Izma's head angled to Hess. "Preserved how?"
"We don't know that yet, either. But we found chemical."
"The Ortega Highway women. They were nice-looking babes, from the TV pictures."
"Nice women, Ed."
Izma said nothing. Merci watched his small still head and wondered what was arcing between the poles of his brain. Then he was looking at her. She could see his hands doing something down in his lap but she wouldn't offer him the satisfaction of discovering what.
"Ed, put your hands to your side."
She had never heard this tone of voice from Hess. There was a threat in it and it was a threat that she would have taken seriously. But it was calm. Izma was staring at him.
"But I'm not—"
"—Hands at your side or I'll hurt you."
The big arms flopped to the bed.
"There. There you go."
The giant sighed and his head pivoted and he gave Merci a look of contempt.
"Keep them there, Izma," said Hess, his voice still flat with latent violence. Merci wished she could get a tone like that, although, Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole? had worked just fine.
"So, Ed," Hess continued, "we got to thinking about this guy out in Ortega. He seems to like women, like you did. He's keeping them with him, like you did. He's probably making sure they're in good shape, like you tried to. So I thought to myself: Ed Izma might be able to tell us something about him. Ed's a bright guy, tested in at just under genius. Maybe he understands this guy, can help us understand him too."
Izma sighed and seemed to relax. His hands moved from the mattress onto his lap again. He looked down at them, then put them back on the bedspread. He looked at Merci, then to Hess.
"The difference is, he's not man enough to deal with them alive. Like I did. I always wanted Lorraine to be alive. I wanted Lorraine alive and happy. But I needed her in every sexual way, constantly. I was quite a virile young man back then."
"She had come to your door selling... what was it?"
"Cutlery. TrimCo. I'm Lorraine Dulak with TrimCo? is what she said. And sometimes, well, everything just comes together for a man. Inside a man. You know what I mean. I had to invite her in. The DA didn't believe I could truly love a woman after knowing her less than two minutes. I disagree. I mean look at what happened. You don't do something like that to a woman you don't love.
"Merci looked down and she wondered again what had left the square dents in the carpet, and why Ed Izma had removed them from her view. She looked at these things and knew the whole time that Izma was looking at her. She disliked being held captive in someone else's thoughts, someone this close and this hateful. It was like being fucked by his imagination.
Hess's voice seemed to rescue her. "Okay. This guy isn't man enough to deal with them alive. I think you're right. But now what?"
"He wants them lifelike. So, maybe a freezer. Not parts, though. Whole. A guy who would cut a woman into parts to freeze her isn't a real man at all."
"Why keep them? Why not just use them and let them go?"
"Because that would be just like letting them run away. This is about love, Hess, not just sex. He really loves them. That's why he wants to be with them. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you. You don't just discard it. I mean, when you get right down to it, us special types are awfully sentimental."
Merci felt her throat tighten and her stomach shift. "Especially vile and disgusting, is what you are," she said.
"You could have her de-barked."
Hess's lethal voice again. "Look at me, Izma. Not the woman. What's he looking for in them? Why take one but let another go?"
"It's just his needs. They're different for all of us, what makes things come together for us. I noticed the faces on the TV. They're both very beautiful women."
"But what else, Ed? What's he see that makes things come together for him?"
"Well, they were both extremely sophisticated, you could tell. They had intelligent faces. Now to me, when 1 see a woman that intelligent and educated, with that kind of look on her face, I want to smash it. I prefer humble women. I like women who work with their hands. I like no-frills women, but they've got to be pretty. Blue collar. Peasant stock. Like Lorraine. Or Merci."
She returned Ed Izma's stare.
Merci saw the giant's pelvis start to move. His hands were still on the bed. His head was small and distant, like a remote controller left on top of the set.
Hess stood. "I'm going to show her what's in your closet,
Ed."
"Don't touch, please."
Merci felt the blood rush from her head as she stood. "Keep your balls in your shorts, pinhead. I'll be right back."
She followed Hess into the back room.
Hess gestured toward the open closet. At first Merci was startled, then it made some kind of sense, then she was just chilled. There were five of them in there, standing along the wall of the closet, looking at her.
"These are what made the carpet impressions you were looking at. He had some of these sweethearts back when he took Lorraine Dulak."
Four were mannequins dressed like tradeswomen—construction worker, a Post Office employee, a mechanic or plumber, a cop. The fifth wore a smart little skirt and had a head of luxuriant black hair that suggested to Merci her own. This last one held a card in her hand. Merci leaned in and read it: Lorraine Dulak, TrimCo. The mannequin bases were square.
"I should have puked when I first got here, gotten it over with."
"I'm sure he does the hair and makeup himself. Probably changes them around, buys different clothes. I don't know why he wanted to hide them from us. Maybe he thought I'd be envious. Or you'd be jealous. Or maybe he thought he was being a bad boy."
She saw his small dry smile and shook her head. "Let's get the hell out of here, Hess. I mean, what did he really tell us?"
"He doesn't understand himself well enough to help us on purpose. But I thought we might see something in him that we could apply."
"Well, did you?”
"I think the Purse Snatcher loved Janet Kane and Lael Jillson the same way Izma loved Lorraine.
I think the Purse Snatcher is a collector. He's collecting them like Izma does mannequins and pictures of mannequins. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you."
"It makes me want to vomit."
"Why?"
"Because it's a lie. And I'm sick of creeps who try to justify what they do by calling it love."
"It doesn't matter what they call it. It's only a lie to us. To guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher, it's the truth."
"Fuck guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher. You spend an hour with this guy to find out that?"
"It was worth it. We've been here exactly thirty-two minutes. I learned something about our man and you got a chance to understand something you don't understand yet."
"Yeah? What."
"That other people don't think like you. So you have to think like them. They don't feel like you. So you have to empathize. They don't behave like you, so you have to get a feel for what they're going to do next. That goes for creeps, so you can catch them, and everybody else, so you can get along with them."
"And what if I just decide not to?"
"Then you won't make sheriff by sixty."
The rage hit her heart like a shot of speed. "Fifty-eight. And that's not a joke to me."
"I'm not joking. And you could handle that job, so long as you understood that the only person in the world who thinks like you is you. Being a good hunter isn't about being in touch with your feelings, Rayborn. It's about being in touch with everyone else's. That's how you find the people you need, no matter what you plan on doing to them. Creeps or husbands, you find them the same way."
"I don't want a husband. And you picked a helluva time for a lecture on feelings."
"It was important."
"I'm not convinced. Now, can we just get the hell out of this ro
om? I've had enough. And if I spend another two minutes with that... gentleman out there who thinks and behaves differently than me, I'm going to draw my cheap Chinese Italian stiletto, cut off his tiny gonad-sized head and flush it down the nearest toilet. Can you understand me and my feelings now?"
He shut the closet door. "I don't feel that great either."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That afternoon after work Tim Hess received his first treatment of thoracic radiation. The stifling atmosphere of Ed Izma's room was still within him as he lay back and the technician aimed the contraption at his chest. Hess wondered if the radiation could kill the sickness of Izma's soul that had surely gotten into him. The doctors had told Hess it was intended to "clean up" any small cell carcinomas residing in his lymph system. If they'd found any there during his operation, they'd have sewed him shut and he'd be dead in half a year. They'd found nothing, but the radiation came heavily recommended.
It was painless and took about thirty seconds. But the radiologist told Hess that the side effects—fatigue, hair loss, appetite drop, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset—built up over time and he'd feel a whole lot worse after six weeks of daily treatments than he did right now.
"If you guys don't kill me I don't see how a little cancer will," he said.
The radiologist smiled serenely. "We're doing everything we can, Detective."
To kill me or save me, Hess wondered as he made his way back through the waiting room
• • •
Back home he called Barbara, certain that he wanted to say things, uncertain what they were.
"How are you, Tim?"
"I feel strong."
"Do you really? Or are you just being strong?"
"It hasn't been bad. Thanks for the letter and the flowers."
"I felt helpless."
"I didn't call because I was kind of out of it."
A lifetime of booze and cigarettes had caught up with Hess after the surgery. Delerium tremens, nicotine withdrawal, three days of mostly unremembered paranoid lunacy that he pieced together afterward from doctors, nurses and friends. At one point he had fled the IC unit, popping IV lines and catheters on his way to freedom. Three orderlies had brought him down.
He heard her breath catch. "I was so worried."
"Come on, Barb, cut it out," he said gently.
"I can't help it. I'm just so sentimental about you, Tim. I know it's ridiculous. But I can't talk to you without feeling like I'm sixteen again. That's so trite but it's so true. First love, and all that. I feel like I let it get away."
"We had different things to do, Barbara. It's okay we did them."
"Yeah, I guess."
He pictured her like she was when they'd met, bright and pretty, with a smile that would stand up to the decades. And her feet always on the ground.
"I just wanted you to know I was okay, not to worry. You hear things, rumors get started."
There was a long silence then, which Hess felt obligated to fill.
"To tell you the truth, though, I've been... thinking some thoughts I never thought before. I mean, forty-odd years as a deputy and I never worried about dying. I never really thought about it. I had guns pointed at me and knives thrown and plenty of threats from unhappy creeps. Then, I get a routine scan as part of a physical and there's a spot on my lung the size of a pencil eraser. And that scared the hell out of me. I've got as good a chance as anybody else, Barb, but it can take you down pretty fast. And if it does, I want you to know that of all the people I've known in my life you're the best. You're the best human I ran across on earth. Not that I was in the kind of business where you run across a lot of really good ones. I didn't mean that like ... you know how I meant it. Anyway. True story."
"Oh, Tim..."
He could see the tears filling Barbara's dark eyes with diamonds.
"If you need some TLC, Tim—you know, anything at all—you can get it here. I still like to cook. I spend a lot of time with the kids and grandkids, but that leaves me lots of time alone, too. I'd like the company."
"I'll take you up on that."
"No, you won't. I thought about it a lot, Tim. After we broke up. I thought about why it happened. And what I came up with was this: you were afraid to slow down. You were afraid to take a few less units at school, take a few less patrol shifts, and just be. Be with yourself. Be with me. Be in the world. And you're still that way now, you're still afraid if you slow down you'll miss something."
"I'm afraid if I slow down I'll die."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"But you're exactly right."
"It's not true. If you slow down, you'll be happier. You'll understand more. People will mean more to you. And you'll mean more to them. It's not so bad, Tim. It's just a matter of sitting still. Being you. Just being."
"It's a flaw in my character, Barb."
"Well, you know what they say about smelling the roses. Or the coffee. They change it every few years. If 1 were you, I'd slow down and smell the ocean on my skin when I'm out riding those spooky waves at the Wedge. You still do that?"
"I did last summer. Not since the surgery."
"I can remember when you loved those waves almost as much as you loved me. And I can remember when you loved them more, too."
For all her optimism and refusal to engage her darker side, Barbara was, Hess knew, a clear seer.
"Maybe that could give you something to slow down for."
She blew her nose. Hess remembered teasing her about crying over anything—TV reruns, radio ads, newspaper articles. He had actually found it irritating once that Barbara had been decent enough to cry over things he would only crack wise about—tough cop that he was, enforcer of the law, prince of the suburbs, badass with a gun. I have been a fool, he thought. So many times. And what am I now but a hollow old man filled with poison on the off chance it can save my life?
"If you ever need me I'll be here, Tim."
His heart was a gathering storm and all he could say was thank you.
• • •
He tried to believe what she said. That evening he stood on the sand at the Wedge and watched the mountainous waves form on the jetty rocks, lunge toward shore and finally break in hollow caverns that huffed spray out the barrels like breath from a dragon. It was big enough to keep the crowds down, and Hess recognized a few faces out there in the turbulent soup between sets. Mostly kids now, he saw, which is what he was when he first braved this wild and unpredictable break, a wave that no other wave on earth could prepare you for. He could feel the reverberations coming up through the sand into his feet.
The evening had gone gray and humid and there was little breeze so the water was smooth. The spectators on the sand were all standing. Plenty of cameras on tripods, huge lenses. When it was big like this the waves spat enough spray into the air to make a salty mist over the water and the immediate beach. The lifeguard boat bobbed just outside the breakers. Hess could see another set of waves starting to form on the distant rocks and thought the rescue boat was in a perilous place. They rarely bothered with the Wedge—it was either big enough to capsize the boat or not breaking at all. Hess wondered what had brought them here this evening.
The water was surprisingly warm around his ankles as he stood there and waited for a lull in the waves. He was aware of people looking at him because he was old, and maybe because of the scar. When the last wave of the set had broken Hess waded in backward up to his knees then turned and dove flat into the receding brine and rode the backwash out into the deep Wedge bowl.
It always impressed Hess about the Wedge, how close you were to the beach while ten-foot waves picked you up and charged toward shore with you. Up on top of one was a scary place to be until the speed replaced the fright. Then you had the barrel covering you and the touchy problem of getting out before it snapped your neck on the bottom. But you couldn't try to bail out too soon, either, because then you faced a long drop before the power of the wave was dissipated and that's how you got tang
led up in the heart of the fury and held under for longer than you could stand. Hess didn't know exactly how many necks, backs and shoulders the Wedge had broken, but he knew it was a lot.
There were five people in the water around Hess and they all started swimming out at once. A jolt of adrenaline went through him as he followed, feeling his legs stretching out behind him, the weight of the big fins on his feet, the movement of his arms through the water. It had been a year.
The first wave lurched up and peaked and Hess watched a scrawny kid shoot across the face, tucked up high, skipping across the water on his hands like a waterbug. Hess dove under and felt the powerful tug on his fins.
A stocky young man Hess had seen before caught the second wave of the set, but he took it late, too close to the peak, and the whole thing just collapsed on him like a dynamited building. Hess glided under it. He knew it was the kind of wipeout that you couldn't slide out of, it would take plenty of air to ride out the whitewater roller coaster to shore. He wondered if a lung and a third would do it, then figured it would have to.
When the next wave rose before him Hess realized he was exactly where he needed to be to catch it. Two of the other guys made for it too, then cleared out in a rare act of respect. Hess let the rising water draw him up the face, let his fins float up over his head. At the last second he turned toward shore, kicked once hard and leaned his back into the wave as it took him. A vertiginous lift. A surge of speed. Tiny people below. Beach towels as postage stamps. Rooftops in the distance. It had him completely, tons of charging water eager to possess him. He dropped his left hand, palm down, and planed along. This was the real magic of it for Hess, the part that was never quite fully believable—how a 200-pound man could ride the bottom of his own hand like this, feel the water resisting, feel it rushing beneath his fingers, feel the wake spraying off the heel of it. A tiny portable surfboard, connected to one's self. Then he could see the lip far above him starting to crest and he bent his right shoulder back hard to keep himself locked in as long as he could. Spray in his face, he glanced down at the people on the beach and at the jetty behind him and the harbor beyond the jetty and the sky above the harbor. Then the roaring cylinder broke over him and the sky was replaced by rifling water and he was deep inside for a second or two, still happily gliding along on the palm of his hand until the wave finally caught him and drove him down toward the sand.
THE BLUE HOUR Page 10