Mind of the Phoenix, page 5
The detective promptly leads me to his office and closes the door. He removes his coat and hat, and I do the same, hanging the jacket on the coat hanger beside his. His nose is slightly red from the cold outside and I know that mine is most likely red as well. I walk toward the desk and sit in his chair. There’s a file sitting on top of a stack of papers, and I blink in surprise to find my name scrawled on the folder in neat writing. The first thing I find when I open the file is a black and white photograph of me when I was about eighteen. The photo is slightly creased, but that by no means distracted from the young figure in a rather revealing corset and dress. My breasts are made to look like small mountains across my chest, and the effect is emphasized by the sleeves of the dress being pulled down to expose my neck and shoulders. In the picture, I’m standing with one foot propped up on a chair and my hands are holding up my skirt to reveal the length of my leg. Half of my hair is tied up at the crown of my head while the rest falls in loose curls down my back. My body was luscious back then, with naturally distinct curves that women seek to imitate with a corset—definitely not the skeletal form I am now.
Madame Del Mar would often criticise my body, centering mostly on my weight, but I would always ignore her. If men were so particular about having their women merely skin and bones, I wouldn’t have been one of her most successful subjects. A lot has to do with your mannerisms. If you ooze sexuality and confidence, then people are naturally drawn to you.
The file snaps shut before my face and the detective shoves it into his top drawer.
I smile at him and get up out of his chair and slide into the stark wooden one that sits opposite.
As I sit across from him, I wonder how many times he had glanced at my photograph. Were those creases created from a determination to memorize the face of a killer, or were they made from curiosity and desire? His caustic behaviour toward me so far makes me inclined to believe the former, but sometimes people who refuse to acknowledge their desires respond to them with contempt.
I pluck the paper bag from his desk and pull out the croissant. Its flaky centre dissolves on my tongue, and I inhale the delicious aroma… and catch the unpleasant scent of smoke. I open my eyes and stare accusingly at the cigarette in the detective’s hand.
“Do you mind?” I say acerbically. “I’m eating and your cigarette is clogging my senses with its pungent odour.”
The insufferable man stares me right in the eyes, pulls on one end of the cigarette with his mouth, and then slowly exhales a thick cloud. The gesture makes it clear that it is his office and he’ll smoke whenever he so desires. In response to his superiority, I proceed to moan in pleasure as I slowly eat the rest of the croissant. He stares at me the whole time, so I stare right back. I’m not particularly good at being submissive, and I wonder when or if he’ll catch onto that fact.
“Are you quite finished?”
I sigh contentedly and lick the flakes off of my fingers. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Good, now we can discuss the case.” He exhales another cloud of smoke before continuing. “I’m hoping that you’ll be able to provide a prospective suspect with the evidence we have so far.”
Again, he’s only hoping that I’ll fail.
“Well, now that we know for sure that the killer is using persuasion it seems that our killer is an empath,” I say. “They would have to be someone who knows how to do such a persuasion; someone who knows how to read and write; someone who would have no difficulty in meeting the required victims to plant their persuasion; someone who is personally seeking revenge on their victims or believes that they are performing a higher sort of judgement.
“The concubines aren’t educated, but meet a wide array of people, so they would have access to Madame Del Mar and the empath that killed the police constable,” I continue. “We would have to see if the Dream House Instigator was a visitor to the pleasure house. I have no doubt that he was a frequent member. A dream weaver would probably meet a variety of people as well, and is probably more educated than a concubine. They would also have had immediate access to Mr. Darwitt, but I doubt that the Madame and the concubine visited the dream house. The concubine wouldn’t have had the money or the permission, and Madame Del Mar was a horrible human being so I doubt she suffered from nightmares or sleepless nights.”
“You don’t think highly of your previous master.”
“Why would I?” I say, propping my feet up on his desk in a most un-lady-like fashion. He glares at me, but remains silent. “Besides, only the ashamed or troubled suffer from nightmares or insomnia. The Madame wasn’t ashamed of who she was.”
“Is that so? You seem to know a lot about human nature.” I know in his mind he continues the sentence to include for a concubine and a murderer, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. “Are you haunted by your past, Del Mar? Or do you have no conscience?”
“I could ask you the same thing, detective. The shadows beneath your eyes suggest that something is keeping you up at night. I wonder if you are a frequent visitor of the dream house.”
His unyielding gaze warns me to tread carefully, and surprisingly I don’t push the subject. It’s because I’m confident that I will sooner or later discover all his secrets, and he will be powerless to stop me. I look into those light-green eyes and find that they are saying the same thing about me. I give him a smile that says, “I’d like to see you try, detective.” I have no intention of blatantly telling him that the ghost of my previous owner haunts me with his leering grin and black eyes. Nor do I confide in him that every time I close my eyes I’m plagued by a multitude of horrifying scenes, and that those dreams are not imaginary. Instead, the nightmares are born from my own experiences that continue to chase me even in my sleep.
I continue with my previous thought. “The memory blockers are the more educated of my kind, and may encounter a variety of clients as well. I doubt the concubine would have been a client, having no money and permission, but I suppose it’s possible that Madame Del Mar and Mr. Darwitt visited the house. As for revenge, well, anyone is capable of that, and any one of them would have motive. My kind isn’t exactly treated kindly. We’re merely slaves, after all—valuable, yes—but still slaves.”
“I suppose you’d rather have us allow your kind to rule the world? And then the rest of the people would be slaves.”
“Why do there have to be slaves at all?” I ask, annoyed. “Why can’t we all be free entrepreneurs?”
“Because, Del Mar, there are the weak and the strong,” he says, pausing to light another cigarette. “And there’s always someone who wants control, and those who don’t want to be bothered with societal problems and need someone to think for them.”
I pause and deliberate on his words, wondering who the weak one is between us. There’s no question that he’s physically stronger than me and can easily restrain me. I’d be powerless against that tall body that I can only imagine is well-built beneath that tailored suit. His limbs don’t appear to be scrawny, but neither are they the bulky musculature that some men have. Instead, his body is the sleek powerful form of a healthy man. But since he’s not an empath I could undoubtedly overpower him with my mind. His eyes are directly on mine, and I know that he has come to the same conclusion as me. Is that why you’re so boldly staring at me, detective?
“I didn’t realize you were such a cynical man.”
“I didn’t think a murderer would be concerned with other people’s freedom.”
“I suppose you would know a lot about murderers,” I suggest, smiling coolly at him. “How does your wife feel about you working so closely with dead bodies and disturbed criminals?”
“You seem to be rather interested in my wife.” A cloud of smoke slithers toward me, and I fight the urge to cringe away from the memories it threatens to evoke.
“Oh, so you do have a wife.”
“No.” When I narrow my brows in confusion, he clarifies. “I don’t have a wife, Del Mar.”
“Divorced? Widowed?” He just stares at me with those cold, calculating eyes that don’t reveal anything. “You’re an attractive and intelligent man, detective. Surely you have some woman pining after you for matrimony. You’re what–” I pause to tilt my head in consideration. “In your early thirties? You could probably still find a lovely demure wife to impregnate.”
“It would appear that you enjoy wasting time with idle talk, Del Mar.”
A crack has formed in his stoic exterior, revealing impatience. My constant references to his marital status irritate him, but the reason has yet to be revealed. Perhaps he doesn’t like me alluding to the fact that he is lonely. I find it hard to believe that he has never been romantically involved with anyone to the point of a marriage proposal, because he is attractive and intelligent. Maybe he’s one of those people who put their career before their personal relationships. That’s easy to believe, considering the amount of hours he’s in his office.
“Fine,” I breathe. “We have no way of knowing who’s capable of performing such a persuasion because no one would willingly admit it. You might think it’s a concubine because they sometimes use persuasion with their clients in their boudoirs, but that’s merely parlour tricks, and it’s not exclusive to them. The persuasion they use is to satisfy the client’s sexual fantasies. Are you partial to blondes, detective, or maybe brunettes? Or perhaps you prefer the rarity of redheads. A concubine can be anything you want them to be.”
He doesn’t even blink at my statement, which confirms my suspicion that for him work comes before anything else. “So, it’s possible that any one of you could be capable of persuading someone to commit suicide and even murder,” he proposes, but he’s already concluded as much without my help.
“Yes, a blocker may or may not have access to the three victims, but they’re traitors to my kind. I don’t see why they would ruin their position with the Elite. They profit as long as the Elite stays in positions of authority.”
“So, you think that the killer wishes to eliminate the Elite?”
“It would seem so,” I say with a shrug. “They’ve already eliminated two of its members: Charles Darwitt and Madame Del Mar.”
“And what of the constable Collin Evans?”
I narrow my brows in thought. “Was the killer targeting the constable or was his intention to incriminate the concubine that killed the constable? And why have two victims commit suicide and one commit murder?”
“Those are questions I plan to find the answers to.” He tilts his head slightly and adds, “That was a rather extensive examination, Del Mar.”
I grin. “I thought you’d appreciate my thoroughness.”
“But if the killer really is targeting the Elite, then it’s imperative that we find them before the seventh of April.”
He stands and walks to the other end of the room so that I can’t see him behind me. My instinct demands me to turn my head and keep him in sight, while my defiant nature laughs at the idea. With someone like Madame Del Mar, taking your eyes off of her would have been foolish behaviour. It would be a sign that you had chosen to succumb to her will, whereas staring her in the eye meant defiance. Yet, with someone like my previous owner, choosing to look away was an indication of rebelliousness just as much as staring into those black eyes was. I don’t know the detective well enough to know how he will perceive my refusal to turn around, but I suspect that if I did, it would be an admission of fear.
“You seem to have a clever mind, Del Mar.”
“For a concubine,” I mutter, finishing his thought for him.
“You read the Bible.”
I snort. “Not really.”
“But you know how to read,” he suggests, and anxiety grips me. “You worked at the pleasure house and were Madame Del Mar’s property.” His voice appears closer behind me. “You seem to possess talents that most of your kind don’t have.”
He’s standing close to me now, so I turn around and stare right into his eyes. “Are you accusing me of being the Phoenix?” He simply stares at me in response. “You realize that I was in jail for the past month and before that I wasn’t even in Braxton. How could I possibly be the killer?”
The idea is ludicrous to me. It’s as if he thinks that just because I killed one man, I must have killed others, clearly having no qualms about murdering people. But I suppose it does make sense that he would suspect me. I’ve obviously been educated, Madame Del Mar was my master before I was bought, and I worked at the pleasure house. So I would have come across the empath that murdered Constable Evans, Madame Del Mar and, assuming that Mr. Darwitt visited the pleasure house, it’s a possibility I could have encountered him as well. Like most of my kind, I resent the Elite and would be glad to hear of their demise. If it wasn’t for the fact that I wasn’t even in Braxton when the first two murders took place, and was in jail for the Madame’s murder, I might be afraid of the look in the detective’s eyes.
“I suppose not,” he says after a moment, and a part of me relaxes at the sound of those words. “But I am curious to know how you managed to evade the officials for as long as you did. I suspect you must have used some sort of persuasion.”
“Would you like me to show you?” I offer in an innocent voice.
Even though I know he would have declined, I’m disappointed when a knock sounds on his office door and interrupts us. He opens the door, looks back at me with an expression that warns me not to snoop in his desk in his absence, and then closes the door behind him. I immediately rise from my seat and examine his office. Against the back wall is a map of Fortland, with the city of Braxton off in the far bottom right, marked with a star to denote its status as the capitol. The bottom of the map is then devoted to an enlargement of the city, dividing it into thirty wards—the first starting in the south, near Braxton Harbour in the industrial zone. Each Elite member owns different wards in each of the four districts, so that the poor, middle class, and rich are evenly distributed between the members. The north district is highlighted in green—perhaps to intentionally symbolize the wealth of the district’s residents. Meanwhile, the west district is coloured blue, the east is marked off in red, and the south is highlighted in yellow. Beside the map is a mahogany shelf filled with some items I can’t identify, for I’ve never seen them in my life. Among the items I can identify are books. I skim through the titles and see that most of them are law books.
“If you are quite finished educating yourself on the law, there are two constables ready to escort you back to the hotel,” says a voice behind me, and I nearly drop the book I had plucked off the shelf.
I return it and turn to face the detective. “Back to the hotel?” I echo, slightly confused.
“Yes, that is where you are staying for the duration of the investigation.”
“Are you coming to get me later?” The idea of spending the rest of the day in the hotel is causing my heart to constrict.
“No, Del Mar. I have no use for you this evening.”
“No use for me?” I echo, my anger rising. “So, I’m supposed to stay at the hotel until you decide you have use for me?”
“Precisely,” he answers, handing me my coat.
“I’ll die of boredom.”
He looks at me with a hint of amusement. “That’s not my problem, Del Mar.”
By the time I shrug into my coat, he is already sitting at his desk, his attention diverted to the papers piled on the surface. I give him one last icy stare before I slam the door behind me. It’s not that I hate being alone; I rather enjoy solitude. It’s the idea of spending hours in the hotel with absolutely nothing to do that bothers me. Most of my life was spent servicing others, either in household chores for the Madame or sexual activities for the clients, until I was purchased at nineteen. The next eight months was a compilation of darkness, learning, punishments, pleasures, and an unhealthy dose of mental abuse. Then, I was on the run for the next six months, which, despite being a form of freedom, wasn’t any better than my previous years.
So it’s when I have absolutely nothing to do that my mind begins to betray me, like the time I spent in the prison. Memories I’d rather forget creep up and haunt me, and it is in those moments that I wonder if I unconsciously receive pleasure from opening up past scars, or if my mind is working against me and is just another thing that strives to taunt me. Sometimes it’s as if I don’t even know myself, like my mind is keeping things from me; as if I’m more capable of understanding someone else’s mind with a single touch than my own.
5
I have one word to describe my evening last night: boring. I silently ate my bland evening meal at the hotel with Rick and some other constable who refused to speak to me. The constable’s silence hadn’t bothered me though, because Rick had spoken enough for the two of them. I discovered that Rick is twenty-four and is planning to propose to a young woman he has been courting for a year now, and by the end of the meal I realized that I was beginning to enjoy the man’s company. His bashfulness and polite demeanour are characteristics I am not used to encountering, especially not in men, and I find his unimposing personality a relief. He also treats me like any other person, which I suppose is a dangerous thing because it threatens to break down my barriers. All I’ve ever known is being the seductive concubine or the disobedient slave, and I’m lost when I find myself in a situation that doesn’t demand either type.
I ended up going to bed early, which means that I woke up early this morning. I decide it’s the best time to bathe, so I dress and grab the necessities needed for grooming. The detective hadn’t mentioned if he would be stopping by this morning, so I have no idea if another boring day awaits me. I open the door and blink confusedly at the constable standing outside in the hallway.
