"Mr. Hadrock, what can I do for you?" he says, in that tone that Blaine has always found to be used when someone really doesn't want or expect to do anything at all for you. He guesses being a homicide detective probably doesn't lend itself to displays of warmth. Nielson seems distracted. His eyes are darting all around the room.
"You could tell me what the hell is really going on in this case," Blaine says. It comes out harsher and more demanding than he'd planned.
"Sit down a second," says Nielson. He points to the chair and waits.
"I'll stand," says Blaine. Nielson raises his eyebrows, gets up and shuts the door in the tiny office.
"Okay," Nielson says. "What is bothering you about the way we're handling the case?" He is standing now, too, on the other side of the desk, adjusting his shirt and tie. The shirt has come partially untucked from his time in the chair.
"I know there are things you're not telling me," Blaine says, "and I get it that you can't tell civilians all that is going on, but the way you're handling this deal doesn't make sense. I tell you about a possible suspect in the bar and you don't seem to be in any rush to get a sketch of the guy who could be your murderer. And even though I know I didn't kill Renee I don't understand why you wouldn't try and get DNA from me as soon as you possibly could, for no other reason than ruling me out as a suspect. It just doesn't add up."
"Citizens always think they know how we ought to do it," says Nielson. "I'm amazed that they aren't solving all the stuff we've messed up left and right."
"I want to talk with somebody else," Blaine says. "Somebody higher up."
"You can talk to whoever you want," Nielson says, but his eyes are darting around the room again. Blaine thinks he has hit some sort of nerve.
"What could it possibly hurt to tell me?" Blaine says. "I don't believe that you think I did it. Even an idiot could see how torn up I am. I'm barely motoring, man. Tell me what you've got." He can see beads of moisture on Nielson's forehead. Finally his eyes settle on Blaine again and he sighs.
"Sit down," he says and points at the chair again. Blaine shakes his head. "Sit the hell down," Nielson says, "or leave. I'm not going to tell you this standing."
Must be something important, Blaine thinks, and sits the hell down. Nielson sighs again. "She might still be alive," he says.
A jolt like a lightning strike runs through Blaine. Something in him shouts: I knew it! He fights for breath but keeps his eyes steady on Nielson.
"How could that be?" he asks. "What about her body?"
"Never was a body," Nielson says. "This guy calls, he tells me that he's got her, and if I don't put it out as dead to the friends, then she will be. I believed him," he says. "I did it that way."
"You lied to us," Blaine says.
"For a chance to save her life: yes."
"He's still got her, then."
"Don't get your hopes up too much," Nielson says. "Guys like this say they'll let their captives go, but they don't. Somebody does something like this is usually ready to go all the way with it."
"Her mom knows, doesn't she?" Blaine says. It would explain the tension in her. Also, the refusal to allow him to view the body.
Nielson nods. "We had to tell her."
"Why the stuff about the strangling: defensive wounds and all?"
"We figured if we had to play by his rules, at least we could put out a story that would let us gather evidence," Nielson says. "DNA: whatever." He eyes Blaine. "Our man is in the crowd watching somewhere."
"So why would this guy want people to think she was dead?" Blaine says. He is standing again, leaning on the desk. Nielson is standing, looking out the window.
"It's just a guess," Nielson says, "because who really knows why people do what they do, but I'm thinking he wanted to see somebody suffer."
"Somebody," Blaine says, "or me?"
Chapter 27
"Let's get out of here," Nielson says, "Go for a ride in your truck."
Blaine isn't exactly sure what he's up to, but for the moment he doesn't care. Renee could be alive. He feels like dropping to the ground right here and kissing it. He feels a weight like an automobile drop from his shoulders. Nielson locks up the office, and they head out to the truck. Blaine asks where he wants to go, and he shrugs. The sky is crystalline blue; the wind shaking the trees, a bird warbles a plaintive refrain. Alive! He had known it all along.
They cruise down the boulevard in silence for a while. Blaine has questions, but he wants to take a moment to process this deal. The parade of life is still going on the beach: dogs, Frisbees, surfers, swimmers; but it doesn't seem so ironic now. He focuses back in. Okay, maybe she's still alive, but we need to get her away from this guy. He could have killed her already. Blaine pushes that thought away. She's still alive. He hasn't gone through all this to lose her now. They will find her, and they will save her. He is looking out at the life all around them. They will save her. Maybe denial is not a river in Egypt, but that is how he feels.
They pull up to a light behind a bunch of cars full of beachgoers and summer frolickers, and he looks over at Nielson. Nielson has one arm on the seatback and the other spread on the door. He appears to be enjoying the day.
"So do you have some kind of plan?" Blaine asks.
"Not much of one," Nielson says. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a sheet of paper and unfolds it. Even from here, Blaine sees it is a sketch of the guy he hassled that night in the bar.
"Where'd you get that?" he asks.
"Somebody else in the bar saw him that night," Nielson says. "We got them to do the sketch."
"Who?"
"That's not really important," Nielson says. The traffic is moving again. Blaine returns his attention to the road. The sketch looked like a fair likeness, but not great.
"We haven't found any information on this guy," Nielson says. "We don't know who he is or where he lives. We don't have any idea if he's involved in this thing. We don't know shit." Blaine looks back over. Nielson is chewing on a thumbnail. He doesn't look happy, but then again, Blaine doesn't think he has ever seen him look happy. He has taken the tie off in the heat and tossed his jacket in the back seat.
"So that's all you got?" says Blaine. "You don't know where she is or who took her, no leads or clues or anything?"
"Fucking citizens," Nielson says. "It's not always like the movies. Sometimes it just doesn't happen for us. Sometimes we come up empty."
"You aren't giving up, are you?"
"Giving up isn't in my vocabulary," says Nielson.
"What about the phone call? Didn't he call you guys at least once to tell you he had her?"
"Prepaid cell phone," Nielson says. "No help at all."
"No witnesses that saw him? Nothing?"
"The crime scene was real," Nielson says. "That spot on the beach is where he grabbed her. But nobody saw him. No real physical evidence. Nothing we can use."
"Jesus," Blaine says. His mouth is a thin white line across his face as he watches the traffic. He darts another look at Nielson, thinking. His stupid, momentary euphoria at the news she is alive has completely vanished now. She is in deep trouble someplace, and they can't find her. He breathes through his nose: slowing it all down, focusing.
"Hell," Nielson says, "If we had anything, I never would have told you. We could be screwing up right now, just cruising down the beach together. This guy might be keeping an eye on one of us."
"He's got to be watching her, though, right?" Blaine says. He wonders for a second why Nielson hadn't just pretended to go along with this deal and told him before. Quick as that, he realizes that Nielson had thought Blaine might have done it. Must have thought so. That the false details he had been given earlier had been subtle taunts thrown at a possible killer: someone who would know they were lies, and maybe give himself away when he heard them.
"Not necessarily," Nielson says. "He could have her tied up, locked in a desolate place where people can't hear her, some type of deal where he's free to roam." He does
n't say she could be dead, but Blaine hears it anyway.
"What about guys who have done this sort of thing before?" Blaine says. "Don't you have computer databases for these kinds of crimes?"
"Yes, but guys that do this type of crime are usually living in prison long-term, dead, or unknown. We've got our lists of the little neighborhood pervs that are all over the place, but nothing much, really, on guys like this."
"All over the place?"
"You would be amazed at the number of guys who just can't keep it in their pants," Nielson says. "Got to be flashing it around. Some like kids, some like little old ladies, some even flash it at good-looking women like the rest of us like, though that is rarer than you would think."
They are getting into the west end of the island now, and the traffic is still stop-and-go. Blaine looks at Nielson, and for the first time thinks that he might not be the only one unraveling over this deal. Nielson seems to be on the verge of losing it himself.
"So what's the plan, then," he says. "Hope that he gets religion: finds Jesus and lets her go?"
"That's about what we're down to at this point, kid," Nielson says. He has taken a knife out of a pocket and is cleaning beneath his nails with it. "He never mentioned money or wanting anything. That's what makes it tough. This guy is just crazy. I could give you some song and dance about pursuing all avenues and following up leads, but the truth is that is what we're down to. We need a break."
"What about a media blitz?" Blaine asks. "Pictures of her, the sketch, ask all citizens if they know anything. That might turn up somebody who saw him or her, somebody who knows something."
"We've been considering it," Nielson says. "There is always the possibility that somebody did see something. We don't know if this guy had anything to do with it at all. All we really know about him is he likes pretty women. Odds are he is just some guy who went to a bar. We've been showing the sketch to people that were in the bar that night. We've checked with everybody we could locate in that area to see if anybody had seen anything. There were some kids partying on the beach, and we talked to them. Nobody saw anything. That part of the beach where they were is fairly remote, off the beaten path, not much traffic that time of night, except for lovers and such.
"Of course," he says, "if we go public like that we might push this guy over the edge. He just might kill her." He looks over at Blaine, thinking about it. "We can't keep wraps on it forever, though. We've given it a couple of days hoping we could come up with something, track him down, but it hasn't happened. If Winslow and I and the rest of the force don't make something happen soon, we won't have any choice. There are going to be some folks who will wonder why we didn't go public right from the first. Always some armchair quarterbacks in the damned public. If you do something and it works, they ask why you didn't do it sooner. If it doesn't work, they ask you why you did it at all." He sighs. "You can't win. Somebody always bitches, no matter how it goes."
Chapter 28
"So I let you know what is going on," Nielson says. "Don't go doing anything stupid that will mess us up. Stay cool. Let me and Winslow and the rest of the force do our job." They are back at the station, parked in front of the office. Blaine nods.
"I appreciate it," he says. "I feel like we have a shot at it."
"Damn right we do," Nielson says. "We will get your girl back." He puts an arm on Blaine's shoulder, squeezes, then grabs his coat from the back and gets out, walks up the sidewalk. Blaine watches him go, thinking no wonder these guys have rotten dispositions: dealing with the dregs of society day after day. The creeps, the subhuman. He wonders if Nielson could get in trouble for handling the case this way. He believes he probably could. Nielson is beginning to seem like a bit of a cowboy, Blaine thinks, but he will save his complaints for later. If they don't get Renee back.
Blaine has always thought that people were penalized for what they had done, whether the law caught them or not. That their own feelings of guilt or shame were penalties, even when they apparently "got away" with something. So what about the sociopaths or psychopaths who didn't have those feelings? What was their punishment? In Blaine's mind, the fact that they didn't or couldn't have those feelings was the punishment, as well as the cause of their actions. They weren't quite human because they lacked the emotion and empathy that humans had. And that was their punishment. They weren't quite human. It made them objects of hate, but of pity also. They were like dangerous monsters.
He is driving down the road away from the station now, watching the traffic automatically and thinking. A lot of people wouldn't agree with him that those people were already being punished by their lack of humanity. They would be screaming for punishment, and Blaine is swinging over their way. It is one thing when it is a dry intellectual discussion and another thing when somebody has your girl. If they catch this motherfucker, he hopes he goes straight to hell. If he gets a chance to put him there, he will do it. Without hesitation, without a second thought. Blaine jerks his attention back to the road. He is almost home, though he has no real recollection of the streets he has just driven down. He feels the .22 in his pocket, thinks it's time to go bigger.
Automaticity. The way the brain allows you to focus on other things when you have learned an activity well, he thinks, somewhat bitterly. He has so much information that seems useless. Think. That is what he needs to do. Put himself in this guy's head. What would he do if it were him? He recoils at the thought, but presses on. It seems from the way things have gone so far that this guy has something against him. Either something personal like the guy in the bar, or something just because he was hooked up with Renee. Right off the jump-go, the guy in the bar is the only person he can remember tangling with at all lately. And even that wasn't really a big deal. No blows or physical actions. Just a few tense words. Not the magnitude of confrontation to escalate into a kidnapping.
Except these guys sometimes got fixated. Blaine had read that before someplace. Little things could loom large in their minds. Tiny slights could provoke large responses. You heard about it all the time. Look at guys in prison. Glance at them the wrong way, you get killed. It is hard to tell what was going on in some other guy's mind.
And with women, Blaine could understand that. How easy it was to become fixated. He had been there. Nothing rational about it. Outside the pale. You were driving your life down the road, in control, and suddenly you weren't. Other forces causing your decisions, like the wheel being jerked from your hands. One day in charge of your destiny, then suddenly, without warning it is like you were some dog on the prowl, tuned into your partner's movements, watching the curve of her neck, the swell of a breast, the long muscles of her thighs, no more in control than a beast in rut. Saliva in your mouth like one of Pavlov's dogs.
Renee knew the effect she had. He believes it gave her a sense of power. Sometimes she would walk around in those panties, and just by the way she moved, he could tell she knew that he was watching. She would have this … look on her face, he couldn't describe it, but it had to do with her knowing her power and accepting it, enjoying it. He would get hard watching her, sometimes even right after they had just had sex. It was beyond his control. That was the scary and wonderful thing about it. And she knew it. She got him so revved up he would just grab her, right there, wherever she was, and do her. And she would … let him, like she knew he was out of control. And he was. That was what he loved about it.
He has an erection now thinking about it.
He was such a thinker most of the time, analyzing everything around him for patterns. Deep thoughts. That was the reason he enjoyed the surfing and climbing so much. The thoughts stopped for a while. Sometimes just being is better than thinking. But being with Renee was the only time he shared that feeling deeply.
And she loved it too, that was the thing. Not only with him, but that power over men in general. That was one of the reasons he had thought she might not have been completely honest with him about her other relationships.
He pulls into the
drive of the house and sits at the wheel. How would she be feeling as somebody's captive? She is smart and resourceful and not above using her attraction as a tool. She is tough, too; and all things considered, he figures she is still alive. She is attuned to men and what they want, and she would be playing this guy as hard as she could. He probably is some manner of psychopath. Blaine thinks that is true of men who commit this type of crime, almost by definition. People who do shit like this just don't care about other people. Which doesn't surprise him. There are a lot of people running around who don't give much of a hoot about others, many of them successful with families and community standing. At least, that is the way it looks to Blaine.
So she would be playing this guy, using every tool she has to gain some modicum of control in a situation where ostensibly she has none. Blaine shuts his eyes in the drive and thanks whatever God there is that she is like she is. Maybe she can survive.
What can he do?
The first thing I can do, he thinks, is keep my head straight. No more of that bullshit with the different times on the computer and such. He still doesn't believe his mind had fooled him like that. That kind of shit makes you doubt everything.
Wait a minute, he thinks. Doubt everything. Head all screwed up. That is exactly what this guy would want. What if he had some computer expertise? What if he had managed to hack into Blaine's machine? Blaine grasps at that idea like a drowning man. Sure would make him feel better if that were true. It would be bad if some guy had managed to hack him, but it would certainly be better than the losing your mind alternative. He straightens up from the wheel, gets out and looks around. His neighbor is busy pulling her wash from that ecofriendly line. She glances at him, cuts her eyes away. Probably wondering what he's doing sitting out in the truck like that. Not even playing music. He throws a wave at her, walks up onto the porch and goes inside.
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