LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  Valerie knew from experience with people like the Bradleys that the best way to get the information through was by way of a dispassionate report of the facts. The body of a woman we believe to be Raylene Ashe has been found. This is a murder investigation. When did you last see Raylene? Did you notice anything unusual or suspicious in the neighborhood?

  It took a while before her questions were actually landing. Jessica’s tears came after the first phase of disbelief and denial. Even then, as the old lady plucked a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her nose (her long nostrils had turned raw with the first sob) she couldn’t quite accept it. Valerie could see her going down mental avenues in search of a way back into a reality where this couldn’t have happened. Every one of them, naturally, a dead end. Karl Bradley, meanwhile, sat next to his wife and rubbed her back, speechless. He hadn’t said a word since Valerie had broken the news. Partly the shock, but partly a paralysis with which Valerie suspected he was struck when anything came into his life with a huge emotional demand. Born in the forties, grown up in the fifties, he was of a generation of American men who Did Not Cry—for fear that if they did the entire apparatus of manliness would unravel.

  “Oh my God,” Jessica said, suddenly arrested by a thought. “Was it the man with the dog?”

  “What man would that be?” Valerie asked.

  “Oh my God,” Jessica repeated.

  “Easy, Ma,” Christopher said.

  “Just take your time and tell me,” Valerie said.

  “Just before we were leaving,” Jessica said. “I was on the phone to Janine saying we were expecting Christopher any minute … and I was saying that I wish he hadn’t left it so late because I don’t like for anyone to be driving in the dark. We were all packed and ready to go, and I’d just gone into the little room at the front to look and see if Christopher was coming.”

  “You didn’t tell me this,” Karl said, breaking his silence. “How come you didn’t tell me this?”

  “You were in the yard,” Jessica said.

  “Please go on,” Valerie said.

  “I was looking out,” Jessica said, “and I saw Raylene in her doorway just there, and there was a guy kind of kneeling on the lawn. He had a dog.… It was lying down, so I didn’t see it at first, but Raylene was talking with this fella about something. I mean, it was weird that he was on her lawn with the dog, but I thought maybe he was someone visiting. But right then Christopher drove up and I … You know, it took my mind off it. And then you”—to Christopher—“said you were starving and could I fix you a quick sandwich and then Karl couldn’t find his reading glasses and by the time we got going … I mean I was planning to pop over to Ray’s and say good-bye, but it was getting late and Karl said leave her in peace. I was going to go over there!” This last was with compressed anguish. Another nail of the fact of Raylene’s death had gone in. They would keep going in, Valerie knew, over the days and weeks ahead.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Valerie said. “Believe me, it’s better for you you didn’t go over there.”

  “I don’t get why you didn’t tell me that,” Karl said.

  “It went out of my mind!” Jessica wailed.

  “Mom, take it easy,” Christopher said.

  “What time was it, roughly, Christopher, when you arrived?” Valerie asked, notebook and pencil poised.

  “Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” Christopher said. “Maybe around seven?”

  “No, no, it was past eight,” Jessica said. “Because I remember thinking it was going to be so late when we got to Janine’s, and she said she was going to let the kids stay up. You know, they still get excited to see us.”

  “Could you tell me what this man looked like?” Valerie asked.

  Jessica shook her head. “I just saw him from the back,” she said. “I didn’t see his face at all. Do you think … I mean, could it have been him?”

  “You saw the back of his head?” Valerie said. “What about his hair color?”

  Jessica went through a visible effort of recollection. “I guess kind of a dark blond,” she said.

  “Long? Short?”

  “Over the collar, I think. Oh, God, I wish I’d gone over there!”

  “What was he wearing?” Valerie asked.

  “I can’t remember. Wait—maybe a khaki jacket … Or light green. I really couldn’t see properly.”

  “What about the dog?” Valerie said. “Could you see what kind?”

  “No. Light-colored, though. I could barely make it out.”

  “Did it seem to you that Raylene knew him? Did she seem at ease when she was talking with him?”

  Jessica shook her head, pressed the handkerchief to her nose, had another moment of teary disbelief. “It’s no good,” she said. “I don’t know. It was just a couple of seconds. Just a few seconds and Christopher’s car pulled up. Oh, dear God, I can’t believe poor Ray’s gone. How can this happen? I mean, what kind of person…?” She trailed off, shaking her head. Then a little viciousness took her. “You’re going to get him, aren’t you? You’re going to get the man who did this?”

  “We’ll get him,” Valerie lied.

  “If someone did that to … If someone…” Fresh tears. “She was such a good girl!”

  Valerie wondered how long she, Valerie, could keep doing this. Facing the demand for justice knowing justice was never enough. Knowing justice couldn’t bring back the dead. Death had been part of her life for so long she couldn’t remember who she’d been before. She knew she had been innocent, a child, a girl, but the recollection was intellectual. Now death felt like part of her DNA. When she and Nick talked about having a kid, neither of them could really face the question of whether Valerie would carry on working Homicide. It was unimaginable. To go home from a day like today carrying the images of Raylene’s torture, Raylene’s rape, Raylene’s corpse—to read The Hobbit to a wide-eyed daughter. She always thought she would have a daughter rather than a son—and even that, she knew, was driven, perversely, by the knowledge that the world was less safe for girls. She couldn’t think of having a baby without thinking of it as female, with all the wretched possibilities that entailed. For a moment, just then, it seemed absolutely clear to her that she shouldn’t have a child, that she would never be able to bear the fear of what might happen to it. Her. What might happen to her.

  “One last thing,” she said to the Bradleys. “Did either of you notice any car or vehicle you didn’t recognize parked on the street? Not just on Friday. I mean anytime recently?”

  The Bradleys looked at one another, sadly. No.

  * * *

  It was after midnight when Valerie drove back from San Francisco International alone. McLuhan was staying in Portland to force a rush on the evidence found at the scene.

  Perhaps Raylene will help you toward the nonrandom nature of my selection?

  Assume that was true. (While simultaneously suffering the knowledge that it might well be false.) Nonrandom how? He knew them. They knew each other. They knew Katherine. They had something in common.

  Nothing, on the face of it, indicated that they had anything in common, except that they were both more or less single, both over forty, both childless divorcées, and both either lived or had lived in San Francisco. Elizabeth had been a lifelong local, born in Sausalito, where her parents and her sister, Gillian, still resided. Raylene had been born in Portland, but moved to San Francisco when she was twenty-two, whereafter she’d worked in the postal service for seventeen years (married for four) until she moved back to Portland to take care of her father. They were physically dissimilar. Elizabeth, fifty-four, was thin and angular, with dyed auburn hair, pale green eyes, and a complexion that had been kept out of the sun. Raylene, forty-two, had long, dark, thick wavy hair and eyes the color of prunes. She was fuller-figured, with a tan body that was manifestly no stranger to the gym. At the USPS she’d gone from processing clerk to city carrier, then through a confusing three or four job title changes until she’d made assistant post
master at the San Francisco office. Transferring back to Portland had forced her to take a salary cut and step back down a couple of rungs, but according to her sister, Allie, Raylene had been determined to come home for what they both knew was going to be their father’s last few months.

  Sexual and romantic background so far (with Raylene’s investigation barely begun) was unspectacular. Certainly nothing in Elizabeth’s case that yielded a suspect. Portland PD was interviewing, but not, as yet, with results. On the surface Elizabeth Lambert and Raylene Ashe were two women with quiet, ordinary American lives.

  Postal Service. His penchant for letters and packages? It sounded ridiculous. And Elizabeth had nothing to do with the U.S. mail, as far as they knew.

  She’d have to show Katherine the picture of Raylene Ashe. Do you know her?

  The answer would be no. Which in any case couldn’t be trusted. No matter what contortions Valerie went through, they left her at the same impasse: Katherine could neither be trusted nor ignored.

  It was as if, in the cosmic scheme of things, that was the fucking point of Katherine.

  16

  Everyone was in early the following morning.

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “We’ve got fake Pest Controller out to all the agencies. Katherine’s description and composites plus CCTV still are going to the national press today. It’s probably only going to make life harder, but right now we don’t have a choice.”

  She was standing in front of the board, the Murder Map, which, around the pinned-up photos of Elizabeth and Raylene, looked ominously ready for more. Next to Elizabeth’s picture was a blow-up of the postcard she’d received, Lucas Cranach’s Adam and Eve. Next to Raylene’s, another enlargement of Bruegel’s The Fall of Icarus. Valerie’s online research had turned up the painting’s little joke, a detail of the canvas she hadn’t noticed at first: the small splash in the ocean and Icarus’s legs disappearing beneath the water, while the farmer went on with his plowing, oblivious.

  “We’ve got three women, all of whom—since the press release—have received warning postcards, now under surveillance and investigation. There’s no physical evidence from their postcards and envelopes to tie them to our guy, but we have to take them seriously. What we do have is metal fibers from the driveway at the Elizabeth Lambert scene to suggest that he used bolt cutters to get in through the side gate, then replaced the padlock and key. As far as we know Elizabeth didn’t have the padlock changed herself. If he got in through the kitchen door we have to assume he picked the lock, because there was no sign of forced entry there. It’s a mixed MO, but that might well be for our entertainment.”

  The team bristled, slightly. At this stage, Valerie knew, they were still sharp. This was the mental crispness you got at the start of a serial investigation. Which would be eroded by each additional victim. You had to maximize the window, get as much done while the energy and belief were still there. Soon—another dead woman, two, three—the shoulders would drop and resignation would fill up the room like a stale smell.

  “The Raylene Ashe MO looks completely different,” she continued. “Neighbors saw Raylene talking to a guy with a dog on her front lawn on the evening she was most likely abducted, a guy for whom what little description we have clearly doesn’t match Pest Controller, though it’s closer to Katherine’s original. Unfortunately we’re dealing with someone who both (a) has most likely changed his appearance physically since the original murders and (b) is capable of inhabiting convincing disguises on top of that. The fact that Raylene was talking to him doesn’t mean she knew him, but we have to go down that road too, especially if we’re attaching credence to the idea that the victims are, in his words, ‘nonrandom.’ Portland PD and the Bureau field office there are dealing with that line of investigation. Elizabeth was killed in her own home. Raylene was taken somewhere, then dumped. I doubt any others will be killed at home. Elizabeth was just the initial calling card. A rush job to get our attention. We know he likes time, privacy, leisure. The damage Raylene suffered testifies.”

  “What’s the deal with this Icarus painting?” Sadie Hurst said.

  “You know the story of Icarus, right?” Valerie said.

  “Yeah: he made some wings out of feathers and wax, and flew too close to the sun, and the wax melted and he fell.”

  “So the painting is about how when big things happen, no matter how big they are, to someone they’re just a missed detail. The ordinary world goes on, no matter what. Something like that. Icarus falls, the farmer doesn’t notice, just carries on with his plowing.”

  “You think it’s a coincidence that Raylene worked for the postal service?” Laura Flynn asked. “I mean, this letter fetish…?”

  “Unknown,” Valerie said. “I’ve got a call in to Raylene’s former employers at the service here in San Francisco and in Portland. We’ll be getting a list of her colleagues from her time there, as well as the routes she worked when she was on the beat. It’s possible she delivered our guy’s mail. Or maybe even Elizabeth’s.”

  “Or Katherine’s,” Will said.

  A palpable negative charge at the mention of the name.

  “Yes,” Valerie said. “Or Katherine’s.”

  “Anything from her?” Ed Pérez asked, with visible skepticism.

  “No.”

  “She must be loving this.”

  Valerie didn’t answer.

  “I mean, for Christ’s sake,” Ed said. “He could have planned all this ages ago. I know her mail’s checked, but they could have one of his fancy codes going between them. He could have been corresponding with her from day one. And if he’s so loaded, what’s to say he hasn’t bought every screw in Red Ridge, including the warden?”

  “Of course that’s a possibility, however unlikely. But what do you want us to do, Ed? Ignore the package he sent?”

  “No, just leave it with the Bureau. If they can’t crack it and someone dies, tough shit. We did our best through legitimate means. That’s assuming there’s genuinely anything to crack, which I doubt. It’s a waste of time.”

  A murmur of assent went through the room. And underneath it something worse: the unspoken suggestion that Katherine’s involvement was down to Valerie’s fascination with her, regardless of its relevance to the case. In spite of herself Valerie felt her face warming.

  “It’s costing us one federal agent,” she said.

  “Until she starts feeding us bullshit,” Ed said. “Then it’s going to start costing us a whole lot more.”

  “Look, Ed, it’s noted. At the moment it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I don’t think she’s going to give us disinformation, but if she does, it’s on me. As she said herself: she gets one life in this game. She blows it, she’s out.”

  Two hours later, McLuhan called from Portland. Valerie was at her desk, drinking the morning’s third cup of wretched station coffee.

  “The blood at Raylene’s place isn’t blood.”

  “What is it?”

  “Corn syrup and food coloring. Fake. Most of it, anyway. Couple of drops inside are real blood. Hers. DNA and prints all match.”

  Valerie downloaded. “‘Help me, I’ve been in an accident’?” she said. “No—wait. ‘Help me, my dog’s been in an accident’?”

  “Maybe. Sympathy hook. Like Bundy with the arm in a cast. Was there any at Elizabeth’s?”

  “Not found. But if it’s his entry MO it would’ve been by one of the doors and there’s nothing like that in the report. Plus we’ve got the replaced lock that says he got in that way. The scene’s been released, anyway. Is the blood commercial or homemade?”

  “Impossible to tell. According to forensics it’s missing something called methylparaben, which would have increased the likelihood of it being commercial, since it acts as a preservative, but really, there’s no way of knowing. It’s more likely homemade. A purchase would leave a trail.”

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “But we know what he can do with dummy credit cards.”

  “The
re’s one other thing. From the door-to-door. One of the other neighbors—a teenager—says he saw a guy sitting in a silver car he didn’t recognize as one of the regulars on the block. On the evening Raylene was snatched.”

  “You got a description?”

  “Nothing beyond blond hair and beard. Usual average-everything-else. The kid was on a skateboard, so, a glance, he says.”

  Blond hair and beard. The blond hair fit the Bradleys’ sketch—and Katherine’s description—but again, not Pest Controller.

  “We might’ve heard about this earlier,” McLuhan said. “But the kid’s an apprentice stoner, barely thirteen. Needed to work up to it and get rid of his stash.”

  This was the way it happened, Valerie knew, as if Crime were an intelligence that used its minor aspects to conceal its major ones.

  “Obviously this doesn’t help with Pest Controller,” McLuhan said. “But we’re just going to have to stick with running them as separate suspects.”

  “Yeah, well, if he can do fake blood he can do wigs and beards.”

  “I’m e-mailing you the report right now. We’re looking at traffic cams on the exits and approaches to Raylene’s neighborhood, but it’s going to take a while. I’ll let you know if we get anything.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  Will looked over his desktop. “I think the postal fixation’s just a joke,” he said.

  “Because?”

  “He knows his own CV: high-tech smarts. So he goes old-school. Paper. Stamps. Postcards.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I’m just telling you because you don’t think I go in for psychological speculation.”

  “I never said any such thing.”

  “You don’t have to say it. You’re subtextual.”

  “I wish I’d never taught you that word. In fact now that I think of it I’m pretty sure I said subsexual. Anyway, heads-up: fake dog-blood at Raylene’s. I’m e-mailing you the latest. Make sure everyone—” Her cell phone rang again.