Grimoire Diabolique

“Roger that,” Moler said. The shears cut right through the waist of the slacks and the leather belt like onionskin paper.

Parker turned momentarily, snapped up an Arista scalpel. Its stainless-steel flash winked at him in the overheads. But before he could turn back around to the patient, he heard Moler’s dismal mutter.

“Oh, shit—”

“What!” Parker barked. “Don’t tell me he 64’d!”

“Naw, but… You better take a look at this. I think we got the guy they’ve been writing about in the papers…”

Dr. Parker finished turning. He closed the eye over which the monocular rested and looked down with his other eye. Moler had indeed expertly cut the patient’s pants off with the shears, and the boxer shorts as well. And when Parker saw what lay there, he knew immediately what his intern meant.

The “patient” had been carrying a severed human hand in his undershorts.

— | — | —

I guess I knew Jameson was the one the moment after the police shrink explained the psychiatric profile. But what tagged it was when Jameson took me to his Belltown condo and showed me those pictures. He introduced me to his wife, then showed me the row of framed snapshots over the mantle. One was a picture of him as a child, his father’s arm around him.

But no mother.

The lack of the facilitation of a nurturing touch…

My name’s Matt Hauge; I’m a crime reporter for the Seattle Times. The other papers were calling the killer the “Handyman,” and I guess that’s why Captain Jay Jameson had come to me in the first place. A couple weeks ago, he walked right into my office and said, “I need your help.”

This was a cop, one of the bigwigs—a captain up for deputy chief. Cops generally hated press people but here’s this tall, imposing guy flashing his shield in my face and asking me for help.

“This Handyman shit—that’s my case,” he said..

“It’s my case too,” I countered.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m here.” He sat down, pulled out a cigarette, asked if I minded if he smoked, then lit up before I could answer. Now that I think back, I should’ve known even then. This guy looked like a perv. He had lines down his face like a James Street speed freak. One eye looked a teeny bit higher than the other. And he had this weird dirty blond hair spiked with grey and a tan, roughened complexion like a waterman. He didn’t look like a cop. He looked like a killer.

“I know it’s your case,” he said. “You think I’m here for shits and giggles?”

“Pardon me, Captain?” I said.

“Every newspaper in the goddamn state is printing all this tabloid shit about the case. They’re making me look like the most incompetent cop in the history of the department. And this ‘Handyman’ tagline they’re pushing? It sounds ridiculous, and it makes me look ridiculous.” Jameson got up, closed my office door, then returned to his seat. Plumes of cigarette smoke seemed to follow him around like lingering spirits. “What is it with press people anyway?” he said next. Then the son of a bitch tapped an ash on my carpet. “The first thing you do is accuse the police of inefficiency, and then you gotta slap these horror-movie taglines onto any repeat crime you can get your hands on.”

“It’s a way of increasing the identifiability of the event to a mass readership, because it helps sell papers. But I might remind you, Captain—before you flick more ashes on my floor—that I’m one journalist who’s never used that tagline and has never criticized the police in their efforts to catch the killer.”

“Yeah. That’s why I like you.”

By the way, the so-called “Handyman” Case involved a fairly recent sequence of murders in the downtown area. Three women so far: two known street prostitutes and one homeless woman. All three had been found strangled to death, their bodies carefully hidden along the Jackson Street corridor. And all three had been found with both of their hands missing. Cut off with an ax or a hatchet.

“And don’t worry about your floor,” he went on. “What? Your big paper can’t afford janitors?”

“Captain Jameson, for a man coming in here asking for help, you might need to learn a few lessons in sincerity.”

“Oh, fuck that shit. Don’t be a creamcake. The only good journalism about this case that I’ve seen has been written by you. I want to make a deal.”

“A deal? For what?”

“There’ve been more than three girls. That info’s gonna get leaked eventually. I want you to break it first. I’ll tell you everything about the case the press hasn’t heard. You’ll look good.”

“Yes sir, I guess I would,” I realized. “But what’s the catch?”

“You make me look good along the way. You write for the most respectable paper in the city. All I’m asking is for some slack. I give you the goods, but when you write it, you say my unit’s doing its best. And when we catch this fuck-up…you put in a good word for me. Deal?”

“No deal,” I said. “You’re bribing me. You’ve got balls coming in here telling me this. I’m a newspaper reporter for God’s sake!”