J. Kerley - The Memory Killer

“Why’d you stay?” I asked White.

He winked and made a syringe-plunging motion with his fingers. “No one messes with a Patrick White patient, sir. I am one bad-ass dude with a hypodermic needle.”

I chuckled despite the grim surroundings. The guy not only had cojones, he had a sense of humor. “You been here long, Mr White?” I asked as he turned to drop the used syringe into a receptacle on the wall.

“Trained here, work here. Now I’m going for my Nurse Practitioner license here.”

The three of us wished White well as he blew out the door to his next patient, our eyes returning to the man on the bed, Brian Caswell, AKA Brianna Cass. No one spoke a word as I approached, put my hands on the bed rails, and leaned low.

“Where have you been, Brian? What did you see?”

All I heard back was the hiss of oxygen into nostrils.

Checking Caswell’s digs took us to the cheap side of Lauderdale, the upstairs of a two-story on a dead-end street. The lower apartment was unoccupied and the landlord’s name was Tom Elmont, a solid guy in his forties with an outdoorsman’s tan and a Marlins cap over a balding head.

“He’s a good kid, Brian is,” Elmont allowed as he led us up the steps. “People judge them too hard. Think they’re sick.”

“Judge who too hard, Mr Elmont?” I asked.

“Kids that dress up in ladies’ clothes. Brian explained how it’s like a talent show.”

He stopped outside Caswell’s door. “I used to be a hardcore metalhead back in the day,” Elmont continued. “Metallica, Def Lep, Sabbath, Kiss. One day I thought about all that stuff they were wearing … net hose, high-heel boots past their knees, ratted-out hair, black leather corsets for cryin’ out loud … and started laughing. I was a tough, super-ass-masculine young buck and here I was listening to music by guys that dressed like hookers.”

I couldn’t stop the chuckle. I turned. “Thanks, Mr Elmont. We’ll take it from here.”

“Sure. I just wanted you to know Brian is a good tenant, the best. He’s a gentle kid, maybe a little mixed up. But everything’s been mixed up since Alice Cooper.”

Gershwin pushed the door open without using the key. “Check this, Big Ryde.”

The lockset was broken, the splinters facing inward, like when you slam a door with your shoulder to get past. It was a cheap lock and wouldn’t have taken much. And with no downstairs tenant, noise wasn’t a factor.

“Forced entry,” I said, following Gershwin into the apartment. The air was suffused with the scent of sandalwood.

It was like walking into a vintage clothing store: racks of wigs, glitzy sequined gowns, feather boas, black leather undergarments, mostly faux . But it was a messy store, two racks on their sides, garments strewn across a battered sofa and the floor. A wooden chair was tipped over in a corner. The sandalwood came from the incense burner on the floor, spent sticks and sand spilling out and whisked with scuff marks.

While Gershwin scoped out the living room, I checked the kitchen, small and orderly, foodstuffs and spices stacked neatly in the cabinets. The provisions in the fridge were minimal, luncheon meat and veggies, a couple TV dinners in the freezer beside a bottle of Stoli. I checked the bedroom, a double bed beneath framed photos of Caswell in various stages of fancy dress or undress, vamping for the camera. A bedside table held a few gay porn mags, nothing freaky, at least compared to some stuff I’d seen.

The bedroom echoed the kitchen in its order. Books in a neat row on a shelf, his daily clothing arranged by color in the closet. Socks, underwear, tees, sweats … all tucked precisely in their drawers. I returned to the living room.

“Everything else this messed up?” Gershwin asked, twirling a blonde wig on his finger.

I shook my head. “Probably happened when the hallucinations started. Or Brian put up a fight. I’ll tell Elmont to hang around until scene techs can get here.”

We crossed town to see the person who’d called in the missing report on Caswell, Mitchell Peyton, a friend who had gotten worried when Caswell didn’t meet him for lunch the following day. He’d called Caswell two dozen times – Caswell a phone junkie who always answered – then notified police that something was awry.

Peyton lived in a forties-vintage apartment complex in North Miami, seedy in a gentle way, peeling paint, a palm tumbled over in the courtyard. But the architecture was classic and bright flowers bloomed along the walkways, recalling a Hollywood idol on a downhill track, but still able to put on airs.

Peyton was in his late thirties, pudgy and losing hair and affecting a maroon beret when he opened the door in floppy jeans and a wrinkled Aloha shirt. When we ID’d ourselves he shot a look toward an ashtray in the living room. I saw an unlit joint waiting the match, and he saw me see it.

“It’s OK,” I said. “Lots of people roll their own, Mr Peyton. Cigarette tobacco, right?”

“Uh, sure. Exactly. Let me just clean things up and you can come in.”

Gershwin and I diplomatically turned away and when Peyton said, “Come on in,” saw that the doob had disappeared. We entered, but declined sitting, instead leaning against the wall in a neat living room decorated with vintage movie posters: Lost Horizon , The Wizard of Oz , Gone with the Wind .

“You called in a missing report on Brian Caswell?”

“He’s been found? He’s all right?”

I laid out enough to paint an impressionistic picture, the scene without a lot of detail, leaving the door open for a hopeful recovery.

“When did you last see Brian?” I asked.

Peyton needed a glass of white wine to smooth out the news. “After his show at the Metro, a place on Mountrain Street. He was like, sitting at a table and receiving people, getting props for his show. Brianna burns up the stage.”

“People ever buy Brian drinks?”

“Always,” the beret bobbed. “It’s a way to show appreciation.”

“What’s Brianna’s act like?” I asked.

“He does Garland to Gaga, but his comic persona is Ivana Tramp, y’know, like from Trump. He’s triple bitchy, put-downs part of the act. If someone hoots at him while he’s performing, he might say, ‘Girl, why are you here buying drinks ? Save that money for dermabrasion .’ It’s all in fun. I’ve got a few videos of his act if you want to see.”

My heart quickened. “From that night?”

“A couple years ago, back when Brian was developing the act.”

No help and there wasn’t much to go on in Peyton’s account of the night. Caswell had been surrounded by well-wishers and drink-buyers and he’d tottered home around one a.m.

“Brian was feeling crappy and went home. He was afraid he was getting a cold and he had a show to do the next night. He’s a trouper.”

Morningstar said symptoms could appear within fifteen minutes following a dosing, including dizziness, dry mouth, increased heart rate, flushing and a sense of general weakness … similar to the onset of a cold or flu. The effects ramped up until the victim was incapacitated.

We left Peyton to his buzz and were wondering where to go next when my phone went off: Roy. The excitement was back in his voice.

“I’m back at HQ,” he trumpeted. ‘We just got a hit on the DNA. A name. It’s over!”

We were three steps out of the elevator when Roy was in front of us, waving a report in our faces, his grin stretching from earlobe to earlobe.

“He’s nailed to the wall,” he said, snicking the page with a fingernail. “The positive on the DNA.”

“Did it just arrive?” I asked. With no former hits, the only possible way to get a match was for the perp’s chromo-map to have just entered the system, meaning he’d been arrested somewhere.