Will woke up, looked around the room, and stopped his gaze on Howard.
“Agent Allex Serret is working with us, fill him in on the details as soon as possible.” And then, turning to the young man, making sure Gatti could hear him, he added, “Stay close to Will and follow his logic.”
“Yes, sir,” Allex responded, half-jokingly, half-seriously, rising and falling on his toes, putting his hands behind his back.
“And don’t touch anything!” Cruz hissed at him.
Allex raised his hands to chest level in a gesture of innocence, grimaced, and widened his eyes.
He didn’t want to argue. He was already watching William Gatti, catching every look of his mobile facial expressions, every step. Professor Gatti, a lecturer on ‘evil minds’ and the psychology of serial killers, had the same ambiguous reputation as Allex …
Allex remembered him from his classes; he was truly extraordinary, incredibly smart, but extremely closed, and the students dubbed Gatti – in addition to his feline surname, which translated from Italian meant ‘cats’1 – the Sullen Dog: for his sullen appearance, conveying the ideology of a loner in every detail.
Professor Gatti was a high-functioning autistic, and his unique, phenomenal ability to see through the eyes of a criminal – called the method of active imagination – amazed everyone: both those who treated his talent with distrust, and those who intended to use the skill for their own purposes, in the interests of the investigation – like Jack Howard.
Allex was a beastie, too, unique but useful. Allex believed in the expertise and professionalism of everyone in the dining room that had become the scene of the Heartthrob’s crime. Bailey’s camera flash whistled and recharged, Ross’s pen rustled across the page of his notebook, Cruz gave directions, frowned, stepped over bloody splatters on the floor.
Will Gatti didn’t notice Allex until Allex stood behind him, close enough to see the picture from the right angle, and voiced his thoughts out loud.
“He serves them on the table … To whom?”
“To himself,” Will replied after a pause. “He looks at them himself.”
“Is he an aesthete? You can eat on the floor if you are very hungry.”
Professor Gatti glanced sideways at the young man, turned slightly.
“You can,” he agreed. “But he wants it on the table. The way it was done in his family.”
“But he’s not expecting his family for dinner, is he?”
Will squinted, trying to figure out if Allex was kidding or being serious.
“He is …” he concluded with a sigh. “But not a family.”
3. Best Employee
“What are you fiddling about with? There are still ten boxes in the back!”
The rustling and crackling of cardboard from the blade of a stationery knife, the hubbub of customers’ voices, the cry of howling children, the beeping of the barcode scanner at the checkout … Everything is as usual. Most commonly, he is simply not noticed, no longer rushed, because he does everything as it should be, has mastered the speed, time, rhythm, place, the routine has become a canvas into which anything can be written – or left a silent void.
Dylan didn’t even turn his head when the senior store assistant – the dark-skinned, corpulent Miriam – called out to him. Sometimes he pretended to be deaf, sometimes mute, and sometimes deaf-mute … Sometimes he put headphones in his ears – but without music, for show – so that no one would distract him for no reason. He pulled his baseball cap almost to the bridge of his nose, his gray eyes-icicles only occasionally scratched the visitors of the sales area: he did not turn around, stood facing the shelving, with his back to the outside world.
The Italian pasta packages were gone, the packs lay in neat rows – but not for long … Soon some degenerate customers would start mindlessly sorting through them, put the goods he had taken in the wrong place, and Dylan would get a reprimand.
The only job worse was that of the cleaning lady, who never stopped washing the shiny tile floors – from dust, water or snow, from scattered cornflakes or a broken bottle of ketchup. Some of the ketchup looked like bloodstains, but only some …
Dylan Vermillion was on the board of the store’s best employees, but he was the only one without a photo – just his name and job title. He didn’t like to have his photo taken, and management didn’t insist … It would be strange to think that this board was of any use to anyone other than the employees. Customers paid no attention to the board, or the employees, or the price tags, they carelessly made a mess of the sales area, dropped blocks of toilet paper, packs of cookies, and rust remover for plumbing on the floor … Dylan cleaned up after them.
A doll with swollen lips was pushing a cart full of groceries, with brightly colored packs of gummy bears and a green leek tail sticking out to the side, typing a text message on her smartphone, not looking at her feet. Dylan was counting down the seconds until she collided with a random obstacle, his broad back in a work jacket motionless, only his arms making mechanical, monotonous movements.
He had been learning this motionlessness for a long time, perhaps even overdone it – and from the outside his muscular figure looked like a statue frozen in a catatonic stupor.
From the opposite end of the shelving, following a dull thud, a scream was heard, then the rustle of falling bags of chips, an avalanche-like sound, interrupted by slaps and crashes from futile attempts to hold back the waterfall of goods.
“Sorry!” two voices exclaimed simultaneously: a male, young, hoarse one, and a female, swishy, stretching out the vowels.
They laughed, rustled, and apparently began to pick up food off the floor. After half a minute of chaotic efforts, the girl, giggling, walked on, occasionally casting interested glances at the guy who remained in place; the guy went in the opposite direction.
As soon as his silhouette appeared in the aisle where Dylan was laying out the juice boxes, a suspicious rustling sound came from the previous scene of the food disaster. The guy in the green jacket turned around, put his palms out as if conjuring the shelving not to collapse, watching with wide eyes as everything fell to the floor again.
“No, no, no … Please, no!” he begged. “Holy shit!”
He covered his mouth with his hands, his pale face turned red, and an absurd squeak escaped from his chest.
He looked around, meeting Dylan’s silent gaze, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m sorry!” he blurted, removing his hands from his face. “I tried!”
Dylan, who wanted to call him a clumsy idiot at first, huffed angrily, left the layout and boxes, turning in the direction of the young man. A menacing six-foot figure headed towards the heap of fallen packs, the culprit stood motionless, without fear, but with a guilty look.
He seems to be the only one in the entire history of Dylan’s work in this store who apologized for the mayhem. He seems to be the only one who even looked Dylan in the eye, addressed him – and not the faceless guy in a work jacket and baseball cap who stands in the aisle and prevents him from passing.
“I’ll clean everything up now, just tell me how to stack them so that they don’t fall over again.”
Disheveled chestnut hair lay in messy curls, the jacket was sticking out, the boots had battered toes, a clipboard was tucked under the arm … Dark eyes looked openly and directly.
“In the