The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 12

Ziggy crept down the empty tunnel like a rat. He darted between shadows, ears pricked for danger. Once, he was alone down here. Once, he strode through these tunnels like a man, knowing no one of consequence would ever see him. The occasional homeless people he encountered weren’t a threat. They didn’t care what he did. No one did. Everything changed when Tesla moved into his tunnels.

Ziggy hissed an expletive. That man thought he owned the tunnels. He walked around at all hours of the day or night with that animal of his. His actions had brought police down here. On one occasion, they’d occupied the tunnels for days, and Ziggy had been denied access to his trophies. That’s why he had to keep one at the office. He needed something to tide him over in case he was cut off again.

He should have killed him before he came down here. Since his arrival the man had been too well-protected by his dog and his friends. Ziggy had been forced to declare an uneasy truce.

His pace didn’t slacken when he entered the darkest tunnel. His excellent night vision allowed him to see things the women never did — tunnel openings, distant switching stations, and the silhouette of others moving about in the darkness. He’d been this way so many times that he could find his way with his eyes closed. Years before, he’d unscrewed the bulbs, separating them from their power source. No one had ever bothered to fix them, and darkness became a permanent presence here. No one could see him.

He stepped onto a rusty track and walked it like a balance beam. Rust made whispering sounds under his shoes, a noise he’d never be able to hear in the clamor of the city above. Down here he’d found true peace.

He spun around and walked backward, moonwalking like Michael Jackson along the track. He was confident on the balance beam. Long ago, his mother had enrolled him in gymnastics, and he’d been surprisingly deft at it. He had the coordination and strength of a feral animal. He never used his strength, even down here. He preferred to stalk and conquer his prey using only his insight into their natures. Once he showed them their innermost selves, the women were grateful when he helped them do the one thing he could not yet do himself.

His feet advanced along the metal until the old track ended. He knew to step off right before it ended. His front foot landed lightly on sharp rocks covered with dust. He took seven medium-sized steps, then reached for the door handle.

The door was open.

His heart jackhammered in his chest. He touched the edge of the door one more time, hoping he’d been wrong, that it was closed the way he’d left it. His fingers ran down the edge of the cold metal, slipped off the door, and touched the frame a finger’s length behind it.

“How could they?” his childish voice wailed.

He clapped his hand over his mouth. He must be quiet. He must be cunning. He turned in a slow circle, eyes probing the inky blackness, listening, smelling. Minutes passed before he was satisfied that he was alone. Someone had come, but was now gone.

With two fingers, he swung open the door. As always, the well-oiled hinges didn’t make a sound. He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Back against the door, again, he listened. All was still. His breath came out in a whoosh. He was alone in the room.

He reached to the side and flicked on the light switch. Milky light flooded the empty room. He blinked in the brightness. He saw the damage at once. Someone had dug up his special spot.

He rushed to the corner and fell to his knees in the cold dirt. Claws had gouged the soft earth and torn out what lay below. A dog. Not just any dog. It must have been Tesla’s yellow mutt. The beast must have smelled his treasures and taken them. Why would a dog want his prettiest things? A dog didn’t need them.

With a howl, Ziggy dug as the animal had. He should have found nine lipstick cases. The tenth he carried in his pocket. His collection contained ten lipsticks, divided into five pairs. The sets had to be used in pairs.

The hole was very deep before he gave up. He laid all the lipsticks he found in a line on the floor. Seven remained. The man had taken away three. Even worse, those three were part of three different pairs. Ziggy would have to throw the singletons away. That left him with only two intact pairs — four precious lipsticks.

He cradled one in his palms. Mud streaked its shiny black surface. He polished it against his pant leg until it gleamed again. He remembered the woman who’d stroked this lipstick across her thin, expressive lips. Rita.

He dug frantically, throwing dirt around the tiny room, but it was no use.

Ziggy repeated the ten names in his head, each tragic face appearing before him. Without the lipsticks to anchor him, he’d start to forget them. Each woman was irreplaceable — Brittany with her warm brown eyes and her sexy despair, and opposite her, Inga with eyes like chips of ice that masked a deep, cold sorrow; Gretchen with the spray of freckles across her cheekbones and a nose like the beak of a stork, and Nan with her sensible shoes; Heather with her tilted nose, Irish accent, and hands like a lumberjack, and Monique’s waist-length hair that shimmered like a curtain of gold when she moved; Paulina had short hair like a GI and wore a flowered dress and smoked two packs that evening, paired with Angela whose hair was too red to consider until he saw it was dyed. Rita with her red dress and spiky hair and Sandra sparkling in silver. Only two pairs remained: Brittany and Inga, Sandra and Rita.

His treasures had been dug up like bones, their elegance defiled by mud and dog spit.

The child inside grieved the loss of his treasures and the years of work, but the man worried that the objects had been found. It would take an extraordinary turn of events for the lipsticks to be tracked to their erstwhile owners or to him, but it’d already taken an extraordinary turn of events for that man and his dog to find his hiding place. He could leave nothing to chance.

He’d allowed the man to live unmolested down here.

But the truce was over.