Panic-attack drumbeat, tortured bass, jet-engine guitars. Brain-scraping vocals, over and over.
No sign of Locking.
I slid the door open a few inches wider, stuck my head in. “Hello!”
Cigarettes, butts and ashes on the carpet. On one of the tables were piles of magazines.
I took a few steps closer, shouted another “Hello?”
The magazines were a mix of psychology journals I recognized and things you didn’t need a Ph.D. to understand.
Full-color covers: nipple-pink, lip-red, coif-blond, pubic-hair-umber. The oyster glisten of fresh ejaculate.
The Journal of Clinical Practice and that.
Locking’s idea of homework?
On another table stood a popped can of cola, a nearly empty bottle of Bacardi, and a glass filled with something diluted, barely tinted amber. Melted ice cubes, the drink poured hours ago.
One glass. Party for one.
Maybe Locking had rum-and-Coked himself into a deep enough stupor not to hear the noise.
I shouted again.
No answer.
I tried once more. The room stank of nicotine and a durable relationship with takeout food. The big black ashtrays on the bar were overflowing. Vegas casino logo on the rim of one, the place Ted Barnaby had worked.
The CD on the chair from a band called Sepultura.
Spanish for “grave.”
Cute. The image.
I turned off the music.
Silence. No protest.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
Not the time to explore further: Half the people in L.A. own guns and Locking’s connection to Cruvic plus the tough- punk image made him likely to be one of them. If he’d managed to sleep through the racket, waking him could be dangerous. At the very least, I was guilty of criminal trespass.
I turned to leave and noticed something under one of the ashtrays.
Polaroid snapshot. One corner pinned.
Aligned perfectly with the counter edge.
Positioned.
As if for display.
Photo of a woman.
Bare to the waist, arms stretched high above her head, bound at the wrists and tied to a wooden headboard. Her smallish breasts were tugged upward by the pressure, stretching pale skin over a delicate rib cage. Tight deltoids, goosebump skin.
Her face was covered by a black leather hood studded with zippers.
Two open zippers in the nasal region, zippered mouth-slit fastened shut.
The eyeholes open, too.
Two bright, brown discs shone through.
Below them, two erect nipples, pinched by a pair of hands.
Male hands.
Two different men.
The one on the left, striped with hair, connected to a bare arm.
Small anchor tattoo midway up the forearm.
The hand on the right, smooth and hairless, emerging from a ribbed black cuff.
A ring on that one. Silver skull, red glass eyes.
I inched closer to the photo.
And saw Locking.
On the floor behind the bar.
Propped in a corner, legs splayed, arms limp. One hand curled inward, the fingers of the other outstretched.
Blue nails. Blue lips.
The skull ring grinned back at me.
His head had been thrown back so that his neck arched toward the ceiling. Cheekbones in relief, long hair mussed.
A black silk bathrobe did a poor job of covering his thin, white body.
White except for the raspberry lividity splotches where the blood had settled after he’d stopped breathing.
Mouth agape.
In life he’d been smug but he’d left this world looking surprised.
Crusted hole in the center of his high forehead.
Rusty stripes on his face, trailing down to his hairless chest, browning the black silk where they hit the robe.
Blood on the carpet and on the wall behind him.
Blood under the body.
Lots of blood; why hadn’t I seen it right away?
His eyes were half-shut, dry, and dull like those of a fish left on the dock. Long lashes mascaraed by gritty blood.
I’d seen plenty of death. The last time, the man I’d killed . . . self-defense.
I could hear myself breathing.
Suddenly, the room smelled sour.
The position of his head caught my attention. It should have dropped.
But it was tilted upward, leaning against the wall, as if in prayer.
Positioned?
All around him, more Polaroids.
Lots more. Framing the corpse.
The same woman, bound and masked.
Close shots that obsessed on her thighs, her chest, her belly and below.