Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

“If he gets antsy, I got your permission to arrest him? We’ve got enough, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so. How are the other cases coming along?”

  “The drowning is down,” he says. “They’re still looking for the shooter on the other one.”

  “We’re still in the running, then.”

  “But the clock’s ticking.”

  The sleep deprivation starts catching up to me on the road. I stave it off with some drive-thru coffee, pulling up behind the lieutenant’s car in record time. Inside the apartment, he’s sitting on the couch with a laptop opened in front of him, scrolling through emails with a tap of the finger.

  “Anything?” I ask.

  “His fantasy football team’s doing all right. Apart from that, nothing here.”

  Walking through the six-hundred-square-foot apartment doesn’t take long. Young keeps it tidy, everything squared away. The furniture looks cheap but newly purchased, and the colors go together. It’s not an unpleasant place, just a spartan one. The contrast with his dead wife’s room full of consumer goods couldn’t be more pronounced. Only one photo on the wall, a framed wedding shot. Apart from the fridge, the kitchen seems to be mainly for storage, what you’d expect in a bachelor pad, assuming your bachelor’s meticulously neat. I look in vain for a block of kitchen knives with a telltale empty slot.

  Mack Ordway is in the bedroom opening dresser drawers. Mack’s the graybeard on our shift, always on the verge of retirement and at the same time always up for a jolt of overtime. I’m not surprised to see him working on Sunday. Sometimes I think he lives in the office.

  “What’s the story in here?”

  “Bed’s still made, probably hasn’t been slept in. There’s an old shotgun in the closet, but I didn’t see any shells. If you look in that valet thing on the nightstand, there’s a Tanto Folder with a serrated edge. Could be your weapon, but it looks clean to me.”

  “Let’s bag it anyway and make sure,” I say.

  “Then there’s this.”

  He bends down to open the dresser’s bottom drawer. It’s empty apart from glass shards and a half dozen busted picture frames, all of them facedown. Ordway uses a handkerchief from his pocket to pick one up by the edge. It’s a photo of Simone Walker in a powder blue halter top and a floppy straw hat, her smile huge, her eyes hidden behind round sunglasses. He turns over another, showing Simone and Jason arm in arm in front of a Galveston crab joint. The next one is Simone by herself again, looking up from a glossy magazine, her hair spread out on the back of a flower-print couch.

  “They’re all her,” Ordway says, “or the two of them together. Maybe he got angry with her for leaving and did all this.”

  “Or maybe he did it yesterday before he went to her place and killed her. Let me take a photo, then you can bag those, too.”

  I leave him to it and head down the hall. In the bathroom, there are wet towels on the floor and a can of shaving cream on its side by the sink, a puff of foam clinging to the cap. No prescription drugs behind the mirror, though. A slatted door down the hallway conceals a stacked washer and dryer. The dryer’s empty. I pull the washer door open.

  “Hello.”

  “What you got?” Bascombe calls.

  “Take a look.”

  He and Ordway both appear over my shoulder. I step back so they can see what I’ve found. A pair of jeans twisted into a ball by the spin cycle, a knotted white shirt.

  “How much you want to bet he was wearing these when he came home this morning? Aguilar can say for sure.”

  “Did we not check the washer?” Bascombe asks.

  Ordway ignores him. “Let’s see what we got here.”

  He tugs the shirt and spreads it open in the air between us. “That’s the thing about bloodstains. You can’t just throw something in the washer and get rid of them.”

  The dark rusty blots across the front of the shirt do have the look of blood, but not as much as I would have expected from holding Simone against his chest as he stabbed her. Still, blood is blood.

  “If this comes back a match for her,” I say, “then I guess we’ve got him.”

  “Put that in a bag,” Bascombe tells Ordway.

  I pull the jeans out myself, letting the heavy fabric uncoil, then work my hands into the front pockets, turning them inside out. Nothing but lint. From the back pocket, though, I remove a soggy rectangle of card stock about the size of a postcard.

  “Someone’s been a very naughty boy,” Ordway says.

  The showgirl on the card has been surgically enhanced, her face heavy with makeup, the lips parted suggestively. The words along the bottom read EXOTIC ENTERTAINMENT, with the club’s name in thick cursive across her body: SILK CUT.

  “Lieutenant,” Ordway says, snatching the card from me. “I’d like to volunteer personally to follow up this lead.”

  Bascombe smiles. “So now we know why the boy was going to church this morning. There was more than one sin he had to confess.”

  While the two of them talk this new development over and try to figure out how to check the laptop’s history for any Silk Cut searches, I go through the place one more time with increasing impatience. There’s one thing missing. One thing I was certain to find. I look under the bed, in all the drawers, even digging through a couple of cardboard boxes in the closet.

  “You notice something?”

  Bascombe shuts the laptop with a frown. “There’s nothing on here.”

  “Look around,” I say. “There’s not a single book in here.”

  “People don’t read anymore.”

  “Can you remember the last time you did a house search and didn’t find a single book? There’s always something. And this guy doesn’t have any.”

  “What did you expect?” he asks. “A copy of The Kingwood Killing with a little sticky note saying ‘gotta try this sometime’? Get over it already. I’m all in favor of hunches, March, and your instincts have been good in the past. But trust me, no district attorney is going to hold those pictures up side by side and try to convince the jury there’s a connection. It’s not gonna happen.”

  He’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier to let go.

  “You got the autopsy to worry about now, March. Why don’t you go home for a couple of hours, get your head down, and then go to the medical examiner’s office. As of now, you don’t have enough to charge him.”

  “I don’t agree. He’s lying about his movements last night.”

  “That’s not enough. What this case needs is physical evidence. We’ll get that shirt tested, and if the blood comes back a match, then great. If a witness comes forward to put him at the scene, great again. Maybe forensics will get something, you never know. In the meantime, we can’t keep this guy sitting in an interview room indefinitely.”

  “I’ll take another run at him,” I say. “Confront him with the scene photos. Tell him we’ve matched the prints on the table to him.”

  “Have we?”

  I shrug. “I’ll follow up on it.”

  He ponders my suggestion, or at least pretends to, then shakes his head. “You look beat, March. For real. Take a break and let me handle this. I’ll bring the clothes in, hit him with the photos, and if he talks, he talks. Meanwhile get some rest.”

  “Sir, I’d rather interview my suspect.”

  “I’m serious, March.”

  “What exactly is the problem with me continuing the interview?”

  He rises from the couch and looms over me. “Can we not get into this right now? Can you just listen to me for once without giving me lip? Most guys would be grateful for the help, you know that? But you wouldn’t know gratitude if it came up and bit you. Just back off and listen to me for two seconds, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Maybe he’ll roll over when he knows we’ve got the clothes.”

  “I said fine. I’ll check back in after the autopsy.”

  “You do that.”

  Outside, the wind is bracing. Most days in
Houston, you walk into a cloud of steam and want to retreat back inside. But the cold wakes me up, brings me to my senses a little. That’s twice the lieutenant has flared up on me suddenly, and over nothing. Something’s eating at him and I don’t know what. But he was right about one thing: most guys would be grateful for the assist. Bascombe’s a good cop. There are half a dozen detectives on my shift I wouldn’t trust to handle an interview like this. He’s not one of them.

  But he was right about something else, too. My instincts are usually good, and what they tell me is that Jason Young is our man. He has books somewhere, maybe in storage, and when I find them, The Kingwood Killing will be there. The thing about instinct is, you follow without knowing where it’ll take you. You can’t explain why, and along the way nothing adds up, making you look like a fool. But working homicide, looking like a fool goes with the territory. That’s the job: getting it wrong until you finally get it right.

  Back in the car, I scroll through the saved contacts on my phone until I reach Brad Templeton’s number. He picks up on the third ring.

  “Roland March,” he says. “You’re finally returning my call.”

  “Have you been calling?”

  He laughs. “You’re so used to dodging me, you do it on autopilot now.”

  “I didn’t catch you in church, did I?”

  “Right. I hope you’re calling to buy me lunch. It’s your turn, if you remember.”

  “I don’t, but lunch is fine.”

  “How about the Black Lab? You like that place.”

  I check my watch. “Fifteen minutes?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 — 1:47 P.M.

  The prized spots up front are all taken, forcing me to park in the garage around back and walk through the breezeway past the closed bakery. Brad Templeton waits at an outdoor table, the only one occupied, bundled up in a corduroy sport coat and a tartan scarf. He spots me and raises a finger, like there’s a chance I might miss him.

  “We could go inside like normal people,” I say.

  “Are you normal? ’Cause I’m for sure not.”

  I drop into the chair opposite. The ten years I’ve known Templeton have been no kinder to him than to me. He’s grown pudgy and soft, and his ginger hairline has receded far enough to expose a patch of freckled scalp. He clutches a plastic-coated menu with spotted, swollen fingers and makes a periodic sniffing sound.

  “You have a cold or something? Or maybe swine flu?”

  “You’d like that,” he says. “The crazy thing is, most people would thank me for making them famous, but not you.”

  “Did you make me famous and I missed it?”

  “I’ve written two books about you, anyway. But can I get you to return my calls? Not on your life. I swear it’s easier to get through to the chief than it is to you. And no, I haven’t been calling him, but if I did, he’d have the courtesy to pick up the phone.”

  “This is the second time today I’ve been accused of ingratitude.”

  He sniffs. “And yet you still don’t get the message.”

  “Speaking of the chief,” I say, “you know the rumor is, he’s on the way out. He was Bill White’s guy, and whichever way the runoff election turns out, the new mayor will bring in somebody else.”

  “That’s not a rumor; it’s a fact. The rumor is that the new chief will be promoted from within. This is the first time I’ve heard you talk politics, though, March. What’s the deal? Are you hoping to get the job?”

  I laugh. “Not likely.”

  “Anyway, I thought I’d bump into you last night, but I saw Charlotte and she said you’d ducked out early. I tuned into the news this morning and now I know why. Which call did you get?”

  “West U.”

  “The stabbing? Is it a juicy one?”

  “No comment.”

  One of the waitresses emerges from the Black Labrador’s front entrance dressed in a short khaki skirt and black knee-socks. She doesn’t look too happy with us for sitting outside. I order black coffee and Templeton gets the fish and chips. He cranes around to follow her with his eyes. All for show. He doesn’t swing that way.

  “I have a question for you,” I say.

  “Good.” He turns back to face me. “I have one for you, too. Which of us gets to go first?”

  “Mine’s important.”

  “Then go right ahead.”

  I put my copy of The Kingwood Killing on the table. He snatches it up with a frown, inspecting the spine. “This doesn’t even look like it’s been read. Have you seen the reprints with the new cover? They did a much better job.”

  “There’s a photo in there from the crime scene, remember? Here’s what I want to know. Has anyone ever written to you about that? Fan mail from readers, for example. Have you ever gotten a letter that seemed a little strange?”

  “They all seem a little strange,” he says. “I was in the true crime section the other day, and there was this woman flipping through the latest book. At first I was kind of thrilled. I almost introduced myself. But then I actually looked at her, and March, this woman hadn’t brushed her hair for days. I mean, she was scary. I thought, I’ll be writing about you one of these days, sister, and I trucked on out of there.”

  “I’m talking specifically about letters. Or emails. Somebody who seemed really obsessed with the details of the Fauk case, or maybe mentioned that crime scene photo specifically.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think I’d remember something like that.” He gazes at one of the nearby trees as it shifts in the wind. “The only person who fits that description is Fauk himself. You know Donald still writes to me?”

  “You’re on a first name basis?”

  “He sends me these long handwritten letters, trying to re-argue every aspect of the book. For a while, after he first read it, he wouldn’t talk to me anymore. During the interviews he thought I was leaning toward his version of events—”

  “His version is, he confessed.”

  He waves the book at me. “Hey, I wrote it. You don’t have to tell me what happened. The point is, he’s a self-justifying egomaniac with plenty of time on his hands. He writes a lot of letters. He’s frustrated that there aren’t any fan clubs on the outside trying to reverse his conviction. I actually have a letter where he says he’s the white Mumia Abu-Jamal. I should send you a copy sometime.”

  “No thanks. But I’m serious about the question.”

  My tone gets his attention. He narrows his eyes. “Why are you asking?”

  “Again, no comment.”

  “Is it the new case? There’s some kind of connection?”

  I must be transparent as glass. The way he locks on to the truth so fast catches me off guard. I take the book from him and open it up to the photo section.

  “You see this? Hold that for me.”

  I shouldn’t do this. I know I shouldn’t. But I dig out my camera and scroll through the photos snapped at last night’s scene, landing on the one.

  “Now, look at those side by side and tell me what you think.”

  With the book in one hand and the camera in the other, he goes back and forth for a while, taking the comparison seriously. The waitress returns with my coffee and he doesn’t spare her a glance. He puts them both down on the table.

  “This is legit?”

  “Yes,” I say, leaning forward, not even trying to contain my excitement. “You see it, too.”

  He nods slowly. “It’s a little creepy.”

  “But there is a resemblance.”

  “Definitely.”

  “If you were me, you’d have a hard time believing that the perpetrator of the one crime had never seen the photo from the other, right? He has to have seen it and fixated on it, too, incorporated it into his fantasy. Because this didn’t happen by accident. He arranged everything to look a certain way. It’s not an exact copy, but if you ask me”—I tap my finger on the book—“this had to be his
inspiration.”

  His eyebrows wrinkle up. “And it just so happens you’re assigned the case? The same detective who investigated the original?”

  “That part’s a coincidence,” I say.

  “Which you don’t believe in, right? There’s a quote from you about that in here. Everything’s related. Nothing’s coincidental.”

  The coffee tastes burnt, but I drink it anyway. Talking to Templeton can be frustrating, which is why I avoid doing it. He’s been strangely possessive of me for a long time, confusing the real life person with the character in his book. It doesn’t help that I’ve made liberal use of him, not just as a source of information but to do back-channel legwork. Thanks to his celebrated run at the now-defunct Houston Post and his voracious appetite for gossip, he knows everyone and knows everything about everyone.

  “Listen to me, Brad. The woman who was murdered yesterday was young and carefree. Maybe irresponsible, but who wasn’t at that age? She was full of life. Her mother said all she wanted was to be happy, and instead she’s on a slab at the morgue waiting to be cut open some more. Now I need a way to link the man who did this to the scene. You can help with that, but you’re going to have to take this seriously.”

  “I do take it seriously.”

  “What I’m saying is, I need you to go back through any letters or emails or any kind of communication you’ve gotten, and make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Give me a name,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You have a suspect, so give me his name. That’ll make it easy.”

  “I can’t give you a name, you know that.” I cut him off before he can object. “But I can tell you this. The victim’s name is Simone Walker, but her married name was Young. Because the guy she married, his name is Jason Young.”

  “Jason Young,” he says.

  “That’s the name of the husband.”

  “Ah.” He reaches inside his jacket for a pen, then writes the name on a napkin, stuffing it away as the food arrives. “You’re not eating?”

  “I don’t have the appetite. I’m heading to the ME’s office after this.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” he says, digging in.