more intelligent than that, and country folk at heart—she had to be true to her roots. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, Mara thought. In the end, it was better to keep her enemies as far from her as possible. She couldn’t get herself killed. Not early on, anyway. She was still flying above the radar, unsuspected and uncorrupt in the eyes of the American Government.

Mara paused, listening to the radio.

The Cold River Killer is still at large today. Authorities have not released the details of the latest deaths...The suspect is believed to be a white male, roughly six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds...

She wondered for a moment, fingers lodged behind the horns of the second catfish she’d been working on cleaning, paused only with interest in the poisonous ability these simple, bottom-feeding fish possessed. A pang of fear stabbed at the back of her throat for just a moment. She dismissed it as soon as she felt it, picking up her favorite knife and chopping off the head of the fish. Mara shrugged, knowing the news never reported the truth. The truth was too important for the masses, she thought, smiling into the blood and guts of her work. She had just enough time to finish cleaning the last fish, cook up the filets in a cornmeal batter, before heading off to work.

It’s advised that if you must fish, to take extreme caution fishing in the Potomac, and report any strange activity to the police as quickly as possible...

“They don’t even know what they’re looking for,” Mara mumbled. “Idiots.”

Nick sat at his desk in northwest D.C. He stared hard at the evidence, each Ace with a name, brief description, and a profession etched onto a piece of note paper and taped to the back of the colored card. There were three sets of four, each from a cheap playing deck, and each with a card slightly to the side that bore a painted, leering Joker staring right back at him. The Joker mocked him. It was the wild card. The variable...but the picture the killer painted was a different story. It was the most important clue in the puzzle. The part that didn’t fit the profile.

The second set of bodies had been found at Seven Locks, more blatantly displayed along a river inlet that opened gently onto a quaint picnic area, not far from a pedestrian path, or a park house. The killer had to work fast arranging the bodies, that much was certain. Even in not doing the killing there on the embankment, he’d left few footprints and little time to waste in getting the bodies arranged and upright. Their cocks were fully erect much like the first set. If time had run out on the rigor mortis, his work would have been nullified before they could be found.

Each blond businessman was arranged again in a doll-like fashion that he’d now come to know as “puppeted,” when the papers printed it incorrectly the first time. The killer had left rough twine nailed to each finger and toe, hammering in his point, the ends of the string crudely stapled to blunt driftwood fashioned like a puppeteer’s tool for maneuvering.

It had been the dark-haired working man, slightly offset from the rest that caught his attention the most, however. The wild card. He’d cradled a book in his arms, titled Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper, and the clues with the twine and reading didn’t befuddle him. He knew he was dealing with something big, perhaps even smarter than your average Serial Killer—which was pretty damn smart. The difference was in the motive...Why kill a bunch of people just to prove a crazy-man’s point, if the answer was in the book; not even a self-absorbed point? He put Briggs on reading duty.

It was hard to keep the murders under the radar of the FBI, and leaking false information to the press was the key to getting the job to get the attention and terror of the public quicker than the attention of the government. It was inevitable, of course...he knew that. Why they hadn’t jumped in yet, he didn’t quite understand...They had to know. Perhaps they only knew as much as he did, and were waiting for someone to come up with more information before they took over his jurisdiction, or were waiting for someone to “get it.” A conspiracy is only a conspiracy theory when facts and evidence are produced to dispute a claim. Thus far, he had only symbols.

The last group of bodies was perhaps the most disturbing. They fit the M.O. perfectly, just like the last group—four blondes of varying shapes and sizes, but they were not all businessmen. They were all fathers. The killer had gone to great lengths to make sure that was the only thing they had in common, and Nick had been the one to deliver the news to each sobbing wife, sometimes with children clinging to her legs. The embarrassment of how they were found, cocks erect, was enough to cause family shame for years. It didn’t seem random that way. It hadn’t been...but the point was not the erection, or the sex. It had been a way to lure the killer’s victims, and that was all. An underlying factor to contend a build up to the rest. Sex was a key. Conspiracy was a key. A game was being played...but who were the players? What was at stake?

The third group was more than just Aces, more than just a wild card. Each body had been scrubbed raw, again, facing east, but posed as if they were praying, in various forms of recital: one man’s arms were outstretched, heavenward. One man was kneeling, hands pressed in a steeple, clouded eyes glazed empty at the sky. Another man’s forehead was pressed to the dirt.

The last man had a screaming, tortured, twisted mouth, eyes profoundly expressive in their cataracts, a delicate weave of snail-slime etching down each cheek pronounced—as if Nick would not have known the man had been crying without it. They suffered this time, thought Nick. Their tongues had been sewn to the roofs of their mouths, holding in a glutton of thick, rich oil that had been filled from the belly all the way up the esophagus. He wondered if the point of death had been choking on the stuff, but it seemed to fit a statement more than a cruel death. It was almost a work of political art.

The Joker held a different book this time. It had been a composition journal, with the word “Jihad” burned into the cover, and the names of dead children printed upon each page, he’d later found out from a friend who was able to translate the Middle-Eastern dialect. There was not a fingerprint, side-print, or other indicator to go on. The evidence was clean.

The Aces had names and dates scribbled onto the face of each card with a nursery rhyme. They mocked:

George, George

George of the Jungle

Strong as he can be!

George, George—George of the Jungle...

Nick didn’t have to guess that the Joker would be etched with “Watch out for that tree” and fish-hooked to the last victim. It was this clue that truly scared him. He knew the Feds would be looking for him soon. He was saddened, thinking of the men the killer chose to be the Jokers. They were the everyday man. The worker bees. The most important men in any society that worked...The clues were thicker, but his brain felt like molasses. He had four dead businessmen every time—the government? A working class man pointing...showing the way: East. Showing Conspiracy. Showing the President...No, he thought. The President’s Father...That could have been the key with the father connection. But why the oil? Why the holy war? What was the killer getting at? Who were the dead children to him? If it really had to do with Bush Senior, why bring it into the light now?

Mara finished her shift at the Dime Dame and headed over to Big Al’s Big Tattoos. She didn’t look back at the place, knowing it would be her last night stripping, knowing she’d never have to work another day in her life. The feeling was uplifting—almost as uplifting as she felt the day she’d gotten the job. The thought of cheating the system, stripping to pay for college had amused her to no end, and being a perpetual student gave her great joy in not ever having to venture into modern society. She never had to become a card-carrying citizen. She got around taxes, didn’t own anything—save the little barn her father had left her in Frederick—and squandered her money as she pleased.

The tattoo was the final straw, though, and she knew after getting it she couldn’t go back to work. The artwork spanned her entire body, grand finale right on her shoulder blades in the form of two upside down flags. It didn’t matter, Mara thought to herself. She’d be dead in a few weeks. They were on to her. Tonight Al would finish her up, and all she had to do was lay low and heal...That, and pay Gun his money. Gun was just that...a gun. He didn’t come cheap, but he was stupid enough to get involved for the right sum, hidden in a secure safe deposit box. The key had already been placed in an envelope, ready to mail.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Al said, looking at her skeptically.

“Yes,” she snapped. “It’s a little late to change my mind—you’ve done most of the work!”

“But the flags—I mean—it’s too fucking patriotic...or activist or something.”

“I’m not paying you for your opinion, Al. Just do the goddamn flags, ok?” He shrugged under her glare, and finished the coloring.

It took much longer for the flags to heal than the rest of her body. The lettering had been easy to take, no extra shadowing or fancy stuff that would bleed for several weeks, but when she turned around and looked over her shoulder at the waving wings of distress, she smiled more widely than ever. It was perfect, she thought. I’m an angel of liberty.

She looked down at her list of phone calls to make. There were five names, and she began with the blonds first:

“Hi, this is Mara. From the Dime Dame? I remember you too...Do you remember what we talked about? Right. 7 o’clock—and don’t be late, or I won’t be there.” She hung up the phone and dialed the second number, changing the time to 7:30, giving herself just enough time to kill the first one and hide him before her next guest arrived.

When she got to the last name on the list, she felt an adrenaline rush blushing her cheeks. Gun was it: the last one. The hard part was over. The killing and cleaning of the fish was just another chore that her medical classes at Johns Hopkins University gave her the grace to finish, and finish well. Daddy would be proud of all I’ve learned, she thought.

Mara scattered kitty litter about the barn to soak up the blood, got her rusty Ford truck ready for hauling, and tied the wagon-cap tarp down, fastening the flap to either side of the rear of the pickup. She’d close it up later, once the bodies were all inside, and in the boat. Mara and Gun would have to make quick work of things later, and she hoped he had the sense to make arrangements on vacating the scene. Once they’d backed her Ford into the river, there would be no turning back, and they would only have a twenty-minute window to work with before the next patrol would be by along that stretch of river.

Nick stared at the scene in awe. He was humbled by it, enraged by it, and completely gutted of all emotion, much like the four men littered about the crude rowboat that had long-since lost its oars, long since lost its purpose in the modern world.

He watched the photographer taking his pictures, pausing grimly when they lifted the soft white linen of the woman’s gown, fashioned like the statue of liberty—only her crown was a crown of thorns that had been wedged into her head-skin long before death, then wrapped in a head piece that looked distinctly Middle Eastern. The boat had drifted about a mile down the Potomac before landing on an inlet quite fitting of the killer’s plans—a small inlet near the Mall, where the Washington Monument stood only several hundred yards away.

As before, the four blond businessmen had been murdered, and Nick suspected the Aces would be fish-hooked to their hearts too, but their heads had been shaved in a priest-like way, and they were cloaked in the fashion of Middle Eastern women. They were positioned like anchors on each side of the dead girl, Mara Benton, but their legs were shackled to her own. They had been killed almost twenty-four hours before her death. She’d been shackled to four dead men while she was still alive...and for a moment, he thought she might have been a victim.

The thing that disturbed Nick the most had been the tattoos. He’d been looking at them when the Feds circled like cockroaches or vultures—he couldn’t think of which—to scoop up their jurisdiction and tell his boys to back off, and get the hell out. How many people have seen the body of the girl, they’d asked. What are their names, what positions do they hold...Give us more to file. We’ll be watching.

The case had been closed immediately and dismissed when they picked up Samuel “The Gun” Johnson, a petty theft and arsonist who was a paid hit man on the side for local gangs and drug runners that didn’t want to get their hands on the dirtier, lower scum of the pond.

He knew the truth, however, when he read the name that had been etched onto the prow of the boat, like something out of a Tennyson myth. It said, Shenandoah, the Indian translation of which was Daughter of the Stars. As if that weren’t enough, he’d gotten a look at the names she’d tattooed all over the front of her body—a blatant cry of anarchy summed up in one giant pentagon: every congressman and woman was listed. Every single one of the same that had stood on the steps of the Capitol Building and sung American anthems after the Twin Towers collapsed and the fires weren’t even out in their own offices...It was funny, he thought, how they were all on the other side of the building at the time of the crash. None of them died.

Like The Lady of Shalott in Tennyson’s tale—Mara Benton had an abnormally potent way of letting Camelot know it was going to fall...When he’d gone to discuss the body with Harry, the coroner had only looked down at his shoes.

“I can’t let you see it. Body’s been sealed off to everyone without an FBI badge,” he said, looking at Nick with a pale face.

“What did she do?” Harry finally asked.

“What do you mean?” Nick said.

“They skinned her before they brought her in. That’s what I mean. The whole front side of her. They had me leave that part of it out of the report.” Harry was fascinated by it.

“I figured as much,” Nick said.

“They left the upside down flags on her back, though—it was an interesting tattoo. Might be because of where the blood from the original shooting had settled, and needing that for the forged record. That Gun kid still saying he didn’t do it?”

“Yep.”

“Such a shame. Not like he didn’t deserve to go to jail. I’ve seen plenty of his handiwork, but a trigger guy like him just wasn’t smart enough to pull off these murders, if you ask me.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

When he’d gotten back to his office, Nick was still worrying over the clues Mara had left, wondering what her culmination of it all had been. He knew the conspiracy theory was pointing the finger at Congress now—but was Mara Benton just some radical obsessed with the War, or did she have a point? And why hadn’t she left a Wild Card in her grand finale? Maybe because she’d done the cutting, fish-hooking, and sewing.

The mail was waiting for him when he sat down. He thumbed through it, pausing at a small white envelope addressed in neat but angry upstrokes, flourished with bubbly cursive mixed in with print. It had been mailed from Maryland. He opened that envelope first, and in it was a single playing card with a leering jester’s grin, his heart carved out to leave a little hole, and as he held it up to the light, he read the message that had been drawn in with permanent marker. It read: 911.

Nick sat back in his chair, wondering how the piece of mail had slipped through the eyes and ears of the FBI. He turned over the envelope again and looked at the date of the postmark—exactly the date the last set of bodies had been found. The Feds had their killer, all right. Skinned and on a cold slab in a sealed morgue drawer. What Nick had was anger...Was it the truth? He didn’t know.

He only knew that Mara Benton had something to say, and she said it with her life, and felt the lives of others were less important than the message. There was a War going on, that he felt was entirely senseless. A wild goose chase that led all public perception far away from what Mara implicated: that Congress was ultimately responsible for all the lives lost on 9-11, that perhaps they’d allowed it to happen knowing it would ignite a fire. Setting something into motion that went all the way back to the first Bush regime.

For the first time in his life, he truly felt like a puppet and a terrorist all at once. He didn’t need a fishhook through the heart for the pain of thousands of lives lost to sink in. He dug Mara’s photo out of a file in a pile on his desk. It’s a shame, he thought. She was so smart, and so pretty. So very alive and dead, all at once in his heart.