Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  “I know it’s all rot and corruption,” he says, “and with what I’ve been through, you can’t sit there and say I’ve got rose-tinted glasses on.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I start to go on, then stop. What’s the point? “Why don’t we just drop this, okay?”

  “How am I supposed to do that, exactly? This is my job, what we’re doing right now.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who needs the counseling, then.”

  “Probably so,” he says. “But it’s precisely because of the evil and rot that I have faith. Knowing that on top of all that, there’s someone loving and all-powerful who can bring good out of evil—that’s what keeps me going. Otherwise, I would be like you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  The worm in my domestic apple starts to turn, and I imagine the conversations they must have had about me, the intimacies Charlotte unthinkingly revealed, and I find I do want to cut him down to size just a bit.

  “Carter,” I say, “if there really was some loving, all-powerful force out there, I wouldn’t be hunting a man down for plunging a bowie knife in a woman’s chest and then stripping her and using her dead body as a pincushion. That’s what he did. He spread his fingers out on her skin and stabbed in between them over and over. One, two, three, four, five, six—just like that. And when he was done with her, he dumped her in the swimming pool and he posed her like she was nothing but a stage prop.”

  He’s quiet now, but I can’t shut myself up.

  “Now, what you’re saying is that, seeing something like that, I should be comforted. I should feel good knowing that as bad as it looks, it was all for the best. God was up in heaven watching it go down, and even though he didn’t lift a finger, he sure wishes us well. I’m sorry, Carter, but that doesn’t do it for me. If I believed that, I think I’d be miserable.”

  “You are miserable,” he says.

  “My point is, you’re out of your league.”

  “Have you ever considered why God lets things like that happen?”

  “No, Carter. I don’t believe I have.”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t have the power to stop it, man. It’s just . . . God wants us to choose what’s right. He could force us—he has the power to—but he also loves us and you can’t force love.”

  “If you were taking a knife to someone,” I say, “believe me, I’d force you to stop.”

  “You don’t get what I’m saying—”

  “This isn’t new to me. My aunt was dragging me to church and force-feeding me the catechism before you were born, Carter. You think God could come down if he wanted to and make things right, but he doesn’t because he wants us to choose right of our own free will—is that it?”

  “Only we don’t because of our sin.”

  “Let me tell you a story,” I say.

  We’re on Heights Boulevard not very far from home, so I pull into a convenience store parking lot, idling on the far edge next to the air machine, determined to get this over with before we pull up the driveway.

  “A long time ago, we got this call. My old partner Wilcox and me. All we knew was that this woman had been talking on the phone to her daughter, and then there were screams and the line went dead. Patrol got to the scene and called it in, saying a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death in the kitchen, and they’d caught him out in the driveway siphoning gasoline out of his truck. You know what he was gonna do with that gas? Burn the place down. And he confessed to everything, right then and there. We arrived on scene and he was ready to give it up.

  “ ‘Why’d you do it?’ Wilcox asks the guy.

  “ ‘Because of the baby,’ he says.

  “Sure enough, we go into the bedroom and find the body there in the crib. Suffocation.”

  “That’s horrible,” Carter says.

  “You never want to see something like that. And for me it was extra hard. This was maybe a year after Jessica, so I mean . . . I could understand why he did what he did. Not the murder, but the rage. Because that’s what you want in a situation like that. You want to kill someone.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with what we were talking about,” he says. “I already admitted there’s evil in the world.”

  “So we do the canvass,” I say, ignoring him. “That’s what it’s called, knocking on people’s doors, asking if they saw anything. In this case, it’s just a formality, but for detectives it’s force of habit. Something bad happens and you start asking everybody what they saw. I walk next-door and the garage door’s open; there’s this set of free weights, and this guy is pumping iron, doing fifty-rep sets, that’s how intense he is.

  “When I ask what he observed, he goes into a rant about the people next-door, how they’re always fighting and screaming, how he’s not surprised what happened. Did he hear them going at it that night? Oh yes. He heard them shouting, he heard her shrieks, he heard furniture crashing—which was the man beating his wife to death—he heard all that. And he did nothing.

  “Now, this guy, he was built like a Greek god. The sweat’s dripping off of him and I’m standing there thinking, This is not somebody I’d want to face down. I mean, witnesses standing by and doing nothing, that’s par for the course. They’re afraid, they don’t know what’s happening, it’s all just too much to process. But this guy, he could have stopped it. He knew there was a history there, and he knew whatever was going down had to be serious.

  “He could’ve done something, Carter, but he didn’t, and he had his reasons.” My throat feels dry and I realize I’ve been talking too fast, too loud, letting the memory take over. “Whatever you think about his reasons, they made sense to him. He was busy. He couldn’t be bothered. He did not want to get involved. It was no business of his. But, Carter, here’s the point: If I’d been there, I would have done something. And I’ll never feel anything for that man but contempt. So the last thing you want to tell me is, God could do something but doesn’t, and he has his reasons. ’Cause I’m not much, but I’m better than that. And you are, too.”

  I put the car in drive and roll out. As we hit the pavement, a car veers around us, forcing me to brake. Next to me, Carter props his elbow on the windowsill, his hand covering his mouth. His jaw tenses and releases like he’s forcing himself not to speak. And I can see the wheels turning in his head, trying to fit back together the thousand pieces I’ve shattered him into. Or maybe he wasn’t listening, I don’t know.

  There’s more I could tell, but that would mean bringing Carter deeper into a part of myself I don’t much want to share.

  That body builder wasn’t my first.

  I started with a bartender at the Paragon, the guy who’d served drinks to the woman who later T-boned Charlotte’s car and mortally injured our daughter. Finding dirt on him wasn’t hard. He was selling more than liquor under the bar. All I had to do was make sure my friends in Narcotics visited just after he’d topped off his stash. He only did a year, but if I’d let him off, he’d have done nothing.

  The driver herself would’ve gotten worse, only she helped herself to a bottle of pills before I could get any leverage on her.

  Wilcox caught on. He thought I’d planted the drugs—he probably still does—but the fact is, you can find dirt on most anyone if you’re motivated and very patient. I was both. In the end, he decided to let it slide.

  Before long, I became obsessed with spotting people on the periphery of an investigation, the ones who’d otherwise slip the net. Settling scores on behalf of Lady Justice, though never in a big way, and never targeting anyone who didn’t have it coming. I framed no one, despite Wilcox’s suspicions. I just made sure the law was enforced in a few instances where it otherwise would not have been.

  I don’t apologize for any of this, but there were consequences. My job performance suffered. I cut corners I shouldn’t have, fudging reports, missing court dates. My partner covered for me the way partners do, but he wasn’t happy about it. I was pulling a Fitzpatrick, he told me, and he was
right.

  With the body builder, everything changed. The guy was squeaky clean, as much a bystander in the rest of life as he’d been for our homicide. I had to get creative on this one: a sting of some kind, opening a door to some criminal enterprise that my subject was sure to walk through. To help flesh out the plan, I made the mistake of bouncing some things off an informant, and my informant went straight to Wilcox.

  That was the end of our partnership. He wouldn’t grass on me, but he wouldn’t cover for me, either. I put him in a tight spot, and he extricated himself in the most unexpected way, sacrificing a promising career to make the jump into Internal Affairs. Even now, he’s half convinced I’d stoop to anything, utterly missing the point of my windmill tilting, which had to do with bringing more justice, not less.

  Carter would understand none of this, or he’d chide me for trying to play God.

  But what was I supposed to do? If the Almighty was gonna sit back and let it all happen, somebody had to step up.

  There’s no such thing in my book as an innocent bystander.

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8 — 9:14 A.M.

  In Homicide the detectives are suiting up, strapping Kevlar over their white dress shirts and patterned silk ties, slipping their arms through the sleeves of reflective POLICE jackets, shifting the paddle holsters tucked into their waistbands with martial anticipation. Aguilar walks over to me with a spare vest.

  “You wanna get in on this just for fun?”

  I strip off my suit jacket and pull the vest on like a life preserver, battening down the side straps until they’re nice and tight.

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask.

  “Lorenz found his shooter from Friday. According to the tip, he’s holed up in an apartment right off Antoine, not more than a hundred yards from the scene. The tactical team will take the door, but the captain wants everybody out there for a show of strength.”

  “Where is the captain?”

  “In his office, probably. Working on the press release.”

  “Funny,” I say, knowing that’s not the captain’s style.

  While the boys load up on caffeine and testosterone, I bring the recurring 832 phone number from Simone’s records over to one of our non-sworn computer jockeys with instructions to find the matching name. On my way back I come face-to-face with Hedges, who’s wrapped in body armor of his own with a badge dangling from his neck.

  “You’re rolling out on this, sir?”

  He ignores the question. “How’s your case coming, March?”

  “It’s a stone-cold whodunit.”

  “I have confidence in you,” he says, patting my shoulder. “Get me that clearance, you hear? If Lorenz is bringing them in, anybody can.”

  I give him a halfhearted smile. “True that.”

  We head down en masse and I tuck myself into the backseat of an unmarked car with Aguilar, Ordway, and a tense-looking Lt. Bascombe at the wheel. The caravan snakes through downtown and onto the highway, winding around to the Northwest Freeway. The atmosphere in the car doesn’t lend itself to conversation, but I don’t let that stop me.

  “We’re certainly gonna make our presence felt. It’s kind of strange, though, the captain charging in like this.”

  “March,” Bascombe says, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “You wanna zip it?”

  Ordway rotates his bulk in the passenger seat, giving me a pair of raised eyebrows and some pursed lips.

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I know what you’re saying, and if you don’t zip it, you’re gonna be saying it on the curb.” With that, Bascombe flips on the radio and cranks up some commercial Nashville bubblegum, only to switch it off when his walkie starts squawking.

  There’s an audience already when we arrive on scene, hooking up with the tail end of a stack of armed officers counting down the push. The lead man swings the ram, crunching open the cardboard door, and it’s Go! Go! Go! along the line. By the time my group is in the apartment, everybody’s re-holstering and there’s a skinny little perp in boxer shorts lying facedown on the carpet in cuffs, an upended cereal bowl spilled out next to his head. On the side table by the TV remote is a Glock 9mm that might as well be wrapped in gift paper with a pretty red ribbon.

  Jerry Lorenz goes down the line high-fiving everybody, and as much as I don’t like the man, I don’t have the heart not to give him his due. Maybe we’ll make something out of him, after all. The captain snatches him by the arm and heads outside. I follow them as far as the door. Over by the curb, the local news cameras are already setting up, framing their shots of the apartment complex. Hedges advances toward them with his big hand clamped on Lorenz’s shoulder, a proud father introducing his boy to the world.

  “What is this?” I say.

  Bascombe curses under his breath, the word coming out like a gob of spit. He pushes past me and heads outside, taking a route well clear of the cameras.

  The drive back downtown is even more tense than before. I spend most of my time thinking of what I’ll do to the clerical help if there’s not a name waiting on my desk when I get back, though my options are limited to adulterating the break room coffee, which could only be improved by the addition of kerosene or rat poison.

  Instead of results, though, I get back to my cubicle only to find it occupied by a familiar-looking stranger with a Fu Manchu mustache and a nickel-plated barbecue gun on his hip.

  “You March?” he says.

  “In the flesh.” I toss my Kevlar on the desk and retrieve my jacket. “And you are?”

  “Roger Lauterbach, Harris County Sheriff’s Department. You and me seem to be working opposite ends of the same case.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve got an open homicide with a victim stabbed to death and left in a swimming pool, right? Well, I’ve got one, too.”

  That well comes out like whelp, and the news hits me hard. On top of that, I know I’ve seen this guy before, though I’m having a hard time placing him. He’s having the same trouble, too, eyes narrowing.

  “You’re . . .” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I seen you somewheres.”

  Then it comes to me. I remember the nickel Government Model more than the man. “You were on the Hannah Mayhew task force, right? I think we stood next to each other at the back of a briefing.”

  A shrewd smile: “You were on that thing, too, huh? That must be it. What a fiasco.”

  “I wasn’t just on it,” I say, “I put that case down.”

  “Good for you.” His smile persists, letting me know how unimpressed he is. I don’t blame him, though. A county detective coming downtown needs some ego the same way a space shuttle entering orbit needs heat shields. “Then I guess you’ve got your stabbing all squared away, too. That’ll sure make my job a heck of a lot easier.”

  Touché.

  “Who gave you the connection?” I ask.

  “Doc Green down at the medical examiner’s office. There’s the swimming pool in common, but she says your killer used a bowie knife. Whelp, so did mine.”

  “And your case is from when?”

  He glances sideways. “Happened back in April.”

  “That’ll sure as heck make my job easier,” I say. “You have a suspect by any chance?”

  “What I have is this.” He grabs an unfamiliar folder from off my desk and hands it to me. Inside, a stack of reports and a bunch of glossies from his scene. “Same deal as yours, from what I gather. She was out on her back porch sunbathing when it happened. The suspect must have seen her through the gaps in the fence, climbs over, rapes her, then uses the knife. Cut her up real good and left her in the water.”

  “My victim wasn’t raped,” I say. “You have DNA from your scene?”

  He does that sideways thing again. “There were some preservation issues.”

  “Someone screwed up.”

  “Pretty much, but it wasn’t me.”

  I flip through the photos. Blood in the water, all around the reclined pla
stic-covered chair she’d been lying in, her torso slashed up in a terrible frenzy. There are a couple of shots of the body on the mortuary slab, showing the wounds in bright clinical light. There’s no rhyme or reason that I can see, just a jagged and random flay job. I pick out the most illustrative angle and hand it to Lauterbach, along with a similar shot from Simone Walker’s postmortem.

  “You think that’s the work of the same man?” I ask.

  “A killer don’t always work the same way. They change things up over time to keep it interesting. The similarities are pretty strong otherwise.”

  Just a hint of a plea enters his voice, and I realize what this visit must mean to him. He’s been sitting under a cold one for months now, and suddenly sees the chance to unload it on another agency. He’s doing the same thing Fitzpatrick was trying when he walked his case file over to the FBI. Anything to get it off his plate, no matter how desperate.

  I decide to let him off easy. I flip through his scene photos again, finding the closest thing to my own snap from the far side of the pool. Then I line the two pictures up side by side on the desk. Everything’s off. His victim floats on the wrong side of the pool and there’s blood where there shouldn’t be. Even the outdoor furniture doesn’t match.

  “Do those scenes look the same to you?”

  He rubs the back of his neck in confusion. “Say what?”

  “They’re not the same. Clearly.”

  “Whelp, I guess not, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

  I dig my copy of The Kingwood Killing out of my briefcase, flipping to the photo insert. “Now, these two”—I give the book a tap, then the Walker photo—“these two are the same, you see? The placement of the body, the way the furniture’s arranged, everything.”

  “Let me take a look at that.” He grabs the book and spends a few seconds going back and forth. “I guess there’s some similarity,” he concedes, “but I’m not seeing the connection.” He turns the book around to examine the cover, then fans through the pages. “What is this, anyway?”