Blood Moon

by Ed Gorman

  Our kids were going to be raised out here but given the nature of my work for the government, we never quite got around to kids. We had to settle for three cats who were still with me, fortunately, their names being Tasha, Crystal and Tess, tiny Eloise having died at six months following a freak reaction to one of her booster shots.

  The inside is just as Kathy had left it, an eclectic mix of Colonial, suburban shopping mall, and what I call post-hippie. You know, water pipes that have been converted into flowerpots, and authentic fake Indian wall coverings that look great in the basement covering up cracks in the plaster.

  In the kitchen is a framed blowup of a segment of a 1901 teacher's contract that Kathy, a teacher once herself, had found in a dusty box in an antique shop. The blowup lists five rules that the undersigned teacher had to obey absolutely:

  The teacher shall not go out with any man except her brothers or father.

  The teacher shall not dress in bright colors.

  The teacher shall not use face powder or paint her lips.

  The teacher shall not loiter in an ice cream parlor.

  The teacher shall wear at least three petticoats under her skirts.

  Dusk was gray and grainy in the den window as I stoked up my pipe. The beer I poured—nothing special, whatever brand I'd found on sale—tasted cold and clean and good. The cats were lined up on the couch next to me, sleeping.

  The heavy envelope was on my lap.

  Who would want to give me ten thousand dollars? Nobody who had anything legal in mind, certainly.

  With the remote, I snapped on the local TV news. The lead story was about a May Day celebration at a nearby mall. A slow news day, apparently. This was followed by a thirty-second commercial for hog raisers whose animals suffered from diarrhea. I was glad I didn't happen to be eating supper at the moment.

  A few moments later, me instantly clicking off the TV set, I heard a heavy car crunch up the gravel driveway. I kept picturing the big Caddy that Harold Peterson had told me about. The engine was shut off. Just dusk birds loud and frantic on the fading day—then a car door opening and chunking shut. Footsteps on the porch. Knock on the door. My mother having raised no idiots, I picked up my trusty Ruger Speed Six .357 Magnum and went to the door.

  The mysteries of the envelope were about to be revealed.

  I saw what Peterson had meant about his looking like an FBI agent. He managed to look tough even in an expensive suit, which was the first requirement; and you could feel the contempt of his gaze even through the mirror sunglasses, which was the second. He was probably forty and bulky in the strong way of somebody who religiously works off the gin at the gym. He could probably afford to buy a little better shoulder rig, though. His weapon was obvious. But then maybe he wanted it obvious.

  "Mr. Payne?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm here about the envelope."

  I smiled. "I figured somebody would show up to take it back."

  But men who wear mirror sunglasses after dark rarely smile. Ruins their image.

  "My employer's name is Nora Conners. She'd like to come in and talk to you. Is that all right?"

  I shrugged. "Why not?"

  "She'll be in momentarily."

  That's another thing guys who wear mirror shades after sundown never do. Never say good-bye.

  He just turned, went down the stairs and out to the Caddy, which was every inch as impressive as Harold Peterson had said. And, at least in the faint porch light, it did look as if it had just rolled off the dealer floor.

  I went inside, picked up some newspapers from the past two days, folded them neatly by the firewood to the right of the fireplace, and when I stood up and turned around, there she was.

  I had been expecting a young woman—for some reason I'd imagined she would be in her late twenties—but Nora Conners was at least forty. And quite lovely, her quietly beautiful face suggesting vulnerability, intelligence and a very private but exciting sensuality. She wore a gray designer suit that flattered the lines of her tall, slender body and lent her blonde chignon a prim but erotic quality that most chignons don't convey. She clutched a tiny black purse with a kind of endearing desperation. Perhaps she had another envelope containing ten thousand dollars in there.

  "I know you prefer to be called Robert rather than Bob," she said, as I took her extended hand. "May I call you Robert?"

  "Of course."

  "And this is Vic Baker. He rarely introduces himself." She smiled like a mother introducing a mischievous son. "He flunked out of finishing school."

  Not even their little private joke evoked a smile on the stone face of Mr. Vic Baker.

  "Listen," I said, "why don't we all get comfortable and take off our sunglasses?"

  She laughed. "Vic gets kidded a lot about his glasses at night, but actually he suffers from an eye inflammation called uveitis. Supposedly the medication he's taking will clear it up in the next sixty days or so."

  "If you say so," I said.

  We all sat down. She took the couch, sitting in the center of it and on the very edge where her nice knees went white behind her hose, while Vic the Vampire took the austere straight-back chair by the fireplace. I took the overstuffed chair beneath our best Chagall print.

  "Well," I said, "you certainly leave memorable calling cards."

  "I wanted to convince you that I'm serious," Nora Conners said.

  "About what?"

  "About tracking down the man who murdered my daughter." She paused, giving me a moment to deal with what she'd said. "Three weeks ago, a friend of yours, Mike Peary, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. I believe you worked with him sometimes."

  I nodded. "They just arrested a teenager for killing him."

  "Very bad detective work, Robert. They arrested the wrong man. Mike Peary had been working for me for the past seven months. He had tracked the man who killed Maryanne—my daughter; she was twelve years old—to a small town up near the Minnesota border. The man killed him before Mike could get to me. Fortunately, Mike had mailed me a long letter before being killed. I have it in the car."

  "Why not take it to the police?"

  "Because they wouldn't listen to me." The pause again. "Do you know who Richard Tolliver is?"

  "Sure. Guy who lives in Des Moines. One of the richest men in the state."

  "He's my father."

  "I see."

  "No, you don't. He's not only my father, he's my jailer. I've been married twice, and both times he managed to put me in mental hospitals."

  "You can't just put people in mental hospitals. There's a whole legal process you have to follow. It's not all that easy."

  "It is if you're my father and three of your best friends happen to be on the state supreme court." She sighed. "My father has convinced most people that I'm not a very stable woman, never have been, and that, since the death of my daughter, I'm even crazier than before. If I took Mike's material to the police, the first thing they'd do is smile patronizingly at me and then turn all the material over to my father."

  She looked at Vic. "Mike said some very flattering things about you and convinced me you could help us if anything ever happened to him. He said the two of you had helped the police on three cases involving missing children and that you found two of them. He talked about you both being in the FBI together—and said you were probably going into business together—helping small-town police departments. He said you'd both obtained private-investigator licenses."

  I grinned. "You make me sound like one hell of a guy."

  "You are one hell of a guy, Robert. That's why I want you to pick up where Mike Peary left off. You're not the old gumshoe sort, but you are a detective. A very modern one. Mike told us all about 'profiling' and how you both use it."

  "That still doesn't make me a wizard." Whenever anybody turns her life—and all her hopes—over to me, I get nervous. I looked at her, which wasn't a real unpleasant task. "You really think Mike was murdered?"

  She nodded. "I'm sure of it. So's Vic.
He was just about to start the second part of his investigation. Then he was killed." She paused. "If I can be blunt, I know you need some work. I happen to know that your finances aren't in terribly good shape," she said. "You're three payments behind on your mortgage, and you haven't paid your hangar fee for your biplane in six months."

  "Vic's been a busy boy, checking me out that way."

  She opened her small black purse and did a circus trick, took from it another manila envelope that looked far too big to be held inside.

  She stood up, walked over to me and set it on the arm of my chair. She went back and sat down, smoothing her skirt primly before she did so.

  "I'd cry and plead with you if I thought it would do any good, Robert, but I don't think it will. But I would like to say that I loved my daughter just as much as you loved your wife, and I want her killer found."

  "The police don't have any leads?"

  "No leads at all."

  "And it's been how long?"

  "Eight years."

  "Where was she killed?"

  "The parking lot of a shopping mall. I was living in a town in Illinois. It was Christmastime. She'd gone to the mall with one of her friends and the friend's mother. One minute Maryanne was with them; then she was gone, just vanished. They found her much later that night, in a Dumpster. He'd cut her up with a butcher knife. I don't want to tell you any more than that. It's not good for me to talk about."

  I looked at the envelope she'd just given me. "Another ten thousand?"

  "Fifteen."

  "Ah."

  "Making twenty-five altogether. One-half down. Even if you aren't able to catch him, you'll make twenty-five thousand dollars for trying. Your banker would be very happy to hear about that."

  "You have Mike's letter?"

  "Vic can get it."

  "How about if I read it tonight and call you in the morning?"

  "I'd appreciate your doing that."

  "I'm not making any promises, understand."

  "Of course." She looked to Vic. "Would you get the letter, please?"

  Vic left.

  "That guy could get on my nerves," I said. "Doesn't he ever shut up?"

  "Everybody's curious about Vic. Especially my father. Actually, it's very simple. We had a pretty mediocre affair several years ago, but in the course of it I found out how good Vic was at managing my life. I came into some money when I was twenty-one, so I hired Vic as my personal assistant. I pay him a lot of money, and he's well worth it."

  He sure was. He was back before she could say another word.

  He walked over to me and handed me a plain white envelope. The letter seemed sizable. FBI agents are very good at writing coherent, detailed reports. That would have come in handy if we'd ever gotten around to starting that private-investigations outfit we'd talked about so many times.

  Vic went over and sat back down.

  "We're staying in Cedar Rapids," she said. "The Collins Plaza."

  "I'll call you tomorrow."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  She stood up. So did Vic.

  She came over and shook my hand and said, "Mike said you were one of the best trackers he'd ever known. He said you could find practically anybody."

  "I used to pay him to say that."

  She smiled. "You don't take compliments very well, do you?"

  "No," I said, "I guess I don't."

  I walked them out to the Caddy and stood in the drive as they pulled away, their headlights sweeping over me as Vic turned toward Cedar Rapids thirty-five miles away.

  By now it was full night, and my friend the barn owl was calling out from his crook at the top of the hardwood down by the creek.

  It was a lonely sound, a perfect complement to the look in Nora Conners's eyes.

  I went back inside, fed the cats, fed myself, opened another beer, and started in on Mike Peary's letter.

  Dear Nora,

  I'm mailing this to you on the night before I go back to New Hope, Iowa, and see which of my three suspects falls into the trap I set. More about this later.

  I wanted to review everything with you in case something should happen to me and you need corroboration for the county attorney when you finally turn everything over to him and he in turn brings in the police. I think you're right. From what I know of Haldeman, he's a good and honest public official and I think he'll resist your father's interference.

  So, for the record, here's my official statement:

  On October 9, 1992, I, Michael John Peary, was hired by Nora Conners to find the murderer of her twelve-year-old daughter Maryanne. She had been killed eight years earlier, in Illinois. No arrests had ever been made. Local police led Nora to believe that no serious suspects had ever been turned up in their investigation. Recent murders here in Iowa suggested that Maryanne's murderer may have left Illinois and come to Iowa.

  I was hired because my last five years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation were largely spent working out of the FBI Academy. I helped local law-enforcement agencies do "profiling" of killers, which simply means looking for patterns in crimes and speculating on the nature and characteristics of the offender. This kind of profiling led to the FBI's capture of several infamous serial killers.

  I took early retirement because I'd always wanted to write suspense novels and I figured that age 53 was not too early to start.

  The novel wasn't going so well when Nora Conners showed up at my apartment in Ames, Iowa, that afternoon. She told me about Maryanne and about her own determination to find the killer.

  She said that, given my background, and given the fact that this was the only case I'd be working on, I would likely do a better job than the police had. She offered me a generous amount of money to lead her search.

  The first sixty days were spent at various computers. The circumstances of Maryanne's murder suggested that she had possibly met up with a serial killer. I say "suggested." I was operating on hunch and instinct as much as anything. There was always the possibility that a local child molester had grabbed her, become panic-stricken, and killed her, as frequently happens.

  I started by going through the national computer files searching for all similar cases. When I had those categorized, I subcategorized them again by—(a) similarities, (b) differences.

  I found that four murders with a heavy percentage of similarities had taken place in Iowa over the past three years.

  1. Victims were all girls 12-14 years of age.

  2. The victims' necks had been broken.

  3. The victims' bodies were severely mutilated with some weapon on the order of a butcher knife.

  4. The victims' genitalia were cut up and pieces of it placed on their lips.

  During the ensuing seven months, I studied the case history of each girl, still looking for similarities.

  Because serial killers sometimes tend to murder the same "type" over again—girls with blonde hair, black girls, crippled girls, etc.—I wanted to find one special element that the girls had in common.

  One was Jewish, one was Catholic, one was Methodist, one belonged to no particular church. One was involved in sports, one was involved in theater, one was starting her own rock band, one collected dolls. None of them had ever seen the same doctor, dentist, hairdresser. Two wore glasses, two did not. One had been a Dairy Princess contestant, three had not. Three had enjoyed playing video games, one had not.

  Then I started making notes on various trips the girls had made over their lives and that was how I learned about New Hope, Iowa.

  For different reasons, each girl had visited New Hope shortly before her death.

  MONICA KOSTNER had visited there 1-6-90 on an excursion to the Midwestern Pioneer Museum there. She was accompanied by her mother.

  SUSAN DOUGHERTY had visited there 11-17-91 to see her aunt, a Mrs. Charles DeWitt. She was accompanied by her father.

  MICHELE ROYCE had visited there 7-3-92 and again 8-16-92 to see her grandfather who was dying of throat cancer. She was accompanied by b
oth her parents.

  BETTY NOLAN had visited there 8-8-92 to stay overnight with a former classmate, Donna Simpson, who had recently moved there with her parents. Betty took a Greyhound bus from Marion, Iowa, to New Hope. She was unaccompanied both up and back.

  After compiling all this data, I spent the next three weeks in New Hope, Iowa looking for a man who fit my profile:

  He sounds very organized to me and so I'd say that he is in all likelihood a firstborn son. His father's work would be stable. But his parental discipline has always been unstable and inconsistent. He has an average or above-average intelligence, but he usually works at jobs below his ability. The FBI profile would show that he'd probably be fascinated with news coverage about himself—his "secret other self"—and might keep a scrapbook of clippings or even a photo album showing his mutilated victims. He is probably between 20 and 40 years of age.

  There is a lot more, of course, which I'll share with you at a later date.

  During the course of my investigation in New Hope, Iowa, I met three men who qualify as serious suspects per the profile. They are:

  CAL ROBERTS, 36, Caucasian, married, no children. Heavy travel schedule part of his "mission" for the True Light Church, a TV ministry that is always trying to line up new cable outlets. Roberts travels a six-state area calling on local cable companies.

  RICHARD McNALLY, 38, Caucasian, father of one daughter. Sells gourmet honey for local beekeeper. Travels the Midwest mostly talking to upscale restaurants. Has been in Des Moines many times.

  SAMUEL LODGE, age 38, Caucasian, married, no children. Used to teach art at the U of Iowa. Now gives private lessons and helps his wife run antique shop. Lectures throughout the Midwest.