The Blue Hour

Forty-Two

She saw the room through pressure and pain. It was an upside-down world of chrome wheels, spray guns and canisters, the walls lined with Peg Board and hung with hand tools and posters of women, a concrete floor — directly below her, just out of reach of her fingertips — stained with layers of paint and oil and fluid. It was all flushed in red.

When she turned to her right she could see the grill and headlights and tires of a silver panel van. She was too far away to see the tread patterns. Near the van was a gleaming yellow-and-black convertible of some kind. If she tightened her stomach and neck muscles and strained into a sit-up she could see her legs all the way up to her boots, which were lashed together with orange rope and tied to a platform that was elevated high off the ground. Merci had heard Ike in the impound yard call such a platform a “rack.”

The pain was excruciating and inescapable. It was like having your head pumped with molten lead. The swollen flesh of her face pushed against the tape that was cinched over her mouth. She could feel it cutting in. If she folded up at the waist and got her head level the pressure would stop growing for as long as she could hold it. But that wasn’t long. And it sapped her strength, with the five pounds of body armor choking off her breath and sending the sweat running in a steady stream off her chest and down into her eyes. The muscles in her armpits were burning and stretched. Her wrists were locked together with tape and her fingers, dangling almost to the floor, felt like they’d been scorched and split and rubbed with salt. Her ankles throbbed with the pain of constant strangulation. She felt nothing in her feet at all.

And through it all she smelled the gagging sweet smell of chloroform, which she remembered from chemistry class was a simple CHCl₃ chain once popular as an anesthetic. So far the bastard had hit her twice with it while she dangled here, plus at least once in her car and God knew how many times while they were in transit.

Her H&K was gone — she’d seen him handling it over by one of the workbenches. Her ankle cannon was gone, too. He had laughed at it, then put the tiny thing in his pocket. Her only undiscovered secret was the Chinese-made Italian stiletto, which was in the bottom of her purse. And her phone. But her purse remained just out of the reach of her outstretched hands, purposefully placed on the floor like some ideal, something she could strive after for the rest of her life and never quite get. She wondered if she could get herself swinging like a pendulum the arc might bring her within reach of it.

“Time’s a running short,” he said. His voice was calm, accented lightly in a strangely indefinable American manner — kind of western but southern, too, a hint of Texas and maybe Arkansas and even California. There was another influence floating around in his voice and Merci assumed it was the Romanian inflection learned early in life by Matamoros Colesceau.

“I don’t like to work fast,” he said. “Because you know, honey, it’s the process that’s important.”

Merci had no voice. The tape choked off her words and left her with only grunts and growls. And there was the damned roaring of blood in her head. It was like standing next to a waterfall or a jet.

What she thought was, important for who, shitbird? But even her own thoughts sounded feeble and far away.

“So I am going to have to move things along. Don’t want the owners getting here at nine, and us still around.”

Merci looked at him: a short, chubby man in boots and tight jeans, a boldly striped country-singer shirt and black leather vest. And flowing blond hair and a thick blond mustache that she knew to be fake, though in spite of her knowledge looked undeniably authentic. But under it all she recognized Colesceau, even upside-down like he was, something in his posture, the shoulders hunched to hide the budding breasts, the sad, untrusting eyes. Yes, this was the man she had talked to just a few days before.

The one she’d bullied and disrespected and dismissed. Called stupid on TV.

The one Hess understood but couldn’t explain to her. Or even to himself.

More disturbing than his appearance was the gleaming contraption over which he stood: an embalming machine, likely the one delivered to the Rose Garden Home. She wondered if the mother was in on all this.

She tried to get herself swinging in the direction of the purse. She might be able to grasp it with her blood-bloated fingers, get to the knife and... what? At first she hoped to be covert about it, but soon understood that just getting some momentum took a lot of work. She flexed her legs, bent at the stomach, swung her aching head. When she felt the first small kinetic glide of energy kick in, she turned her head to look at him. He had one of the embalming machine tubes in his hand, but he was watching her.

She watched him back and kept pumping with her shoulders and hands, and tightening her calves to create sway. It was amazing how much effort you could put into something for so small a result. He dropped the end of the tube and picked up a half-gallon bottle of something and began pouring it into the canister on the machine.

She had to slow him down long enough to let someone in the world find her, but it was hard to imagine someone finding you when you had no idea where you were.

A shiver of fear broke over her. It was like drowning — no oxygen and a need to scream. She told herself to be calm. Calm but alert. She estimated how far her body was swinging now, in each direction away from center. It seemed to be about four feet. The purse was still at least a yard away from her hands. Through the red panic and a sudden clutch of nausea Merci tried to counsel herself: I will you to stay calm. I will you to overcome this situation. I will you to prevail.

But it was extremely hard to draw extra breath with your mouth taped shut.

“That’s funny,” he said. “Hold on now, honey. I’m gonna hit the brakes.”

He came around behind her and Merci felt the rope stiffen, breaking her momentum and slowing her. Something inside her panicked, then broke.

She flailed blindly with her bound wrists, in hope of catching any part of him. What she wanted most right then was just to make him hurt somehow.

She heard fluid splashing into fluid. She turned her head — God, it was just a throbbing ball of pain — and watched Colesceau swing into view. He plugged an orange extension cord into the wall. He carried the contraption toward her, setting it down on the stained concrete floor.

Merci felt her body settling into a little circular orbit now. The dregs of her energy were all that was left. As she swung slowly on the rope she tried to think of how to best stall Colesceau, give him something to worry about, give her companions in law enforcement time to find her.

She watched him approach her, upside down, blond waves on his shoulders, boots shining, vest taut.

“Nice try,” he said. He steadied the rope. “I don’t see anything else you could have done, little woman.”

Then he reached out his hand. He seemed to be offering her one of those faded red shop rags sold in bunches of fifty. It was folded neatly and cupped in his palm.

She felt his boots press her fingers against the floor. She knew if he put all his weight on them she’d lose a knuckle or two, maybe more. But the smell of the CHCI₃ hit her and she couldn’t help herself. All the panic rose inside her and it put up a ferocious struggle to get out. She tried to pull her hands free of his weight but it was useless. She screamed against the tape. She felt him grab her hair hard and press the cloth up tight to her face. For the first time in her life Merci thought of heaven as a place with a door, and the door would not open.

And back she fell into the soft black nowhere.

Colesceau unfolded one of the big gray blankets used to protect newly chromed or painted automobile parts, and laid it down over the stained floor. Then he lowered the unconscious Merci to the blanket. He cut away her blouse. He unfastened the heavy bulletproof vest and cut her bra off and set them aside. He ran his fingers lightly over her pale skin and kissed each nipple and was pleased to feel them harden between his teeth. Then off with her boots and pants and undies. He was efficient but not hurried. He arranged her hair up, a crown of dark lavish curls.

He stood and looked down at her. She was more beautiful than he’d thought she’d be: large, well proportioned, strong but smooth, like a mare. Powerful legs, but shaped well. Not very hairy, considering that dark-haired women often had extra. Big knockers, as the Americans liked to say. The way her beauty marks contrasted with her skin was exhilarating.

He regretted that he’d have to drain and preserve her simultaneously — standard operating procedure taught at mortician school — but for Colesceau a hurrying of what should be a calm, meditative and often erotic procedure. Still, an hour and a half should be plenty of time. If push came to shove he could load her into the yellow-and-black Shelby Cobra, squeeze the Porti-Boy into the trunk and check into a motel somewhere to finish his saving. A little TV volume would be enough to disguise the chugging of his machine. Maybe he could find an old western on.

He touched the red ligature marks around her ankles. They would restore easily. Same with the tape marks on her wrists, but it wasn’t prudent to cut that tape away just yet. Or the mouth tape, for that matter. He moved the Porti-Boy up close and hit the “on” button just to test it. The motor whirred assuringly and he turned it off.

Well, he thought: cut in, hook out the carotid and install the insertion tube. When everything was up and running he could start massaging the life out of her and the preserving fluid in. Inject her with eternity.

He took the blade from his instrument book and started pushing his fingertips down into the gristle around her clavicle. And there it was, lovely carotid, throbbing against his finger like a snake.

What a weird thing to be doing, he thought, going to so much trouble to preserve a cop.