Page 5 of Love of the Egoist
Greg’s brow twitched. He stepped back, tugged the door, and closed it behind him. The key rattled in the lock. A few seconds later everything plunged into darkness.
“Fuck!”
CHAPTER 2
HUGGED BY THE STICKY LAYERof his sweat-drenched shirt, Kuon lay on the floor, tormenting himself with thoughts of the careless mistake that had led him here. Burning blue flames trapped his gaze and dragged his mind into a semi-hypnotic state, which on some level helped him control his body functions and not think about his needs. Kuon didn’t know when Greg would come again and the thought of staying in the cell with a used bucket for hours disgusted him. The slight hope that Greg would let him use an actual bathroom still lingered in his mind. Kuon blinked, falling deeper into the trance. Shreds of memories surfaced in front of his eyes. The blue flame started to resemble the lights of his police car.
It had been a phone call from his informant that rang the bell.
“Meet me at Zone at nine. I dug out something on him and now I am in danger,” Andy had blurted before hanging up. The sound of his worried voice had knotted Kuon’s guts as he kept pressing the beeping phone to his ear.
Andy had worked in the field for four months and had never been able to get close enough to the people Kuon was after, yet he had raised enough suspicion to bring a real risk to the whole operation. Kuon knew Andy had never been loyal in the face of danger and could switch sides any moment—that was how he got him in the first place. But his influence in Yugo’s circle was too high to pass up and despite the lack of trust Kuon had hoped that Andy would prefer working with him, rather than going to prison.
Yet… Kuon hadn’t pulled him from the operation. The hope that Andy had finally managed to achieve something had dominated his instincts.
If he’d listened to his intuition, he wouldn’t be locked in this cell right now.
In a weird way, it was even funny. Kuon had been so thirsty to learn about the Black Duke that he’d shadowed him, absorbing any and all information he’d been able to get. Now he was closer to him than ever, but that didn’t make him happy at all.
Lying on the mat, Kuon stared at the blue burning spot behind black bars with his eyes stripped of sense. His brain, feverish with recent events, couldn’t rest. It reanimated the chain of events that had led him right into the Minotaur’s lair.
Countless days surfaced in front of his eyes, days he’d spent in the Police Academy. He remembered his last day in the academy and how right his choice had felt that day. Getting into the Homicide Department hadn’t been easy, and he was proud he’d made it.
Kuon had always been sure he was born for the job, that he’d been molding himself for it, polishing his skills; hence, he’d never expected his first case to hit him so hard.
Four thirteen-year-old girls had inflicted forty-two knife wounds on their friend, turning her small body into a disfigured piece of flesh. All over a boy. The pictures of that child were forever imprinted in Kuon’s consciousness.
He’d tried to block his emotions and distance himself. At some point he started thinking he could do his job without being mentally involved, until one particular case had been forwarded to his department—the serial killer case.
He couldn’t help remembering the nausea that had gripped him the moment he’d seen the first picture of the victims.
The case was big. Newspapers flashed with juicy details on the colored front pages. The media didn’t stop speculating about the victims’ private lives as well as the killer’s psychological profile. The whole department worked on it twenty-four seven.
Women, perfect copies of each other, with pale, bleach-soaked bodies whose split open abdomens had been filled with nothing but orchids. All internal organs had been scooped out and replaced with a nutrient substrate, where Paphiopedilum rothschildianum, also known as the Gold of Kinabalu orchids, had been re-planted. The mature plants that required up to twelve years to bloom from seeds, now thrived in the guts of the victims.
Flowers, growing from the flesh of once beautiful women, had changed him forever. He’d lost the ability to sleep, to eat, time after time going over the facts. Calling each and every flower shop, market, and exhibition center in the country, repeating the same question—if they sell those flowers—and always receiving the same emotionless answer—no.
He understood he had wasted time. The flowers could have been bought anywhere in Europe or even in Malaysia. The only reason Kuon didn’t let it go was the number of plants. No one could buy this amount of a rare species and remain unnoticed.
He’d worn himself out to mindless fatigue, pouring an enormous amount of energy drinks and coffee down his sore throat. He had slept in his office for a month on the worn-through leather couch.
Days had gone by, the number of victims had grown. The hope that the killer,The Gardener, would make a blunder melted with each second. Kuon stopped shaving or showering and, judging by what his colleagues had been saying, he’d become a shadow of himself.
He hadn’t cared.
Mass media had pressed the police hard. The government had laid down demands. His bosses, instead of concentrating on catching a real criminal, tried to tie all the loose ends together and buy time. They had even tried to fabricate evidence and framed someone else, showing everybody their extensive activities.
Kuon had felt useless. Not knowing what else to do, he’d inquired about data from all airports of the country, requesting information about people traveling to Malaysia along with the green control conformations. A vague thought that someone wasn’t buying the flowers but had grown them from seeds stirred his instincts. If so, that someone took time learning about the delicate flowers, failing and succeeding while growing them. This required time, patience, and a supply of seeds. Trying to be safe, Kuon filtered through people, extending his time frame to the last thirty years but also narrowing his search to 25- to 50-year-old single or divorced men.
Staring at the photos of the depersonalized women, robbed of life, color and internal organs, he couldn’t help but notice, that the women looked old for their age and resembled each other enough to be sisters. This led him to the conclusion that the serial killer very likely grew up without a father and maybe still lived with his abusive mother who had lost her color to age.
He’d spent sleepless nights scrolling through people until his patience had run out.
Through the fog of vague memories, he saw himself leaving the office, taking a taxi to the airport, and flying to Borneo without saying a word to his bosses.
He remembered the plane landing in Kota Kinabalu, taking another taxi to the foot of the same named mountain, and how astonished he had been standing in the middle of the forest and looking up.
Silver sparks scattered all over the black sky, right above his heavy head. Kuon had never seen this many stars in his whole life, and never before had the air been so heavy to breathe. The giant mountain hovered in the gloom, fading in the night. But its presence was strong as if it’d compressed the air around it. Night birds cried out in the darkness, hidden in the thick foliage of wild jungles. Everything around him felt dangerous, unreal, as if in a weird dream.
