Isaiah went to college, took his studies seriously, stayed away from the pitfalls of drugs and excessive alcohol, and married his true love. Isaiah was the architect of all the great things in his life, and none of the bad.
A drunk driver took it all away in a moment.
Isaiah Webster wasn’t always a serial killer.
* * *
The Nob Hill area of Albuquerque is near the city’s center and serves itself up as an eclectic area of shopping and nightlife with nothing less than historic Route 66, the Mother Road, running through the heart of it.
The aging Craftsman-style home on Carlisle Boulevard Southeast, just blocks south of Route 66, still sports the faded earth tones from a paint job with too many years behind it. Despite the deplorable paint, the home itself is in immaculate condition, as is the cubistic landscaping.
Ross Feldman said that Lisa Webster is an RN at Lovelace Westside Hospital; more importantly, she’s an emergency room nurse. That generally means that she’s going to be logical and pragmatic … and she’s going to want answers.
Answers we can’t give, or don’t have.
Jimmy parks on the street and I slip my lead-crystal glasses off as I exit the passenger side. The home is awash in ice-blue, breathtakingly so. Not just decade-old shine like I saw at the library in Baton Rouge and the Southern Cross in Sealy. No. This shine is much older, stretching back to Isaiah’s youth. I see it on the roof, around the vegetation, brushing against the side of the house, and ensconced in the very soil.
Here he played.
Here he grew up.
I’m still entranced by the blue neon glow as Jimmy makes his way to the front porch and presses the doorbell. A white screen door with five vertical bars on the lower portion is all that stands between us and the interior of the house, and the pleasant door chime that drifts out to us.
“Just a minute,” a voice calls from within.
Moments later, a woman comes around the corner, still teasing her hair with a brush as she prepares either for work or a night on the town—it’s hard to tell which, since she’s wearing the pants from her hospital scrubs, topped off by a white chiffon blouse.
She slows when she sees us, and it’s clear she was expecting someone else.
“Ms. Webster,” Jimmy says, pulling out his badge, “I’m Special Agent James Donovan; this is my partner, Operations Specialist Magnus Craig. You are Lisa Webster, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she says hesitantly, and then her tone becomes inquisitive. “Can I help you with something?”
“We have some questions about Isaiah, if you can spare ten or fifteen minutes. It’s important.”
She nods skeptically. “It usually is.” She takes a good look at Jimmy’s badge, then at Jimmy, then at me. Pushing the screen door open, she waves us in and guides us to the small and sparsely furnished living room. There’s no couch, just the recliner that Lisa sinks into, and an old floral pattern love seat which Jimmy and I end up sharing.
We’re so close the smartphone in his pocket is jabbing me in the leg.
“If this is about his clearance update, you should know that he doesn’t work at CERL anymore,” Lisa begins.
Isaiah’s shine is so thick in the house that it’s almost overwhelming, like someone painted it on the floor in broad strokes. What I notice in the living room, however, isn’t on the floor or the walls. It’s on the ceiling: two handprints with the thumb tips touching and the fingers splayed out like wings—a bird in flight.
They’re not adult hands; Isaiah would have been maybe nine or ten when he made them. How he reached the ceiling … well, that’ll have to remain a mystery.
“We’re not here about his clearance,” Jimmy replies. “We just need to talk to Isaiah about some work he’s been involved with.” It’s not exactly a lie, but it’s not exactly the truth either. “Do you happen to know where Isaiah is living these days? I understand he sold his house a few months ago, but we weren’t able to locate an updated address on him.”
Lisa shakes her head. “I have his P.O. box in Deming, that’s about all. He moved down there in March, before his house even sold. I offered to help him move, but he refused. And when I asked for the house address, he gave me the post office box number and some excuse about the house being too difficult to find.”
“So you haven’t been to his new place at all?”
“No,” she replies. “Sorry. I figured he just needed a little space, so I gave it to him, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep at it.” She pulls her long brunette hair over her right shoulder and begins to run her fingers slowly through the silky strands as her eyes drift slowly away from Jimmy and find me watching her. The way she plays with her hair is silently seductive, though probably not a conscious move on her part. Still, it pulls the eyes in and teases the mind.
At Jimmy’s prompting, Lisa retrieves a pen and writes the P.O. box number on a scrap of paper. When she finishes, she hands it to him and he slides it into his shirt pocket.
“Where, exactly, is Deming?” I ask.
“It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive south of here,” she replies. “Just hop on I-25 and follow it south to Hatch. Then you want to get on State Route 26 westbound. Deming’s hard to miss. There’s not much out that way.”
“Do you have any idea why he moved there?”
“I’ve been asking myself that for months,” Lisa replies. “Isaiah’s had a rough time of it since Bill Blevins killed that little boy in February. I’m just trying to be there for him as much as possible, but he keeps pushing me away. I only hear from him once or twice a week, and only when he calls me. All my calls to him go straight to voice mail. He’s got me worried.”
“How so?” Jimmy says.
She shrugs, and in doing so the mask of confidence she’s been wearing since we arrived begins to slip, revealing a sliver of fear underneath. “It’s nothing,” she says quickly.
“He hasn’t been himself, has he?”
Her face melts and she almost goes to tears. “No,” she replies, and then the words come fast. “I’ve never seen him like this; not after Tracy died; not after Mom died. He tries to pretend that everything’s all right, but I know it isn’t—is it?”
Jimmy and I exchange a glance, and as if by some unspoken agreement, I’m the one who delivers the bad news. “He may be going after Bill Blevins.” I don’t mention the other three victims; she’ll hear about them soon enough.
“To hurt him?”
“To kill him.”
She shakes her head firmly. “No, you don’t know him. Isaiah couldn’t do that; it’s not in him.”
“You’d be surprised what perfectly normal people are capable of, Ms. Webster,” Jimmy says. “We all have our breaking point. Some tune out and disconnect from society, like Isaiah. Some turn to drugs or alcohol. Others turn mean or even violent; still others snap completely and stare at a wall all day. I’ve seen every manner of mental break in my time with the Bureau, and nothing surprises me anymore.”
Lisa props her right elbow on the side of the recliner and rests her forehead in her hand. The soft sounds of tears—the sniffling, the bubbling—issues from her bowed head and we let her digest the information uninterrupted. As hard as it is delivering such news, it’s even harder receiving it.
A box of tissue sits on the end table next to me, so I rise, pull two of the tissues from the box, and hand them to Lisa. She stares at them for a moment, as if she doesn’t recognize them, and then takes them into her hand and dabs at her eyes.
When she finally speaks again, her head is still bowed and her words are monotone. “I was the one who found her, you know,” she says.
Jimmy and I remain silent.
“We were supposed to go out for breakfast. She didn’t want to, of course, but I was the pushy sister-in-law. I was always forcing her to go to the mall, the grocery store, even the pub down the street, anything to get her out in public so she could get over the fear of wearing her new feet around others.”<
br />
Lisa pauses and dabs at her eyes. “Maybe I pushed too hard. She hated those prosthetics, like somehow they made her less of a person.”
She looks up now, her eyes red. “I told her how brave she was, every day—I told her, and I meant it. To endure what she had and to come out the other side; to have to learn to walk all over again using different feet—it’s superhuman. It’s remarkable and honorable and noble … but it wasn’t enough.”
Lisa falls quiet.
The house, too, lies silent, save for the faint murmur of street noise outside. I can hear the steady ticking of a clock from the kitchen.
“When I got to the house that morning,” she continues, “I let myself in, as always. I called out to her and she didn’t answer, so I just figured she was in the bathroom or still getting ready in the bedroom.
“I rinsed off the dishes in the sink and put them in the dishwasher while I waited, and then emptied the trash. There was still no sign of her, so I called out again and went to see if she needed any help. I cut through the dining room to get to the back hall and that’s when I saw her.”
She gasps involuntarily, and then forces herself to inhale deeply.
“I’d been in the kitchen cleaning dishes … like an idiot … when the whole time she was dead on the other side of the wall … fifteen feet away.” Lisa visibly shivers, almost convulsively. Tears begin to stream down her face as she continues.
“She was just sitting there with her head on the table, her eyes closed, like she was sleeping. And at first, that’s what I told myself—but I knew.
“Then I saw the blood.” She blinks hard and covers her mouth. “She had slit her wrists all the way up the forearm and her hands were resting inside a cooler between her legs. I suppose she did that so blood wouldn’t get all over the carpet—and not a single drop did. She wouldn’t have wanted to make a mess.”
Jimmy’s posture changes at the same moment as mine, both reactions cued by a single word: cooler.
He clears his throat and in the most gentle of voices asks, “What kind of cooler?”
Lisa looks up, puzzled, or perhaps just caught off guard by the odd question. “It was one of those disposable white Styrofoam coolers you get at the convenience store for a couple bucks.” She expels a series of involuntary sobs, but then grows angry with herself over the outburst. She balls her fingers into tight fists and holds them against her stomach. When she speaks again, her voice is flat and eerily low, each word controlled absolutely. “Do you know what she did with those prosthetic feet she hated so much? She put them inside the cooler; she bled all over them.”
The Styrofoam ice box!
The feet!
He’s doing it for Tracy. He’s doing all of it for her.
As Lisa finishes, her face falls into both hands and she weeps loudly and uncontrollably for a long while. Jimmy moves over to the chair and stands next to her, his arm across her shoulder, silent, but present.
How do you console what is inconsolable?
* * *
It’s well after six when we leave Lisa to the spoiled squalor of a ruined evening, with worries for a brother whose soul has drifted far from shore. She still doesn’t know anything, but she suspects much, and fears the worst. We promised we’d do everything in our power to help Isaiah, but I don’t know if that’s a promise he’ll let us keep.
Right now we’re still not sure where he is. We think Deming, but, honestly, he could be anywhere. He could be parked down the street or a thousand miles away in Baton Rouge.
Jimmy calls Diane and puts her on speaker as we pull away from Lisa’s quaint home and park at a convenience store two blocks away.
“Apartment 202,” Diane clarifies after rattling off an address on Chestnut Street. She sounds as tired as I feel, and the sarcasm we know and love is lacking from her weary words. “It’s Blevins’s last known address.”
“Thanks, Diane,” Jimmy says. “We’ll head there—”
“You won’t find him,” she interrupts. “He’s been gone a while. He posted bail on February eleventh, and then picked up a felony warrant after he failed to appear on the vehicular homicide charges. Albuquerque PD has checked the apartment a dozen times looking to arrest him, but it’s like he dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Or someone else dropped him off the face of the earth,” I say under my breath.
“I talked to Detective Susan Rigo,” Diane continues. “She’s lead detective on the vehicular homicide and says that no one has seen him at the complex since February.”
“They could be covering for him.”
“That’s what she thought, so she stuck a paper clip between the door and the frame to see if anyone was coming and going, and it stayed in place for a month, until she removed it. It was enough to convince her. She thinks he’s on the run, maybe Mexico.”
“When did she start looking for him?” Jimmy asks.
“It wasn’t until after he missed his court date on April ninth, but she said there were rumblings before that. His attorney tried reporting him missing in March after not hearing from him since his release.”
Jimmy perks up at the mention. “Speaking of attorneys…”
“The attorney from the Webster accident is Paul Anderson,” Diane says. “He’s a condescending, uptight…” She pauses. “He’s difficult. I also found out that he got Blevins off on a technicality after the accident with Tracy Webster. The Breathalyzer hadn’t been calibrated recently, there was a problem with the blood sample, the usual. Anyway, he said he hasn’t dealt with or talked to Blevins in years, and wouldn’t tell me anything if he had. I tried to convince him to take on a security detail, but he wouldn’t agree to any precautionary measures, not even an extra patrol in the neighborhood. ‘It’s not my first rodeo,’ he told me,” Diane says, putting on her best Southwest accent.
“What part of severed feet and serial killer didn’t he get?” Jimmy utters in disbelief. “Did you explain to him that this is a very real threat; that his life might be in danger?”
“Till I was blue in the face,” Diane replies.
“Maybe I should have a talk with him,” Jimmy offers.
“I appreciate the offer,” she says, “but the day I can’t handle an uptight defense attorney is the day I turn in my resignation. Besides, I asked Rigo if she would have APD provide some extra patrol on the sly, and she’s on top of it. They’ll drive through the neighborhood every twenty or thirty minutes. That should provide a bit of deterrent.”
“Good enough, I suppose,” Jimmy replies. “Steps and I will go check out Bill Blevins’s apartment, see if there’s anything worth seeing.”
“I told you, it’s empty. He’s not there.”
“Yeah, I know you did,” Jimmy replies, and then terminates the call.
We sit in the idling car for a full minute, both of us staring out the front windshield in silence. Jimmy has both hands on the wheel and he’s slowly twisting them up and then down as he thinks about Isaiah, Blevins, and Tracy.
“Blevins’s apartment?” I say after another minute passes and the fading sun begins to threaten the long horizon.
Jimmy nods—just nods, and then slips the car into gear.
* * *
The sky is hazy gray, and quickly surrendering to the dark shades of dusk, by the time we reach the dumpy apartment complex on Chestnut Street. At first glance, it looks like an old two-story motel with the rooms opening onto outdoor walkways and stairs all the way around. There’s even a swimming pool, but it stands empty and neglected. If ever it was a motel, those days are gone. The rooms now rent by the week and the month.
As we start up the stairs to room 202, a prostitute in her late teens brushes by us on the way down. We’re not in uniform, we’re not even dressed professionally, but somehow she makes us for law enforcement and says, “I didn’t do nothing,” as she averts her eyes and starts taking the steps two at a time, which is hard in heels.
There’s a light on in 202, and the sounds from
a TV issue through the door and wall, so Jimmy knocks; Jimmy knocks loudly. There’s a scuffling inside, and then a face appears at the window, peeking through the curtain.
“What do you want?” the face demands.
Jimmy holds up his badge and does the usual introduction. “We’re looking for William Blevins. We understand this is his apartment.”
“Not no more,” the face says. “This is my apartment. I moved in last month. Never heard of no William Blevins.”
“Would you mind if we come inside and check for ourselves? It’ll only take a moment, and then we’ll be out of here.”
“Get a warrant, bitch. This is my place.” At that, the face disappears behind the curtain, and the TV gets cranked up to full volume.
Jimmy stares at the empty window.
I stare at the floor.
“Orange and silver,” I say, holding my glasses in my hand.
“Huh?”
“Orange and silver.” I repeat. Then, in almost a whisper, I say, “Your new best friend there, he’s got orange and silver shine. He’s not lying when he says he’s only been here a month or so.” I tilt my head down at the walkway. “I’m betting Belvins is more of a burgundy. It’s all over the ground, it’s on the handrail; he probably lived here for a couple of years.”
Jimmy sighs. “Still doesn’t tell us where he is now.”
“Wherever he is, he’s dead,” I say in an even quieter tone. “The shine is flat—no vibration. There’s something … else.”
“What?”
“Isaiah.”
“He’s been here?”
I nod and point at the transition at the base of the door. “His prints go right into the apartment and it’s not just one visit. He was here again and again. The time frame matches up with his mental break.”
“Dammit!” Jimmy presses his palms into his temples.
“Tssstt.”
The sound comes from two doors down on the right, one of the apartments we passed on the way in. The door is ajar and a mid-forties Hispanic male with a beach-ball gut under his T-shirt is standing there waving us over. His eyes keep shifting around, making sure no one is watching. I imagine this is one of those neighborhoods where everyone hates cops until they need one.
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