THE BLUE HOUR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "What?" asked Merci.

  He looked up from the Sex Offenders Registry.

  "You groaned," she said.

  "Oh. Thinking about dinner."

  "I thought chemo and radiation killed the appetite."

  "It was supposed to make my hair fall out, too. I'm really not that hungry."

  "But hungry enough to groan? Maybe you should eat."

  It didn't take long to finish the regular volumes, because the last six letters of the language don't begin many names. The registry of recently released mental patients with histories of sex offenses was fairly brief.

  None of them looked even generally similar to Merci's drawing. Hess thought that one had the weepy dark eyes that Kamala had described, the look of remorse, but that was a real long shot. Nothing else about him seemed right.

  "Colesceau," he said. "Matamoros Colesceau."

  Rayborn didn't look up. "No. He likes older women, the real helpless ones. The eyes are interesting, but there's no other facial similarities I can see. Plus, he's castrated."

  "Castrated?"

  "Yeah, snipped him under AB 3339, Chapter 596. He won't be hard to keep track of, either," said Merci. When Hess looked over she was standing by his desk. She was smiling. She set a paper down in front of him.

  There was this Colesceau fellow, front page above the fold, looking not much like he did in the mug, his hair thinner and shorter, his face wider and less defined. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt with his name over the pocket. It appeared that he was leaving a vehicle and caught by surprise. His hand was on its way up—to cover his face, Hess figured— and it made him look pathetic. Hess was disappointed, because he still didn't look anything like Kamala Petersen's mystery man. Eyes, maybe. But with a wig and a mustache... Well, with a wig and mustache a lot of guys could look like Kamala's weepy boulevardier—blonds, redheads or the completely bald, for that matter.

  "We'll know every move he makes now," Merci said. "The crazy, nutless sonofabitch. Actually, they leave the nuts on. And the effects of the hormone wear off when they stop shooting him with it, so the whole punishment is only temporary."

  Hess read the headline:

  CASTRATED RAPIST

  BRINGS TURMOIL TO OC COMMUNITY

  While Hess read the article he was aware of Merci dialing out on the desk phone. He read that Colesceau would satisfy the terms of his parole the following Wednesday, at which time his chemical castration would end. The SONAR team had decided to notify his neighbors, thus the turmoil and the article. The neighbors were already protesting.

  Kamala, this is Merci over at.. .

  He read Sheriff Department spokesman Wallace Houston's statement that the sheriffs "didn't reveal this felon's whereabouts in order to run him out of town. It was a matter of protecting the public safety. We believe people should know who he is and what he's done, but we want them, basically, to leave the man alone."

  Fat chance of that, Wally, thought Hess. Wally the Weasel. There was a picture of protest organizer Trudy Powers. She was blond and quite beautiful. The sign she held said

  RAPISTS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS.

  .. . wanted to know if the picture in today's Times resembles the man you saw at the mall. . .

  Hess read that the soon-to-be-free Colesceau had a full-time job in Costa Mesa and had lived in the apartment at 12 Meadowlark for all of his three years since release from Atascadero. He'd volunteered for the Depo-Provera treatment—one of only twelve mental patients included in the protocol. He was injected and interviewed every week. Depo-Provera was the brand name for the female hormone medroxyprogesterone acetate, which causes breast enlargement, hair loss and genital shrinkage when taken by males.

  Then, a week before completing his sentence we rat him out to his neighbors, Hess thought. I thought I had problems.

  ... so, what are you saying, Kamala, that it could be him, but probably not? Is that u/hat you're saying?

  Hess read that Romanian-born Colesceau had been arrested and prosecuted in Los Angeles County. It wasn't uncommon to release sex offenders into different jurisdictions because of the controversy created if they were discovered. He made a note to get the jacket from Sex Crimes and see if this pudgy, chemically castrated man had a background involving hunting, meatpacking or embalming.

  . . . realize that a person can add a mustache or change

  clothes any time he wants . . .

  In fact, he'd have trudged over to Records right then and asked the clerk for Colesceau's file but they were closed by now. Hess suddenly felt as if he was part of the chair he sat on. Like he'd painlessly melted to it and couldn't get out. Stuck. He sat back and crossed his hands behind his head to mask the dizziness. Knuckles on fire again, dipped in acid.

  . . . and we'll run two others past you. Sunday morning is

  good for me . . .

  Hess wondered if it was the radiation that had gotten him feeling so weird. He wasn't supposed to feel the damage until later.

  "Kamala doesn't think so," said Merci. "She saw the paper. A whole different look. She pointed out that her man was wearing fashionable-looking clothes, which tells you something about Kamala. Anyway, she says no to this guy. We'll show her Eichrod and Pule on Sunday morning."

  He was aware of her looking at him, setting back the phone. She stared at him frankly now, nothing covert about it. Nothing like her glances in the rearview on their way to Elsinore.

  "Hess, what do you think about when you stare at nothing?"

  He shrugged. He felt sick now, all the way down to the marrow of his bones, which was where, the doctors had told him, the chemotherapy was most damaging. Because bone marrow made white blood cells. And if you interfered with that production your cell count could drop. You could become anemic. You could die from that. Or from a thousand diseases that were easy to catch when your white cells got low. That's why they did the blood work once a week, to keep the chemicals from doing to you certainly what the cancer only might accomplish.

  "Is that when you're seeing things? Like the women hanging from the tree before you saw the rope marks on the branch?"

  "Well, no."

  "I still want to know how you ..."

  She either didn't finish or he didn't hear it. There was a big silver passenger train bellowing through his eardrums now. He could feel the tracks shaking in the bones of his legs. Then a blast of hot steam against his face. Everything so goddamned loud.

  Then quiet.

  His heart was racing and his face was still hot and when he looked at Merci she was outlined in shimmering red.

  "You put everything out of your head, first," he said.

  "You all right?" "You forget what you think you know. All your assumptions. They get in the way." "Yeah. Let's get into it some other time, okay?" "You start off with what you know for sure. Out on the

  Ortega, when I was looking down at the ground, I saw how neat the blood was. It wasn't splashed out in a struggle. It didn't spurt out in a fight. It came out slowly, and the source wasn't moving much, if at all. So, she's restricted somehow as she bleeds. Okay. You know what I saw first? A woman in a cocoon. Then I saw a woman in a spider web. Stillness. Immobilization. I'm still wondering if he's poisoning them somehow. Anyway, I know I've got a dead woman, bleeding. Then I see what's left of her when he's done—nothing. Because he's taken her with him. That requires a lot of work and energy and planning. I saw him walking back to his car with a suitcase in each hand. Hard luggage, made out of plastic. Washable. Waterproof. Round edges, gray. But that didn't make sense because she was too big and too heavy. And according to what we found, he didn't cut her up. He took her. Because he values her. He knows he values her. So, he'd planned to take her from the start—and he didn't want to mess her up. He didn't want to spoil her but he wanted her blood drained and he wanted her body? Why, of all the millions of spots along the Ortega, did he bring her here? I looked up and saw the branch—low enough but strong. I remembered a deer hanging, bleeding, after my father shot him o
ut at my uncle's place in Idaho. So I climbed up and found the notches."

  She said nothing. Hess wasn't sure if she'd heard. His voice sounded like it was coming from a canyon twenty miles away.

  Hess unlocked his fingers from behind his head and picked up the newspaper again. He wanted to appear strong and well. He tossed the newspaper aside as if it annoyed him and folded his hands over his lap. His hands were shaky but he could feel his heart slowing down now and Merci was no longer silhouetted in red neon. His face still felt warm but the burning of his knuckles was over. He breathed in deeply and it felt right.

  "It's easy to understand, on paper," she said. "But when I went out there and tried it, all I saw was what you had seen."

  "You need to do it alone."

  "It's hard, eliminating the things you assume, because you need to assume some things. Like with the tree, you had to assume that the body was there. When in fact, he could have bled her somewhere else, contained the blood and just poured it out where we found it. Right? You assumed the body and the blood were together."

  "There's some of that, yes."

  He could feel the cadence of his heartbeat slowing and his vision coming clear again. But it was still like he had melted to the chair and he couldn't imagine getting out of it.

  "Do you ever see things that are wrong?"

  "They're not as clear as the right ones."

  "I don't see pictures. I see video, and it's blurred."

  He looked at her. She was sitting backward in the swivel chair, leaning forward, her feet spread. Her arms were along the top of the backrest and she was resting her chin on her wrist.

  "Seeing a lot of bad stuff helps. The older you get, the more of it you see."

  Hess expected some comment like I don't need these pithy aphorisms all the time, and he really didn't blame her. Instead she was quiet for a long beat.

  "I've worked thirty-eight homicide cases. How about your "Eight hundred and fourteen."

  "Bigger library."

  "Forty-three years' worth. Plus Korea."

  "How come people who have been in wars always mention it?"

  "We're proud."

  "Just in the obvious ways?"

  "Yeah, they're obvious. Like coming out alive."

  "I'll never be in a war."

  "That's not a bad thing."

  "It is, if I'm building the library."

  Hess thought about that. It was a delicious feeling to get a clear thought, after his body had rebelled like it just did.

  "About that library—you're a lifetime cardholder. The things you see don't go away. All the cliches and stories about burnout and booze and depression and suicide. Well, they're true."

  "But they don't always have to be true."

  He looked at her and smiled. It was half because he enjoyed her optimism and half to portray a heartiness that he didn't feel. She was quiet again. Her chin was still on her wrist and she was looking at him with an expression of frank thoughtfulness and curiosity, like a boy might examine a new green bug found under the porch light.

  "This is a hard one, Hess."

  "They're the worst. A guy who doesn't regret it in the morning. Just starts planning the next one."

  "But isn't that a weird look in the sketch? In his eyes, like he's sorry or sad or something?"

  He nodded. He was proud of her in that moment and wished there was a way to say so without making her feel small.

  "I've never seen a look like that," she said. "I wonder if Kamala Petersen might have added it."

  She stood then and slid the chair under the desk with a push of her foot. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him uncertainly. "Well, it's Friday evening, Lieutenant. Want to get something to eat?"

  Hess said fine with me before reminding himself that it was going to take considerable effort to leave his chair.

  Too late now, he thought. He lay his arms along the rests and set his feet squarely and looked at Merci again to see if she was registering his weakness. She was standing close by with one of her large hands out and he took it before he realized everything that taking it would mean.

  He glided upward on her strength.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Colesceau sat in his darkened living room at 12 Meadowlark and listened to the chanting of the crowd on the street outside. The blinds were closed and the lights were off. He stared openly at the images on the TV screen but his attention was outside with die mob. His heart felt heavy enough to stop beating. Five days before the nightmare would end, and this is what they do to you. He felt a rage so overwhelming his arms trembled with the power and urgency of it. He felt the weight of ice picks in his hands.

  When the chanting stopped he went over and worked the blinds open just a crack so he could see out. But as soon as they saw the plastic louvers move they started yelling again. It had gone like this for two straight hours now, and six hours yesterday after work. It amazed him how a news story in yesterday's morning paper hatched a crowd so instantly. One day he had privacy; the next he had these . . . concerned citizens howling for his blood. And photographers bushwacking him as he got out of his

  little red truck.

  But he looked through the thin crack anyway, at the outraged and outrageously beautiful face of Trudy Powers contorted into a mask of purest hatred. She raised and lowered a sign in rhythm to the chant:

  MAKE our NE/G Hborhood

  SAFE for the CHILdren!

  MAKE our NElGHborhood

  SAFE for the CHILdren!

  Her sign said RAPISTS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS and Trudy waved it up and down like a fan at a soccer game.

  Jesus, thought Colesceau, I don't exactly love children but I've never even considered hurting one. He wondered what the police had told these people. Did they know his convictions were only for attempted rape of very old, pathetically ugly and helpless women, not the glowingly healthy children of people like Trudy Powers? Did they know he was pumped full of female hormone and quite harmless? He was astonished. He touched his crotch—a bag of dumplings.

  The reporters were still there, too. They were different ones but you could tell what they were—cameras and microphones and grim, hungry faces. There were two big news vans parked on the other side of the street. One of them was from the channel he was watching!

  Five more days. Now this. Thank you, Holtz-Thank you, Carla. Thank you, fucking police. At least in Romania they just shoot you and get it over with.

  He twisted the blinds shut all the way again and went into the kitchen. He made a big Bloody Mary with the mix from the fridge and the vodka from the freezer and about a tablespoon of hot sauce.

  MAKE our NElGHborhood

  SAFE for the CHILdren!

  His phone rang again. Holtz had called once yesterday and once today. Kaufman, the ACLU lawyer, had called twice today and promised to call again. Sure enough:

  Mr. Colesceau, this is Seth Kaufman of the American Civil Liberties Union again. I just wanted to make it clear that we're concerned about you and your rights. We think we can help you and we're willing to do so. I'll leave my number again and encourage you to call. We can't help you if you won't help us help you. My home number is . . .

  Colesceau felt a rush of anger surge through him and he picked up the phone.

  "This is Matamoros." "Good, great. I'm glad you picked up. Now, how are you holding up?"

  "It is difficult. I feel like an animal."

  "They're treating you worse than an animal. I hear something in the background. Are those your neighbors?"

  "They chant like monks, hours at a time. I feel like it may cause me to lose my mind."

  "Can I come over? Like right now? 1 think we can get a court order to desist against them, or at least move them back to the nearest public place. You live in an apartment complex, correct?"

  "The Quail Creek Apartment Homes in Irvine."

  "Well, that's private property. Do you have a back door into your unit?"

  "None."

  "All
right. Look, there are a lot of people out there who are on your side. And we can convince a lot of others, if you're willing to stand your ground and speak your piece. We'll talk about our options. Would you mind making a statement on-camera? It could go a long way to getting some public sympathy coming our direction."

  "I have nothing to hide. But I don't like cameras."

  "No cameras, then. Until we meet, don't say anything to anybody. Don't open the door. Don't say anything to those people. I'll be coming down from L.A. so let's say exactly one hour from now. I can get you out of there, we can go get some coffee or dinner if you want. Or I'll bring some takeout."

  "That would be welcome. I need to go out."

  "Do you have a copy of the medical protocol you signed when they released you from the hospital?"

  "I have it-perfect.

  Give me your address."

  • • •

  Kaufman brought an overcoat that Colesceau pulled on over his own before they walked through the front door and into the jeers of the crowd. Even with his face buried down in the big coat he could see the bright jolts of light from die photographers' flash attachments, and he could feel the white brightness of the lights set up for the video shooters. And the chant tripled in volume as he moved toward the driveway and Kaufman's car.

  ... get out of Irvine ... miserable creep . . . pack your bags ... the fuck out. . . rapist, raper, human swine . . . don't come back . . . keep on going . . . filthy animal. . . don't sleep or we'll bum your place down with you in it. . .

  "Middle America snarls," whispered Kaufman as he swung open his car door and guided Colesceau in. "You're just this week's entertainment."

  A moment later Colesceau's head pitched forward as Kaufman backed out of the driveway and swung wide, then shifted into drive and gunned it down the street.