Spiral, page 34
part #13 of John F Cuddy Series
I watched and listened for as long as I could bear just standing there. Then I ran in a zigzag pattern toward Justo, finally coming into the range of his eyes beneath the band of wire that restricted his head movement. He began waving the little flag frantically, his eyes rolling up as though he were trying to gaze at the moon.
Reaching for the tape over his mouth, I managed to get out, ”Justo, I’ll get these off—” before a whooshing sound above and behind me made contact with the back of my head, and I felt the tree take a shot at me, too.
Nancy remained just beyond my reach, but this time she wasn’t drowning. Somehow we’d moved from the Bay area to Hawaii, and she stood in the path of molten lava, flowing down the hill toward her. Nancy was tied to a tree, her hand extending out to me. But the faster I ran toward her, the farther she and the tree receded toward the lava flow. I lunged as the hair on her head caught fire, nearly exploding into flame. And then the flesh on Nancy’s hand began to melt away, down to skeleton. I could feel the heat, her pain on my own hands.
”John?”
And when Nancy called out to me, it wasn’t even her own voice, but that of a man, a voice I thought sounded familiar, though—
”John!”
I opened my eyes to deep-set, hooded ones staring back from less than a foot away, my hands and shoulders and neck all burning so intensely I nearly cried out.
David Helides said, ”For a moment there, I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up.”
I tried to talk, realized my mouth had been taped shut.
Just like Justo’s.
Helides stepped back by executing a little dance step, a runway model at triple speed. He wore a dark shirt and pants, but not his usual sweats. These were fashionable, like something in a Banana Republic display window, and his hair was brushed and gelled stylishly back over his ears.
”The real me, John.”
A searing flash on my left shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to swallow the scream, creating that same chuffing noise I’d heard Justo making.
Could still hear him making over the sound of my own.
”You’re tied to a manchineel tree,” said Helides. ”I mentioned them to you the first time you came to visit, remember?”
The torture tree the Native-American tribe used on their prisoners.
”You might recall that I described the sap as being ‘caustic.’ Well, I’ve come to think of it more as arboreal ‘lava,’ really. Perhaps you’d now agree?”
I probably would have nodded reflexively, except my forehead was lashed, and I realized that the part of my scalp against the tree felt wet.
Helides pointed toward his left and my right, but out of the field of vision I had. ”Your friend Mr. Vega agreed with me on that, after he promised not to scream if I took the tape off his mouth. Though frankly, I doubt anyone could have heard him anyway.” Helides cupped his hand behind his left ear, bending his knees and widening his eyes in a parody of a Swiss yodeler. ”Listen.”
I could hear the doppler sound of an approaching and then receding vehicle engine.
Helides lowered his hand. ”And that’s from the state route, nearly a mile from where we are, as the proverbial crow flies. The reason I could hear you coming up the dirt road in your car. I must say, though, that you gave me a bit of a scare with your silence afoot.” Helides executed another dance step, this time a pirouette ending in a karatelike stance. ”Yes. John Cuddy, skulking along my path like some sort of ninja warrior.” Helides spun around, but didn’t kick or strike out at the air. Instead, he seemed to relax. ”God, it’s so good to act out.” He turned back to me, smiling. ”Faking chronic, clinical depression is terribly enervating.”
I watch Helides cavort around the clearing, like a hyperactive child after a long drive. He skipped and hop-scotched, jumping front and back, then side to side.
Suddenly Helides stopped, turning to me again. ”You figured it out, didn’t you?”
I just stared at him.
He said, ”Same deal as with Mr. Vega. No tape, no screams. Not for help, not even from the pain. Agreed?”
I blinked.
Helides came forward, bouncing, almost prancing, on the balls of his feet. He pulled the tape off my mouth slowly, clearly enjoying the sound of it, the feel of it.
”There now, John. Tell me, how did you deduce that I was no longer depressed?”
”I worked backward from the crime. The pool scene chosen very thoughtfully, so that forensics wouldn’t come up with much. Or with too much, given the number of people attending the party.”
”A quite wonderful Website for mystery writers helped me immensely there.”
”And Veronica had told you about Kalil Biggs wanting to do a video.”
”Yes,” said Helides. ”The perfect excuse for my father ordering Duy to turn off the internal security cameras.”
”Then the — ” I clamped my jaw shut, gritting my teeth against a surge of pain from my right buttock.
”Ah, exquisite, isn’t it? I would love to have had this kind of conversation with Malinda, too, but unfortunately my specialty is flora, not fauna.”
Tightly, I said, ”And something got to her first.”
‘Turkey vultures. If it were daylight, you’d see them above, circling. After I took her on Wednesday night, and brought her here, I really had to get back to my father’s house, so there was no time to speak with her then. And besides, John, even I didn’t know how quickly the lava/sap would work, though I am glad to have had the foresight to use cable wire instead of rope. I think the sap could weaken even braided hemp to the breaking point.” Helides shook his head. ”But, I digress. Learning from Malinda—whose heart, I believe, must have simply given out from terror—I went back on the Internet, found that vultures are discouraged by movement of any sort in what they perceive to be carrion. So, I gave Mr. Vega a scarecrow of sorts, the flag of his country of origin.” He looked toward Justo’s tree. ”Waving it in a patriotic fashion will keep the vultures away.” Helides came back to me. ”For how long, though, should prove fascinating.”
I tried to focus. ”I can understand how you killed Veronica, even why violating her would deflect suspicion away from you given the depression and the drugs you take. What I still don’t understand is why—”
”—I had to kill the little bitch in the first place?” Another surge, from my left forearm this time. ”Yes.”
”Quite simple, really. She found out.”
”About what?”
Helides regarded me the way a teacher might when disappointed by an otherwise promising student. ”That I wasn’t really depressed, of course.”
”And you took her life for it?”
”Not immediately. I was actually quite naive. When I realized about fourteen months ago that I was seemingly, miraculously coming out of the years—decades, John—of genuine depression, I didn’t tell anyone. Not Dr. Forbes, certainly not my father. You see, I wasn’t sure if my ‘improvement’ was just another cruel joke the illness was playing on me. So, I conducted my own experiments, with my mind and body the laboratory. I slowly weaned myself off the drugs—still getting prescriptions filled, of course, even palming a few pills when someone else might be in the kitchen to see me ‘take’ them. I applied for—and received—a driver’s license. Then, as the weeks went by, I could feel genuine well-being for the first time in my life. Hiding it from Dr. Forbes was child’s play, as he’d already made up his mind about the hopelessness of my prognosis and basically just played drug dealer on every visit until it was time for him to go fishing. Within a month, I discovered I had a rather strong sex drive after all, even disguised myself to visit bars and occasionally indulge that drive thereafter, though one-night stands are not as easy to manage as I’ve heard they were in my brother’s—and your—time.”
A surge near my left elbow kept me from replying, even if I’d wanted to.
Helides said, ”Well, as I began to feel even better and more confident, I took to ‘acting out.’ At first, as a celebration of feeling human and only”—a sweep of his hand around the clearing—”out here, in the hammock, where I knew no one could possibly see me.”
”At first.”
A rueful smile. ”Exactly. There were days when, despite feeling better, I had no desire to visit this place. The weather, sometimes a particularly fierce hatch of mosquitoes. On those occasions, and when no one else was in the house, I would slip into the control room and simply deactivate one of the security cameras. Can you guess which one?”
I thought about it. ”The pool, because it gave you the largest working area to act out’ in.”
”Bravo, John. In fact, to extend the metaphor a bit, it was the largest and most desirable theater in the house, so long as no security guard could monitor it.”
”How did you get into the control room, though?”
”My father had a key. He sleeps from time to time. Not so difficult really to slip it off his ring and have a copy made.”
”I still don’t see why you had to kill Veronica.”
The hollowed features changed. ”During one of my sessions in the pool area, she had Cassandra drop her off at the front of my father’s house. For some reason, Very decided to stroll around to the rear of the house.”
”I thought you always called her ‘Veronica’?”
”Only for you, John. To bond us, once I noticed you used her full name. Out of your respect for the dead, I assume, no matter how badly misplaced.”
”And you didn’t hear her coming?”
”Not through the glass wall, and since Cassandra, of course, lived in the house, there was no telephone call from the gate guard. Which wouldn’t have mattered, generally, since my father’s new wife is not the quietest of people, and I therefore always heard her coming in time.”
”So, Veronica saw you through the glass wall...”
”And sensed immediately that she had an advantage over me.”
”One that she—” I clamped down again, this time feeling the sap eating into my neck below the hairline.
David Helides beamed a beatific smile at me.
I said, ”One that she... cashed in.”
”Blackmail. For a supposed ‘child’ of thirteen, Very already exhibited a remarkable appreciation of how leverage on another person could improve her own position.”
”But how did the knowledge that you were recovering give her leverage over you?”
The disappointed-teacher look again. ”She threatened to tell my father, John.”
”That you were better?”
”That I was faking still being ill. I told her it was only a recent phenomenon—I said ‘thing’ at the time, of course. However sly Very might have been, she was ignorant as pig dung. But the little bitch knew how to play the card I’d so unwisely dealt her, and so she bluffed going to my father and... exposing me.”
”Bluffed.”
”To gain what she wanted.” A grotesque caricature now of pelvic thrusting. ”In a word, sex.”
”With you.”
”Me?” Helides seemed shocked. ”I was Very’s blood uncle, John.”
”And that stopped her?”
”It stopped me, at least until it helped cover up my crime. But even then, the experience wasn’t terribly pleasant, because I waited until she was... ‘in extremis,’ shall we say? And there were smells—” Helides shuddered delicately. ”No, in any case, Very was more interested in the love that dare not speak its name.”
I thought about what Cassandra Helides had told me about the incident in her car. ”Veronica wanted a female partner.”
”And an experienced one. On top of which—no pun intended—she expected me to find such a slut for her in exchange for not blowing the proverbial whistle on me with my father. Which expectation presented quite a problem for a man who hadn’t been out and about much.”
A drop of fire crawled down my spine, but I thought I saw Helides’s solution. ”Sundy Moran.”
”Oh, excellent, John. I’d met Sundy at one of those bars, and her name rang a bell, a conversation I’d overheard between two of my brother’s band members at my father’s house. A conversation about one of their deceased druggie cohorts fathering himself a child with that odd name. I thought it might add some spice, Sundy being completely unaware of my familial connection to Spiral, of course.”
”And so you started dating Moran.”
”Dating her? Not at all. I said before that sex was not as available in these plague-ridden times, unless, of course, one is willing to have ‘a relationship’ with the woman involved, which in my position would have been awkward at best.”
”Or unless you were willing to pay for it.”
”My, John, we are on the same wavelength, aren’t we?”
”I hope not.”
Helides seemed not to notice my jibe. Or care about it. ”The ‘allowance’ from my father was sufficient to cover biweekly visits—including the cheap motels Sundy would rent for a couple of hours—so I’d become rather a regular client of hers. Enough so that she explained to me—complained to me, really—about her boyfriend Ford and her ‘momma Donna,’ and how Sundy thought they might be ‘doing it to each other’ and how disgusting that would—”
”So you took a thirteen-year-old girl to see a prostitute.”
”The girl took herself. My only function was the arranging and the transporting. I didn’t even have to pay, since Sundy was curious enough to service Very on the cuff, so to speak.”
I thought it through. ”But those visits weren’t enough, were they?”
”No.” Another change in the hollowed features. ”No, Very wanted other ‘trips,’ as she called them, a term no doubt cadged from one of the drugged-out band members. So, she found where her dear demented dad kept his cocaine.”
”And snorted some.”
”Yes. Obnoxious as Very was ‘straight’—no pun intended again—she was exponentially the bitch once under the influence. The first occasion she used cocaine, with Sundy, Very let slip about her becoming a rock star soon, and that she’d take Sundy with her on the road. Fortunately, I was in the room with them, and realized the bitch hadn’t just compromised my anonymity but could just as easily blurt out my secret to her grandfather.”
”So you staged Veronica’s ‘performance’”—a searing sensation over my kidney—”for her grandfather at the party.”
A shake of the head. ”I’m afraid you’re wrong there, John. I of course intended to kill Very then, given all the masking reasons you’ve already recounted. But her decision to snort up was one she made herself. Probably wanted to show the old man what his money was buying in more ways than one.”
”And her running from that room gave you the perfect opportunity.”
”Exactly. People had used the pool earlier, but no one was interested in going there after Very’s performance. Except for Very herself, whom I found already in her bathing suit. As soon as I entered the pool area, she began to snarl: that she was going to tell her grandfather about my faking the depression, that she thought it had been going on for years, and that I’d been threatening her if she revealed it to him. However, Very was so high on drugs, she couldn’t sense my attitude toward her—at that moment or any other—as being anything beyond the simperings of a pathetic beggar.”
”But Malinda Dujong might have.”
”Yes. Malinda, Malinda.” Helides looked toward her manchineel tree. ”I’m sorry to say I believe she suspected something about me even during the few times we were in each other’s company. She had a genuine gift, John, and I’m just extremely fortunate that she also was so empathetic as to agree to meet a woman she’d never spoken to before instead of attending my father’s party that day.”
”You had Sundy Moran as ‘Wendy’ make the call to Ms. Dujong.”
”From a pay phone, shortly before slashing her in our little trysting spot. But I have to say, the sex with Sundy just after the call was the best I’ve ever had.”
”Because you were contemplating killing her.”
”Yes. I insisted she shower and clean up when we’d finished in bed, because I wanted to take her out for a great dinner.”
”But more because you wanted to wash away any trace evidence.”
The beatific smile again. ”When Sundy came out of the bathroom, I’d already gathered up the sheets. She said, ‘Huh?’ and that’s when I took out the buck knife and started with her throat, to reduce any screaming. There’s an excellent Web-page on combat killing techniques, too, though its site address probably won’t be of much help to you anymore.”
”Quite a risk for you”—Jesus, now the sap ate at my elbow—”to carry that knife away.”
”Ah, so I was right! The police were able to match it as the one Ford Walton tried to use on you.”
”A nice way for you to tie him to both crimes.”
”Yes, John, my thought exactly. And even when I discovered after killing Sundy that Ford had an ironclad—if rather embarrassing—alibi, I thought it still might work. I even told him that I’d found the buck knife a few blocks from the hotel, where I’d seen you ‘pitch’ it after running from that hotel room.”
”And Walton bought all that?”
”Ford was not the brightest of bulbs, John, and the prospect of killing you with the same knife you’d used on Sundy was, I think, too much poetic justice for his mind to question.”
”You drive Walton away from my hotel, too?”
”Yes. It was the surest way for me to keep tabs on him for the short period between then and killing him myself. Oh”—Helides bowed, as a Japanese business representative might—”and many thanks for ‘softening him up’ for me. Even with that other Website on ‘the Knife in Combat,’ I’m not sure I could have handled an uninjured man of his background so easily, though all those years on the exercise equipment did keep my muscles toned, and these last healthy months really have strengthened them. Watch.” David Helides leaped straight and high into the air, extending arms and legs so that, combined with his head and neck, they made a five-pointed star.
