Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “Yes. I’d like their names.”

  Lou Boldt felt himself sweating heavily. His throat was constricted, like he’d had a heavy workout.

  “The Angel of Mercy. The Angel of Fate. The Angel of Forgiveness—”

  “Their Christian names, please,” Boldt interrupted.

  “Those are their Christian names now.”

  “Before, then.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before you freed them.”

  “Yes. I freed them. I do His work. I told you that. Did you know I’ve read the Bible sixty-three times?”

  Boldt took a drink of water. “In your report you said eight. You said the papers had lied. Why did you say that?”

  “The papers lie. Names like Saviria, Jordan, Kniffen, DeHavelin. These are not His work.”

  Boldt realized the man did know the names. “But Holmgren, Reddick?” He led him on.

  Lange grinned.

  “Were Holmgren and Reddick His work, Mr. Lange?”

  “Call me Milo.”

  Come on! Boldt agonized at the man’s avoidance. “His work, Milo?”

  “Yes. Venessa Holmgren, Jan Reddick, Doris Heuston, Tanya Shufflebeam, Robin Bailey, Cheryl Croy, Diane Fabiano. All His work.”

  “And Nancy Levitt?”

  Lange looked at the PD. He seemed to be asking “Who?”

  The PD said, “He won’t discuss the boy, Lou.”

  “I’m not discussing the boy. I’m discussing the boy’s mother.”

  Lange said uneasily, “The little boy’s mother is a whore. His father is a drunk. I saved the little boy.”

  Silence.

  “Did you free the little boy, Milo?” Boldt asked anxiously.

  “Boy?” Lange asked oddly. He repeated the word several times. Then he said, “I freed the whores. Someone had to free them, Lou. It’s all right if I call you Lou, isn’t it?”

  Lou Boldt looked down at the photo I.D. clipped to his sports coat. He saw his name printed there, but it seemed the I.D. belonged to someone else. He nodded slowly. “Whatever you want, Milo. Whatever you want.”

  “I want to help you, Lou,” Lange said. “I’m here to help you. God wants to help you.” The man reached across with his bound hands and touched Boldt’s hand. The small chain made a scratching sound on the tabletop. Boldt didn’t dare jerk his hand away. He withdrew it slowly. He looked blankly at the mirror in the wall, knowing Daphne and Shoswitz were on the other side. Then he glanced back at Milo Lange and looked him directly in the eye.

  “I’ll need details,” he said in a voice he didn’t recognize.

  51

  “That was rough,” she said.

  “Where’s Shoswitz?”

  “He’s running down a bunch of the leads you picked up.” She had let her hair down and combed it out. She ran her fingers into her hair, stretching the skin on her face. “His attention to detail suggests a true fantasy. The postcrime phase was interesting—from my point of view, Lou,” she added, seeing his response. We don’t think alike, you and I, Boldt thought. There are times your comments leave me cold. “It didn’t occur to me that he might kill these women and then go back to work as if nothing had ever happened. One minute he was killing them, the next, delivering videos. Not the most comforting thought.”

  Boldt said, “It’s hard for me to conceive of a man getting no sleep at all for days at a time. And he claims to have been doing that for what, three months? I don’t know…”

  “It helps explain the voices. It’s fairly common, actually; this chronic insomnia is one of the early indications of psychosis. It will go on for days—sometimes weeks—at a time.”

  Boldt pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Insomnia’s not my problem at the moment. I’m a walking zombie.”

  “You did a good job extracting his fantasy world. That will be extremely helpful to me.”

  Too cold. Too clinical. He missed the warmth of Elizabeth. “When’s your interview?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow, if the PD will agree. Mine will be short. The Prosecutor’s office will call in an ‘expert’ to write the trial summary.”

  “I thought you were our expert…”

  “They like to bring in outsiders. It gives a much cleaner look to things. They’ll probably use Dr. Farris. He’s the best there is.”

  “This seems so cut-and-dried to you. I have trouble with that,” he admitted.

  “To me, the Milo Langes will always have a piece of Mary Alice in them. His behavior is a result of something, Lou. I suppose to me it is cut-and-dried. There’s a cause and effect at work here that as a policeman assigned to find him, you may not see—or care to acknowledge. He’s not a monster. Not an animal. Not like your copycat is.”

  “Why did Lange help us?” Boldt asked, too tired to challenge her.

  “It gives him a sense of superiority. By reconstructing the killings in such detail, it gives him a sense of cleverness and control. He wants desperately to control us now, to be the one dictating how the remainder of the investigation goes. His fantasy, which he believes involved God and the idea that he was purifying society, replaced reality for him. Reality has become the fantasy now; fantasy the reality. He’s scared of reality.” She paused. “We checked his record, you know. He was previously committed. Upon release from the institution he was prescribed a drug that costs about ten dollars a day. That’s three hundred dollars a month for a man fresh out of an institution! When do you think his last prescription was filled?”

  “Sometime in April?”

  She nodded, lips pursed. “Right before the killings started.”

  “Damn.” He shook his head. “I know you want me to feel compassion for this man.” And you, he thought. He placed a hand on her shoulder. Where had that feeling of intimacy gone? “But right now I can’t.”

  “At least you’re honest, Lou. I can’t fault you for being honest.”

  But I’m not being honest with you, he thought.

  52

  He started for home, but at the last minute stayed on Aurora for another two exits and then turned off. Shortly thereafter he was idling outside the entrance to his driveway. Her driveway now. Elizabeth.

  He sat in the car and looked at the house and he could picture her in bed. It was just past two in the morning. He didn’t imagine another man in his bed, he felt no great pangs of jealousy; he pictured himself in the bed, curled up with her, none of the last several months having ever happened. He missed her. He tried to rub the fatigue from his eyes, but it wouldn’t leave. He tried to erase the last several months, but they wouldn’t leave either. In his extreme state of exhaustion he bordered on the verge of tears.

  He pictured himself with Daphne, embracing, making love, and he tried to convince himself it hadn’t happened. Then he tried to convince himself it was all right that it had. But it wasn’t all right anymore.

  He was in a fine mess, he decided. He had scrambled up his priorities a long time ago, and was paying dearly for those decisions now. He recalled the doctor’s waiting room. He recalled Elizabeth’s begging to keep the child. He spoke quietly to himself, though he wasn’t saying anything intelligible, nothing anyone sitting there might have understood. Faint apologies for things done and things said. Another failed effort at changing the past. Correcting the past. He could see the child out there playing on the lawn now, despite the darkness, despite the cold. She had wanted the child. He had not.

  “We’re a lot alike, you and I.” He heard the eerie voice of Milo Lange, and wondered if that was what had triggered this.

  A child kicking a ball. A boy or girl? He would never know. A child gleefully experiencing life and passing on the wonder of it all to her/his parents. He bit down on his knuckle, making it white, and fought back his tears. He blinked and the child was gone. There was no child playing in the yard. Only grass out there, grass that needed cutting. Empty, dark, and quiet.

  I’m tired, he thought. That’s all it is. I’m tired.

 
; ***

  “Lou?” He heard the dreamlike tone of Elizabeth’s gentle voice and the light tapping on the window and wondered where he was. The sun was up and he was lying against the door, mouth open, tongue dry. He opened his eyes a bit further and realized he was still in her driveway. He shook his head to wake himself, and when he looked over his shoulder he was face-to-face with his wife, a sheet of safety glass between them. She smiled at him genuinely. “How ’bout a cup of coffee?” came her muffled voice.

  He shook his head. His refusal annoyed her and she took a step back, crossing her arms. She scrunched her eyes.

  Not knowing why, he waved her away, like a teacher erasing the blackboard. This never happened, his effort seemed to say. He started the car.

  “Lou,” she pleaded, her voice even more faint. “Please.”

  He began to roll down the window, stopped, and shook his head, leaving the glass between them. He backed out of the drive. She followed the car on foot to the end of the short stretch of blacktop and, he saw as he glanced into the rearview mirror, stood in the road watching him drive away.

  As he drove along, his imagination conjured up images of Justin Levitt. It was at this peculiar moment in time that Boldt realized just how much this young man meant to him, recognized the fact that the emotional intensity he had felt before their separation was now being focused on the boy.

  He faced the abortion now for the first time in eleven years. The act he had demanded of his wife back when she was still in school and he was a young patrolman unable to make ends meet. He faced her resentment now, and though he had told himself a hundred times that he knew what she went through, only now did he fully realize that he had not known. He had never even tried to understand. She had begged him—begged him—to let her keep the child, and he had steadfastly refused. Pigheaded. He could still smell the antiseptic odor of the doctor’s waiting room. He could still feel his hands sweating as he pretended to read ancient magazines. His mind filled with images of what must have been taking place in the room just beyond those doors. He saw the nurse come into the waiting room and assure him everything had gone fine. Fine? he wondered now. His wife would lie down for an hour or so, he was told. She would be ready to go home shortly.

  So what gave him the right? He had killed a human being of his own flesh and blood on that day. Elizabeth was not responsible; the doctor was not responsible. Only him. Only he had demanded they stop the life. Was it any wonder that Elizabeth had refused to have another child? Was it any wonder that she had buried herself in her work, had become a different person? Was it any wonder that she still kindled a sense of resentment?

  ***

  “Am I glad to see you,” Shoswitz said as Boldt entered the office area. The lieutenant looked surprisingly rested. “You look like shit,” he said, appraising Boldt.

  “I feel like shit,” Boldt agreed. “Slept in my car.”

  “Different strokes…” Shoswitz said.

  “We’ve got to find Justin.”

  “Agreed.”

  “How do you want to go about it? How many men can I have?”

  Shoswitz shook his head.

  “Phil!”

  “Relax. What do you need?”

  “We focus on any and all marinas, engine-repair shops, anything like that, in the immediate vicinity of Lange’s residence. That mud we keep finding at all the sites is our key, Phil. It’s still a dead-end lead. He’s tracked it to a number of sites, into his apartment, but we haven’t found the source. The mud is all we’ve got right now.”

  “So, we check the Yellow Pages for likely places?”

  “That’s what I would do. Yes. I’d check the Yellow Pages and pull out a map and start pinpointing locations near his place. Work out in a circle from there. If he has another place he uses as a hideout, how far could it be from his room? I doubt very far. Not with him.”

  “It could be near the video shop, or near the vet’s, right?”

  “True. That’s a possibility too. I doubt the video shop. It’s too centrally located, but the vet’s worth a try as well. You don’t mind working on this?”

  “Listen, I’ll talk to the captain when he gets in. He wants the kid as badly as the rest of us. If he can get the chief to okay it, we’ll pull some overtime funds and get as many guys on this as possible. Right?”

  “I’m going to start at his room and work my way out from there.”

  “It’s pouring out there,” Shoswitz reminded.

  Boldt shrugged. “What’s new?”

  ***

  The rain was falling consistently, though not pouring, as Shoswitz had suggested. It was a typical Seattle rain. Boldt parked outside of Lange’s rooming house and rang the doorbell until he awakened the super.

  “Did you guys arrest that boy?” the super wondered. He had pulled on his clothes quickly and the man still looked half asleep. “Is that how come your people came back and gave my place that kind of going-over?”

  “I need access to Lange’s room. And I’d like a look from your rooftop, if you can arrange it.”

  The man nodded. “Shit, fella, it’s your guys’ tape that’s across his door, not mine. And I already showed them the whole building—basement right to the top. They put that dust everywhere. Nasty shit, that dust is. But suit yourself.”

  The super unlocked Lange’s room, and the door that accessed a small stairway that climbed to a small attic.

  Boldt opened the door to Lange’s room, breaking the bright orange sticker-seal marked SPD—POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS. The room was much as it had been the previous day, only now I.D. had returned and given it another thorough inspection. There was fingerprint dust everywhere. The room seemed painted with it. Boldt approached the window and looked out: a couple of low houses to his left, a taller brick building to his right. He could see the dark water of the canal over the roof of a distant building. But everywhere he looked he saw grass—thick, green grass. Not the kind of area one picked up gobs of mud on their shoes.

  He stared out the window and thought of the boy. Was the boy alive? Did they have a chance of finding him? We make what we want, he heard Daphne tell him. We create the way it is. “I want to find him,” Lou Boldt said aloud into the empty room, his voice sounding strange to him.

  He climbed the narrow staircase and was reminded of his climb at the Fabianos’. But there were no dead women at the top of these stairs, only a cluttered, box-filled attic with an occasional blemish of fingerprint dust spread across a hard surface. Boldt rummaged through the room mindlessly, unsure of what he was looking for; when he didn’t find it, he walked over to the wooden ladder that was built against the far wall and ascended to the hatch that led out onto the roof. He pulled himself up and through with some difficulty, his fatigue slowing him down, the short climb draining him. The rain fell more heavily now, and he tugged up his collar and checked the hatch before lowering it, ensuring he could get back down. The roof was thickly painted black tar and was graded slightly and rimmed with drains that were working feverishly to remove the rainwater. Boldt stepped into a puddle and soaked his right foot. He cursed and jumped from the puddle, but the damage was done. His shoe slurped and squeaked as he walked toward the edge. To the north were more buildings. Endless two-story buildings. A sea of rooftops and chimneys. Rain ran down behind his ears and down his neck. He tried to adjust his sports coat but it didn’t help any. There was no way he was going to stay dry. To the west were more buildings, and to the east the same. He felt frustrated as he turned to the south and looked out toward the canal. Lange had walked around down there somewhere—had picked up mud repeatedly on his sneakers and had tracked the mud into several of his kill sites. Did the mud have something to do with his ritual? Did he have a hideout to go with his explosive personality, or was this rooming house all that remained? I can find him if I want to, Boldt thought. And I want to.

  He studied the area before him carefully, rain soaking through to his shoulders. His pants were wet from his knees down. He
began to shake from the cold. His eyes searched the various groups of houses, one by one. And then he lowered his eyes—he looked straight down into the small backyard behind this building, and he saw it. It wasn’t mud—it was a chain-link fence with what appeared to be a tiny path cut into the weeds along its edge.

  Boldt ran to the hatch, splashing through the same puddle and soaking his left foot as well. He lowered himself through, pulling the door closed over him, and slid down the ladder so quickly, he picked up splinters in the process. The attic smelled strange after the fresh rain, like mildew and dust. He bounded down the stairs and nearly knocked over the super, who was standing there, apparently wondering about all the noise. Boldt ran past with no attention to the man, and hurried down the creaking flight of stairs. A moment later he was back in the rain and that damp, almost electric, odor.

  When he reached the edge of the chain-link fence he stopped cold. No mud here. The thin path was cut through spent weeds. He proceeded slowly, eyes trained on the ground. Despite the lack of mud, he liked what he saw—the path had not been used often. Without his bird’s-eye view he might never have spotted it. It was narrow and it followed the fence as the fence turned left. Boldt glanced ahead briefly. The fence ran behind a small house, which Boldt now passed. At the end of the fence the path stopped. So did Boldt. The rain was intense now and Boldt felt discouragement pull at him. The water ran off the knuckles of his tightly clenched fists and cascaded to the weeds.

  Boldt was no tracker. He knew nothing about tracking. But he walked on and quickly found himself facing a discolored picket fence. He was walking in an area where the backyards of opposing houses met, and he wondered if someone would call the cops on him. Would Lange have risked being seen? he wondered. He looked around. No yard lights on the back of either house, and to his left a row of shrubs a few feet inside the fence. He looked toward both houses, and then quickly vaulted the fence, dropping in between the row of shrubs and the fence. The jump hurt his knee. He remained bent over and something inside him told him that this was right—this was how Milo Lange had done it to avoid being seen. Then he realized it wasn’t something inside him—it was something outside of him. The smell of gasoline. He looked down. He was into an area of mud, and on the surface was the rainbow haze of gasoline. He planted his hand firmly into the mud, covering it. It dripped from his fingers like gruel. He crawled forward to the base of the shrubs, to where the stream of colors was more intense—the source on the other side of the hedge. He lowered his head and butted his way through the thicket. His coat sleeve, worn at the elbow, caught and tore. He pushed harder and broke into the cluttered backyard. His eyes settled on a fifty-five-gallon drum ahead of him. It was old and rusted, but the wooden length of board bolted near its rim told its purpose—it was filled to overflowing with gas-stained rainwater, a vat to test an outboard motor. The weathered length of board mounted to it showed several sets of circular impressions where the engine clamps had been screwed down tight. The drum, slightly tilted, was spilling its poison out onto the mud and into the narrow gap between fence and shrubs. Boldt broke back through the hedge, tearing his jacket again. A group of sloppy shoe prints in the mud. He moved along the property line, following the hedge until it stopped.