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  Joshua breathed in the smell of deep lust and grinned. This ride had, in a way, been his best yet.

  Since he had tied her wrists to her ankles, not to the legs of her bed, she had really moved, oh how she had moved. He had felt like a cowboy on a rodeo, trying to stay on top of her and keep his dick inside her, as she wailed, and alternately blew up bubbles in the cling film from her inner reserves of air, and then vacuum-stuck it to her face, as she tried to take a breath.

  It was even better than the annual Bonding Rite.

  Well, not better as such, he corrected himself quickly, but certainly more intimate.

  He squeezed her breasts one last time. They were fantastic. A notion appeared out of nowhere: he could cut them off and take them with him. Perhaps even eat them? He bent over the body and opened his mouth, imagining how the flesh would fill his mouth and yield to his teeth.

  He straightened up abruptly, dismissing the idea. That would be simply crazy.

  Joshua squatted by his magic bag and took out the one thing that he always took out last: the portable vacuum cleaner. He quickly sucked away the possible invisible particles on and around the bed.

  There was always a chance that a hair, or a skin flake, or a piece of spit or sweat would give him away. He knew that was highly unlikely. He was, after all, a wizard. Fate was his ally, as long as he didn’t break the sacred rules.

  Then it was time to go, to take care of business. He was an important man and without him, the business would not survive. Many customers depended upon him, so fun and games were all very fine, but he had to remember his duty.

  A real man never allows his pleasure to disrupt his duty.

  He went out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the front door. He stopped himself just in time from pressing it shut. With a decadent giggle, he left it slightly ajar.

  It was already nighttime.

  As he walked, his footsteps echoed in the crisp chilly air. He whistled to his car and it lit up with subtle ka-chinks of the doors unlocking.

  A young man walked past, looking straight ahead of himself. As he passed by Joshua, the sound of machine-gun electronic drums and squeals and beeps flared up for about ten seconds, before quickly receding.

  One of the youth’s earphones was dangling, a tiny music spewing butt plug, while the other tiny butt plug was presumably deep in his ear. Just like mental fashion dictated.

  Joshua climbed into his car, flipped on the swanky interior light and looked at his notebook, to remind himself of where he had planned to go this time.

  To the north industrial zone.

  He turned the ignition key and switched on the surround system. An expansive pop opera stimulated his glands, catering to his sophisto tastes, and he whistled softly to himself as he drove past increasingly ugly neighborhoods, until night really descended all around him, signifying that he had finally left the city limits.

  He made a slow careful turn to get off the paved road, which would otherwise take him to a suburban cluster of lights, and continued out into the prevalently dark, very scantly illuminated, rust belt country.

  The giant former cement factory was rusting behind its forbidding walls for decades, but near it was a smaller island of decay, a half-dozen scattered buildings of a former dairy.

  He reached the abandoned settlement and parked his car amidst the weeds and saplings that patiently worked at widening the cracks in the overgrown concrete slabs on which countless workers in rubber boots had walked decades ago.

  A chain-link fence, torn and collapsed at half of the perimeter, outlined the territory of the derelict buildings.

  The perfect place.

  Joshua had fantasized of using it as a murder site when he first found it, but using it as a vehicle disposal site would be almost as fitting.

  In fact, completely fitting—keeping in mind that the disposal was the final act of a drama, the culmination of which was a lovely, magical killing.

  He got out of his car, took the grenade from his coat’s pocket, and after pulling the pin he placed it quickly but carefully below the car’s fuel tank. With a grin, he jogged away athletically.

  He was behind the central building of the former dairy when the dense sound wave of the car blowing up ripped through the air, like the echo of an apocalyptic pinball bouncing back and forth between from the peeling walls all around.

  So it seemed to him.

  Exhilaration like from a hit of Bursters made his skin tingle all over. He wanted to wriggle in pleasure on the ground.

  He didn’t, of course. He was in control.

  After the flash and boom of the explosion, darkness and night sounds flooded back in, except for the crackling and jerking residual tongues of flame, invisible from his position, but no doubt enveloping the carcass of the Toyota. He saw the flickering shadows dance in reflected glow.

  The night autumn air whispered soothing promises to Joshua. Now was the time for a brisk walk.

  A walk, no need for running.

  The city police were just sufficiently understaffed to be able to arrive here in twenty minutes at the earliest, if anyone saw or heard anything at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Joshua walked for a half a mile, before reaching the gas station. It was an island radiating light and a promise of warmth, situated at a point that was at an equal distance from the city limits and from the two near branches of the sprawling suburbs.

  He went inside, chose a soft porn gossip magazine from the stand and an orange juice in a fat glass bottle from the fridge, and seated himself on one of the high chairs at the coffee bar.

  Sucking the juice through a multicolored straw, he leafed through the magazine for a minute, before seeing a black Hyundai jeep pull up at the small parking lot.

  Right on time. Good.

  One had to be serious with such things.

  The driver’s door opened and a well-built man with a short haircut came out. He strode with a confident bounce through the sliding doors, and after briefly scanning the gas station café, his gaze settled on Joshua. Joshua nodded slightly and closed his magazine.

  “Good evening, Mister IT,” said the man as he neared. Joshua nodded again in answer to the polite query and stood up. They walked back to the black jeep.

  The driver opened the back door and Joshua saw a balding, sweating man somewhere between fifty plus and sixty minus, in a red tweed jacket and blue pants. Joshua climbed in and sat by the man. The driver closed the door, climbed into his seat, and turned the ignition key.

  Off they went, back to the nebula of lights, back into their city.

  “Mister IT, an honor, an honor to meet you,” said the man, pumping Joshua’s hand vigorously with his moist cold paw.

  Joshua knew the man. It was the head of the health ministry, Mister Fischhof.

  “Glad to make your acquaintance, Mister Doolittle,” he said softly, trying to ease the stress of this initial contact.

  The man was obviously nervous, tense. A first-timer. A virgin, so to speak.

  He will not be able to really believe that his dream has come true until the exact moment in which he indulges in it.

  Even afterwards, even though his friends and comrades referred him, he will still need whole months before his unease about possible blackmail subsides.

  Joshua was a professional. He made these tubs of shaking blubber with gay mustaches eat out of his hand. He opened the magazine purchased in the gas station and commented wittily on a gossip concerning the singer Doris.

  Fischhof gratefully used the chance to jabber mechanically on celebrity topics as they drove towards Joshua’s business.

  Joshua felt the man unwind just a little, like a tense client with whom the dentist swaps jokes and comments on the weather before switching on the drill. Not that there would be any d
rill in this case.

  Not unless the client himself wanted it, that is.

  The house stood on a street lined with similar houses, an enclave of the upper middle class denizens of the capital. Only private security guards cruised slowly in their cars here.

  There were no common criminals and no common policemen in this part of the city. Joshua told the driver where to park the jeep and less than five minutes later the customer, ‘Doolittle’, and him, the young wizard, went up the steps, and into the house.

  Joshua motioned to Fischhof to take residence at the visitor’s couch, while he himself went to his room and quickly changed. The customer gave a high-pitched surprised laugh when Joshua appeared in his clown attire.

  With a bow and a honk, Joshua gave the man an elegant yellow mask with an elastic band, to hide the upper section of his face, and led the now even more spooked customer up the stairs. On the second floor, Joshua took out his ring of keys and opened the brown wooden door.

  The inside the door was not brown, it was light blue and green.

  The whole room was painted in these colors and there were also charming additional details, like rainbows, teddy bears, ponies, and a few Tinker Bells waving fairy wands.

  “Ho-ho. Ha-ha. Hello, children. Hello, my little treasures,” Joshua said in his clown voice and waved at the kids.

  The kids waved back. They were four girls and four boys, all in fairly good condition—purchased two years ago.

  They didn’t talk much and couldn’t follow long sentences. All had some ticks of the faces and the limbs. They still looked good enough to fulfill their function and they had learned all the basic tricks.

  Joshua looked at the small beds lined up by the right hand wall. They looked in order, more or less. There were no dirty paper plates on the two small tables. The cleaning lady had been and gone, good.

  “Children, this is Uncle Doolittle,” Joshua said, introducing the masked sweating statesman. “He will play with you, but not all of you. Say ‘hi.’”

  “Hi, Uncle Doolittle,” the children said dutifully and one of the girls, little Dashenka, fluttered her eyelids exactly as she was taught. Fischhof was looking at little Petechka. Then he looked at Joshua with an obvious question in his eyes.

  “Just him?” Joshua asked. Fischhof nodded fervently.

  “All right, do you want to do it here, or in a separate room?” The customer pondered for a moment, before choosing ‘Here’, with a nervous lick of his lips.

  “One last question,” Joshua said, “may I shoot a video? We sometimes combine both our businesses.”

  Fischhof whipped around and looked Joshua straight in the eyes, breathing heavily, the lower part of his face turning crimson. “Of course. Of course. I will want a copy too. You can only film the first part, though. The second part is for me alone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Natalie woke up one minute before the alarm clock and got out of her bed with stiff determination. No more was the bed a soft warm nest, difficult to leave early in the morning. Now it was a treacherous and uninviting place, to be left behind as soon as possible.

  Natalie dressed herself. For breakfast she had a small cup of coffee and a cigarette. Then she discovered to her chagrin that she felt intense apprehension just from standing near the front door.

  She could not bring herself to open it.

  She cringed at the mere thought.

  Her heart started beating faster even when she only pulled the latch open.

  She let the matter rest for now, retreated to the kitchen and smoked a second cigarette to compose herself.

  Feeling slightly weaker physically, but more stable emotionally, she went to the door a second time and with only the shortest of hesitations strode over the threshold, and into her floor’s corridor.

  She couldn’t face the creaky, diseased elevator today and scuttled down the stairs. Outside, a menacing, portentous autumn day loomed at her from all directions. She tried to ignore it as she walked to the boulevard and concentrated on the traffic, trying to pick out the right car.

  She hailed a free cab, climbing inside she nodded to the vaguely familiar driver and said Jane’s address.

  That invitation for a morning brainstorm over coffee was the reason she went out a whole hour earlier. However, she was in fact grateful for that. At least she was out of her bed.

  Beyond their reach. For now.

  Before she focused her attention on the upcoming brainstorm session, or what was far more likely, a get-to-know-each-other gossip session, the cab already pulled up.

  Natalie paid and extracted herself from the back seat and grimaced as the wind pinched her face. In this part of town it was stronger and somehow drier.

  Jane did not live in a high-rise but in an old two-story house flanked by poplars and old-fashioned red brick apartment blocks.

  Natalie walked up the stone steps and stopped at the door. She looked for a button to press to announce her arrival and noticed something unnerving.

  The door was not locked.

  “No, no, no,” muttered Natalie under her breath. The dread, which she had managed to keep in check so far now, swooped down on her, pushing at her frail frame and hunching her.

  The narrow opening between the door and the door frame held a promise of something very bad. There was no sound coming from the house as far as she ascertained, and the lights were on.

  An unexpected dizzy spell hit Natalie and propelled her forward. She stretched out her hand instinctively and tried to balance herself on the door. Under the pressure of the small hand the door swung open with the softest of creaks and Natalie stumbled inside into the corridor.

  “Hello, Jane?” she asked, shaky and out of breath, as if she had run a marathon before getting to the house. There was no answer.

  She slowly went forward, for some reason stepping very lightly and holding her breath.

  The dim corridor in front of her had a big retro wooden cupboard on one side, complimented by a retro wooden coat hanger and the beginning of a staircase down at its end. Opposite to the cupboard were the entrances to two rooms.

  The first one was a reading room. One whole wall was filled with shelves stacked with books, and there was a small wooden coffee table, and a padded easy chair just by the window.

  Jane was not inside.

  A tiny, delicate, white cup with dried coffee residue on its bottom, stood on the table and a book was lying open, face down. It was a bestselling detective romance about a worldwide conspiracy rooted in the murky past. ‘Mesopotamia Factor’.

  Trying to control her misgivings, Natalie proceeded to the second room. It was the kitchen.

  There were two leather gloves and a handbag on the table. Tiny droplets fell from the tap every two seconds. With a sudden growl, the refrigerator began vibrating.

  Sweat breaking out on her forehead, Natalie reached the staircase and stopped.

  She took a deep breath and opened her handbag, pricked herself on a pen, and felt her fingers close on her phone.

  She dialed Jane’s number and waited. After a few seconds, a faraway pop melody began playing. It was coming from upstairs. No one picked it up. The upstairs floor did not creak under anyone’s feet.

  Natalie forced herself to put her left foot on the first step of the stairs. Then she put her right foot on the next step.

  The melody upstairs stopped playing. From her own phone Natalie heard the beep of a voicemail switching on.

  Her mouth set in a perfectly horizontal line and her hands clenched into small fists, she slowly walked up, reeled in by the center of her hypnotic terror, which she knew awaited her upstairs.

  The layout of the second floor mirrored the first. The first doorway presented a view of the bathroom. A white bath and a sink with a small mirror box above it, the wa
lls and floor covered by light yellow tiles.

  The other room was the bedroom. A funny smell of rotting bananas and an unflushed toilet made Natalie’s nostrils quiver as she pushed the white wooden door open. On the king-sized bed, lying on her back, with her knees pointing upwards, was a woman.

  Her hands were tied to her ankles by thin rope, head covered by some transparent material. Behind it was a face, frozen in a death grimace, with yellowish and brownish stuff on the skin.

  It was obviously Jane.

  On the floor by the bed lay a leather mask with an unzipped mouth. A mannequin stood by the bed.

  Madness.

  Natalie averted her gaze and pointed it at her phone. She started dialing the police, but her hands shook violently and her phone clattered to the floor.

  She stooped limply to pick it up and then a buzzing darkness flooded into her head, obscuring her vision. Suddenly something hard pushed at her shoulder blades. It was the floor.

  It took endless minutes for the darkness to recede slowly and to evolve first into vague objects, and then back to the normal dimness of a half-lit house.

  With a cold and slippery hand, she picked up her phone again and this time managed to call the police.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dave entered the pathology basement of Merkell College. It was a chilly and understandably unfriendly place. A morgue is a morgue. A cold bluish light washed the whole gray tiled room, adding to the already depressive ambiance.

  In this room with bleak walls and bleak lighting Dave saw two men with bleak expressions. One of them was Andy Fortham.

  He was a denim guy and was covered with it from shoulder to ankle. His brown hair was short and slightly curly. His Pancho Villa mustache, in combination with his denim attire and his slightly cracked gaze, made him look like an aging patron of a gay S/M club.

  From Andy’s point of view, he looked like a true twentieth century rocker.