Chapter Text
Myra was sleeping soundly, curled around a pillow, undisturbed by whatever nightmare had forced my eyes open. It was early enough to start the day, so with a kiss to Myra’s head I forced myself out from under the covers and headed straight to the other side of the room, taking my clothes where they were hung on the closet door.
Myra introduced me to those fancy hangers that fit a whole outfit on them, so I never had to rummage through the closet in the dark again. I slung that over my shoulder and crouched down to access the safe on the floor, clicking the little night light I glued to the front so I could see the numbers. It had two layers of security, fingerprint and combination lock, and inside was my portable firearm case, which kept everything sealed while disassembled.
Most people probably took a shower and ate breakfast before work. I grabbed my gun and double checked that none of my bullets were missing–but most people didn’t have a toddler who really liked puzzles.
Before I left, I poked my head into Lily’s bedroom door to see her nestled among a sea of stuffed and crocheted toys and blankets, and told her that I loved her.
The morning was rainy and hot, drizzling over me as I passed under the office awning. I didn’t particularly enjoy the rain, but the car radio promised us sun later in the day, so I didn’t bother with an umbrella.
I was pulled aside before I could even see beyond the foyer. “Got any plans?”
I sighed and longed for a coffee. Juli Kidman was a morning person, always did her best work with the sunrise, even after pulling an all-nighter. I could barely keep up with her on a good day. So I longed for a coffee and my partner to come back. “Just the paperwork on my desk.”
Kidman smirked as she handed me a case file, thin and lightweight and brand new. “It can wait,” she said. Her enthusiasm was promising, but her lack of explanation concerned me; I had come to expect her to entice me with information to get my brain working. A good puzzle always motivated me to drag myself to the scene. But that morning, she was chipper yet quiet.
Just as quickly as I’d arrived, I was in a cruiser and we were making our way downtown while she gave me the most basic preamble I’d heard in my ten years in law enforcement. Some wanna-be serial killer making a mess of innocent people’s homes, nothing new. It wasn’t until she mentioned Mobius that I really began listening.
“...and wouldn’t you know, eleven months ago a STEM lab was raided. No witnesses, millions in tech stolen, and an employee’s personal camera, of all things.”
“Not your run of the mill thieves, breaching a Mobius facility just for some lab equipment. You wouldn’t raid a military base to steal guns. Who the hell would even buy it?”
“Well, whoever our killer is, they bought something.”
We pulled up to a block of businesses with a few floors of apartments above. Another set of red-and-blues joined us soon after, and the officers already on the scene waved Kidman and I over.
The floor was covered in thread, swirling and wading through furniture and appliances to congregate at the victim’s corpse where she was strung up from the ceiling. Caught in a spider’s web, the silk red as blood, and it leaked away from her body to countless anchor points all over. We had to step into PPE just to enter the damn place.
As I tucked the booties of the plastic suit over my shoes, I glanced over to see Kidman already slipping into a pair of latex gloves. She was staring, so I followed her gaze to a camera on a tripod, set up a few feet away from the body.
“That’s the stolen camera?” I asked as I approached.
She nodded, tossing me a pair of gloves. “Same make and model, same silver marker smudged on the lens cap.”
“Eleven months is more than enough time to dispose of the goods, but… think maybe our killer knows our thieves?”
“Too soon to say.” After releasing it from the tripod, she began pressing buttons and flicking through the photos stored on the camera.
I gestured for the forensic photographer to join us, and together we huddled around its little screen. “Anything special about this camera?”
The photographer seemed surprised, but excited to help out. “It’s a Hasselbald,” he said, as if that explained everything. But in response to our silence, he cleared his throat and continued, “Hasselbalds are expensive as shit. They’re, like, the luxury handbags of cameras.”
Kidman sighed and straightened out her back. “There are only photos of the crime scene on here. Empty SD slot… Might be a dead end.”
“When was the last photo taken?”
Kidman quickly skimmed to the 25th and final picture. “Six in the morning.”
The hair on my body stood on end, the familiar ache of dread settling in my core. It had only been two hours since the killer was there and, along with any potential DNA evidence we would find over the course of the investigation, he left a luxurious camera behind. Pointed directly at the body, recording evidence itself.
“That’s long enough to make it to Union,” I said, itching to reach for my gun. Union was the closest city outside of Krimson, and it was a straight shot on the highway, but there weren’t any road cams to help unless we knew what we were looking for. Though it was more than feasible that he had fled out of our reach for the time being, my gut was telling me he was close. “Anyone check for bugs?”
“What, you think he’s… watching?” Kidman said, half laughing. “Why would he surveil his own crime scene?”
Why would he take pictures of the entire scene, make a couple dozen trophies of his kill, and just… leave it all there, pointed directly at the body? Perhaps he intended to return, not even aware that his victim had been discovered yet. It had only been two hours, after all. But that amount of carelessness did not match the undeniable level of care taken to orchestrate such an elaborate presentation.
Nothing about this killer was unplanned. He knew every stitch of his tapestry, and therefore the camera was not a defect, but a feature. And it was in the foreground, observing his work indefinitely.
So rather than answer, I began inspecting everything that had a line of sight to the body. Bookshelf, TV, sofa, decor, plants.
“What the fuck?” the photographer gasped, gesturing to the camera.
“What?” Kidman asked.
“The lens just… I don’t know.”
I quickly took it from Kidman, turning it so that the lens faced me, and squinted as I looked down the barrel. Suddenly my face flashed bright blue, flickering, and then the camera sort of twitched and crackled briefly before returning to stillness and silence. The three of us stared at it for a long moment.
“That is not normal,” the photographer said. “We need to get that to the IT lab now.”
“Tell them Castellanos wants top priority,” I ordered, and he hurried to grab his phone while Kidman bagged it.
I decided to explore the apartment for a while after. I’d already put all the PPE on and I wanted to get the most out of the effort.
I nearly tripped on the thread more times than I could count. It was sewn into the walls, the furniture, wrapped around chair legs and door knobs and the kitchen faucet. I knelt down to pass under a thick band of the stuff to enter the hallway, just a bedroom and bathroom on the other side
Her bed was a disaster, with four evidence markers just on the top. Her death had clearly been bloody, probably a stabbing judging by the patterns, though I wouldn’t have considered myself an expert.
She had sparse decorations throughout the whole apartment, but in her bedroom the absence was truly felt. Not a single thing pinned or screwed into the walls, only a stack of books on a dresser and a messy nightstand next to the bed, and inside were some personal objects and a jewelry box, all seemingly untouched.
Stepping around some bloody fabric on the floor, I took a look under her bed. There were two storage containers full of shoes and a couple handbags, but nothing else. Not even a candy wrapper or a dust bunny. She lived very minimalistically, and this was supported by the emptiness of her closet as well. What clothes she did have appeared high quality, some luxury brand tags that I recognized. She was a fan of the classic suit-with-heels.
That side of the bed was clear of blood, so I had a seat on the floor and just took in the space around me for a while. The soft, medium-brown of her furniture and the creme of the walls matched the muted blue of her bed clothes. The lamp in the corner matched the one on her nightstand, and I was pretty sure they were the same as the ones in the living room, too.
The whole space was designed to be calming, every corner accounted for. To see someone so meticulous forced into such extreme and chaotic circumstances made my stomach churn. It was in that moment that I considered that such a carefully executed display was not a signature of the killer, but rather intended specifically to mock the victim’s orderliness, while at the same time disrupting it. As if he loathed the idea of her being so perfect and unburdened that he had to ruin it, to show her that her notions of what perfection was were demonstrably false; that even the deep attention to every string could not change the horror of what it would become.
The kill was personal, but not interpersonal. The killer knew her, but not deeply, not romantically or sexually. There was no real sense of anger, moreso disapproval. To kill her was an act of correction, or discipline.
The natural conclusion was that the killer was likely her father. I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of a father doing this to his daughter, not then, not when I could remember Lily’s sleeping face so clearly in my mind. Telling myself it could be someone else’s father was of no comfort, either.
Kidman scared me out of my thoughts by poking into the corner of my vision. She tip-toed her way to the dresser and leaned back on it, observing me with her casual intensity. “Myra called,” she said. “She’s outside. The press is here.”
I rolled my eyes and snapped the mask back over my mouth and nose to follow Kidman out to the apartment complex’s common area, where we would divest ourselves of all the plastic.
Myra was a Detective with the KCPD, so she really had no reason to be there. The director of the FBI was very particular about this being our case, as the stolen camera was identified as belonging to the Mobius employee. I suspected there was something larger at play, but didn’t give that instinct as much merit as I should have at the time.
After what happened at Beacon, I was just a distracted mess. At work, all I wanted was to be home with Lily and Myra, but as soon as I got home I had this incomprehensible sensation of doom and grief hovering over me, sinking its fangs within me. I looked at Lily and all I saw was how helpless and confused I felt. I looked at Myra and thought immediately of Joseph, thought of the pain it caused her when she found out and the shame and guilt I carried from receiving her forgiveness.
Myra studied psychology in university, working on her thesis, and she was so perceptive it almost didn’t make sense how the affair had gone on for so long without her knowledge. She’d explained that she saw what she wanted to see, what was easiest for her to accept–her husband, falling out of love.
It changed me.
So I shut Joseph out. Hadn’t seen him for two months and it was literally draining life from me, but I had no other ideas. Run away, that was all I could think, but when you can’t run, you have to push people away.
When I heard Joseph would be returning from leave, I bought him a box of his favorite specialty green tea, which was painfully expensive–at least when compared to the cheap coffee grounds I was used to drinking. I wrote, To good health -Seb on a post-it and stuck it to the top, leaving it on his desk.
My partner in justice leaned in the doorway and smiled at me the morning he arrived, holding the gift in his hands. “I see you haven’t gone and got yourself killed,” he remarked. This was his way of thanking me.
I replied, You’re welcome! in the form of not acknowledging the gift at all. Though I didn’t hesitate to give him a crowding hug and pat him a bit roughly on the back, on his uninjured side. “Welcome home.” I held Joseph’s shoulders at arms-length and beamed at him. “You look good!”
Joseph laughed, “Sure I do…” and took in The Wall, covered in paper and photos. I let him do so in peace; he had a lot to catch up on. “So you think he’s some sort of… homicide artist?”
“I guess so. If this is art.”
“Anything can be art,” Joseph said. “He has taken this to an extreme, perhaps to… make a point? Send a message?”
“That’s as close to making sense as we’ve got. I’m thinking our killer’s a father. Probably still lives with his kids, or is close to them. But I’m not ready to sign off on a profile.”
Joseph hummed and reached up to point at something, but halfway through the movement he paused and winced, petting his left shoulder. “Bastard’s knife got down to the bone,” he explained through gritted teeth.
I moved my hand to touch and Joseph turned to watch me, his eyes flicking up before closing fully when I began to massage the muscles of his upper back, thumbing carefully around his spine and avoiding the bandages I could feel under his shirt. The room was so quiet that I could hear Joseph sigh, and the sound of him swallowing a second later. I closed my own eyes to savor this simple moment. Whatever was going on between us was unpredictable. We shared intimacy like stolen liquor, in the backseat of my car, in my office, wherever and whenever I could find a scrap of privacy. I had to take what I could get.
It had been two months since we last saw each other, and my chest was aching as I touched him. I wanted to speak, but nothing would come out, so I just pressed my lips to the edge of his ear and held on, hoping he could hear the apologies behind it.
It shouldn’t have been arousing, but it was, because it was him.
I stepped in as close as I could, until my belt buckle was bumping into him, the toes of my shoes breaching the space between Joseph’s heels. “Maybe you should take a few more days,” I said softly, hovering behind his ear, my nose brushing it. “If you’re bored, I think I can help with that.”
“Pervert,” Joseph admonished lightly, his voice unaffected as it always was, which only riled me up more in my determination to shake his unwavering confidence. But at the same time as he spoke, he stepped away, turning around to put some space between us. I could see the faint pink in his cheeks running up to the tips of his ears, the dilated pupils, the subtly parted lips; telling me that maybe this time, I was close. “They’re waiting for us.”
I tried not to look disappointed. Joseph’s face didn’t betray whether or not I was successful. “I’ll drive.”
The Krimson Gardens doesn’t deserve this, was my first thought upon entering the men’s restroom.
I had spent many mornings at the gardens with Lily and Myra; we could’ve lived there if we wanted to. Lily would have claimed the butterfly house as her own.
This time, we had a mountain of information when we arrived. Everything about the victim, witness accounts, and thankfully no PPE requirements other than the usual gloves and booties.
Joseph was particularly affected by smells, though he would never admit it, so when the stench of sewage and chemicals overwhelmed us, I looked over at him and rested a hand on his upper arm in silent apology.
There was another camera, a different brand this time, but positioned much the same with a tripod and pointed at the victim. The victim himself was posed on one of those janitorial carts as if riding a horse. His legs dangled off the sides, tucked between the embedded garbage can and the raised shelf where cleaning supplies and towels were supposed to be kept. The long handle of a mop skewered him end-to-end. His head was tilted back at an unnatural angle to accommodate, his whole upper body stiff and straight despite having very little external support.
A dozen cleaning products were scattered around the floor, most of them leaking fluids or otherwise damaged. Together it all created a filthy grey puddle in the middle by the drain, which was clearly clogged as none of it had gone down.
I noticed his skin first, which appeared to be covered in hives, but upon closer inspection looked more like chemical burns. Some of it was waxy and soft, as if it might slip off if touched. I took a moment to turn away and breathe before carrying on with my examination. His fingernails were bloody, which would usually mean we had biological evidence of the killer. However, considering the last victim, I felt the need to look closer.
As carefully as I could manage, I lifted one of his hands. It was severely affected by the chemical burns, and while the active bleeding had stopped with his heart, there were such deep open sores on his palm that they had dripped blood down and into the crevices around his fingernails.
“What do you think killed him?” Joseph asked, peering at me from the other side of the body.
“Shit, I don't know, could’ve been a heart attack from the pain…”
“There’s not a lot of blood. The impalement may have been done post-mortem.”
I smiled. Seeing him concentrated and working after so long without him made my chest swell. I tried to hide my face by checking out the rear view of the scene, but Joseph just followed me back anyway.
“Is that his intestines,” I said, knowing the answer but wishing I didn’t.
“Yes.”
“Hanging out of his rectum, like he’s– shitting them out.”
“Yes.”
“What a sick bastard.”
I decided to take a break after that discovery and ended up in the cafeteria, drinking a sports drink from one of the vending machines. Joseph found me a while later.
He pulled out a pack of nicotine gum and popped one into his mouth. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it.”
“I’m not,” I said dumbly. I could feel my whole face stuck in some lovesick expression I couldn’t fully wipe away.
“I need to limit my intake for two more weeks while I heal.”
“That’s okay.”
He finally met my eyes, and his own expression softened just enough that I could tell. “You are making it very hard to pretend we’re not involved.”
Involved, that was definitely a way to put it.
“You were gone for two months,” I explained.
He glared back. “And not once did you visit me.”
“Oh, we’re doing conjugal visits now? I get reprimanded for a little PDA and you're wondering why I’m not getting handsy while you’re in recovery?”
Joseph carefully slid the gum back into his inner breast pocket, eyes on the table. “It’s the same fight, just a different context. I want more, but you can’t devote your time to me because you have a family. So I try to walk away, but you can’t live without me. Which is it, Sebastian? My patience is wearing thin.”
“So’s mine,” I spat. “You knew what you were getting yourself into. You get off on it. Don’t act like a victim.”
Joseph stood abruptly, leaning forward on the table until our faces were only an inch or so apart. “I bet Myra gets off on it, too,” he said, low and broken, before walking away.
He left me fuming and speechless, and I could only be grateful because I feared what one of my outbursts would have sounded like had I not been stunned into silence.
Joseph was right, as always. I had played both sides and expected to win, but I had always been very clear about my intentions. Joseph knew that, knew that I would not abandon my family until Lily was an adult, and even then, they would always be a part of my life. Because I did love them, I loved them so much that I planned to spend the rest of my life with them. I just hadn’t anticipated my own needs, my own desires. I hadn’t known how complex a person could be until it was too late.
We were so young when we married. I never regretted it for a second, I just wished the world hadn’t been so confining in its design, that a person could love freely.
Just because I was thirsty did not mean I was dissatisfied with the food. Just because I was tired did not mean I was angry at the sleep. My needs were different from what Myra felt comfortable providing, and from what she was capable of providing. It was my fault that I did not come to our relationship prepared. I had no one else to blame, and I never tried.
And Joseph’s pain was striking. He had needs, too.
I set my forehead on the table and groaned. Once the anger had dissipated, reality came flooding in. I could feel his longing, and it was agonizing.
In the afternoon, Kidman stopped in my office to hand me some paperwork.
“Lab’s done with the Newman camera. And they found some hair from Dixon, three distinct DNA profiles but no matches.”
“Alright, I’ll take a look when I’m done here.”
She nodded, hesitating at the door. “So, about dinner…”
I didn’t bother replying as what she meant by dinner clicked and in an instant I was panicking.
I checked my phone which was stupid because I knew Myra would have left me a hundred calls and texts, but I did anyway, which only made me panic more.
I shoved everything into my bag that looked relevant to the case as I said, “You’re coming. I don’t care if you only stay for ten minutes, you are coming and telling Myra she is beautiful, intelligent, and perfect. And you’re bringing Joseph.”
Kidman looked like she wanted to argue, so I made it impossible by nearly sprinting all the way down to the parking lot, and I was home in half an hour to clean up and help set the table. Myra was understandably unimpressed, but she kept it to herself for the most part since Lily was constantly hovering around us.
“It’s okay,” I told her as I set the forks on the placemats, “I deserve it.”
She poured herself a glass of wine at the bar cart. “Deserve what?”
“Whatever you’re yelling at me about in your head.”
Myra laughed and it seemed to change the course of the night because everything was suddenly lighter. Relief washed over me. That carried me all the way to our first guests arriving, Myra’s best friend, Savannah, and her husband, Mark. Kidman and Joseph arrived together just a few minutes later, filling up the entryway.
Myra had her degree in a big, fancy frame, taking center stage on the wall opposite the dining table. Our guests oohed and ahhed, hands full of wine and beer, and I drank my own bottle while looking at a picture of the three of us from Lily’s first birthday party.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said, just for my wife to hear.
Myra set a hand on the small of my back and kissed my cheek. “I know you are, honey. Couldn't have done this without you… You taught me how to believe in myself.”
I looked up at her and saw the red rims of her eyes and then I was crying, too. Just a few tears down my cheeks, but it was enough. I quickly wiped them away, clearing my throat and pressing a kiss to Myra’s forehead. For the first time in years I had looked at Myra and, rather than the all-consuming burden of guilt and shame, I just felt contentment and pride.
After dinner, we all crowded into the living room to chat more comfortably. I put the TV on low, switched it to something boring so Lily wouldn’t sit too close to it. As expected, she was fast asleep in less than fifteen minutes, so Myra helped her to bed.
“Yes, and the program itself is really something special, not just the work,” Savannah said, “If I wasn’t so invested in engineering I would love to be a participant.”
“You said this is with Mobius?” Kidman asked.
She nodded and replied, “They have a few research facilities in the country, but the one in Krimson City is their headquarters. Myra’s thesis had to be exceptional, to be hired right after graduation.”
“It was,” I chimed in, though I wasn’t expecting four pairs of eyes to suddenly turn on me. “I can’t say I understood the chemistry stuff, but it isn’t so different from profiling.”
“Well, I’ll definitely have to ask for a copy,” Joseph said, giving me a small smile that looked suspiciously like forgiveness.
When Myra returned, the conversation evolved into workplace benefits and wages, so I tuned them out, my eyes on the TV. At first, I wanted to see if they’d mention the weather for the next day, but then a whole new segment began with a different reporter, and the imagery they used caught my attention.
Each photo which spanned the screen had the name of its artist and their year in school. After a few had passed, it showed an advertisement for the KC-MOMA, reading: The Krimson City Museum of Modern Art has announced their 2009 Spring exhibit, featuring Krimson City’s own Dr. Stefano Valentini. Dr. Valentini works as a professor at Mobius University, and he tells the New York Post that he has been slowly cultivating what he calls his most subversive collection, based on his time as a war photographer…
I pulled out my phone without thinking and excused myself to the kitchen.
“Hey, Castellanos.”
“Hey, Pete. I need to set up a consulting interview.”
“It’s not another psychic, is it?”
“No, don’t worry. It’s for the Newman and Dixon case.”
“Not a problem, just need a name and address.”
“Uh, name is Stefano… Valentine? I know he works at MU. Sorry.”
Pete was quiet for a moment, but I could hear a keyboard clacking in the background. “...Dr. Stefano Valentini, professor of fine arts?”
“That’s it.”
“Alrighty, drafting the form now. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Thanks, man. Talk to you later.”
I turned around to see Joseph standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. Apparently he’d cooled off since our interaction at work that morning, because he had no malice in his voice when he asked, “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, we’re good.” I moved to stand in front of him, to grab his hands in mine and feel the bones of them under my fingertips. He so rarely went without his gloves, and I missed the warmth of his skin more than I really knew at the time. “Just got off the phone with Pete.”
“You are not bringing a psychic on the Dixon case.”
“Shut your mouth,” I whispered. “That was one time.”
Joseph smirked and as he went to adjust his glasses, my hand went with it and I had to cover up my laughter.
He also rarely wore casual clothing, but for the pleasure of my eyes that night, he was dressed in a quarter-zip sweater and slacks; his socks thick and fuzzy and his eyes dark. Seeing him in any state other than how he presented at work was a gift I had promised myself that I would never take for granted.
“Would you stay tonight? Just a little later than everyone else?”
Joseph sighed. “Sebastian–”
“I want to talk about the case, and I didn’t see you all day today. Please.”
“...Fine.”
I pressed my lips to his. He kissed back right away, his hands coming to clutch my t-shirt at my waist. It took everything in me to stop, to move an inch away and just breathe and look in his eyes.
After everyone had left and Myra had gone to bed, Joseph and I were in the home office looking through the Dixon forensic photos on my computer. His hand made small sweeping movements on my lower back, and it was so relaxing I was struggling to keep my eyes open.
“I suppose he did everything in the bathroom, but it’s so cramped. I don’t understand how he even got him up there. I was thinking one white male, but now…”
Joseph sighed and set his head on my shoulder. He was very warm, and if he got any more snuggly I was definitely going to fall asleep sitting upright. I pressed a kiss to his forehead and he flicked his eyes up to look at me.
He was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen, a classic sort of beauty with a quiet confidence. I had a deep appreciation for his glasses, the way he always styled his hair slicked back, his clothes always pulled straight out of a film noir. His tidiness was exceptionally fun to muss and ruffle.
I had missed him so much while he was gone that as we looked into eachother’s eyes, my throat grew tight from an impending cry.
“I’m sorry for not coming to see you,” I said softly, petting his head with my right hand. “I think I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of how you make me feel… I– I shouldn’t… I need to work on– on this.” I gestured around me, hoping it got the point across. “You are worth doing whatever it takes to sort my life out.”
Joseph sat up and turned just to press his lips on my cheek, then my lips, then just about everywhere else on my face he could reach.
“Fuck yes I am,” he said, making me chuckle and pull him in for a real, deep kiss that left both of us a little breathless.
Though it took quite a bit of strength, I pulled away so we could both settle down before things got out of control. We still hadn’t really talked about it, about boundaries, what was or wasn’t appropriate.
“Myra wants to know you,” I said.
Joseph tensed, but I tried not to look worried. “That’s scary,” he whispered, smiling nervously.
“It’s okay. We’ll get through it together.”
“So you want the FBI to consult with some college professor off a hunch?”
I sighed into my palm. “Yes, sir. There’s a little more to it than that–“
“Do an interview first, send me the transcript, then I’ll approve or deny. Is that good enough for you, Castellanos?”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
“Good. And don’t forget to look into those forgeries. I haven’t got all year.”
“Understood.”
I threw my phone into the passenger seat and slammed my fist on the wheel.
Usually, I would expect a serial murderer to have accelerated the time between murders until eventually the urges were never dormant. This killer, however, had gone three weeks between the first two, and then almost four weeks had passed without a new victim since Dixon.
Joseph set up the interview room while I made my way to the university to pick up Dr. Valentini. The area was a lot bigger than I expected. Once I’d gotten past the first parking lot it opened up into a wide, horseshoe campus with even more lots around the side and in front of the dormitories.
Eventually I made it to the main office, where an older woman spent nearly five minutes looking my name up in the student registry before a younger employee stepped in, escorting me to the fine arts building.
I felt old as shit myself, seeing the young crowd. I was only 32, but after spending every day since I graduated college working, I had inherited my share of aches and pains and lessons learned, something that all the teenagers enjoying the sunshine wouldn’t understand for at least another decade.
The fine arts building was surprisingly quiet, and just as I started to make my way down the second floor hall towards room 204, it suddenly flooded with students. No bell, no warning, just a floodgate silently opened. I bid my time at one of the windows until the rest of the path was mostly clear.
Dr. Valentini’s room was essentially a miniature warehouse with only a few large, white tables scattered around. And the man himself, just like the image of him from the news, was seated at one of them with a book and a sea of small, delicate flowers made of clay in front of him. As I got closer, I could see that he was using a gradebook.
“Excuse me,” I said, holding out my badge. “Dr. Valentini?”
The man did not startle, per se, but he did have a wide look to his left eye at first. He was wearing an apron and his hair was quite an extreme style, draped over the entire upper right half of his face.
He only glanced at the badge before he rose to greet me. “Stefano, please,” he said.
“I’m Special Agent Castellanos. My partner spoke to you on the phone this morning.”
Stefano nodded and gestured to the table. “My apologies. You’ll have to wait for me to finish, the clay will fall apart once it dries.”
I knit my brow as I looked at the flowers. “What’s the point, then?”
Stefano sighed in the way that a man who had just spent several hours of his life trying to teach young adults to appreciate art might sigh as he took his seat again. “They are beginners, and developing skills require repetition. If I let them fire every piece they made, I’d need a hundred kilns.”
I pulled up a chair and sat near the short end of the table. One by one, Stefano picked up the flowers, checked the slips of paper underneath them for their names, then wrote something in the book. After finishing the row closest to himself, he slapped the book shut and straightened his back until it cracked a few times with a deep, grateful breath.
I had a thought, as I watched him stretch and yawn and shove on his coat and scarf. And as we silently made our way to the back lot, where my car was parked, and I opened the door for him. And I felt stupid, because he looked at me with the gentlest expression of surprise, and the wind blew his hair just enough to reveal some pale pink scars which bloomed on his cheek and the bridge of his nose, and I realized I wasn’t driving a cruiser, I wasn’t arresting anyone. It was a regular car–my personal car–there was no reason for me to help him inside, especially not the passenger seat.
And all too quickly, my head was full of this thought, so much so that I couldn’t make even benign conversation.
It was only twenty minutes to the business district, where the office was, but it felt long in the awkward silence. As soon as I parked, Stefano turned to me and said, “Is this really it? I know the area, I could have driven myself.”
“It’s protocol,” I replied reflexively.
“And so is opening doors?”
I removed myself from the car without replying, mostly because I physically couldn’t do anything except think about how embarrassing I was being. But also because it definitely was not protocol, not for consulting anyway.
I stood outside for a second to text Joseph and let him know we’d arrived, and when I didn’t hear the car door open, I bit my cheek and walked around to the other side, working very hard to stifle the laughter bubbling up in my chest.
When Stefano was out far enough to close the door behind him, I leaned in and said, “Opening doors is not protocol.” I was grinning down at him, and it was his turn to flush, and the thought that had taken over my brain finally became so loud I could no longer fight it.
Stefano was beautiful.
“Background check was clear,” Joseph began, “We have all of your documentation including your work Visa, birth certificate, and passport. We just have to do a verbal interview and then we’ll give you the contract, but we’re ready to start today.”
Stefano was looking a bit overwhelmed, so I offered him something to drink. Once he had a hot cup of coffee, he seemed a little less spooked about the whole thing and the interview was already half over.
Afterwards, he read the contract while we waited for the go-ahead from the director. Every single word of it. I knew, because I watched him from the monitor in my office. He was on the phone with his lawyer, reading it out loud to him. For over half an hour, I was listening to his voice rattle off legal jargon like music. His Italian accent was fairly weak, and he did have quite an extensive list of countries in his passport to explain it. I wondered why he chose to settle down here, of all places. With the whole of the world at his fingertips, when money for him was of no concern, why here and now?
I also watched Joseph enter the interview room, and they had a short conversation, shook hands, and then they made their way to my office, so I shut the program on my PC down and got back to organizing and updating The Wall.
When he first saw the spread of photos, his visible eye went wide and he just stared for a while, taking it all in.
“This is real?” he asked.
Joseph explained, “These pictures were taken by the killer of the bodies of Olivia Newman and Ranger Dixon on the left, and our latest victim on the right, Julianna Diaz. Below are the relevant photos from forensics in the same order.”
Stefano grabbed one of the pictures from the bookshelf below the wall, picked it out of the pile like a tarot card. A wide shot of Newman’s apartment, including most of the expanse of the threads and the camera still on its tripod.
“This is incredible,” he said. “I mean, it’s horrible, but…”
I gave Joseph a look, but he was busy giving Stefano one of his own, like he was waiting for him to pull out a gun or something.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, hoping to make Joseph look at me. He did not. “Do you recognize that camera?”
Stefano hesitated. “Yes. I’ve been tempted on more than one occasion to purchase a Hasselbald.”
“Why haven’t you?”
He shrugged, setting the picture down and crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s not as versatile as I’d like for a digital camera. And as for my photography, I prefer to process film, so the appeal is limited.” He spoke slowly, deeply, with careful attention to enunciation. I was enamoured by it, the richness, the emotional transparency of it. He then touched one of Diaz’s photos on the wall and gasped almost silently. “She is… but how?”
“Suspended by metal rods,” Joseph explained. “They’re painted to match the rest of the stage. It was obvious in person, but not in most of the photos.”
I sat at my desk while Stefano explored. We still had a case, leads to follow and cold cases to examine for connections. Dr. Valentini was just one piece of the puzzle, and while I had hoped he would help us get closer, I also had my doubts. He was very young, in his second year as a professor and even less time had passed since being awarded his PhD.
Joseph was rightfully cautious as well, making sure to text me after the interview to point out all the ways in which Stefano was too young, too inexperienced, had said or done something weird. I had simply glared at him from over my monitor rather than replying.
“I don’t recognize his work,” Stefano said. “I don’t even know if I would call it fine art.”
“Why not?” I asked, just as Joseph began to say, “Why did you use the masculine pronoun?”
Stefano looked between us before he replied, “I just assumed they were a man. They usually are, aren’t they?”
“But is there anything about these crimes that specifically indicates a man committed them?” Joseph challenged.
Stefano turned back to the photos and contemplated the question. “I don’t think a woman could subdue and lift a three-hundred pound man into such a position even if he was already deceased. And as for the other victims… I suppose they could have had help?”
I dropped my head into my hands. We’d been ringing around those exact rosies for weeks.
“There cannot be multiple perps,” I groaned. “We’ve got less than a dozen pieces of DNA evidence, from crime scenes in public places, and from what we’ve been able to ID, most of it belongs to people with alibis. …None of it matches the evidence from the other crime scenes, either.”
Joseph added, “It is rare to not leave this kind of evidence as one person, let alone two or three. That would require statistically improbable levels of perfection or coincidence.”
“And why did you say you wouldn’t call this fine art?”
“These are more reminiscent of performance art, such as ballet or theater. The digital cameras aimed at the bodies could be the audience, or critics. …Perhaps you are the critics–you must sit here and scrutinize every image, and eventually the courts will cast judgement.” As he spoke, he picked up a photo from the bookshelf and kept his eyes on it, transfixed. “I’m not used to seeing this much… viscera.”
At Joseph’s insistence, we took a break. I walked with Stefano through the floor, showing him around. The office was not impressive by any means, nothing like Quantico, but it had its charms. Like an old friend, I had developed inside jokes and safe places over the years.
The lounge, which most of us affectionately referred to as Daycare, was our final stop. Stefano didn’t seem enthusiastic about the tour, but he did perk up a bit once he saw the amenities. And I was happy to brag about my efforts to create the space.
In the middle of my rambling, Joseph jogged up to us and put a hand on my shoulder. “Got another one,” he said.
It was snowing. Stefano had pulled his scarf tight around his neck and zippered his long coat. He was hovering in the doorway, observing from a distance.
I picked up a scrap of paper from the floor with gloved fingers and held it up to the light. Along with the rest of them, it was probably canvas, some smudges here and there but nothing informative from the pieces I had inspected so far. I wanted handwriting, something identifiable, to link suspects to the crime. But I would have taken a scribble just to know what brand of pen had been used.
The victim was a night shift guard for a shipping company, and his body was found in the security room. Electric cables were anchored to the walls, his body drawn as if to be quartered. It felt like an evolution of Newman’s staging, strung up and secured into the environment.
The killer was finding his niche, his style. He liked his victims bound and in the air, which meant there was a good chance he was familiar with bondage and shibari. But that wouldn’t be helpful until we had suspects to investigate.
Along with the other victims, he had died by punctures in the chest, which forensics concluded would have been done by a six to eight inch blade, sharpened well and unserrated. The guard had three bloody holes in his uniform, a triangle over his heart.
And littered all over the floor were those scraps of torn canvas, but otherwise the scene was rather simple.
Joseph was on the other side, looking through the footage on the security cams while a tech downloaded everything from the system.
From where I was still crouched on the ground, I paused to admire my partner for a moment. His hair was messy from the wind, and his coat made him look smaller and more… domestic.
Stefano shifting outside the room caught my attention, and he looked similarly unkempt. And in that moment I realized I had a major problem.
“Are you sure I can be here?” Stefano asked.
“Yes,” I told him, for the third time. “My scene, my rules. You've already got the PPE on, why not come in?”
I could feel Joseph’s argument before he even spoke. “He’s not law enforcement, Sebastian, you can’t expect him to–”
“Just give him a chance.”
Joseph shot me an odd look, but he turned back to the CCTV.
Stefano did eventually step inside, just a few feet beyond the threshold, arms tucked into himself. His eye was glued to the victim for a while, but once he began to take in the rest of the scene, he became more relaxed.
“What’s your assessment, doc?”
After a moment to collect his thoughts, Stefano replied, “The wires are positioned around his limbs as if eating them, becoming them.”
“Huh.”
Stefano gestured to the floor. “What are those?”
“Just some scraps, feels like maybe fabric or canvas, hard to tell with the gloves.”
He nodded and went back to quietly observing.
I looked at the victim’s limbs with this new perspective, but before I had much time to ruminate, the body gasped. All of us were startled, though Stefano was the only one who was not laughing from relief after the fear subsided.
“It’s just gas,” I told him. I’d been knocked onto my ass by the scare, so I finally made my way back to standing and winced at the ache in my knees and ankles. “He’s been dead probably two days, things are getting broken down. It happens.”
Stefano nodded slowly, his mouth slightly open, and he retreated back to the hallway to wait for us to finish.
What happened at Beacon Mental Hospital was something I longed to forget, and for the most part I made it through each day relatively undisturbed by the memories of what I endured. But every few nights, I had nightmares. They woke me up, and though I could not remember them in detail, I knew what they were about.
Myra was a heavy sleeper, but sometimes I did wake her, and she would put a hand on my chest and a leg over mine and rub soothing circles into my sternum until I fell back asleep.
That was before she discovered the affair. Afterwards, I woke up and looked at her and wished that I could take it all back for just a little while. Because it wasn’t fair to her, Joseph, and most of all Lily.
But what was done, was done. And she forgave me. And she still loved me. Somehow. And I knew we would find a way to make it work, if just for Lily's sake.
The night after visiting the security guard’s scene, I woke up from one of those dreams and looked at Myra and longed. And then I got in my car and drove. I didn’t know why, I just had this ticking in my chest, urging me to go. I could have gone for a run, but my body wasn’t energized–it was my mind.
Joseph lived in the city, just a mile or so from the office, so the sun was rising by the time I parked. I called him from the elevator and his grumbling sleepy voice graced my ears through the phone.
“Hey,” I said, “Will you forgive me for waking you up if I tell you there’s breakfast outside your door?”
“...Maybe,” Joseph replied slowly, possibly smiling, and then I could hear his sheets rustling and his joints cracking as he got out of bed.
He pulled open the door, my eyes immediately dropping to his full morning erection, as he was entirely nude. “Good morning, Sebastian.”
As soon as I got in reach of his kitchen counter, I set the food and coffees down and pulled him in for a breath-stealing kiss. Joseph didn’t waste any time shoving off my outer layers and I kicked off my shoes while he worked on my shirt buttons.
We kissed carelessly, tongues and teeth on my neck, until I was just in my socks and he was pressing his cock into my hip while he sucked bruises on my collarbone.
I groaned when he backed away to drag me into his bedroom. Joseph liked to be in control, and he was great at it, knew just how to push my buttons until I was incomprehensible and twitchy.
He dropped to his knees without warning and pressed a delicate kiss to the skin beside my cock, letting his nose bump into my length as he breathed in the scent of me. I carded a hand through his hair, admiring the view of him on his knees for me. His cheeks and nose were just a shade pinker, his eyes dark and raking up and down my body.
“Do I smell okay?”
“Intoxicating,” he sighed. “I’m going to suck your dick.”
As I whispered a very grateful string of expletives, he pressed his lips to the head, then again to the shaft and down over and over until he was nuzzling into my balls. I was so pent up, struggling to decide between tipping my head back and staring at him, but when he looked directly into my eyes as he sucked one side of my testicles into his mouth, I couldn’t look away again.
“Fuck, Joseph,” I gasped, tightening my fingers in his hair. He made a pleased sound and licked a stripe up to the tip, then swallowed me as deep as he could, one of his hands coming up to cover the very base of my shaft.
The wet heat of his mouth was enough to make my knees weak. His lips were rosy and slick, his cheeks hollow when he sucked. I could see him humping his own hand and I had to tap him to let him know I was close already.
He pulled off painfully slowly, making sure I watched every second of it, before flashing me a self-satisfied smirk as he sat back on his heels.
I sat down on the bed just behind us and reached out for him, coaxing him over until he was in my lap with his knees on either side of my hips and his arms around my neck.
“I was fucking myself before you called,” he said, almost a whisper, before kissing my neck generously. “Thinking about you…”
A shiver came over my whole body, starting at the base of my neck, my cock throbbing as images flooded my mind and Joseph’s teeth grazed the shell of my ear. “Need some help?”
Joseph nodded, and after a brief stretch behind us to grab something from the sheets, he put a bottle of lube in my hand.
I grabbed his ass to start, got a nice hold of one cheek and squeezed. He was in a bit better shape than me, all tough, lean muscle; but his ass was still padded with a nice softness that was heavenly in my hands. Sliding my fingers down to his hole, I could feel the remnants of lube going sticky, and hurriedly applied some more.
He was prepared enough to welcome my finger smoothly, though I wanted better leverage, so I guided us down to a lying position and helped him shift up my torso. His neck was in my face and he smelled amazing and it took all of my strength not to bite a chunk out of him on the spot.
Joseph was melting in my hands after hardly a minute of working just inside the rim. He was the most expressive in his life when I had him like this. Every sound and gasp and moan had to be cherished in the moment, because once we had both finished, those exhilarating noises would be gone indefinitely.
“You’re doing so good,” I said, pressing gentle kisses to the edge of his jaw. I couldn’t help but encourage him, even if it wasn’t necessary. He amazed me.
Joseph was pushing his hips back to try to force my finger deeper, but I just followed the movement to tease him. He made a frustrated sound and whined, “I’m ready, Sebastian, please.”
I hummed and slid my other hand down to his cock, lightly caressing him there. He set his forehead on mine and shuddered, rocking his hips forward. “I can’t– My shoulder.”
I removed myself and helped ease him down onto his back without a word. He was breathing hard, but I could visibly see the tension drain from his body as the pain subsided.
The scar was healing well, just a three inch line on the front, a diagonal from shoulder to neck. I’d completely forgotten about his injury in the heat of the moment, and I just sat and breathed with him, gently rubbing all over his chest and arms.
“I’m okay now,” Joseph said softly.
I smiled down at him. “I know.”
Stefano came into the office that afternoon with charcoal smudges all over his hands and clothes and even some on his neck and ears. It seemed a shame as his clothes always looked rather pricey, but he didn’t mention it.
Stefano and Joseph were standing again before The Wall with knit brows and discussing the case. Then, Joseph asked for something big to write on, so I went and hauled the whiteboard from the conference room to my office and handed him a marker.
He began on the left side by writing each victim’s name and the most important facts about the case:
Newman, posed in air, impaled by thread, stabbed
Dixon, posed on cart, impaled by stick, stabbed
Diaz, posed in air, impaled by poles, stabbed
Wilson, posed in air, impaled by cables, stabbed
He gestured to their names and then circled them all, adding a note: All white or half white, all between 20-30 yrs, all current KC residents.
“They are off of the ground, not in the air,” Stefano said. “It’s about being lifted, or rising up, the idea of movement… ‘In the air’ would be more like, mm, weightlessness and spirituality.”
Joseph nodded in agreement and replaced “in air” with “off ground” to reflect the perspective of their consultant.
“They were all impaled by something directly related to their careers. The tailor, the janitor, the exotic dancer, the security guard.” Deep in thought, Stefano walked over to The Wall and began plucking photos seemingly at random.
Stefano mumbled to himself while using magnets to stick the photos he’d selected to the whiteboard, “She was too good, he was a failure, she was too good, he was a failure…”
The photos Stefano picked were all taken by forensics, showing the cameras that the killer had placed in the scene. There had been a camera at every crime scene. The women had expensive cameras which took meticulous, thoughtful photos, almost as if guiding them to the details needed to understand why they had been killed. The two men’s scenes, however, had been recorded on cheap video cameras that had been hidden in the environment, footage grainy and dark and at odd angles. Five or ten second clips, nothing more, nothing intimate or up close. Almost petulantly, as if the killer didn’t feel they were worthy of capturing.
“Holy shit,” I said, rubbing a hand over my beard. “Killer’s a woman.”
Joseph was as serious as ever, though he did have the hint of a smile on his lips. “Hell hath no fury…”
Stefano didn’t seem so sure, but he also didn’t argue. He and Joseph both went to grab the marker from the ledge, their hands overlapping, and my breath caught.
I had to sort of blink my way through the fog of all the crap in my head then, because it was all too much for me. I sat on my desk with my arms crossed and stared at the space where their hands had met, now empty of them.
They were both wearing gloves.
I fucked Joseph in the records room as soon as we had a moment to ourselves. I guided his gloved fingers into my mouth, his middle and ring, and the rest of them grabbed my face while I sucked on them.
Why did they both wear gloves indoors, and fancy suits? Why did they both possess such impressive amounts of knowledge and poise and patience? Why were they both so fucking hot I could have sworn it was making me stupid?
Joseph’s eyes rolled into his head as he bit down on his tie to keep quiet, never looking away from me, hardly even blinking. The table made small rumbling sounds with each thrust, our skin slapping and my belt jingling around my ankles filling up the silence.
As I rolled my tongue around his fingers, I imagined it being Stefano’s hand, what the look on his face might be like if he was the one on the table with me inside of him.
I hiked Joseph's hips up and the next thrust made him choke on air, the spit-soaked tie falling from his mouth, his eyes scrunching up tight. “Fuck, Seb–!”
Then the dizzying image of Joseph taking Stefano in my place, or from the other end, both of us getting a taste of soft Italian leather and the noises that the professor would be making, the wild and desperate widening of his eye. I felt like I wasn’t even on Earth anymore. I’d gone somewhere so deep in my mind, the only thing that could have brought me back was Joseph moaning my name a little too loudly.
Seeing his length jump as he spilled onto his abdomen was all I needed to fall over the edge as well, and I was just quick enough to pull out and cover my cock with my hand to keep either of us from getting too messy, stroking myself furiously through my orgasm until it hurt.
Joseph was staring at me with the most emotion I’d seen in a long time, quite a lot of it awe, panting with his mouth open and his face and neck red. He looked like a dream.
When Joseph first transferred to the Krimson City branch of the bureau, I did what might by legal definition have been considered stalking. I suppose it was my way of trying to deal with the emotions that I couldn’t understand at the time, not that that made it any better.
And I found myself doing it again.
Mobius University’s website had a page for all their staff, and the paragraph about Dr. Valentini was unenlightening, so I began to search through social media. I found at least four accounts associated with his art, but his blog was what sunk several hours of my work day down the drain.
Art of War
by Dr. Stefano Valentini
At the age of nineteen, I was in search of something greater than my sheltered upbringing. While working in my late father’s studio, a military recruiter presented me with a copy of my own resumé and portfolio and, despite the numerous other red flags, I said yes.
Within the year, I was informed of my deployment to the middle east. I spent an exhilarating eleven months with my squadron before the incident that would change my life…
While I do not possess a visual memory of the explosion itself, I can still hear the ringing in my ears and feel the force of it against my ribcage, shaking every bone of my body as I was knocked backward off of my feet. I remember the grittiness of the sand in my mouth, and the prickling of molten debris scattered across my front from head to toe.
But most of all, I remember reaching up to touch my right eye. It was slimy, sticky, my anatomy transformed into something inhuman… My arms were ripped away and I was dragged for about a dozen or so kilometers, through razor-sharp foliage and grating sand, through mud and corpses and more corpses. When my savior paused near a smoldering tent to take cover from gunfire, I had a moment to take in what little I could make out of my surroundings. As if compelled by some unseen force, I leapt to steal a rifle from one of the bodies near my feet, and shoved it so hard into my mouth that I broke through the flesh of my palate.
I did not know that my eye was irreparably damaged in the literal sense. I was not so distraught by rational considerations of what such a disability would be like to have, nor the agony of the indescribable pain in my skull. Rather, there was an animalistic fear which overtook me. I did not think anything except that I had to die and I had to do it now.
In hindsight, I believe this sudden suicidal attempt occured because even deep within my traumatized state, I knew that if those men put their hands on me– Those men, who were so broken that their brains had atrophied due to the abuse by their superiors. Those men, who used me in ways that do not bear speaking of. Those men, who spat and bit and snarled like rabid hounds trapped in an enclosure, a prison of their own making, signing a paper, shaking a hand, doomed to suffer and create suffering before they even knew themselves beyond the names of their fathers.
The animal of me understood that it would be better to die than to be vulnerable.
And most of all, the animal of me could not live knowing that Arabic civilians were facing worse extremes than the pain I now endured, and all that I had ever done was peer at their agony through the lens of my camera.
I pulled the trigger, but the mercy I sought never came. I couldn’t see much through the blood, but I was later told that the magazine of the rifle had been broken off, and it was a miracle that the mechanism of firing was damaged in that process.
The “enemy” had indirectly saved my life…
This is the story that a single photograph possesses. This soldier who is taken apart for eternity, and the scared young man behind the camera, we are not to be pitied.
An eye for ten thousand eyes.
“Are you okay?” Juli asked from the door. “Look like you’re about to cry.”
I jumped at the sound of her voice and quickly clicked out of the browser as if I’d been looking at something inappropriate. “Yeah, just…” I waved at my computer, hoping the lie would come up with itself.
Thankfully, she was happy to change the subject. “You never read the IT report, did you?”
“About what?”
Her reply was to slap a folder on my desk. “You were right, the killer was watching Newman.”
Lily set down a coloring book and a box of crayons in front of Joseph in a no-funny-business manner, so he was effectively held hostage for the foreseeable future. As he colored in a My Little Pony with realistic horse colors, to Lily’s amusement, he managed to still drink his tea and eat from the plate full of loose snacking veggies I had thrown together at the last minute.
“Stefano wants to quit,” Joseph said.
“Hm? What, why?”
“Says he’s too busy at work. I’m alright with letting him go. I think he’s been helpful, but we got what we need.”
Myra returned from the home office and sat on the other side of Lily as she announced, “I start tomorrow morning.”
Joseph and I raised our respective beverages in cheers. “Guess it’ll be just you and me, kid,” I said.
Lily smiled and without looking up from her coloring, she said, “Can Mr. Oda come over tomorrow?”
There were varying degrees of tension coming from Joseph and Myra, so I decided to try to steer the conversation straight through the awkwardness like a runaway train. “Well, Mr. Oda is a busy man,” I said.
“I can’t make any promises,” Joseph explained, stumbling a little. “But if I finish my work early, and if it’s alright with your parents…”
“Fine with me,” I said, looking at Myra.
“Of course! You can come by anytime,” she said.
I recognized the subtle twitching of Joseph’s hand under the table. He was anxious, and probably needed some space or a distraction, so I sent Lily to her room so the adults could have some ‘work talk,’ which Myra knew as code for ‘stuff we can’t say around a kid.’ And Lily seemed to be catching on to the meaning, as she put up a bit of a stink about it before scurrying up the stairs. Though she seemed genuinely excited at the idea of Joseph coming over, which warmed my heart.
“Well, I think we’re gonna get going, once I finish my drink,” I said, mentally searching the house for where I put my wallet and keys.
Myra fiddled with a pale pink crayon on the table. “Alright. What kind of art is it?”
“Photography, I’m assuming,” I replied, thinking about Stefano’s blog post. “Whole thing centers around this one picture.”
“The exhibit is called, ‘An Eye for Ten Thousand Eyes,’” Joseph added. “It’s about Dr. Valentini’s time as a war photographer.”
Myra looked interested enough that I offered to take her and Lily with us, but she shook her head, saying she had too much to prepare for her first day.
When we actually got to it, the place was fairly crowded. Had to park way down the street just to catch a spot, and then walk for about five minutes to the gallery. I opened the door for Joseph, who was dressed in one of his nicer suits, a vintage pinstripe trouser with a matching vest, no jacket and the sleeves rolled up. The kind of thing that made my knees weak.
After entering beyond the foyer, a large white wall blocked the rest of the exhibit. The titular photo from Stefano’s blog post was there, in all its gorey glory, of the soldier and the explosion. Below was an excerpt I recognized from the blog post, ending with the title of the exhibit. I was surprised by how much it affected me. I’d been working with the FBI for so long, I generally didn’t feel much seeing that kind of thing. Except maybe children, but anything that made me think of Myra and Lily was bound to sting.
“My father was in the marines,” I said.
Joseph turned fully toward me. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well. He was a piece of shit, so…” I shrugged.
We made our way around the wall and the space opened up into an expansive gallery. There were a lot of photos, but also paintings, charcoal drawings, and glass display cases toward the back.
Stefano was in conversation with a blonde woman by what seemed to have most of the attendees’ attention: a wall full of photos of what appeared to be Stefano’s damaged eye, capturing the healing process from start to finish.
The first photo was shaky, imperfect. I could see where he was lifting the bandages covering his head to take the picture, and what appeared to be a cot under him. The photo was too far back to really get a good look, the gore of the wound mostly a dark blur. He must have been out of his mind from the pain when he took it.
Stefano caught my eye and excused himself from the conversation soon after to greet us. He was dressed in a fancy suit of his own, dark blue and fitted to hug all the right places. It was difficult to marry the images on the wall with the man before me. What little I’d seen of the pale scarring on his face was in person nothing like the deep ridges and textured flesh on the wall.
There was so much blood, early on. In the fourth photo, it was unclear if his eyeball was still there, but in the fifth the socket was engorged, the whole right side of his face burning bright red and swollen and bruised and burned. So much commotion in the delicate skin, so much color and texture that his professional camera had the ability to capture.
It made sense to me now why the killer used such expensive ones for his female victims, despite knowing they would be turned in as evidence, like never to see the outside of a plastic bag again. Each trail of scabbing and dried blood on Stefano’s face was an emotional thread pulled to its full length. The tension there, not unlike the tension in the thread holding Newman and the cables holding Wilson. Our killer really was an artist, and I’d made the right call getting Stefano involved, and I couldn’t let him go now–not until she was caught.
“Agents,” he said, giving us both a once-over, but spending a little extra time dragging his eye along the length of Joseph’s body, which I understood implicitly, as I’d nearly crashed the car on the way over. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Happy to be here,” I said, shaking his hand and trying not to stare at his glove or linger too long.
“There are refreshments–” He gestured behind me. “–and please, take all the time you need. I’ll be around.”
My first stop was to self-indulgently skip to the displays which had piqued my curiosity since I laid eyes on them. The items were small enough that I couldn’t quite make out their shapes until we were there. The first of three contained a surgical tray. It had various used tools, an empty vial of iodine, snippets of thread. All of it was stained brown and black from old blood. The second case, in the center, held a fragile-looking sculpture. I had to read the plaque to find out that it was made from human skin, from Mobius University’s collection of wet specimens.
“That’s fucked up,” I grumbled, and Joseph gave an agreeing nod without looking away from it.
The doll was composed of every possible shade of skin, its joints empty except for a lattice of metal wires inside, which made up its skeleton. Some pieces had tattoos, moles, skin tags, age spots. The doll’s head was haunting, faceless and stretched over a realistic form.
Stefano’s various blog posts referencing his time with the military held a lot of contextual information, and I wondered if it wouldn’t help people to know. The doll, for example– Stefano held immense guilt for the suffering of the children affected by the war. As we walked in, I spotted some photos of toys, and I squinted at them from across the room to see if there was a doll–and there was.
It was a bit different from Stefano’s creation. It was made of mostly fabric, had feminine features, and wore a dress; whereas the skin doll was a sexless, emotionless statue. But it got the point across. A childhood should not be full of death, that was something Stefano and I both felt strongly about.
And the last display case was a bit hard to comprehend. Joseph’s eyes went wide, which confused me even more as I was pretty sure it was just a pair of rings, but then I read the plaque:
“Vows”
Dr. Stefano Valentini
metal alloys, lab grown diamonds
Two rings forged with the metal retrieved from the body of Dr. Valentini over the course of three surgeries. These surgeries were performed without anesthetic, and resulted in life-threatening infection and the total loss of his right eye. Each ring is the diameter of the pin of a grenade.
“What a horrible thing,” Joseph said.
Instinctively, my thumb went to the wedding ring on my finger. I was having trouble understanding the decision to make a pair of wedding bands. They were designed to look like a combination of traditional male and female rings, thick bands with embedded diamonds and a crude finish. “Think I could use that drink.”
Turning to the bar, I saw for the first time the other side of the introductory wall, where maybe a dozen or so photographs of eyeballs were chaotically hung across the full expanse. It sent chills down my spine, just the feeling of being observed by disconnected eyes. Maybe Stefano felt haunted by his disability, maybe tired of it being so impossible to hide.
All in all, I was grateful for the whiskey cola and we took a walk through the rest of the gallery in comfortable silence. The rest of the exhibit was shockingly gorey, but always with some element of beauty. Intestines and flowers, blood flowing through sand, flesh-like canvas littered with wounds and stitches, all of it made of silk and lace.
“Feels like we’re back at work,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I had a lot of questions for Stefano, but most of all I felt I owed him an apology for dragging him into a murder case when he had clearly met his lifetime quota of fucked up.
Joseph glanced at me for just a second, and he looked utterly exhausted compared to when we first entered, drawing my immediate concern. I rubbed his upper back, nudging him to look at me rather than the art along the wall. “Hey, hey. Need to step outside…?”
Joseph took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. He seemed to relax somewhat into my touch at least, and I resisted the urge to kiss him before remembering that I didn’t have to. Maybe someone would recognize me and it would be a little awkward, but… I was a grown man. And Joseph was deserving of it, more than worth whatever discomfort I might face.
So I did kiss him, just a quick peck to his cheek, and then I grabbed his hand, too, because I was feeling bold. I could have sworn I was getting some sort of natural, dopamine-induced high at the look on his face.
“Sebastian,” he said, with his little pink cheeks.
“Joseph,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’d like to keep going, I’m okay.”
After asking if he was sure, we swung around the back of the rectangular gallery space, and I was greeted by the sight of Stefano laughing open-mouthed as he spoke to a pair of very artistic-looking youths.
When the kids saw me, their eyes lit up.
“Aren’t you the FBI agent that’s always loitering in the hallway?” asked the one with short, black hair.
Stefano and Joseph both looked at me in ways which I did not care for. “I would call it being respectful and waiting for Dr. Valentini’s class to finish,” I replied. “You’re his students, I take it?”
The shorter kid nodded. It had been maybe fifteen seconds and both of them had already taken discreet glances at where Joseph and I’s hands were still joined together. I gave Joseph’s a squeeze.
“He won’t tell us anything,” the first student lamented. “Is it true he’s not allowed to talk about it?”
“Yep. Case is classified.”
Stefano smiled warmly at me. “As I have said countless times now.”
The three of us separated from the students to walk the last wall all the way back to the entrance. Stefano didn’t offer any insights to the work, just stared at us intently while we observed.
In the foyer, it was almost silent. I was finally able to throw my plastic cup away, so I stepped away from the two of them to use the trashcan by the entrance.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Stefano said to Joseph.
“I need some time to digest, but I am very impressed. Even the gallery itself is...”
I indulged in some extravagant fantasies where the three of us spoke like this over dinner. To the other patrons it may look like a simple gathering of friends, or a business meeting. Only we would know what we shared, and when we got home we would make love in ways I could only imagine, pleasures unbound. The opportunities would be endless.
It was then that I realized that what I felt for Myra was not what I felt for Joseph, what I could see myself feeling for Stefano. It may have fit in the right boxes, but it wasn’t… this. This deep ache, nauseating anticipation, my heart untenable.
Myra was the first woman I fell in love with. She was the first woman I enjoyed sex with. She was always an outlier, an exception.
But looking at Joseph and Stefano now, feeling my body’s reactions to their proximity– I was facing the real magnitude of the situation. I was facing it. It was horrible. It was freeing.
Myra and I stayed up late that night talking. About everything, even things I wasn’t supposed to be sharing about the case. Because I needed her to know, to see, to understand.
Then she asked for a divorce.