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.