by Owen Mullen
His voice was flat.
‘There are no eye-witnesses. Once again, forensics found nothing, most probably because there’s nothing to find.’
Agent McLaren said, ‘Any observations at this point?’
I raised my hand.
‘Mr Delaney?’
It was a strange feeling to be the only one in the room without a job title. Intimidating in an egocentric kind of a way. I’d been Detective Delaney for years and never missed it, until now.
‘You said whoever killed her took a chance. Seems to me that’s how this guy works. In every case, the chance of discovery is high. All the homicides are in public places, all in daylight, and of course the victims are children. Vulnerable, yes, but liable to scream the place down, too.’
‘Point well made.’
He turned to the stranger sitting along from him.
‘Mr Diskins. Would you like to introduce yourself and respond?’
Unlike Rutherford, he didn’t stand. He didn’t need to; his voice cut across the room, loud and clear. ‘Charlie Diskins. I’m a profiler with the FBI. So far, this guy has killed six children, and going to what Mr Delaney said, in every case, he took an almighty risk, suggesting the threat of being caught is part of the thrill; as big a part of the motivation as the violence. Our perp never leaves any trace, which means he’s thoughtful about his business. Shows he’s under control, in some ways at least. No sign he used drugs to subdue the victims, yet the acts are committed in crowded places. Our killer thinks he’s cleverer than we are to the extent that detection is only a theoretical possibility to him. Exciting, yes, though unlikely to end in his capture.’ He paused for effect. ‘That belief is a big plus for us; it means he’ll make a mistake. In his arrogance, he’ll drop his guard. We’ll get our chance. We need to be prepared to take it.’
He eyed the solemn faces in front of him. ‘Six attacks in six states; victims from both sexes. You know from your own experience, but I’ll say it again: these crimes are about power. We’re up against a super-ego. Lucy Gilmour is the only one spotted with a stranger. So, the question to ponder is: who can walk around at these events without causing suspicion?
‘Most of the crowd are women – some men; fathers, grandfathers, brothers, though the brothers will be kids, too. There’ll definitely be workmen, like venue staff, an electrician or a plumber grafting on the weekend. Janitors. Judges. Caretakers. Maybe catering people. Everywhere had these types at the time of the crimes. No doubt this stuff has already been covered, but something must’ve been missed. Track them all down again so we can cross them off the list a second time. Believe it or not, some of these children have their own hairdresser, performance coach, even make-up artist. It’s incredible, though those aren’t so likely at a local event. There’s a whole other world happening out there, people, most weekends of the year. Normally, it would pass us by, except nothing about this is normal.’
A hand went up. ‘Detective Eddie Clementon. Who’re we looking for? What’s your best guess?’
Diskins answered with unashamed candour. ‘Don’t have one. All I can do is speculate. On the basis of the not-very-much we have so far, I’d say our perp is male, twenty-five to forty-five, perhaps a well-known face on the pageant scene. It could even be a parent using a child as a cover.’
‘How sick is that?’ someone said.
‘Sick. But sick is the keyword here. In all probability, he’s a family man Monday to Friday and a monster on the weekends.’
Diskins had told us pretty much what we already knew. No evidence existed to support anything more specific. His final comment was about the media. ‘The decision’s been made to keep the serial connection out of the news. That would give an advantage to the killer. He would know we’re on to him and probably go to ground, for a while at least.’
The woman in Detective Nancy Corrigan slipped out. ‘Shouldn’t we be warning people?’
‘We have. It doesn’t stop them. They believe – if it happens at all – it’ll happen to somebody else. They’re sure they can protect their own children. Notices were sent out, after Timmy Donald was killed, to every known pageant venue. We also placed a public information notice in Pageantry magazine that ran for three issues. It’s public knowledge, Detective. Draw any more attention to ourselves, and we’ll be telling this animal we’re waiting for him.’
Corrigan flushed under the rebuke. It was a fine line, and everybody knew it.
Captain Anthony Delaup got to his feet. ‘The FBI has a plane to catch. Everybody else stay in your seats, please.’
Rutherford, McLaren and Diskins left. Off to do the same show in another state. I didn’t envy them their job, nobody did. Running around, coming up dry, trying to believe they could crack this thing. Trying to make us believe it, too.
We settled down to listen.
Danny took the floor. ‘Our job is to keep on looking. Revisiting the familiar until it gives up its secret. Hard going. We don’t have a choice.’
He pointed to two detectives and gave them names.
‘Morrison and Santana, compare the list of competitors in all six pageants where our guy took a child. Corrigan and Lawson – tough one, sorry, guys – I want you to interview our victims’ parents one more time. Go over their statements. See if they can remember something. Anything. Millar and O’Rourke, talk to every ancillary person connected with the Baton Rouge event, and cross-check with Corrigan and Lawson anyone who used or uses professional assistance – hairdresser, dance teacher. All of it. First thing Friday morning, be prepared to feed back to the group. And copies of everything for everyone. Agent McLaren will be the task-force co-ordinator. He knows the teams working the other states. The paper will come through him. I’ll pass it on. Right now, we have one attack to investigate. Baton Rouge. By the end of the week, I expect us to have something to contribute. Thanks, folks.’
He clapped his hands the way they do on TV cop shows to get the team moving.
I watched them file out. One or two said goodbye – to me, to their weekend, to any family plans they might have had. That had once been my life. I didn’t miss it a bit.
When everyone else had gone, Delaup, Fitzy and myself were left.
‘No assignment for you, Delaney. Least not out front.’
Danny spoke to me. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘I’m going with the family on Saturday. Molly wants to see if she can make it two in a row. Report on Monday.’
Both of them shook my hand.
‘Glad to have you back.’ Delaup sounded as if he meant it.
‘Good luck,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Sorry I got you into this.’
‘A man’s gotta do … right?’ At the door, I turned. ‘Let the games begin.’
If the games did begin, nobody noticed. Saturday came and went, and nothing happened. Molly was second, which didn’t please her. All the way home, she sulked, behaving nothing close to the angel her fans imagined and more like a five-year-old girl who hadn’t gotten her way.
At the event, I sat through hours of precocious no-talents, and the nearest I came to a violent confrontation was when some kid sitting behind me insisted on pressing his knees against the back of my chair.
Seeing Molly do her stuff was a thrill. I could tolerate the event more easily than I thought, and though the pageant was ham, it was a family day; harmless fun, and the youngsters seemed to love it. I divided my time roaming around, watching the adults a lot more than the kids.
If the killer was there, I didn’t see him.
11
When the Governor of Louisiana, John J McKeithen, toured the Houston Astrodome in 1966, he was quoted as saying, ‘I want one of these, only bigger.’
Looking around as the Superdome filled up, I guessed he’d got his wish. In the seat next to me, Cal Moreland struggled through a giant packet of potato chips. How he could be hungry already was a mystery, we’d only finished eating an hour ago.
Cal is my oldest friend. In the season, we meet up for
home games. Football is the excuse to get together.
He said, ‘What do you think?’
‘First game, too soon to tell.’
‘Yeah, we know that, but what do you think?’
‘I think I’ll wait and see.’
‘Know something, Delaney, you’re too cautious, always have been. Even when we were kids. You need to take a chance, cut loose.’
I’d heard all this from him before and couldn’t agree with any of it. ‘Ok, I’ll go with Florida.’
I knew that would get him, and it did.
He exploded. ‘The Buccaneers, are you shittin’ me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Because we’re here to see our team win. We’re here for the Saints.’
‘And I’m rooting for them. You asked me what I thought.’
Frustration bloomed on his face. Cal was always better-looking than I was: taller, blond, blue-eyed and much more reckless. Impetuous. I was darker, brown-eyed and steady by comparison. For years in our youth, I got the girls he didn’t want. Cal Moreland had always represented something special to me. Larger than life, full of fun, full of shit. There was a time when I wanted to be him. But we were different. He was built wild: didn’t play music, didn’t like dogs and had no brothers, sisters or children – so no nephews or nieces. Cal joined the NOPD three years after I did, always working out of different districts from me and finally making detective, third class. Soon after, I was gone. In truth, most of what we had was in the past. Those season tickets we’d scrummed-up to buy a long time ago represented what was left of common ground. We’d come a long way, not always together, but here we still were.
‘Fifty on our boys, by four,’ he said. ‘It’s called faith. You want to try it.’
The following day I was at my desk, checking bills, when the phone rang. It was Harry Love. He wanted a background check on a prosecution witness, a Johnnie G Miller. He needed it as soon as. Two, maybe three days of my time in billable hours. Not a lot, still, it was money. I fingered the harp in my pocket without any intention of playing it. The guitar and Lowell rested in the corner. It was one of those days where everybody seemed low for no reason.
A memory came to me: the delight on Cal’s face when the Saints finished off a forty-two-yard catch and run to lift them to an opening-game win over the defending champions, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
He crowed. ‘I told you, I told you: no quarter.’
‘Yeah, you did. A good start.’
‘A great start.’
I waited and wasn’t disappointed.
‘We could go all the way. We’ve got the right stuff this year.’
‘Maybe.’ The immediate aftermath of an opening-day win was no place for moderate talk. ‘A lot can change during a sixteen-game season, Cal.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t get you. We can win this thing.’
‘You think?’
‘Who knows where the road goes, Delaney?’
‘Anyway, you won fifty dollars.’
‘Oh yeah, so I did. So I did.’
Voices from outside brought me back. I grabbed the bills off the desk and stuck them in a drawer. The door opened, and a cinema line came through it. There must have been fifteen or twenty people, mostly African Americans with a handful of Asians, Koreans or Vietnamese, and one or two who looked to be Hispanic or Latino; there were no white faces in the group. I brought my chair out from behind the desk and placed it beside a woman standing at the front. She thanked me. Then, I perched on the edge of my desk and looked at them.
These were not young people, most were at least in middle-age and some a lot older than that. They looked at me. I looked at them. Each waiting for the other to begin. The silence was broken by a voice from the back, a man’s voice, deep and gravelly. ‘Nice dog.’
‘So, how can I help you folks?’
Feet shuffled and heads went down. The woman at the front surprised me by standing up.
‘My name is Pricilla Bartholomew, Mrs, and this is my husband, Willard. Thank you for seeing us without an appointment, Mr Delaney.’
Mrs Pricilla Bartholomew was a tall lady; slim, edging sixty I guessed, with ramrod posture and clear eyes. Easy to imagine she’d been a looker. And there was an intelligence it was impossible not to notice. ‘We need your help. Plain as that.’
‘Tell me about it.’ I repositioned myself on the desk to listen.
‘We’re here representing the traders and business people of North Le Moyne and the surrounding area. There’s more of us, a lot more. I can introduce everybody, if you like. That would eat up your time, so I guess I’ll just stick with telling you the facts. It was me who proposed coming here. Saw your box in Yellow Pages and persuaded the rest we jump right in and come down today. You looked like somebody we could afford.’
She spoke without offense. ‘And now, we’re here.’
So, it was true: it did pay to advertise.
‘We own a deli, Willard and me, have done for almost thirty years. Used to be my father’s. When he passed, it came to me. Originally, my family was from Asia. We specialise in spices and sauces from the region. Everybody here is a small trader. Nobody’s making a fortune down our way.’
I believed her.
‘We were doing all right until two months ago. That’s when it started.’
‘What started?’
‘The threats, the violence – Clyde had his arm broken. They went to every store and laid out how it was going to be. From now on, they said, they would make sure nobody bothered us. If anybody did, they’d sort it out.’ She took a breath. ‘They wanted money, of course, for this service, as they called it. One hundred at first. It’s gone up to two.’
She tilted her chin proudly. ‘It’s killing us, Mr Delaney. Not just the money we can’t afford, but the worry, the constant fear and the disgrace of knowing we stood for this, even for a minute. We’re all hard-working people, who just want to be left alone to run our businesses, raise our children and live our lives. It can’t go on.’
‘Mrs Bartholomew, all of you, what I’m hearing is extortion. Organised crime. Really, this is a matter for the police. I can make a call. Put you in touch with a guy I know. This isn’t what I do, I’m sorry.’
Pricilla Bartholomew held me with her eyes. She was the one I had to convince.
‘I’m not unwilling. It is a police matter. Extortion is a serious crime. You need the police.’
She let me dig a hole for myself.
‘That’s why we’ve come to you. These people are the police.’
12
‘They told us.’
The voice hadn’t come from Mrs Bartholomew; she was busy watching me. I spoke to all of them, although really only to the tall, proud woman at the front.
‘They told you they were the police?’
Her face remained impassive. The gritty voice that had commented on Lowell said, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘You say it began two months ago?’
‘Yes. About that.’
‘How did it actually start? What was the first thing that happened?’
Cilla looked back over her group and nodded to a small black man over to the side. ‘Tell him, Clyde.’
He fidgeted with his hat, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. ‘One day, two young fellas showed up. Walked in as if they owned the place, started lookin’ around. I remember I was servin’ a customer at the time, but I saw ‘em. There was an arrogance, a cock-of-the-walk kind of thing, the way teenagers act around each other in public, know what I mean?’
I knew what he meant.
‘When the customer left, I asked, “What can I get you fellas?” They just smirked across the counter at me. One of them palmed an apple ‘n took a bite out of it. The other strolled over, drew the blind and locked the door. My place, closed in the middle of the day. Never been known.’
Clyde pulled himself up to his full height.
‘I wasn’t afraid, but I wasn’t happy either.’
It was important to him to get that out. Get it said in front of his peers.
‘Anyway, they told me my store was under new management. That was their expression. The new bosses wanted one hundred dollars from me every week from now on.’
The hat in his hand was taking a beating.
“‘Why would I pay you anything?” I asked them. “Look on it as an investment,” the one by the door threw in. The first guy leaned over, opened the till and counted out one hundred in twenties and tens. “Startin’ today,” he said, and he laughed. They both did. I told them to get out of my shop before I called the cops. “Save your dime, grandpa.” One of them grinned. “We are the cops.” Then, he broke my arm.’
Clyde cast his gaze around the group.
‘Heard everybody got a visit, same speech too. Now they come in every week for the money, except three weeks ago, it went up to two. Two hundred a week, eight hundred a month. Money like that isn’t hangin’ spare in my business. I’m payin’ them out of my wages. No other place to find it.’
He wasn’t nervous anymore; he was angry. The hat got it just the same. He was done and disappeared behind a bigger guy, which could’ve been anybody in the room.
Cilla said, ‘Everybody has a similar story.’
Heads bobbed and lips moved in agreement.
‘Okay. Is it always the same two guys? What do they look like?’
Willard Bartholomew chimed in, without waiting for his wife to invite him. ‘Late twenties, clean-cut, real short hair, tallish – well, taller than me anyway. Look the way cops look out of uniform. Tell them a mile off. Same two all the time. Always doing that good cop, bad cop routine. One of them does the smiling, while his friend does the threatening. In the beginning, we put up some resistance, refusing to give them the money, closing up on collection day: making noises about what we’d do. They just laughed. Then, they came ‘round to a couple of stores and trashed them. That brought us into line. We realised we had trouble that wasn’t just gonna go away.’