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  “This is Jericho Sands. There is a dead body in the Howitzer building,” I told the operator.

  “Are you sure the person is dead, sir?”

  “Well, I would check the neck for a pulse, but ’the head is disconnected from the rest of the fucking body.”

  I hung up before the operator could ask anything else. Was I sure he was dead? Yeah, lady. Pretty damn sure. Within minutes, a pair of patrol cars raced up Main Street. Seconds later, four more cars arrived. Their lights and sirens cut through the night like an invading army. The officers parked diagonally, blocking off the street while they set up perimeters. Good moves. Practiced by professionals who were all too acquainted with responding 911 calls of a dead body. The city had seen a rising homicide rate over the past few years and the officers who took control of the scene looked like they thought they had seen it all.

  They were in for a surprise.

  Two of them finally came up to me and I pointed over my shoulder.

  “Just past the stairwell.” I said. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Is anyone else in the building?” One of them asked. He looked over my shoulder towards the front door, his weapon just a whisper away from clearing leather.

  “Just the dead guy.” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “The dog was sure. That’s good enough for me.”

  He looked down at Doomsday and nodded. “Okay. Wait here. One of the other officers will need to talk to you.”

  As soon as they were gone another officer walked up. He was built like a defensive end a decade past retirement. Probably a heavy weight lifter in his day, but all the mass had slid down to his gut. He would be useless in a foot chase. He pulled a small notebook and flipped to a clean page. His nameplate read Olsen. I had just begun answering questions when the first two officers stumbled from the building, walked past me and leaned against one of the squad cars. The one I talked to hunched over and began mumbling between dry heaves.

  “Holy shit … holy shit … shit, shit, shit …”

  “Jesus, Robby.” Olsen asked. “What the hell did you see in there?”

  The only answer he received was the sound of his partner’s digestive downpour splattering on pavement and mixing with the rain.

  Chapter Three

  Within minutes my building was surrounded by what appeared to be every law enforcement vehicle in Peoria County. Many nightclubs in the area were still open. The chaos attracted drunken patrons who fought against the barricades for a good look at whatever the hell was happening. Cell phones were raised over the heads of cops in attempt to grab a lucky snapshot worthy of posting on Facebook.

  I was taken to headquarters. No surprise. A body turns up in your garage with no head and no explanation for how it got there, you had better be prepared to answer some tough questions. I briefly considered calling a lawyer, but didn’t spend very long mulling it over. I had done nothing wrong. I had the message on my cell phone to verify my story. And I hate lawyers.

  The cop behind the wheel was a kid who looked like he hadn’t yet grown into his uniform. He kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror and fidgeting in his seat. Clearly, he was not crazy about being ordered to bring the psycho downtown. Or maybe he just had to pee.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Rourke.”

  “You can relax, Rourke. I didn’t kill that guy, so you can stop checking the mirror to make sure I’m not going to tear through the metal screen and bite your head off.”

  Rourke glanced back at me, but did not make eye contact. His gaze went back to the road.

  “You wanted to see it, didn’t you?” I asked. “You wanted to see the body.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Trust me, Rourke. You are much better off for not having seen it. I wish I didn’t see it. Hell, I may never stop seeing it.”

  “Was it really that bad? I mean, is it as bad as the stuff you write about? I’ve read your books. You conjure up some pretty graphic stuff.”

  “My books don’t come close. My books are Disney compared to what is back there.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  Rourke nodded, and we rode the remainder of the short drive in silence. He parked in the underground parking garage and led me up two floors in an elevator and through a hallway into the special investigations division. This time of night, it was completely deserted. I looked at the desks in the bullpen, observing what I could as I followed my escort. There were three pairs of desks. Six detectives, three teams. The area was experiencing heavy layoffs and hard economic times. People were out of work, and many had given up looking. But homicide detectives had job security. I wondered which team I would get. One of the desks was covered in Chicago Cubs fanfare. Another was just covered. It was a mountain of papers and files and boxes that looked on the brink of collapse. By contrast, the one beside it was so clean that I wondered if it belonged to anyone. Stacks of files were set to the left in perfect alignment. Everything, from the desk calendar to the keyboard to a penholder, was at right angles. A full pump bottle of hand sanitizer was beside the phone.

  Rourke took a call on his cell phone, turning his back and speaking in hushed tones. I still was not cuffed. Had I been dangerous, I could have attacked Rourke from behind, taken his weapon and had free reign of the floor. In my mind’s eye, I pictured Christian Black doing it. I casually glanced around the room, playing out the struggle. After a minute, Rourke ended his conversation with a crisp “Yes, sir,” snapped his phone shut, and turned back to me.

  “The detectives are still at your building. If you want to wait in one of the interview rooms, one of them should be here in a few minutes. I also need to take your phone.”

  “My phone?”

  “Yeah. We need to have the tech guys look at that message. They may be able to get something useful.”

  “Sure.” I said and handed it over. The screen had shown ‘Unknown Caller”, but there was really no such thing. Someone with the right know-how and enough patience could trace just about anything. Unfortunately, the kind of people who were good enough to do that sort of thing usually worked the other side of the law. It paid better. But I knew that was not the real reason he was asking for my phone. Cops did not allow people into an interrogation room with a form of communication. Rourke smiled as he took the phone, seemingly grateful that I wasn’t going to make an issue out of it. Some people would sooner hand over their kidney than their phone.

  “I can start some coffee if you want.”

  I said that coffee would be great, but I eyed the small square-shaped lump in the chest pocket of Rourke’s uniform. I asked to bum a smoke and he handed me a Winston. Not my brand, but I wasn’t going to be picky. I fired it up, letting the harsh hit of nicotine fill my nose and lungs, kissing like an old flame. Rourke left me there, sitting in a tiny room with in a hard chair and waiting to be grilled by a team of detectives.

  The interrogation room was a contrast to all that I had ever described in my books. Usually, I wrote them as being dimly lit, cramped spaces that stank of stale cigarette smoke and urine and fear. This one was brightly lit with clean white walls and off-white tile floors. It smelled of disinfectant and Pine-Sol. The requisite large mirrored glass took up the east wall. I tried to ignore it. I shifted my chair so that my body was turned in the other direction, but still it was there, large and intruding.

  Ever since my sixteenth birthday, I have been unable to look in mirrors. The technical term is catoptrophobia. It’s not the mirror itself that put me at unease, but rather the image staring back. I had none in my apartment—not even in the bathroom, which is fine since I hate shaving and rarely bother. The rearview mirror had long since been removed from my car, a violation I occasionally had difficulty explaining to patrol officers. With no other focal point in the room, the mirror stared at me, daring me to stare back.

  Forcing myself to think about something else, I smoked the cigarette to the filter, trying to find
a plausible explanation for the night’s events. Someone was obviously messing with me, although not so much as they were messing with whoever was the headless corpse in my building. At book signings and other appearances, I often ran into fans who, at best, could be classified as “borderline.” While I had only one modest fansite, Christian Black had over a dozen. Roaming cyberspace were thousands of fans who studied, discussed, and critiqued the homicidal acts of my recurring character. Sitting in an interrogation room, having witnessed an all too real manifestation of one of Christian Black’s more noteworthy exploits, I considered the possibility that one of those crazed fans had taken their obsession to the next level.

  Rourke knocked sharply on the door, came in, and set a ceramic coffee mug on the table. He also left me another cigarette and a plastic lighter.

  Fans.

  The young officer disappeared as I lifted the steaming mug and took a drink. The brew lived up to every cliché about horrible police station coffee. Maybe that was why you always saw cops at Starbucks. My knuckles rapped on the battle-scarred table. Keeping track of time was something that the design of the room prohibited, but my best guess was that I had been waiting for at least an hour. Probably longer. My body was approaching shut down. Four weeks removed from my breakup with Katrina, I was still lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night, fueling myself with coffee and nicotine. With nothing to do but wait, I decided to take a nap, not caring that it would make me look guilty as hell. My chainsaw was sitting beside a dead body, the body was sitting in my building, and I had no real alibi for the time of the murder. Getting caught sleeping was the last thing I should worry about.

  I woke to the sound of the door slamming. A detective walked in, a clean-cut Hispanic man in his late thirties. Young, but didn’t look it. Not the way Rourke looked it, doe-eyed and unsure of himself. By the way he smelled, I could tell he had just come to the station from my building. The smell of death was on him, although I caught a whiff of cologne, as though he had splashed some on after leaving my building to try and cover the stench. He stretched, cracked his neck and took the seat opposite me. His posture was slightly sagged, but he still carried himself like somebody who was used to being in charge. I stole a glance at his watch and saw that it was Four-thirty in the morning. I had been stuck in the room even longer than I thought.

  “My name is Eddie Torrez. I am the lead detective of this investigation. The purpose for this interview is to get your formal statement on the record. You are not currently under arrest. However, you do have the right to have counsel with you for this interview. Would you like to have a lawyer here?”

  “No.”

  “Your decision.” He said, his tone indicating he thought it was a bad one. “Have a good nap?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Nice shirt.”

  I knew what I was wearing—it was the same shirt I had been wearing for the past two days—I but looked down anyway. It was a black T-shirt with I’M ALREADY GOING TO HELL, NOW I’M JUST TRYING TO GET A GOOD SPOT written on it. It was a dig toward my parents who used religion to justify their homicide. I always thought it was funny. However, it was probably not the best impression, given the circumstances.

  “I read in an article somewhere that you were an atheist.”

  “I am.”

  “Which means that you don’t believe in Heaven or Hell.”

  “Exactly. That’s why it’s funny.”

  “Right. Because the very best jokes are the one you have to explain.”

  Torrez got to business by asking me to state my full name, address, and occupation. It’s how cops always begin interviews, because it gets the person across the table in the habit of their answering questions. They ask your name, where you live, and then toss out a zinger like “Have you killed anybody lately?” It’s shameful how many people fall for it. It’s why you are never supposed to talk to cops without a lawyer.

  He was writing my answers on a yellow legal pad. “You go by Jericho?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Middle name is Thomas?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you go by Sands? Not Sandborn?”

  Sandborn was the name I was born with, the name synonymous with murder in the name of religious extremism. Two decades later, it still followed me. Especially on those times when I had to talk with the police.

  “I had it legally changed when I was eighteen,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “If your last name was Manson you might consider changing it to Mann. It makes it less awkward when people introduce you at parties.”

  “But everybody knows who you are. Your career depends on it, right? You cash in on your name, regardless of whatever you shortened it to.”

  I decided right then that I hated Torrez, even though technically he was correct. While true, it was not a concept I even considered when I was eighteen. All I wanted at the time was to be somebody else, and a name change was an easy step in that direction. It was not until much later that I realized I would always be me, would always carry my DNA no matter what I called myself or where I went.

  “Your date of birth is January nineteenth, nineteen seventy seven.”

  “Yep.”

  Torrez set the pen down on the notepad. Straight up and down. Middle of the page. It was the sign of an ordered mind that valued control and reason. Add to that the obvious dislike for sarcasm, and I figured that his would be the desk I saw that looked like it was vacuumed on a daily basis. Meaning his partner was the slob. Must be a fun pair. Torrez made me recount the events of the past twenty-four hours, all while taking notes and flipping pages like a writer in the middle of brainstorm. He asked his next question without looking up.

  “This video message was sent to your cell phone?”

  “I received it on my phone. It was sent to an email account.”

  “How many people have access to that account?”

  “Pick a number. It’s posted on fan pages. Anybody could have it.”

  “You don’t screen these things?”

  “No.”

  We stared at each other from across the table.

  “Your dog is making quite an impression.”

  I smiled. Before being taken to the station, I left Doomsday with a topped-off food bowl and instructions not to maul any of the officers who would be snooping around the apartment. There was no doubt in my mind that the dog would do as he was told. But the people he eyed like lunch would not be so sure.

  “I told him to stay. He’ll stay.”

  “I’m sure he will. But he made some of the crime scene people uneasy.”

  “I would think that the decapitated corpse would make them uneasy. If they can handle that, my dog shouldn’t worry them.”

  Torrez nodded.

  “Good point. You don’t seem too shaken up by it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, in all candor, Jericho, that is the sickest fucking shit I have ever seen. I had to bring in five-gallon buckets for the cops who were barfing just from the smell. The unlucky bastards who saw that massacre didn’t make it to the buckets, making the job of preserving the integrity of the crime scene a real nightmare. Hell, my partner almost barfed a few times and she is tough as they come. But you ... nothing. In fact, you were fast asleep when I came in.” Torrez shrugged. “I don’t know. It must be the genes.”

  I didn’t need a lawyer to tell me not to respond to that one. Torrez seemed surprised that I did not swing at such an easy pitch down the middle of the plate. So he threw another one.

  “You look just like him,” he went on. “Your hair is longer, and the five days’ growth hides it a little, but you really are his spitting image.”

  “So I have been told.”

  “That must be why you don’t like mirrors. It must bother you to look so similar to a monster.”

  “Do you have an ID on the victim?”

  “You didn’t recognize him?” Torrez asked.

  �
��No. The missing head made recognition difficult.”

  Torrez sat back. “His name was Sean Booker. He was mostly into drug dealing, but he also dabbled in the sale of illegal firearms and stolen property. An all-around asshole.” He looked at me from across the table. “Still doesn’t ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  “That’s funny. Because …” Torrez rummaged through a file, ostensibly searching through a stack of documents. He found the page he wanted and placed it on the table. “Two weeks ago, he was questioned by robbery detectives regarding a break-in at a local nightclub, the Blue Note. This took place on the fifteenth of this month, which would have been a Wednesday. I assume you are familiar with the crime I am talking about, since it was your bar.”

  “It’s not my bar.” I told him. “But yes, I am familiar with it.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “You have it right there in front of you.”

  “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  I shrugged. “Somebody threw a brick through the window, grabbed whatever he could carry, and ran out.”

  Among the stolen items was a black Gibson Les Paul autographed by Slash. The musician had stopped at the bar after a concert downtown and played a few impromptu sets with the house band, even inviting me to sit in. The instrument he left had been placed over the bar, along with photos of me playing back-to-back with the guy most responsible for me picking up a guitar. Slash was a genuine guy. Upon hearing about the robbery, he immediately sent a replacement. But I was still pissed.

  “It says here that surveillance videos were unable to provide an identification of the perpetrator.”

  “That’s right. The guy wore a sweatshirt with a hood and kept his head down. He also wore a ski mask. Low-budget, but effective.”

  “Must have been aggravating. Someone breaking into your place. Taking something so personally valuable. Irreplaceable, really.”

  I took a deep breath, not allowing the detective to get me riled up. Not an easy task considering I had been awake for roughly nineteen hours and was suffering a crash from severe caffeine and alcohol withdrawal. I was going to need either a pot of strong coffee or twelve hours of sleep when they let me out of here. If they let me out of here.