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  A KING OF INFINITE SPACE

  TYLER DILTS

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2010 Tyler Dilts

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-935597-09-4

  For my mother

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Awake in the darkness, long after midnight, I imagine it like this. He waits patiently in the restroom, the early November sun fading in the small patch of sky visible through the row of windows along the top of the back wall. Standing near the door, he reads the first bits of graffiti on the freshly painted wall above the urinals:

  “Mr. Jackson Sucks Dick,” “Fight the Power,” “I Luv Sweet Pussy.”

  The sound of a squeaking wheel in the hall catches his attention. It’s almost time. He pulls the door open quietly, just enough to peek out. Carl Peters, the custodian, stops his janitorial cart in front of the open classroom door across the hall.

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” Carl says into the room.

  “Hi, Carl,” she answers.

  “Another late night, huh?”

  “Seems like they all are.”

  He can hear the smile in her voice.

  “Getting dark. You give a shout if you want me to walk you out.”

  “Thanks, Carl. I will.”

  He eases the door back into the jamb as Carl’s cart begins squeaking down the hall toward the far side of the building. He waits expectantly. There’s plenty of time. Carl always starts upstairs at the distant end of the building and works his way back. It’ll be at least ninety minutes before Carl will be close enough to hear anything at all.

  As he waits, he feels the butterflies tingling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling much like the nervous anticipation he used to feel driving his father’s car to a girl’s door for a first date. But this…this is something more…something so much more. His pulse quickens, and his breaths grow deeper and faster. The tightening in his crotch comes as no surprise.

  Inching the door open, he slips into the hallway. Like a child crossing the street, he looks first to the right, then to the left. After a deep breath, glancing around the edge of the wall of student lockers and into the open classroom door, he sees Elizabeth.

  She is sitting at her desk at the front of the classroom, focused intently on the student paper she is grading. Her long chestnut hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, and she holds a pen in her mouth as she pushes her glasses back up her nose. A loose strand of hair falls across her face, and she brushes it back, tucking it behind her ear.

  He likes to watch her like this. Seeing her after a long day in the classroom, after the students have gone, the sleeves of her faded blue chambray blouse pushed up above her elbows, the tails untucked, one more button open at the collar, showing just the barest hint of her cleavage. But he knows the time for watching is now over.

  He steps into the doorway. His eyes take her in, and the beginnings of a smile form at the corners of his mouth. He stands there for a moment before she senses his presence. Just as she starts to turn toward him, he speaks.

  “Hi, Beth.”

  “What are…? Hi,” she says, surprised, but not afraid. Good.

  “I’m sorry to just stop by like this,” he says, smiling charmingly. “I was driving by and I saw the school, and of course, I thought of you.”

  “That’s nice.” She smiles tentatively. “But you really shouldn’t be here. School policy.”

  “I know. I just wanted to say hi.” His eyes sparkle. “Want to take a break? Walk me out?”

  She hesitates, and he gives her his sweetest “aw, shucks” smile. As she walks toward him, he slips the blade from under his coat.

  ONE

  Longing to kill my dreams, I poured half a glass of orange juice. I was just taking the bottle of Grey Goose from the freezer when I heard the chirp of the pager. Ignoring it, I unscrewed the cap and topped off the drink. Lifting the glass to my lips, I smelled the citrus tang of the orange juice, imagined the cool, sweet taste flowing through my mouth and the sensation that would spread outward from my stomach in a warm wave, and for the briefest moment, I paused.

  It was the pause that got me.

  I looked down at the pager as I emptied the glass into the sink. Work, I knew, would do more than vodka to quiet my sorrow and regret. I picked up the cordless phone, and just as I was about to dial, it rang in my hand.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “He call you yet?”

  “Hey, Jen. I just heard the page. What do we got?”

  “Dead teacher,” she said, a trace of exasperation in her voice. “Hacked up right in her classroom.”

  “Where?”

  “Warren High.”

  “That’s right by—”

  “I know. I’ll pick you up.”

  I took just enough time to change out of my suit and into a pair of khakis and a polo shirt before slipping my arms through the harness of my shoulder holster, draping my navy blue LBPD HOMICIDE Windbreaker over my shoulder, and walking out into the middle of the street in front of my duplex. From there, looking to the north, in the distance, you can see the corner of the bleachers facing the Warren High School football field. That’s where I was standing and what I was looking at when a pair of headlights illuminated me from behind and stretched my shadow onto the street in front of me. I stepped out of the way and watched Detective Second Grade Jennifer Tanaka’s Explorer slow to a stop.

  “Long time no see,” she said as I climbed into the passenger seat. It had been barely an hour since we had turned in our daily reports and told each other to have a good weekend. She wore the same tan coat, dark pants, and white blouse she’d had on all day. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, though. The clothes looked as though they’d been freshly plucked from a dry cleaner’s bag, and she had an eager gleam in her brown eyes that belied the fact she’d already put in a ten-hour workday.

  “So much for the weekend,” I said.

  “You had big plans, huh?” She rolled her eyes.

  “Maybe I did.”

  “Don’t worry.” She turned on the blinker to signal a left turn. “Vodka doesn’t spoil.”

  “Maybe not, but my Blockbuster coupon expires on Monday.”

  Another turn, and the front of the campus was
in sight. The main building of the high school had been built not long after the turn of the last century. It had arching doors and windows, columns flanking the entrance, and wrought-iron handrails along the front steps. A tower, in which a bell would not have seemed at all out of place, rose from the roof of the second floor and overlooked the neighborhood. The rest of the school, though, was not so lucky. The other buildings had been added, decade by decade, in a ramshackle fashion, and they bore the stamp of the uninspired, boxy, and utilitarian Southern California high school architecture that had seemed the height of modernity during the sixties and early seventies.

  We drove past a row of patrol cars and parked in front of an unmarked Chevy Caprice. Eyeing herself in the rearview mirror, Jen ran a hand through her short black hair and gave herself a nod of approval. We got out, put on our matching Windbreakers, stuffed a few pairs of latex gloves into our pockets, and followed the trail of uniforms to the front of the building.

  A young cop stood near the door, visibly shaken, but trying not to let it show. His partner, a vet who was only a few months shy of his twenty, nodded to me as he watched us approach.

  “Hey, Stan,” I said, returning the nod. “What do we have?”

  “Dead woman, carved up. Janitor called it in. He’s in the office.”

  I looked at the younger man. His polished brass name tag read G. Adams. “What’s the G stand for?”

  “Greg,” he said.

  “First homicide?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was the first one in.”

  “Don’t worry.” Stan put his arm on the rookie’s shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Greg looked away and shook his head back and forth as if the motion might somehow erase the images burned into his memory.

  We walked through the glass doors and turned left, following the trail of lights and hushed voices. As we passed the main office, we saw David Zepeda, another member of the Homicide Squad, through the window. He was interviewing a smallish man who looked to be in his midsixties and was wearing gray coveralls with the name Carl embroidered over the left chest pocket. Carl seemed unable to raise his eyes from the floor.

  “Janitor?” Jen asked.

  “Must be.”

  We turned as a uniform approached. “Scene’s right up there,” he said, motioning backward with a hooked thumb, “and around the corner.” He went down the hallway and out the door.

  Jen and I turned away from the office. On our right was a large glass wall, behind which were housed three-quarters of a century’s worth of sports trophies, mementos, and photographs. I fought the urge to wallow in the history and followed her down the hall.

  Around the corner, half a dozen cops stood in a small huddle and spoke in soft voices. I searched the faces, and although I knew most of them, we passed each other with wordless nods. The light spilled out of the classroom and into the relative dimness of the hall. On the floor, a single red-black rivulet had found its way past the threshold. At the door I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and slowly let it out.

  Looking through the door, the first thing we saw was the blood. The thickening liquid pooled on the floor, and spatters covered everything in the front quarter of the room—desks, walls, chalkboards, bookcases, file cabinets were spotted with scattered drops of blood.

  Marty Locklin, Dave’s partner, squatted on his haunches and bent over the victim, with his back to the door, blocking our view of the dead woman’s upper body. He wore a charcoal gray suit that strained across the backs of his shoulders. With his salt-and-pepper hair, which was almost the same color as his suit, and his massive bulk, he reminded me of a silverback gorilla I’d seen on the Discovery Channel the week before. I almost expected him to bang his fists against his chest and roar at the carnage in front of him.

  “Hey, Marty,” Jen said, carefully circling around the pool of blood on the floor.

  He looked over his shoulder and stood up, flipping his notepad closed and tucking a small pencil behind his ear. “Hi, kids.”

  He turned around and stepped toward us, giving me my first clear look at the dead woman. Her khaki slacks and chambray blouse were soaked a deep crimson, and only a few small, unstained patches near her ankles and shoulders allowed me to identify their original colors. She had been stabbed in the torso repeatedly. The wounds were so numerous that her midsection had been rendered a bloody pulp of tissue and shredded fabric. Her vaginal area had also been mutilated. Her attacker had apparently penetrated her with the blade. Most troubling of all, at least from the investigative standpoint, was the fact that her left hand was gone, severed just above the wrist. Her blood had soaked into her wavy chestnut hair, which was now matted and tangled under her head. The color had disappeared from her face, and her dead green eyes stared at the ceiling.

  “Danny?” Jen said. Although she stood two feet from me, her voice sounded far away.

  “Yeah?”

  “You alright?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why?”

  “You know her?” Marty asked.

  “No,” I said, looking back down at the woman’s face. Something was familiar, though. Something I couldn’t quite place. The eyes? The hair? Had I seen her somewhere before? “I don’t think so.”

  Jen studied my eyes a moment and then turned her attention back to the victim. “Where’s the hand?” she asked.

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Marty said, lifting his shoulders toward his ears.

  I squatted next to her body and noticed something in the slowly drying blood. “Marty, you see this?”

  “Yeah. Looks like a partial footprint.”

  A half-inch-wide pattern curved through the outside edge of the pool, but none of the blood had seeped back into the area. I slipped my hands into a pair of latex gloves and delicately dabbed the tip of my index finger into the edge of the puddle near the print. The blood was tacky, like freshly applied glue.

  “Hang on,” I said as I stood up and went back out into the hall, walking past the swelling number of our city’s finest. I turned the corner and looked in on Dave and the janitor. Dave wiped a handkerchief across his forehead as I watched him. Even though I couldn’t hear a word he said, I knew Dave was asking Carl to take him through it one more time. Carl shook his head slowly and looked down at his feet as he began to speak. He wore heavy black work shoes that had a waffle sole.

  I went outside and took a look around. I spotted the man I was looking for sitting on the edge of a brick planter a few yards away from the entry steps.

  “Greg,” I said as I approached him. He looked up at me. “Got a second?”

  “Sure thing, Detective.” He started to rise.

  “No, that’s okay.” I motioned with my hand for him to stay seated. “How you doing?”

  “I’m alright. What can I do for you?”

  “You can lift up your left foot.”

  “What?”

  “Lift up your left foot.” Kneeling in front of him like a shoe salesman, I took his foot in my hand. I shined my Mini Maglite on the sole of his shoe and saw specks of blood coagulating in the treads. Stan had found us and was standing a few feet to my right with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Greg asked.

  I pulled the shoe off his foot.

  “You stepped in evidence. I’ve gotta bag and catalog this shoe.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean…”

  “You have another pair in the unit?”

  “No. Should I?” The nauseated expression on his face had turned to one of distress.

  I shook my head as I walked past Stan, who tried not to crack a smile. Carrying the shoe with my index finger curled under the laces, I went back inside. Marty and Jen were both hunched over the body.

  “You see this?” Marty asked, shaking his head. He was pointing at the stained and ragged crotch of the victim’s pants with the eraser on his pencil.
/>   “Not enough bleeding,” Jen said. “Probably postmortem.” She made a few more notes in her notebook.

  “Footprint’s a dead end,” I said, “unless the doer’s that rookie outside who’s still fighting to hold onto his dinner.” I held up the shoe.

  “You took his shoe?” Jen asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “So that maybe next time he’ll think twice before queering evidence.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

  “Might as well bag it.”

  Marty was grinning. “Danny Beckett,” he said with pretended awe, “Detective Supreme.”

  “Detective Supreme, huh?” Jen said with a snicker.

  “Yeah,” I said, “just like a regular detective, but with tomatoes and sour cream.”

  The crime scene techs arrived a few minutes later. Jen and Marty were at the front of the room studying the spatter patterns on the chalkboard. They cleared out of the way and moved into the hall as the flashes began going off. Crime photographers snapped photos of the corpse and the room from every conceivable angle. The electric white light of the strobes threw the crimson stains into stark relief.

  I stood in the back, behind the wood-grained Formica desktops, and tried to imagine the room as it had been only a few hours before. Along the front wall, just below the clock and above the top edge of the blackboard, a row of pen-and-ink portraits of famous authors spanned the width of the room. Some I recognized—Shakespeare, Twain, Hemingway. Others I guessed at. Faulkner? Eliot? Ellison? I strained to remember my college English classes. I wasn’t sure if the black woman at the end of the line was Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou. It had to be one of the two. The dead teacher had known.

  My eyes wandered. Her desk faced the students. On it were the stack of papers she had been grading, a red ceramic apple, an At-A-Glance desk calendar, and a smiley-face coffee mug filled with pens and pencils. To the left of the desk stood two scratched, ancient gunmetal gray file cabinets. The one nearest the windows was topped with a philodendron whose leaves cascaded down the cabinet’s side. On the wall opposite the windows, another chalkboard was flanked by two bulletin boards covered with short poems, pithy quotes, and snapshots of her students.