Distemper

by Beth Saulnier

  Cody sighed and draped his arm around my waist. “He didn’t. He was probably just raving. He knew there’d be another murder sooner or later, and whenever it happened he’d just factor that into his next threat.”

  “What a whacko.”

  “Alex, I’d deny this in a court of law, but I think he’s a genuine lunatic.”

  “He’s not the only one in town.”

  Cody’s arm tightened. “You know, just because Vandebrandt’s not our guy doesn’t mean you should go taking any stupid chances. There’s still some nut out there killing women. I don’t want you going out alone at night—not to walk the dog, not for anything. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Jesus, Cody, I feel like I promise you the same thing every fifteen minutes. But okay, I promise I won’t go out alone at night. You don’t have to convince me. I’ve seen this guy’s work myself, you know.”

  “I know. We’ve both seen enough to choke on.”

  There was a catch in his voice that made me think the past forty-eight hours had gotten to him more than he was letting on. I rolled on my side to face him nose to nose. “Did you have to break it to Lynn Smith’s boyfriend?”

  “Her father and stepmother out in Groton. They were the next of kin.”

  “Was it awful?”

  “Very.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t feel like talking about the case at all, do you?”

  “Not one damn bit.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You know, Alex, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said after a minute. “That painting’s not real, is it? It’s a copy, right?”

  He gazed up at the oil painting that takes up an entire wall of my bedroom. It depicts a woman in the fragile light of an empty apartment, and it’s just about the loneliest thing you can imagine. It’s also the first thing I see when I wake up every morning, which is probably not healthy.

  “No, it’s real.”

  He stared at me, then back at the painting. “It’s a Hopper, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He gave a low whistle. “It must be worth a fortune.”

  “Probably. It was a gift.”

  “From who?”

  “I got it after Adam died. Call it a consolation prize. Or maybe the spoils of war.”

  “Shouldn’t it be in a museum or something?”

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t feel like talking about it, do you?”

  “Not one damn bit.”

  “Well, fair enough then.”

  “Do you want a back rub?”

  “What?”

  “A back rub? You’ve heard of it?”

  “Yeah, but it’s been a while since one’s been offered.”

  “Roll over.”

  “You know, you don’t have to give me a back rub just to get me to shut up about the painting.”

  “I know. I just sort of feel like it.”

  “Then I’d be a fool to resist.”

  He turned over on his stomach and I produced my various massage aids. I’m not much of a hippie, but I still live in a town where you can’t swing a dead cat around your head without hitting an aromatherapist, so I’ve collected my fair share of oils and unguents. Cody snickered as I lit my lavender relaxation candle, but he shut up once he realized the thing smelled pretty good. I poured some orange-scented massage oil on his back and dug in. His muscles were tight, but considering the pleasant state of his torso, it wasn’t what you’d call work.

  “Strong hands.”

  “All that typing.”

  “Feels good.”

  “Just relax.”

  “Where’d you learn this?”

  “There’s a massage school in Gabriel. I did a feature story on it once. Picked up a few pointers.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Be quiet.”

  I worked on his back for twenty minutes until the muscles finally felt pliant and his breathing slowed to what I thought was sleep. But when I went to pull the sheet over him he gave a little protesting groan and muttered something that sounded like “Don’t stop.”

  “You want me to keep going?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then roll over on your back.” He opened one eye. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to try and take advantage of you when you’re all sleepy.”

  “Baby,” he mumbled as he turned over, “you can do any damn thing you want.”

  He lay there with his eyes closed, his breathing mixing with the dogs’ gentle wheezing from the other end of the bed. And as I rubbed his chest and stomach in the candlelight, it hit me that this was one of those quintessentially intimate moments—the kind you remember later, when the relationship is over and you’ve gone your separate ways and you’re looking back at the things you miss most.

  Call me a cynic, but I’ve never had what you’d call a long-term romance, and regardless of where Cody’s dog was sleeping, I had no illusion that our little cop-reporter interlude was going to be any different. I knew it was just a matter of time until it ended, and that in the long run the whole thing was probably going to be counted in weeks rather than months, and although I should have been used to the law of the jungle by now the thought of sleeping alone again made me want to cry.

  So to avoid thinking about it, I let my hands wander lower. Cody had said I could do anything I wanted to him, and it seemed a shame to let such an offer go to waste.

  22

  AS GORDON HAS POINTED OUT MORE THAN ONCE, HOME delivery of the Times is not available in Gabriel. You can, in fact, get the Times delivered in far-flung metro areas like Chicago and San Francisco, but in a little city five hours north of Manhattan you are expected to brave the elements and get your own damn paper. For the rest of us, it’s business as usual. For Gordon, it was a daily reminder that his life had no meaning.

  On Wednesday morning, however, the Times showed up on my doorstep in the hands of one very tall and very, very annoyed reporter. “Read this now,” Mad growled as he came in the front door, “and kill me later.” Then he went into the kitchen to make coffee.

  I unfolded the paper and scanned the front page. Nothing seemed particularly relevant, so I jumped to the Metro section. There I found Gordon’s byline, under the headline FEAR IN A COLLEGE TOWN and the subhead AS FOURTH BODY IS FOUND, SEARCH FOR GABRIEL KILLER INTENSIFIES. “Man, why are their headlines always so lame?”

  Mad stuck his head out of the kitchen. “It’s their style.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s their style to have no style.”

  “Oh.” He disappeared again. “ ‘Some people are calling him the Canine Killer,’ “ I read aloud. “What the hell is this?”

  “Just read it,” Mad yelled from the other room.

  “ ‘Some people are calling him the Canine Killer. For four months, residents and students in this upstate college town, home to prestigious Benson University, have retreated behind locked doors as a serial killer preys on young women.’ Hey, Mad?”

  “What?”

  “When did Gordon have a lobotomy?”

  “Just read the damn thing, will you?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Bernier…”

  “Oh, all right. Where was I? Serial killer, yadda yadda… Okay. ‘Two days ago, as the fourth body was found in the dugout of a campus baseball diamond, a pattern began to emerge that may provide what police sources call their first break in the case: at least two, and possibly more, of the victims were apparently walking their dogs at night when the abductions occurred.’ Man, that sentence sucks. ‘Although the bodies of both women were meticulously displayed in public places, their dogs have not been found.’ So Lynn Smith had a dog?”

  Mad came in from the kitchen and flopped into an armchair. “Name’s Harley. As in the motorcycle.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I
t’s in Band’s goddamn fucking story.”

  “So why isn’t it in ours?”

  “Because I’m an idiot.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “I need some coffee first.”

  “Speak now.”

  “Argh… Okay, here’s the thing. I went out there and got my quotes from the grieving boyfriend, and he even mentioned the goddamn dog was gone, but I never put two and two together.”

  “Mad…”

  “Come on, Bernier, you know I’m no good at this touchy-feelie-girlie shit. That’s why I write science stories—no people in ‘em. What was Bill thinking sending me out to get color in the first place? He knows I suck at it. You’re the sob sister.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why he sent me up to interview the girls at the dining hall. He probably never thought the fianc?ould talk in the first place, so it didn’t matter who went.”

  “And now Gordon ‘The Weasel’ Band breaks this dog thing in the fucking Times. Makes me want to snap his neck.”

  “Is your manhood hurting?”

  “You bet.”

  “So what’s his scoop? And don’t tell me to read the story. I can’t bear it.”

  “Pretty much what you got out of the lead. Smith and C.A. were both walking their dogs when they disappeared. The cops think there’s a connection.”

  “They say that on the record?” I fumbled for the paper.

  “You kidding? Unnamed sources only.”

  “Gordon must still have some contacts in the department.”

  “Looks like it. Didn’t Cody say something to you about the dog thing?”

  “No. Wait. Come to think of it, he did make me promise not to go walking the dog alone at night.”

  “So what the hell do you make of all this?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, now that Vandebrandt’s out of it, all that’s left is the physical evidence. And it’s all pointing in one very fucked-up direction.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning at least two of the women were abducted while they were walking their dogs. The dogs are nowhere to be found. The women were all strangled with a goddamn dog collar, for Chrissake. Maybe they were even dragged around on their hands and knees…”

  “Like a dog.”

  “That’s what I was thinking before. Then Vandebrandt’s little reign of terror kind of got me off track.”

  “What does your boyfriend think?”

  “He’s not my… Oh, screw it. He doesn’t seem to want to say a whole lot. Well, sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. There’s kind of a weird vibe about it, and I’m still not sure what the rules are. Anyway, we didn’t spend a lot of time last night talking about the case.”

  “Bernier, you hot mama…”

  “Shut up.”

  “Only if you give me coffee.”

  We went into the kitchen, and Mad did his patented cup-shuffling trick under the still-dripping coffeemaker. We were out of milk, so I got some of Emma’s beloved heavy cream out of the fridge. After informing me how many grams of fat were lurking within, Mad poured an inch of it into his mug.

  “You ever go back and bang those twins?” I asked as we sat side by side on the kitchen counter.

  “A gentleman doesn’t tell tales.”

  “Oh. You ever go back and bang those twins?”

  “Not as such.”

  “Just a social call, eh? How was it?”

  “Trippy.”

  “Literally?”

  “Yeah. The chicks had some decent shit. Turned out to be kind of uptight, though.”

  “You mean they wouldn’t give you a tumble? How refreshing.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You going back for another try?”

  “Nah.”

  “How come?” He didn’t answer, but his quick glance toward Emma’s room told me plenty. “You in danger of becoming a one-woman man?”

  “Come on, Bernier, you know me better than that.”

  “Maybe Emma has you enslaved with her wild English ways.”

  “This conversation is so over.”

  “You want some breakfast?”

  “No time. We have to get out of here.”

  “Where are we going besides work?”

  “To do something to stave off the shit storm we’re getting when Bill sees the Times.”

  “You mean you want to get your manhood back?”

  “You are so much less clever than you think you are.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Where do you think we’re going?”

  “Syracuse?”

  “Syracuse.”

  “Do we get to go to the mall to interview Patricia Marx’s buddies at the Gap?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  “What are you so happy about?”

  “It’s not every day I get to shop in the line of duty.”

  We drove up to Syracuse in my Encore, stopping only for bagel-and-coffee provisions on the road. The drive takes about an hour, but it always seems longer with Mad reminding me every few miles that my car is designed for “wimpy little frogs,” not a full-grown man such as himself, and it seems even longer than that when Mad does this with a mouth full of whole-wheat bagel.

  The Carousel Mall is on the other side of downtown Syracuse, just off Route 81. It rises like a glass fairyland on the outskirts of the city, three stories of conspicuous consumption with (yes) an actual vintage carousel in the middle. The merry-go-round sits and spins at the end of the food court, so you can hear the oompah-oompah music while you’re eating your fries, and the arrangement would seem quite wholesome if only the carousel weren’t located outside the front door to Hooters.

  We got to the mall just as it was opening. Mad—in an ignorance born of not enough estrogen—suggested that we refer to one of the kiosks, whereupon I explained that just as Sir Richard Francis Burton needed no map to explore the Nile, no self-respecting woman needs anything more than instinct to find her way around a mall. He looked at the map anyway.

  The store was on the second floor. When we got there, a girl was just raising the front gate, as though to bust a storeful of T-shirts and jeans out of prison. She checked us both out as we walked in, sizing up our spending habits and probably realizing with a glance that (a) there was no hope I was ever going to learn to accessorize and (b) Mad’s khakis were older than she was.

  “Hi,” I said when she approached. “I wonder if maybe you could help us.”

  “Sure,” she said. “What are you looking for? You know, we’ve got a really good sale on sweater sets…”

  “We’re not shopping…” Mad started.

  “Yes we are,” I interjected, giving Mad a look that meant back off, you’re on my turf. “We’re absolutely shopping. And I could totally use another sweater set.”

  We perused tables of tops folded so neatly you could get a paper cut off the corners. I pawed through various shades of moss and eggplant and ecru and indigo, chose a few likely candidates, and repaired to the dressing room while Mad stayed behind to pray for his own death. After a half hour of careful reflection, I bought a little deep-blue cotton knit tank top with straps thick enough to cover my bra (if just barely), plus a matching hooded warm-up jacket that was supposed to be that season’s answer to a sweater for the under-sixteen set. I was admiring myself in the mirror, wondering if I was going to have to stop wearing pigtails when I turned forty, when Mad came storming back.

  “You’re going to pay for this, Bernier.”

  “I’m giving you valuable experience at being a harried husband. You ought to thank me.”

  “Can we start asking questions? Or are you going to buy some pants now?”

  “No, you are.”

  “I am not.”

  “Come on, Mad. We’re greasing the wheels.”

  “Do you have any idea how much men hate this shit?”

  “Think of it as research. Besides, it would do my heart good to see those pants of yours go to th
e Salvation Army.”

  I dragged him over to the racks of khakis, and the salesgirl looked on with the contentment of someone who was having her job done for her, and well. Five minutes later, I had Mad sequestered in a dressing room with the fourteen pairs of pants he’d picked out, the clerk having volunteered to overlook the six-item limit.

  “He must really like shopping,” she said as we loitered by the sales racks at the back of the store.

  “Nah, I think he’s just going into sensory overload. He didn’t know there were so many shades of tan.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?” she asked. I had a feeling I knew what answer she was hoping for.

  “Mad? Oh, God, no, we just work together.”

  “Oh, yeah, where?”

  “We’re reporters down at the Gabriel Monitor.”

  “Hey, didn’t one of you guys call up here after Patsy…”

  “That’s right. Did you know her?”

  “Know her? She was my roommate.”

  Bingo. “Oh, I’m really sorry. It must be awful for you.”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “Yes, I can.” She stared at me with big open eyes, and I decided to tell her the whole truth. “The same person who killed Patsy… He killed one of my roommates too. Her name was C.A.”

  “Oh, God. That’s such a weird coincidence, that we should run into each other in the stupid Gap.” There was a chair just outside the hall of dressing rooms, and she sank into it as though it were all too much to think about standing up. “But maybe it isn’t a coincidence, is it? That you’re here, I mean.”

  The girl was no dummy. She was smart, and she was friendly, and I couldn’t think of a reason to dodge her. “No. We came up here hoping to talk to some of Patsy’s friends.”

  Her delicate brow furrowed in confusion. “And go shopping?”

  “Always.”

  She smiled a little. “Yeah, me too. Shopping makes me feel good.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kim.”’

  “Kim Williams?” She nodded. “I’m the one who talked to you on the phone. My name’s Alex Bernier.”

  She chewed on my name for a minute. “I read about you in the paper. You found Patsy’s body, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That must have been pretty awful too.”