Simeon Grist Mystery - 04 - Incinerator

by Timothy Hallinan

  “So he’s saying,” Velez Caputo said, cutting through the history of science with a straight razor, “that he intends to burn you to a crisp.”

  “That’s what he’s saying,” I said.

  “Because he thinks you betrayed him. I should explain,” she said, turning to the cameras, “some of the background here.” The TelePrompter was whirring again, and she explained it in about forty compact seconds. Finishing, she turned to me. “So how do you feel about that, Mr. Grist?”

  It wasn’t time for that yet.

  “Miss Caputo,” I said.

  “Velez,” she said. “Call me Velez.” Off camera, nobody called her Velez.

  “How would you feel if he were after you? And who knows? He may decide to go after you next,” I said. “Surely, he’s watching us now.”

  Caputo said, “Well, I don’t—”

  “He might like to burn a celebrity,” I said maliciously. Schultz was making frantic hand signals. “Think of the media coverage.”

  “And yet,” Velez Caputo said, a trifle grimly as the man with the tic made frantic adjustments in the TelePrompter, “up until a few days ago, this Incinerator specialized, as you say, in men. Then he apparently decided to kill women as well.” She paused and licked her lips again, and this time the gesture looked functional rather than cosmetic. “Why?” she asked. “Why do you suppose he changed course?” The man with the tic pointed at Schultz, and Caputo turned toward him. “Dr. Schultz?”

  Schultz was sitting taller than a man who suspected the presence of a whoopee cushion. He hadn’t wanted to do this part. He’d asked me repeatedly to do it myself, but I’d refused. If he did it, it meant that he hadn’t talked to Finch.

  “He feels that the rules were broken in the, um”—he looked at me, and I returned his gaze, feeling my heart pound against the walls of my jugular vein—“in the, in the…”

  “Police action,” Velez Caputo said.

  “Yes,” Schultz said, and his Adam’s apple did a little swan dive. “In the police action last Sunday evening.” Hammond, in the back of the room, glared first at me and then at Schultz. “He feels that Mr. Grist betrayed his trust by talking to the police, and he broke his own rules in return. So he burned his first woman.”

  “We have a picture of her,” Velez Caputo said, and Schultz sagged back into his chair as a photograph flashed onto the monitors. It might have been the woman I talked to, but the photo had been taken in a different life, a life when she shopped and went home and went to the beauty parlor, and there she was with a matronly smile on her face, a woman living safely within the walls of a world that shut out rain and cold and Thunderbird and bottles of gasoline and Incinerators.

  “Helena Troy,” Caputo said. The name sounded like a sick joke.

  “Mrs. Troy,” Schultz acknowledged.

  “A woman deserted by her husband in Boston less than a year ago,” Velez Caputo said. “Left with nothing, not even the rent for her apartment. Mr. Troy, wherever you are, I hope you’re watching. She was the first woman he killed,” she said to Schultz.

  “Yes,” he said, looking like someone whose shoes were wet.

  “And you think this is significant.”

  “We think, that is I think,” Schultz said, “as a trained psychologist with some experience with this kind of mentality, that he’s been keeping himself from burning women, that, in fact, women have been his real target all along. He’s been denying himself that target—”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Velez Caputo said, on behalf of the folks at home.

  “Remember the note,” Schultz said. The camera had had enough of the note, and it remained on him. “Remember the control in that note. He talks about the rules. The rules protect people, he says. Remember his behavior. Always the homeless, always within a certain area, until after the, um, police and Mr. Grist broke the rules. He could have killed elsewhere, someplace the police weren’t looking for him. He didn’t, until the, ah, police action Sunday night.” Dr. Schultz was sweating like a waterfall. He was a police psychologist, and he’d just suggested police culpability not only in the shooting of Dennis Thorpe, but also in the deaths of three women. I felt sorry for him, but I also felt a small thrill of victory at recognizing an ally. He hadn’t consulted with Finch.

  “So he felt Mr. Grist had broken the rules,” Velez Caputo said. “Why did he react by burning women?”

  “Because,” Schultz said, advancing the theory we’d spent two days arguing over, “he’d always meant to burn women.”

  “Please,” she said. “Can you be more specific?”

  “With considerable effort,” Schultz said.

  “Male serial killers always kill women, unless they’re homosexuals who derive sexual pleasure from killing men,” Stang broke in. “That’s been the problem from the beginning. There didn’t seem to be any sexual element. Put him into a whole new category. He was just burning them and going away. What was he getting out of it?”

  “He was deriving the same kind of enjoyment,” Schultz said, literally shutting his eyes so he could plow ahead with a theory he hadn’t shared with the LAPD, “that an artist gets by not putting real wood, say, into his paintings but rather facing the challenge of painting wood. Wood has a very difficult texture. To paint wood in its natural state, wood that’s full of whorls and loops and seemingly random patterns, well, that’s very difficult indeed. Why not just put a piece of wood into the picture and paint around it?”

  “You keep comparing this man to an artist,” Velez Caputo said.

  “He is an artist,” Schultz said. “He’s an artist of death. Death is his area of creativity,” he said, word for word from the script, “and, like all great artists, he set down rules, limitations for himself.” Schultz drew a deep breath. “And the primary limitation he established, I believe, was that he would only burn men, even though his hatred, the spark that ignited his rage, was women. When Mr. Grist broke the, um, when the …” he faltered. “Oh, hell,” he said, settling into his chair at last, “when the LAPD broke the rules he had set down for talking to Mr. Grist, he threw out his own rules and started to burn women instead.”

  “Women,” Velez Caputo said neutrally.

  “Women were always his main target,” Schultz bravely reiterated, risking his professional reputation. “It’s women he hates.”

  “We’ll be back with Mr. Grist’s reactions—and a very personal plea to the killer,” Velez Caputo said into the camera, “after this.”

  Things went dark. “And keep it short,” Velez Caputo said to me as a squadron of makeup women rushed to repair the damages of whatever real emotions she might have endured while we were on the air. They were finishing when the tic with the headset said, “Fifteen.”

  Two men were hustling Hermione out of Seat Number Four, and she was cawing protest.

  Three, two, one, the man with the tic counted with his fingers. The lights had come on.

  “Mr. Grist,” Caputo said, and then she looked at Stillman and fought down a rebellious grin. “We’ve heard from Dr. Schultz that the Incinerator may concentrate on female victims from now on, and yet this note was addressed to you. We promised that we’d get your feelings about all this, but before we do”—she glanced to her right, where a woman was being seated in Hermione’s place in Seat Number Four—“we want to focus on that note. In fact, on all the notes.”

  I glanced wildly toward Schultz, who looked like he’d just been hit by a train.

  “Hold on,” he shouted.

  “There have been three,” Velez Caputo said, as though Schultz hadn’t spoken. He got up, but the first note was already on the screen, pictures and all, in glorious color.

  “That’s not allowed,” Schultz said helplessly, still standing there. People waved him back to his chair. “That hasn’t been made public.”

  “Sit down, Doctor,” Caputo said, flicking a finger at the floor director to keep the note on the screen. “It’s public now.”

  I got up, too.
“You won’t show the other one,” I said, “or Dr. Schultz and I are leaving.”

  The monitors opened up to show a wide shot, Caputo, Schultz, and me all standing there, the woman in Seat Four looking calmly on. Schultz was jiggling from foot to foot like a prizefighter.

  “And why is that?” Velez Caputo asked, looking happy. She’d finally gotten her fight.

  “Because it’s privileged information,” Schultz said. “In any murder investigation, certain details are kept quiet. Do you know how many people have confessed to these murders?”

  “How would I?” Velez Caputo said accusingly. “The police haven’t released much of anything.”

  “More than a dozen,” Schultz said.

  The first note flashed back onto the screen.

  “We’ll make a deal,” Velez Caputo said. “We won’t show the second one.”

  “You sure as hell won’t,” Schultz said. “You’ll give it back, and you’ll tell us where you got your copy.”

  “We’ll talk about that after the show,” Caputo said. She came back onto the monitors. Up in the booth, the director must have been tearing his hair out. “For now,” Caputo continued, “we believe that the note you’re now looking at—where is the note?” she demanded. It reappeared. “We believe that the way this note is written tells us something entirely new about the Incinerator, and we have with us an expert who can enlighten us. Joining us,” Velez Caputo said, “is Dr. Catherine Cowan of the University of Southern California, an expert on medieval manuscripts.”

  “Hello,” Dr. Cowan said to the cameras. She was an angular woman of forty or forty-five with a determined jaw, a large Victorian garnet brooch, and a beehive hairdo that suggested a hidden fondness for country music. Schultz was studying her as though she were a piranha that had popped up in his bathtub.

  “Dr. Cowan,” Velez Caputo said, “you’ve had a chance to review all the Incinerator’s letters to date.”

  “I have,” Dr. Cowan said.

  “And what is your opinion of them?”

  “They’re parodies,” Dr. Cowan said, “no, that’s not the right word because they’re not scornful—they’re imitations of illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.”

  “We already know all this,” Schultz said.

  “Our viewers don’t,” Velez Caputo said. “And what are illuminated manuscripts, Dr. Cowan?”

  “Well, as I say, they’re medieval,” Dr. Cowan said, settling into her chair for a nice long chat. “Should I establish the dates?”

  “Never mind,” Velez Caputo said. “The Middle Ages.”

  “Yes, well, illuminated. Anything illustrated in silver or gold. Usually, although not always, containing religious texts. They’re hand-painted, of course, on vellum, which is the stretched skin of a goat. Vellum is very durable.”

  “Is it?” Velez Caputo said, a bit impatiently.

  “Certainly,” Dr. Cowan said serenely. “In fact, the most common surviving objects from the Middle Ages are books.”

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Velez Caputo said. “Now the notes—”

  “It’s not just interesting,” Dr. Cowan continued, “it’s fascinating. Remember, most of the libraries and monasteries that held them have crumbled away into ruins, and they were made of stone. But the books are with us still.”

  “And looking at this note,” Velez Caputo prompted.

  “Some illuminated manuscripts survived appalling treatment. In Ireland, they were dipped in cattle troughs because it was thought that their magic would protect livestock.” Dr. Cowan permitted herself a well-bred snicker, and Caputo used it as a shoehorn.

  “Dr. Cowan,” she said in a tone that would have haltered an avalanche in midslope.

  Dr. Cowan had her mouth open to say something, but she took a little bite out of the air instead. “Sorry?” she said.

  “The note from the Incinerator,” Velez Caputo said briskly. “The one that will be on the screen as soon as the technical staff gets on the ball.” It appeared. “We’ll confine our discussion to that note,” she said, glancing at Schultz but meaning the words for Dr. Cowan. “Now, in what ways does this note—this note, Dr. Cowan— resemble an illuminated manuscript?”

  “Well,” Dr. Cowan said, her mouth a straight line, “it’s written in gold, of course. One of those cheap metallic pens from Japan. An authentic illuminated manuscript, you understand—”

  “Please,” Velez Caputo said. “It would have been written in real gold. We understand that.”

  “Not pure gold, of course,” Dr. Cowan began.

  “Ink with gold in it then,” Velez Caputo almost snapped. Schultz was beginning to enjoy himself. I, on the other hand, was feeling distinctly odd. I was hearing echoes.

  Dr. Cowan had her mouth zipped tight. “What was the question?” she said, after a moment. Schultz grinned uncharitably. Norman was wilting.

  “Other points of resemblance,” Velez Caputo said. “Looking at this note and this note only, Doctor.”

  “The drawing at the bottom,” Dr. Cowan said, giving Caputo’s attitude back to her, with change. “It resembles a miniature, a painting on an illuminated manuscript. They’re not called miniatures because they’re small—

  “Minium,” I said out loud. I felt as though I were saying it with someone else’s voice. Something that might have been a worm seemed to be crawling up my spine.

  Velez Caputo shot me a glance, but Dr. Cowan rolled on.

  “—but because they’re painted with a lead-based paint called minium. That’s one reason they lasted so—’

  “What do you know about minium, Mr. Grist?” Velez Caputo asked me. I shook my head. The worm, or the tremor, or whatever it was, had just about reached my shoulder blades.

  “The big initial at the very beginning,” Velez Caputo said, giving up on me and turning back to Dr. Cowan.

  “It’s an historiated initial,” Dr. Cowan said tightly, and the little worm reached the back of my neck and set off a small firework inside my skull, and just for a moment I saw a face, a very young face, and then it broke and shivered apart like a reflection in water that’s been disturbed.

  “… They have scenes painted in them,” Dr. Cowan said. Schultz was staring at me as though I’d popped out in spots. “Or around them, like this one,” she added, apparently unable to stop talking.

  “So what does this tell us about the man who wrote this note?” Caputo asked, happy to be back on track.

  My ears were humming, but I gathered that it meant that the Incinerator had some training in art history.

  “We already knew that,” Schultz said, a bucket of cold water in Seat Number Two. He was looking at me, but I barely saw him. I was wondering whether I’d kept any of my notes. My God, it had been thirteen or fourteen years.

  “… After this message,” Velez Caputo said. The studio went dark.

  “I must say,” Dr. Cowan began angrily.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Velez Caputo said, dismissing her. The powder-puff brigade reassembled and began its repair work. Norman and a helper ushered Dr. Cowan off the set. She sounded a lot like Hermione.

  “God damn it,” Schultz said to Velez Caputo, “where did you get that note?”

  “Sources,” Caputo said airily.

  “Simeon,” Schultz turned to me. “I promise you…”

  “I know,” I said. “Skip it.” I was trying to reassemble the face I’d glimpsed.

  “You’re next, Mr. Grist,” Caputo said as the tic started to count down from fifteen. I must have looked vague, because she said, “Mr. Grist?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

  The lights snapped back on.

  “Well,” Velez Caputo said, “this has been interesting. New information about the nation’s most dangerous serial killer.” Stang made a scornful sound. “And the man who probably has most to fear from this monster is here in the studio. Mr. Grist,” she said as the monitors reflected a two-shot, “let’s assume that the Incinerator is watching. Have you got
anything to say to him?”

  “I do,” I said, through the buzzing in my mind. The camera was now on me, as we’d been promised it would be.

  “And what is it?” Velez Caputo said, checking her lipstick in a mirror held by one of the makeup girls.

  “As you know, I got your letter,” I said to the camera. It was very hard to keep my eyes on the camera, as opposed to looking around the room for someone—Eleanor, or even Hammond—to whom I could speak directly. I’d been told, though, that skipping past the camera would look shifty and untrustworthy, so I forced myself to stay locked on the lens that had the red light beneath it, feeling like someone practicing a speech to an ashtray. “We all know what it said. It said I made you break the rules. It said, basically, that I’d betrayed you.” I took a deep breath and tried to keep my eyes on the camera lens.

  “Well, I did. I betrayed you. I was frightened, and I didn’t remember you, and I betrayed you. But, and I ask you to believe me, I told the police to keep their distance. They didn’t.” Behind the cameras, I saw Hammond bristle. Too bad.

  “I had a friend on the force,” I said, deviating from the script. “I trusted him to keep the cops under control. He couldn’t, but that wasn’t his fault. It was my fault for having involved him, and the LAPD, in the first place. So here’s what I’m saying.”

  I looked over toward Schultz, and he nodded encouragingly.

  “I’m saying no more cops,” I said between dry lips. “I’m saying that I’ve stopped working for Annabelle Winston. I’m saying that I’m hanging out there solo, and if you want to write me a letter, or talk to me, or burn me alive, there won’t be any cops around. Check out my street, if you’ve got the nerve.” The challenge had been Schultz’s idea, and I hadn’t been sure I’d use it until that moment. “Or else, wait a week and follow me. You’ll see. I’ll be clean.” I couldn’t look at the camera any longer, and I lowered my head.