Death Orchid

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

It was Sunday morning and as the sun peeked through the Venetian blinds, Lieutenant Victor Garcia sat slumped at his desk with his face crushed into the palms of his hands.

He was a little bit drunk, but that wasn’t why he felt so exhausted not to mention stunned from the last several hours, especially the few he just spent with a man he now thought was a mad genius.

An hour earlier, as previously arranged he met with the two cops from the alley crime scene. After reaming them a bit, he immediately felt guilty taking his bad mood out on them. After apologizing to the two dedicated patrolmen, he gave them an “Atta Boy” and sent them along their way.

What was causing him such grief so early in the morning was the fact that some insane artist of unimaginable talents had simply been sneaking around under his radar for so long.

“If this guy is floating around undetected, then what other freaks are haunting his turf.”

This he thought as he felt the remnants of a-magnificent-velvet, Glen Livit Scotch on his tongue.

The fact that Mal had such exquisite and expensive tastes in Scotch and freely shared it with him set him more off kilter and he didn’t like it.

After taking the grand tour of the artists lower floor working area and of course unable to absorb any of it, he fell further shocked as he toured the mad man’s upper living area.

They had talked for some time and Garcia knew, just knew there was something very bent with all of it. He almost arrested Mal, because he could. But the man was so gracious, and above all intelligent, he didn’t.

With one more Scotch, just for the road, Garcia reluctantly said his goodbyes. Once down to the lower level, he stalled at a massive eight foot by twelve foot oil painting of one of the most beautiful young woman that he had ever seen.

With the artist at his side, Garcia marveled at the painting of the naked girl, for the sun light from a back window seemed to be pulsating through the girls white skin, and it was perhaps, In the Lieutenants mind, eerie to say the least that this Just Mal had such talent to create such an illusion.

Exchanging curious looks with the artist, who seemed neither pleased not proud of what he had created, Garcia reluctantly said his fond adieus.

Driving back to his office at the sprawling North Las Vegas Police Station, he quickly wove his way to his office and began E-Mailing and phoning different law agencies throughout the country.

“Nada. Nilch. Nunca. Nette. Nothing.”

The FBI, the DEA, The National Criminal Data Bank, The Cub Scouts of America, nobody had ever heard of the guy. It was like he was invisible and he simply did not exist.

He had an E-mail out to the Internal Revenue Service, yet knew the chance of them having anything on Mal what with their antiquated computers was probably going nowhere too.

If this Mal character wasn’t the smartest and most elusive character he ever met, he knew that there weren’t many smarter or craftier.

Knowing that nothing is ever as it seems, and people are illusions at the best of times, he knew that he had to visit the artist again, preferably when he wasn’t there.

Sneaking around other people’s things, though completely illegal was one of his favorite past times. The thought that the artist could have killed so many homeless was not out of the range of possibilities.

In cop terms, the guy was just plain strange.

In his flat footed bones he felt something was very wrong with Mal, and those tingling nerve warnings were seldom wrong.

Garcia didn’t like spooks, and he felt Mal was clearly invisible for a reason.

He was a little bit annoyed that he hadn’t gotten a DNA sample from the freak so he could run it through “Codeus” the nationwide DNA identification network databank, the other lunatics at the Crime Lab used so freely.

Peering down at the case file of the Homeless Head Lopper, which was getting thicker by the moment, he knew he would be visiting Just Mal soon, preferably when the artist would not be there.

No matter how he tried he still could not get the experience of the guy’s work place and home out of his mind. The fact that the guy appeared to be rich and talented within so many venues, gold, steel, ceramics, photography had blown his mind. The reality that Mal had danced around the issue of how he got so much money bothered him still further.

As he flipped open the folder and winced looking at more photographs of severed heads and bloody crime scene c*****e, he knew soon, very soon he would find out just who the character he called Just Mal was.

Not prone to making mistakes, he was about to make perhaps a terminal call of his judgement, one that leaves police widows staring at late night phone calls through their own tears.