Nick turned and made his way to the far side of the bank. He walked slowly around until he noticed a small opening in a curtain of shrubbery that lined the bank. He ducked under the limb of a white birch. When his foot caught on a vine, he looked down and saw freshly broken branches. Then he pushed aside a screen of small trees laced with spiderwebs. He stepped through. The trees and bushes whipped back into place, obscuring a new-mown field of rye behind the marsh.
On an elevated portion of ground he found the place of death. It was just a small, flat area by a fence where the grass was thick and soft. It reminded him of a primitive burial ground where people were sacrificed to uncertain gods.
The tiny blades of rye riffled in the wind as Fowler bent over, counting out the bloodstains that spread in patterns. Some of the grass had been pressed down.
He thought the patterns were different this time.
The edges of the grasses that carried the weight of the dried, reddish-brown substance were sometimes stuck together, fused by the blood that had been spilled, he guessed, two days before.
He looked up in the sky. He imagined the ceremony had occurred at night, when the sound of falling blood pelted the grass like a soft rain. As he shook his head to clear his racing thoughts, Nick Fowler worked his way around the extremity of the crude grasses bent under prints of shoes that must have determined this strange, primeval dance floor.
He knew, with all the nasty press he had gotten, he was bound to incur resistance from the department. Yet he also knew that one of the first rules of investigating was inclusiveness—it dictated that every piece of evidence be gathered and, when there was a question as to whether it actually constituted real evidence, to define it as such. He had to include a detailed report that he thought the killer was dancing with his victim, but he would confine the details to how the act functioned uniquely as associative evidence.
He couldn’t minimize the details, but he could cling to a kind of police jargon that wouldn’t threaten the brass. He also knew it was an important way he could prove the killer was a person strong enough to hold the weight of his victims as they were dying—but perhaps it wasn’t the only way to prove that.
Then he saw a knee impression on the hallowed ground.
21
WHEN CAPTAIN WEATHERS’S car barreled to a stop on the country road beside the marsh, Sergeant Marty Orloff was standing sheepishly by the sign, holding the tape measure on the metal upright.
“Come over here,” Weathers yelled to Marty. “I want to talk to you.”
Marty pointed to the tape and shrugged. Weathers’s face deepened its already burnished hue as he stomped determinedly over toward the policeman.
“You were on the kid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the fuck were you doing—beatin’ your meat?”
“No,” Marty said under his breath. “I was knocked unconscious with a blunt object and drugged. Sir.”
Weathers leaned over to look at the back of Marty’s head. “What’d they hit you with?”
“A baton . . . sir,” Marty said under his breath.
“Your own?”
Orloff nodded silently.
“The most basic fundamental, Orloff. Never leave your fucking window down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Weathers tramped his boots into the clumps of grass around the sign, shaking his head. “I oughta fire your ass. Parked in a vulnerable stakeout to begin with.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Yes. I’m sorry . . . Captain.”
“I don’t give a damn if you’re sorry. You’ll be really sorry if you pull any more shit with me. Now we have another dead kid on our hands. You think I don’t have men who wouldn’t love to be on this? Huh?”
“I promise I’ll make this up to you. I’ll question every student, every person who lives anywhere near here.”
Weathers grunted and sunk his bull neck into the leather collar of his denim jacket. “You’ll do what I tell you.”
“Yes.”
Weathers’s sharp eyes lifted over the marsh to a clearing on the other side of the trees. He could see Fowler’s blue windbreaker. He saw the flash of a camera aimed at the ground.
WEATHERS WORKED HIS way around the marsh on the far side of the curtain of trees. From a distance he could see Fowler’s blond hair blowing around in the wind. He was meticulously taking photographs of the grass, then stopping to take field notes. The captain’s boots were muddy and wet by the time he got within shouting distance of his lieutenant.
“Hey, Fowler, what have you got?”
Nick looked up and yelled into the wind. “Best thing I have is a knee impression in the ground here, ribbed cords, I’d say.” He started in the captain’s direction.
Weathers waved him back into place. “Stay put, I’ll come to you.”
Fowler continued talking into the gusty wind. “I’ve taken some macros of the impressions, several soil samples to compare with any trousers that might yield deposits. Plaster man’s on the way to cast it.”
By the time Weathers had made his way to the spot, his boots had sunk in over the lacing two times. He was puffing.
Fowler looked down, puzzled for a moment. Then he realized. “This little area must be the high ground—that’s why it’s not wet.”
Weathers shook hands. “Look—I want Marty off this detail and on that Ballard boy’s tail every minute of the day.”
“Good idea.”
Weathers looked down at his shoes. “Goddamnit.”
Fowler pointed to the impression. “Over here it’s dry. Place of death, Captain. See the blood?”
Weathers looked around. “Yeah.”
“Severe wounds, again to the neck, probably the same weapon; again the wound wrapped, this time with an undershirt, and the body was propped into the silt thirty-five feet from here in the marsh. I located the path he took. The body was nailed, dragged, then lifted slightly through the curtain of undergrowth over there, then hauled into the water.”
“What happened here?”
Fowler hesitated. “This time—go with me, Captain—this time, the stains are a little different. I think there’s some kind of code here.”
“In what?”
“The dance steps. Look.”
Weathers bent down and stared at the bloodstains. He stood up. “I’m warning you, no newspapers—you got it?”
“I’m going to have this entire area studied for saline activity, fibers, cloth fragments.”
“Look,” Weathers said, “I don’t need to know every time you go to the bathroom. I just want it taken care of.”
“I think the killer, or someone, was on his knees for part of the time. It’s hard to speculate why, but—”
“You gotta do better than that.”
“What?”
“The governor called me today.” He paused. “Do you have any idea what kind of pressure I’m under?”
“I know that you—”
“No, you don’t—but just the same, I’ll put it to you this way, Fowler. Maybe it isn’t exactly your fault when your men get clubbed on assignment, but it does reflect, okay?”
“I know.”
“It makes me wonder if I’ve got the right man on this case.”
“You have the right man, Allen.”
“The right man, Lieutenant, will give me a suspect in the next day or so, you understand? The right man will comb this county for the murderer instead of futzing around here in the make-believe ballroom.”
Fowler’s face turned crimson. “You’re out of touch, Captain.”
“What?”
“You want results, but you don’t care if they’re the right ones.”
“Lieutenant, I suggest you—”
“You think this guy is killing young boys so his methods can fall out of a textbook into our laps?” Weathers was taken aback. Fowler had raised his voice and now was staring, his blue eyes bright with anger.
W
eathers stared back. “These news stories make it look like we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“We don’t. We’re stymied. This killer is smart and is going to be hard as hell to catch. He’s just hitting his stride now—I can feel it. He wants to keep killing. And I certainly can’t do my job with you breathing down my—”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“If it makes you feel better, Captain.”
“What would make me feel better, Lieutenant, is less time spent on theory and more time on law enforcement.”
“Then why did you hire me? This is what I do. I get inside the killer’s head. I try to understand who he is.”
“I want a suspect. I’ll give you forty-eight hours.” Weathers glared at Fowler, turned, and padded back through the muck toward the other side of the marsh.
Fowler turned his attention back to the ground. He didn’t see Weathers halt on the far side of the marsh and forge a path through the sludge over to Marty, who was now standing on the bank, still holding the tape measure. He couldn’t have heard what the two men were saying, even if he had wanted to.
Maureen McCauley had just entered May Loon Kitchen, the Chinese restaurant out on the strip. Judy Bayard, the dispatcher, waved at her from a cloud of smoke at the end of the room. Judy had grown up with four brothers. With one leg thrust out into the aisle, she hunched over the table chewing gum like a truck driver in eye shadow.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, putting her gum in the ashtray. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Maureen said, sitting down. “This story’s so hot my editor thinks it has to go national. They’re going to take it away from me, Judy.”
“Have you heard the latest?”
“No,” Maureen said, adjusting herself into the cane chair. “What’s up?”
“Well, I usually work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the club, you know.” She smiled knowingly. “Got to keep this little body tight—all I own are tank tops, right? So . . .” She put out her cigarette, waved the smoke away. “It’s hot in here, right?”
“Yes. So? What happened?”
“Well, I’m like stuffing my leotards into my gym bag when the captain storms in. I hear him yelling at somebody on the phone in his office. Somethin’ ’bout this Fowler guy still using that dance crap on this murder too. Somethin’ like he’s fed up, he’s going to personally send the guy back to the Thousand Islands. In a salad. You know—crazy stuff.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“I don’t know. His wife.”
“He’s going to fire him?”
“I wouldn’t exactly shed a tear. Know what I’m saying?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, he said something about the Tribune—I don’t know what it was but he was pissed, so—”
A little Chinese man had shuffled up to the table, bowing slightly as he lifted his pad and pencil into the dim light. “Ready to order?”
Judy Bayard looked up. The hard lines of her eye makeup seemed to melt. Her eyes even crinkled. “Oh, we haven’t even looked. Just give us a minute. Please.”
Maureen nodded with approval, then smiling a little uneasily, she opened the menu.
HER CHICKEN WITH black bean sauce was still talking back to her as she drove up the winding country road toward Brookside Cottage. She stopped her blue Rambler a good two hundred yards up a hill, where the reflecting sun made the road look like the back of a snake. She stared down at the twisting cement sheath as it coiled around the marsh. She turned off the engine, put a mint in her mouth.
She could see several policemen combing the marsh area. From her crime reporting in California, she could tell the men were working the area in a grid search pattern. In a field beyond it, she could see a section cordoned off by the same boring yellow police line. There, by a long metal fence, she saw more men down on their knees, searching for an original thought.
She left her purse in the car but shoved her auto lens camera into her skirt pocket. As she approached the fence, she could see several technicians studying a section of grass with magnifying glasses. One man was placing something in a small test tube then into a black case; there were pillboxes clustered near his hands.
One man was surrounded by heavy manila envelopes, equipped with lock seals. He was writing furiously on a form that was glaring back at him in the afternoon light; Maureen knew this officer was launching a piece of evidence on the odyssey it makes toward the courtroom. She remembered the phrase “chain of custody” as she saw yet another man working with a mold of plaster of Paris.
One of the policemen looked up at her suspiciously when she leaned over the fence, looking over the yellow tape. His name was Robby Cole.
“Ow,” she said, bumping her knee against a galvanized steel post.
“No one’s allowed on the crime scene, ma’am. Sorry.” The man had dark features, a widow’s peak at his hairline.
“What crime?” she said.
“I’m sorry. We can’t discuss that.”
Maureen smiled. “I guess you can’t stop me from standing on my cousin’s own land, now can you?”
“Just stay on that side of the fence please,” Sergeant Cole said wearily. “Collecting evidence here.”
From where Maureen was standing, the sun was laid out at an angle across the grass; she could see small spots that shifted slightly when a breeze came up. She wondered what the spots were.
“You know, you look like my old boyfriend. What’s your name?” Her dress rode up her thigh slightly as she leaned over the fence with her camera. Robby Cole looked at her now. She focused the lens on the spots in the light and pressed the shutter. “Mind if I take your picture?”
The policeman heard the click, sighed, and shook his head. Two other men were amused by this. They looked at Maureen. The dark tops of her panty hose were just beginning to peek from under her skirt as she leaned again, focusing on the grass just behind the policeman’s hair. She clicked the shutter again. This time the policeman stood up. “Now listen, I told you—”
Another snap. Maureen was backing away, now snapping the angry policeman as he waved his arms moving toward the fence. She turned and walked down the path, smiling. That was one way to get a man’s attention. Behind her, Sergeant Cole was staring at the way she walked. He watched her until she was out of sight.
“Nice,” he said to himself. “Very nice.”
An hour and a half later, in the darkroom at the newspaper, Maureen glanced down at the luminous dial of her watch, slipped the paper from under the enlarger, and plopped it in the solution.
She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, lifting the paper gently from one pan to the next, as it finally curled in the setting solution. After she had checked her time again, she pulled the last print out. This time she had adjusted the brightness to compensate for the aperture setting on her camera. The spots on the grass were lit up in patterns that made her mind wander.
Something was going through her head as she hung the wet developing paper on a line with clothespins. It was a song. She couldn’t remember the name of it, but it made her sad. She flicked on the light.
She started thinking about her senior prom from high school. The guys in Bakersfield all wore their hair greased up on the sides like the fenders of a Jaguar. They rolled their smokes up under the short sleeves of their white T-shirts—part of a uniform that included black chinos, white socks, those pointed black shoes with zippers or ties on the side—shined so you could see them in the dark.
She couldn’t remember how long she had been staring at the L-shaped patterns of the spots before she heard the rhythm in her head. Her hands were drawn across her chest defensively as she hugged the outsides of her elbows.
Slow-slow-quick-quick-slow. She unclasped her hands when she realized her knuckles were white. She was one of those girls who could never follow. Her tragic flaw, she thought.
She had been stood up at her senior prom. It had a th
irties theme, she recalled. She had spent most of the night with her hair pinned down like a flapper, wearing a pillowcase, trying to teach some greaser how to dance. Seeing a redneck attempt the Charleston is one of those sights that can stay with you for a lifetime. She remembered how, toward the end of the night, they played nothing but slow music.
Slow-slow-quick-quick.
The greaser never got it. He just wanted to hang on her and feel the flesh along the sides of her ribs, of which she felt there was a little too much. On the last dance, he had tried to reach up and feel her breast. She had grabbed his hand and tucked it behind her back.
Maureen McCauley shook her head, wishing, now standing there alone in the small room, that she had let him touch her. She wished a lot of things had gone differently. She looked at the spots again. Slow-slow-quick now.
She knew she had her story.
22
THE WHITE SHEET clapped like a sail. Fowler thought of the regattas he had seen as a boy. When he had taken sailing lessons with his dad those summers on Lake Erie, he remembered how, coming about in a stiff wind, the jib cracked like a rifle shot.
This sound was different. Edwin R. Koenig had whisked the sheet all the way to the ankles of Finkelstein’s body. He brushed the boy’s red hair back as if a gesture of deference would mute the grisly sight. He began to speak very softly.
“The cherry-pink discoloration of skin you see here is caused by the accumulation of reduced hemoglobin in the capillaries as it migrates under the effect of gravity. Normally it has a purplish cast, but here the body was cooled rapidly in the waters of the marsh.”
“Cause of death?”
“This time we have a slightly different case, Lieutenant.” His gloved fingers traced the edges of the gash in the neck.
Kiss Them Goodbye Page 11