Free Dead Last by James W. Hall Page B

bookshelves he’d tossed into the fire. The room seemed bigger, cold and strange.
    He sat on the long white couch, tucked the towel close between his legs.
    “Don’t worry about flashing me,” Buddha said. “I already had a good look at that ding-dong. It’s nothing special.”
    Thorn glanced out the French doors into the side yard where the fire was burning low. Dawn coming. A pale russet glow out on the water.
    “Rusty had an aunt?”
    “Michaela Stabler. She was murdered last Saturday night, July twenty-fourth.”
    “And you think I had something to do with it.”
    “I don’t think it, I know it to be true.”
    “Because of my blemished past.”
    “That’s one thing. But by itself that wouldn’t bring me this far.”
    “Why did you do that to your face? All those marks.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “What do you say we keep this moving in the right direction?”
    Thorn’s eyelids were heavy, weariness overtaking him. The all-night purge, the frantic cleansing, the roar in his blood had left him empty. The last fumes of his destructive outburst had burned off. He felt as if he might be slipping into a trance. A long, dreamless vacation from earthly cycles.
    Maybe if he chose not to fight it, didn’t pinch himself, just drifted off into the beckoning shadows, everything would be over. Everything would go away and he could rest for a month. That’s how it felt. Drift away and be done. When he woke and returned to his body and his house, it would all be simple again. As easy as letting his head rest against the soft cushion of the couch. Leave this woman, this room, this new crisis, just drop away and go.
    “What do you know about Zentai?”
    Thorn straightened, cleared his eyes, looked at this small strange woman.
    “Never heard of it.”
    “How about Iklwa ? Ever come across that word? Know what it is?”
    She was studying his reaction with distrusting eyes.
    “Sorry to disappoint you.”
    “ Iklwa, ” she said. “It happens to be an onomatopoeia. Know that?”
    “A word that sounds like what it is.”
    “Good. You’re one for three.”
    “And you’re way past pissing me off.”
    Thorn watched while Buddha craned her head left and right, stretching the tightness from her neck.
    “Shaka Zulu. Ever come across that name?”
    “African warrior,” he said.
    “Good, good. Early 1800s, Shaka Zulu invented the Iklwa. A thrusting spear. Short, good for working in close. In battle, after Shaka’s enemies threw their long spears, his soldiers charged and used their Iklwas for close-in killing.”
    “I have a scholar in my house.”
    “Not really. All that is, it’s about ten minutes of Web surfing.”
    “Where’s your onomatopoeia?”
    “ Iklwa . The slicing sound the spear makes entering the enemy’s flesh and the sucking sound when it’s pulled out.”
    “Cheery.”
    Thorn used his good hand to rub the exhaustion from his face.
    “Michaela Stabler was stabbed three times in the belly with a replica of an Iklwa. High carbon tempered steel with a brass wire reinforced socket and wood shaft. About four feet long. This particular spear was manufactured in Plainfield, Indiana. And it was purchased in Miami.”
    “It’s always Miami.”
    “The killer did a half-assed job covering his tracks. The torn-up pieces of the sales receipt for the spear were in a Dumpster outside a local bar. That spear was bought with cash in a Miami sporting goods store two days before Michaela Stabler was stabbed to death.”
    Thorn was quiet, waiting for the punch line.
    “Zentai is a head-to-toe bodysuit usually made out of stretchy material. Sometimes they have zippers that join the head to the body. On the tips of the zipper pulls are eyelets where small steel locks secure one zippered section to another. When the locks are on, the wearer can’t escape. Those are the ones sex fetishists wear. S and M. It gets them off, I understand. Covers the whole body, eyes, mouth, everything. They have