by Sam Reaves
After a time he said, “All right. You know where I am. Call when you need to.”
When they ended the call Abby sat staring at her phone. She would have loved to talk to Samantha, but the last couple of conversations had been unsatisfactory, Samantha too absorbed in her own travails to focus on Abby’s distress. Her phone buzzed in her hand. She recognized the number with a sinking sensation of dread. “Yes?”
“Ms. Markstein? Detective Ruffner here. I’m sorry to call you so late.”
“That’s OK. I’m just sitting here trying not to be scared.”
“I can imagine. You heard about this new murder, I assume?”
“I heard.”
“Well, I was wondering if I could swing by tomorrow morning and pick you up to come and look at some pictures again.”
Abby sighed. “More mug shots?”
“No, actually, we have something better than that today. Jud Frederick had security cameras on his property, and we think we may have the killer on video.”
The office in the rear of the police station was crowded: There were two uniformed officers and three in plain clothes, one of them a woman in her thirties, in jeans and a black blouse, brown hair in a ponytail, badge and holstered automatic on her belt. She was sitting at a desk with a laptop in front of her.
“Have a seat,” said Ruffner, waving Abby to a chair at the corner of the desk. “This is Detective Perkins from the ISP.”
The woman nodded at Abby. “How you doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Abby. “Ask me when this is all over.”
Perkins gave her a brief, sympathetic tightening of the lips. “It’s no fun, I know. We appreciate your help.”
“So what am I going to look at? Am I going to have to look at a body?”
“No.” Perkins was frowning at the laptop, manipulating a mouse. “We got the feed from Frederick’s home security camera. He had a pretty good setup. Cameras front and back. And they caught somebody. Not much good for a positive ID, as you’ll see. But we’re hoping you can tell us if it’s the same guy you saw.”
While Perkins peered at the computer, Abby looked at Ruffner. “When did this happen?”
“Some time last night. Or early this morning, probably. Frederick lived in a subdivision west of town called River Woods. The houses back onto Shawnee Creek. We think the killer came up from the creek. He shows up on the camera at the rear. But there was no forced entry, so he might have waited for Frederick to come home and jumped him then, or slipped in when the garage was opened or something. But Frederick was killed inside the house.”
Abby closed her eyes for a second or two. She could see Jud Frederick coming down the room at the Azteca with a decorative blonde in tow. “Was anybody else home?”
“No, thank God. Frederick was divorced. He’s got a couple of kids at IU. But he lived by himself. The killer stayed in there for a while, it looks like, going through drawers and such. Frederick had a gun in the house, and apparently this guy took it. He left the holster.”
“Here we go.” Perkins turned the laptop toward Abby. She saw a screen with a blurry black-and-white video still. It showed a stretch of patio at the side of a house, with what looked like a sliding glass door to the right. Perkins hit a key and the counter at the bottom of the screen began to tick off seconds, starting at 1:57:44. “This was about two in the morning,” said Perkins. “But the back of the house is pretty well lit at night, so the image is good. And there’s our guy.”
As Abby watched, a dark figure came from the bottom of the screen, below the camera, and walked along the patio, pausing at the glass door to lean close and shield his face as he looked through the glass.
Abby caught her breath. There were the cargo shorts, the sneakers without socks, the black hair curling on the neck. “I can’t see his face,” she said.
“Wait,” said Perkins. “He’ll be back.”
The figure disappeared off the top of the screen. The seconds ticked off. Abby realized her heart rate had accelerated. At 1:58:16 the figure reappeared, facing the camera now, and halted just below it. The view was from above, and the face would have been clearly visible, but for the bandanna tied over it, western-outlaw style.
“He got smart,” said Perkins. “He knew he was on camera, and instead of trying to disable the system he just put on the mask.”
“And I’m supposed to identify him?” said Abby, though the chill of recognition had intensified the second he came into view.
Ruffner said, “Just, if you can, from stature, body language and so forth, tell us if it’s the same guy you saw.”
The mask obscured the bottom half of the face, but the shape of the head was the same, the dark hair slicked back from the forehead. He was wearing a shirt this time but the tattoos on the arms were visible, blurry indecipherable markings crawling down to the wrists. “I think it’s him,” said Abby. She pulled away from the desk and closed her eyes. “That’s the man I saw.”
The police officers traded a look among themselves. “Thank you,” said Perkins. “That’s helpful.”
“Not to me,” said Abby.
Ruffner pulled a chair from a neighboring desk and sat down next to Abby. “You’re not out jogging by yourself anymore, I’m assuming.”
“No, that’s over. Am I safe just walking around? Should I leave town? Are we at that point?”
Ruffner sighed and another look went around among the cops, producing nothing more helpful than shrugs. Ruffner said, “We don’t have any reason to think this guy is actively looking for you. If you could positively ID him, if you knew who he was, it would be another matter. That’s when witnesses are really in danger. But you didn’t know this guy. He’s probably not going to waste energy trying to find you. Now, he could just see you by chance, there’s always that, but would he recognize you? I don’t know that he would, in a totally different context. If you’re really worried, we can put on extra patrol for your residence. Or we could get you a place in the Family Crisis Shelter. Going someplace else for a while would be another option.”
“I have a job here. I can’t really run away.”
Perkins had been watching, frowning faintly. Now she said, “Cut your hair.”
“Excuse me?”
“Cut your hair. Nothing changes your appearance faster. If you’re worried about this guy spotting you on the street or something, change your appearance.”
Abby nodded. “I can do that.”
“Turn off the Facebook location feature on your phone. Probably not a factor, but just in case.”
“Did it a long time ago.”
Ruffner said, “Drive rather than walk, and keep the doors locked. Hang with people when you can. You’re renting from Ned McLaren, right?”
“That’s right.”
“He can keep an eye out for strangers and so forth.”
Perkins said, “I think the risk is manageable. And we are working as hard as we can to reel this guy in, believe me.”
Ruffner said, “We’ve got some federal help, too, in view of the possible, uh . . . foreign angle. There’s a lot of resources on this.”
Abby could see that was all she was going to get. “This is two. Two men I just happened to see on practically my first night in town who have been murdered now. Why? What’s going on?”
“They’re related,” Ruffner said. “The victims knew each other and were apparently killed by the same guy. As for why you happened to see them, it’s a small town. There’s a limited number of places people go. You were just there.”
“And then the next morning I went for a run.”
“Yeah. That’s the anomaly. You went for a run.”
“Well, that’s over, believe me,” Abby said, bitterly. “That’s all over.”
Lisa Beth answered her phone on the third ring. “Abby. How are you?”
“I could be better. I could be a lot better.”
“You heard about Jud Frederick?”
“I just got back from talking to the
police.”
“Did you, by God? What did they want with you?”
“They wanted me to look at more pictures.”
“Don’t tell me anything if you don’t want to. I will not abuse your friendship by trying to make a source out of you.”
“Thank you. It would help me to talk about it with you, actually. But first I have a practical question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who does your hair?”
There was a silence and then Lisa Beth’s bellowing laugh sounded in Abby’s ear. “I swear to you, that is the last thing on earth I would have expected anybody to ask me.”
“I need to get my hair cut. Like, today. Can you recommend someone?”
“Well, I can tell you who keeps me shorn. Is that the look you’re going for?”
“Maybe not so . . .”
“So extreme? You may be frank, I don’t mind.”
“Not quite as short as yours. But shorter, yeah. You know somebody who could do me a bob or a pixie or something like that?”
“Honey, my guy Dexter can do anything. Let me call him and see if he can fit you in.”
Dexter, it turned out, could fit Abby in at four o’clock. That worked with Abby’s schedule, and Lisa Beth offered to swing by and pick her up. “My source at the police station has promised to call me if anything breaks. In the meantime it’s a slow news day and I can do what I want.”
Dexter was a gay male of a certain age who worked in a salon a block off Main Street, a three-chair operation with crimson walls, towering racks of hair products and ample mirrors. Dexter had made a gallant attempt to offset the ravages of time by dyeing his hair a luminescent blond, with indifferent success. “So we have decided to go with a more gamine type of look, have we?” He stood with hands clasped and head canted to one side, the artist surveying his canvas.
“We have decided to go with significantly less hair,” said Abby. “It’s hot and I haven’t done anything with my hair for five or six years and, basically, what the hell?” Here at the brink Abby suddenly had a bad case of nerves, her natural conservatism shying at the prospect of radical change. But the image of a man peering in through a glass door carried the day. “What are my options?”
“For a ravishing beauty like you, with naturally thick and wavy hair and a heart-shaped face, I think a nice textured pixie with bangs a wee bit on the long side will be exquisite.”
“Do it.” Abby settled into the chair and abandoned herself, stomping on her misgivings. Lisa Beth had installed herself in an armchair opposite with a cup of coffee, and she watched the proceedings with an amused smile while carrying on a back-and-forth with Dexter that testified to long acquaintance and a shared, somewhat jaundiced view of life in Lewisburg, Indiana. Abby mostly sat with her eyes closed, listening to the snick of the scissors and feeling a part of her persona fall away.
It took time. When it was all over, Abby was stunned, looking into the eyes of the stranger in the mirror. “Weeeell,” drawled Dexter. “What do we think?”
It’s not me, was what Abby thought. But it’s not bad. “It’s fine,” she said. “I like it. It’s good, thanks.”
“You are superb,” said Lisa Beth, who had come to stand at Abby’s shoulder. “Oh, my. Dexter, you’re a master.”
“I am humbled by your praise.” Dexter beamed at Abby in the mirror. “Sweetie, you are going to knock them absolutely dead.”
Actually, somebody else is taking care of that, Abby thought.
“It’s cocktail hour,” said Lisa Beth, starting her car. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I think I’d better not. I have work to do this evening. I’d probably better get home.”
“What a work ethic you have. You are an inspiration to us all. Talk to me.”
“Huh?”
“You said you wanted to talk to me about this investigation.” She pulled away from the curb. “Off the record. With you, there is no record. I promise you that.”
Abby exhaled. “I identified the guy who they think killed Frederick. On the security camera footage. It was the same guy I saw with Lyman. That’s what the haircut is about. The police told me to change my appearance. Because the guy is obviously still around. And I can identify him.”
“My God.” Lisa Beth drove, scowling out at the world. “No wonder you’re scared.”
“Mostly I can function OK. Coming home at night is hard.”
“Get yourself a dog. They bark and slobber and shed, but they are company.”
“Sounds like a lot of work. I just want the cops to catch this guy.”
“Well, they’re working on it.” Lisa Beth turned onto Jackson. “They’re beating this supposed Mexican connection to death. This guy you saw, could he have been Mexican?”
“He could have been just about anything. I saw him once in limited light and once on a surveillance cam. I didn’t exactly get a chance to study his features.”
Lisa Beth nodded. “So it’s possible he doesn’t give a damn about your having seen him. If he’s from down there, he’s used to impunity. The line the cops are following goes back to Veracruz, where all our Mexicans come from. You know about Veracruz?”
“I know it’s in Mexico.”
“It’s a battleground. Some of the worst drug cartel violence has gone down there. That’s where the Zetas operate.”
“OK, I’ve heard of the Zetas, but that’s about it. Educate me.”
“They’re former Mexican army commandos who hired themselves out to the Gulf Cartel as muscle and then decided to take over. They’re the biggest and meanest organized crime group down there. They like to leave bodies in cars and set them on fire, and they like to behead people. So, bingo, especially with the Veracruz connection around here, that just jumps right out at the cops.”
“Wait a second. Bingo? Behead people?”
Lisa Beth shot her a look. “They didn’t tell you? Frederick was decapitated.”
The bottom dropped out of Abby’s stomach. “Oh, God.”
“Just wait, it gets better.”
“Better?”
Lisa Beth smiled grimly at the road ahead. “They brought in Frederick’s doctor to identify the body, from scars and so forth. And they took fingerprints. They had to do that because the head is missing.”
Abby looked up from her desk to see Ben Larch in the doorway of her office. They just stared at each other for a moment and then Ben smiled and said, “Hi. Can I get some help with these differentiation problems?”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Abby returned the smile and shoved her laptop away. Please, she thought. Let it just be normal. Just let him be a normal student again. “Have a seat and let’s see what’s going on.”
He sat at the corner of the desk, next to her, set the textbook on the desk with a thump, and opened his notebook. “In class I thought I was following you OK, but then when I sat down to do these I kind of got confused.”
“OK, let me look at what you’ve done.” Abby ran her eye over the scrawl in the notebook and saw that like most struggling math students Ben was handicapped by a disorderly approach. It was hard to make sense of what he had done, as lines straggled off crookedly to the margins and calculations were crossed out with heavy strokes of the pen. “What’s this term here? Where does it come from?” She pointed and Ben leaned closer to peer at it.
“I don’t know. I did this last night. I was kind of tired.”
“OK. Let’s start over.” Abby turned to a clean page in the notebook. “Problem number one. Look at it and tell me what you see.”
They went at it for a few minutes, Abby trying to coax out what Ben knew and pinpoint what he didn’t. The art of teaching was to get people to figure it out for themselves. It was a tough slog sometimes.
Ben had a small eureka moment and successfully nailed the first problem. He laid the pen on the notebook, sat back on his chair, and looked at Abby. “Why’d you cut your hair?”
A chill ran through Abby. She met Ben’s un
wavering gaze and said, “That’s really none of your business.”
“I liked it long. I mean, it looks OK now, it’s kind of cute, but I really liked the way you looked before.” He was giving her an earnest look that in other circumstances would have made him appealing; now it made Abby’s hair stand on end.
“Ben. I thought we settled this. Personal remarks are not appropriate. We are not friends.”
“What do you mean we’re not friends?”
“I am your teacher. It’s a working relationship and we will maintain a proper distance.”
Now his look hardened just a little. “Why are you so cold?”
Abby could only gawk at him, astonished. “Ben, I am cold, as you put it, because we are not here to discuss my appearance or your opinion of it. We are here to help you learn to do calculus. And that is as far as it goes. As far as it can ever go. If you are incapable of avoiding personal remarks and excessive familiarity, then it’s going to make my job a lot harder. Impossible, in fact. And yes, I know I sound harsh. But that’s the way it has to be. Now, can we return to the matter at hand and do a few more of these problems?”
Ben Larch just looked at her, the appealing look gone, replaced by a remote, affectless gaze. “That’s OK,” he said. He closed the notebook, slapped the textbook on top of it, and stood up. “I’ll try and figure it out on my own.”
Abby drew breath to toss him a bone, a parting offer of reconciliation, but something stopped her. He turned in the doorway for one last glance and she met his stony look with what she hoped was an appropriately resolute one. “Thanks a lot,” he said, and vanished.
Abby sat with her heart pounding. All I wanted to do was teach, she thought. What did I do to deserve this?
Abby had plenty of milk at home but needed to talk to Natalia about their next tutoring date; she could have texted her but the Poza Rica was on the way home and she badly needed a friendly interaction. Bill Olsen had not been in his office when Abby had gone looking for him; she had drafted and sent a careful e-mail documenting her encounter with Ben and then fled the campus. It felt ridiculous to be driving the few short blocks home, and a man in a pickup truck behind her leaned on the horn when, lost in her thoughts, she was a little slow to notice that a traffic light had changed. By the time she walked into the Poza Rica she was frazzled.