THE BLUE HOUR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Merci looked down at him. There was a brightness in her eyes. She was wearing a different scent than usual. She took hold of the still lengthening fax transmission. "Bart?"

  Hess nodded.

  "Anything good?" she asked.

  "There's an Elsinore buyer. William Wayne of the Rose Garden Home."

  "William as in Bill? LaLonde's customer? It's worth the call. After that, we drench the three malls one more time with these."

  She held up the papers—color copies of Kamala Petersen's Purse Snatcher. Hess was disappointed because he thought that TV and newspapers were a better way to broadcast a suspect sketch than walking malls, giving them away hand to hand. Deputies had already done it. This felt like they were going backward.

  But, as if she had read his mind, Merci continued, "Look, I called that Lauren Diamond and said I'd talk to her about the Purse Snatcher case. I even kind of apologized a little. Anyway, she's down here at the Corrections building anyway for that Colesceau thing, so she's squeezing us in. She's just

  doing a bullet on our progress, she said, not a news feature."

  "Good work."

  She looked down at him with a gently bemused expression, but said nothing.

  A moment later he pivoted in his chair to see her before she was out of the pen, acting like he was checking the wall clock.

  Claycamp came through just then, almost bumping into her. He said something to Merci, then at Hess he flashed his right-hand fingers, three times.

  Down to fifteen, thought Hess: the panel vans with mismatched tires are going to be a bust.

  He sold it.

  He stole it.

  He got new tires.

  His girlfriend, wife, sister, mother, company, church holds the paper on it. Run the women.

  It cost Jerry Kirby his life to find that out.

  He dialed the Rose Garden Home in Lake Elsinore and got a recording that said it was open during regular business hours, but failed to say what those were. The voice was a man's, a clear baritone that spoke of sympathy and efficiency. Hess entered the address, the purchase order information and William Wayne's name to his blue notepad.

  His fax machine came alive again. He read the transmission upside down: a list of male buyers of blond, human hair wigs from Lifestylers of Irvine:

  Burt Coombs

  Lance Jahrner

  Roger Rampling

  There were three other buyers, the fax stated, who paid with cash.

  He ran them past the other lists and came up with nothing.

  • • •

  Bald Hess, trudging the storefronts in his fedora, offered the color sketch of the Purse Snatcher to hundreds of shoppers at all three target malls.

  Most were indifferent, hadn't heard that much about the Purse Snatcher. Some were frightened of Hess and his pale, sharp, old face. The kids on summer break were wiseasses as usual. And although Hess and Merci had tried four days ago to make sure that every employee of every store in all three of the malls had a copy of the drawing, it was made difficult by unresponsive personnel departments and sluggish mall security companies. So he went to all the first floor stores again. Merci took the ones on the second story. They divided up the big department stores that took up both.

  In an electronics showroom he watched one of ten big screens with stereo that were tuned to CNB. He saw the recorded news bulletin featuring Merci, recorded outside the Sheriff's Department. She looked larger but quite beautiful on the TV and Hess felt an irrational pride. She told Lauren Diamond that the Purse Snatcher investigation was "progressing well on several fronts," but she wasn't free to discuss details at this time. She couldn't predict an arrest. She couldn't say when they expected an arrest. She did say they expected an arrest. Yes, Veronica Stevens was considered a victim. And the two missing women whose purses had been found along 1-5 were considered victims, too, with a possible sixth unconfirmed at this time. Merci emphasized the word sixth. Hess could tell she was getting angry—Merci could go from zero to pissed off in about three seconds. She called the Purse Snatcher "an animal and a coward" for the way he chose only unarmed, defenseless, unsuspecting women. Hess shook his head when she said "creeps like this aren't usually too bright," because it was just the kind of statement that could motivate the Purse Snatcher. Which was what Merci intended. Lauren Diamond nodded along intently, like she was getting directions.

  A moment later Lauren was live outside the Corrections building, at a demonstration outside the Parole Department. Colesceau's last injection, thought Hess. The crowd was big and the stereo broadcast was faithful to its volume and emotion. It was like the protesters were all around you, Hess thought. Like you were Colesceau. He watched the strange, round little man make his way toward the crowd with a resolve that Hess found admirable. He could tell by looking at him that Colesceau was anxious, perhaps afraid. Hess recognized the parole agent, Holtz, when he came through the door with an angry expression on his face and tried to usher his charge through the crowd.

  Lauren Diamond got a mike into Colesceau's face but Holtz pushed it away. The front door of the building shut with a flash of reflected sunlight and Colesceau was gone.

  Hess watched for a while, listened to the protesters, then went back out and gave away another fifty sketches.

  Nothing.

  Half an hour later he was back in the electronics store. On the ten identical screens Holtz was hustling Colesceau out a back door of the building—Hess recognized it immediately because he had used it himself. They'd ditched the demonstrators but Lauren Diamond's CNB shooters were waiting. Colesceau turned to Holtz after he came through the door. "What a fine idea, Al. Send me through the looking glass again." He raised his eyebrows and smiled and nodded his head in an exaggerated way.

  "Something like that," said Holtz, shrugging with fake modesty.

  Colesceau complimenting Holtz on his cleverness, thought Hess. Why bother? They must have used that back door more than once before.

  In Hess's mind, Colesceau was like a shadow that never quite faded. Hess drew a deep breath into his lung and a third and wondered if fixation was a sign of senescence. He was pretty sure it was.

  Hess found a bench, took out the blowups and looked at them in the oddly bright but unrevealing mall light. Colesceau's head, larger and less clear with die pixels loosened to expand the image, looked neither more nor less convincing than before. The ambient light was still poor Colesceau's TV screen still hogged the auto-focus. The shadows were still large and indistinct. The crack in the blinds still framed the shot with horizontal bands of black. What appeared above the back of the couch could be a mannequin's head—something like Ed Izma would have in his closet.

  Or, the head could be Colesceau's as he watched TV.

  Send me through the looking glass again.

  Hess knew the hardest time to trust your instincts was

  when you needed them most.

  • • •

  They sat in the food court, on purple plastic chairs around a green table. The foods of several nations were offered from kitchens around the perimeter of the room, each trying to lure customers with free samples and dazzlingly uniformed employees. Hess was hungry and everything smelled good mixed together like it was.

  Merci studied him. "Do we need to get some things straight about last night?"

  "If you want to."

  "Like what?" She blushed.

  He smiled. "Well, that would be up to you."

  "Okay. It happened. It was what it was. It doesn't mean anything except what it means."

  "A-okay, Merci."

  They said nothing for a long moment. Hess committed himself to Nikki's Tandoori Express.

  "I really do like you, Hess."

  "I absolutely love you, Merci."

  Her breath caught slightly. "That's what I meant. I love you, too."

  Hess smiled and touched her hand.

  She gulped, exhaled loudly, then laughed. "Goddamned glad that's out of the way."

  He laug
hed, too, and it felt like something he hadn't done in centuries. "Thank you," he said.

  "And Hess? Live forever. Direct orders. Please?"

  "I'm going to."

  Hess looked at her and thought again that she really did have a lovely face, just about any way you cut it.

  Merci, still flushed, stirred her coffee. Hess could see her retreating from the moment, leaving well enough alone, which was all right with him.

  "Gilliam pulled three latents off the purses—one

  CalTrans sweeper and two CHP officers. He's working the hair and fiber, but none of it's pointing at our creep. I'm disappointed about Bart Young's list. All my charm and patience on Bart for nothing."

  "There's the funeral home out in Elsinore—the Rose Garden. Owner or manager is one William Wayne. Elsinore puts us close to the Ortega, close to Janet Kane and Lael Jillson. Close to Lee LaLonde, the security system override, the swap meet at the marina. It's an outside shot, but I think we should look at it. I called—a man's voice, just a recording."

  Merci considered. "It really frosted my butt when I had to admit we're not that close. On TV. We're not that close to him yet, Hess. And I had to tell the county that. And six. You know how hard it was to say he's killed six women on my watch?"

  Hess nodded but said nothing. He knew you weren't always close just because you thought you were close, weren't always far just because it felt that way. Cases had their own secret length, their own surprise endings. But you could only see them when they were over.

  "Tim, I called Claycamp a few minutes ago and we're down to eight vans. I took four of them. I'm starting to feel lucky again. Man, I can feel it," she said. Then, as a consolation she tried to sound enthused about: "And after that, we can hit the Rose Garden Home in Elsinore, if you want to."

  Hess's heart sank a little: his own partner was throwing him a bone. "All right."

  "These unmatched tires still smell right."

  "That's good enough for me, Merci. What if we run the women on the DMV list? The women with late-model panel vans?"

  Merci looked at him sharply. "That's a lot of man-hours if you—"

  "—No, just run the names against the other lists. Maybe the Purse Snatcher's got someone who loves him, too. Like Colesceau. A relative. A girlfriend. Maybe she's got money. Maybe she's old and he can use her as a front and she doesn't know it It's worth looking at."

  She studied him for a moment. She looked at the TV screen. She nodded and took the cell phone out of her pocket. "I'll get Claycamp on that," she said, dialing. "Maybe he can get someone to run the lists while we hit the last four vans and Lake Elsinore."

  It took them almost three hours to find the vehicles, with all the traffic, driving from one end of the smog-choked county to the other, wrecks all over the place. One of the vans wasn't operable; one had been stolen the day before. The other two were family vehicles. None of them was silver, or had mismatched tires or embalming machines hooked up to generators in the back.

  Midway through the fruitless expedition they stopped to get coffee and for Hess to get his radiation treatment.

  He came out with a strange feeling in his face. Like it was numb and cold, packed in mint. The back of his hand hurt because the nurse took five stabs to find his "shy" vein when she took blood. Dr. Ramsinghani said yesterday's white cell count was very low, and he might need a transfusion if it hadn't come back up by today. He was borderline anemic. They'd know tomorrow. Until then, get plenty of rest. Eat well. Lots of water. Relaxation, meditation. Don't even consider going to work.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  To his authentic horror, Matamoros Colesceau glanced at the TV in his living room to see his mother making her way through the crowd toward his door.

  He watched her barrel through the demonstrators. She threw one arm up to cover her face and peered over it like a leper from a cave. The mob parted for her.

  MAKE our NElGHborhood

  SAFE for the CHlLdren!

  She was dressed, as always, in her long loose black skirt and black v-necked shawl. The lapels of the shawl were embroidered with white crosses of her own design, but the effect was far more pagan than Christian. From any kind of distance the crosses looked like rows of teeth closing in on her throat. She was a strong woman, thick as a lumberjack. Her face was round and white. Her mouth was open even when she wasn't speaking, the heavy, dry lips parted over posts of misshapen teeth that were separated by spaces suggesting violence. She wore the thick oval sunglasses favored by dictators and a black knit babushka over her head. Even to Colesceau she looked like the witch in some fairy tale illustrated with woodcuts. He opened the door and let her in.

  "Moros, I am saddened and furious."

  "I am, too, Mother."

  She looked at him. Even after twenty-six years his first instinct on being close to his mother was to run.

  She took his wrists and pulled him down so he could kiss her. He did. He could smell the breath from her never-closed mouth: a red American mouthwash she used by the gallon.

  "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

  "I was ashamed."

  "They are the ones who should be ashamed."

  "They're not ashamed of anything. That's why I've become so important to them. What could you have done?"

  "Done? I could have helped the only blood I have left on earth. Why, the television, it says you have no job, and no place to live in just a few weeks. And still, you don't call or write me?"

  Colesceau stepped back a little and sighed. "Thanks for coming."

  "How do you live with that noise outsider

  "It stops at nine."

  "They would crucify you if they had the courage."

  "And the hammers."

  "Make me some tea. I'm going to sit here where it's cool and think about this situation. There must be a way we can overcome it."

  Colesceau made the tea. He brought it out to her.

  Helena was watching "Rape Watch: Irvine."

  "Are you on the TV all day?"

  "They broadcast live when I go outside for any reason. Or when someone visits. Yesterday, law enforcement. Now you."

  "What are they saying about the children?"

  "They're demanding a safe neighborhood for them."

  "But you love children."

  "True."

  "And if you had ever shown interest in a Romanian girl, she would have given children to you, like I gave you to your father."

  References to his mother in childbirth disgusted him. His father was weak, womanly and traitorous. Matamoros was ashamed to be sired by him. Which was why he had taken his mother's maiden name when he came to the states. He tried to think of something pleasant, always difficult in the presence of Helena. "You've told me that a thousand times, Mother."

  "Instead of the French or Italian girls in Bucharest. Instead of the German girls in the magazines. Instead of the American girls in California."

  "I know your opinions." Certainly, he did. She'd been opining about his prospective mate for twenty years or so. Her words had always made him sad and edgy and angry. At first it was because he didn't really understand them. Later, because he knew she was right.

  "You will never attract an American woman like you desire."

  "This isn't the time to discuss it."

  "It's the reason for all that's happened. Your own type, Moras. Your own level. What is similar and harmonious. A hummingbird for a hummingbird. A sow for a hog. Beautiful and educated American women for beautiful and educated American men. For you, a simple Romanian peasant girl. Someone like me."

  "You horrify me, Mother," he said softly. "I love you, but you always have."

  When she forced him to sleep in her bed after the death of his father, Colesceau had begun to truly understand why his mother so adamantly choked his desires for other women. He began to understand this while he lay in her bed the very night his father was shot to death by the state police, lay still and silent and in considerable pain as she sobbed and worked
the cooling herbal poultice over the stitched fang holes that the attack dogs had left all over his body. Her desire was easy for him to feel. It entered him through her fingers, arcing down into him like electricity in slow motion. It never left. He could never really make it leave.

  Now, years later, he considered killing her just to stop her damning words, but there was the money she gave him, the rent she paid, the vehicles she financed for him, the savings and checking accounts she helped him maintain, the lawyers and doctors she hired and fired like maids.

  "I believe I have a solution for our immediate problems, Moros. You will move in with me. We can transport you in a private way, and no one will know you are with me.

  He just looked at her, the brown and broken teeth rising from her gums.

  "What do you think of that, Moros?"

  "No."

  "Do you have a better solution?"

  "I'll be all right here, Mother. I'll finish out my lease here, that's twenty-five days. Then I'll find another place to live. It's not impossible. It's a free country."

  "Not for sexual perverts, it isn't."

  "I'm not a sexual pervert. And I'm not moving in with you. I'm not going anywhere. This is my home."

  "Then I'll move in here. And I will hear no argument about that, if you expect to continue your allowances. No arguments from you, Moros. But, more tea. And turn up the TV."

  He picked up the remote and pressed the button. As the "Volume" bar rose up one side of the screen, hatred rose up in his heart. It was like water jumping to a boil. But it was a soft, compromised hatred, not one that would ever spur him to action. It frustrated him so much that he couldn't just shut her up and get it all over with. Then start to rebuild his life from the ground up, clean slate, American Dream and all that: no Depo-Provera, no shrill neighbors, no Helena to tell him he should aspire only to women as ugly as her.