Gray Matter

by Shirley Kennett

  She thought she knew just how to approach the situation. She tried to put some silkiness into her voice, but found herself out of practice.

  “I’d like to get your input on something,” she said. “I’m trying to decide what would be the best use of my time on this investigation. I could come with you while you do in-depth interviews with Burton’s friends and neighbors. My psychology training would add some insights. On the other hand, the computer aspect of CHIP should be up and running as soon as possible, since this is a pilot program. That means I should stay in my office and work on the computer for the next, oh, three or four days. Do you think you could handle the field interviews by yourself?”

  PJ was surprised to see a flash of anger on Schultz’s face.

  “Doc, I’m not as dumb as you think I am, or even as dumb as I look,” he said. “I know who’s boss here because Wall whipped my ass about it. I don’t need any fine speech or shrink mumbo-jumbo, and I don’t want to be patronized. We’re going to work together, we’ve got to talk straight to each other. Don’t give me any of this phony ‘get my input’ crap.”

  PJ folded her hands on her desk. She realized that she had been deliberately manipulative. It wasn’t like her. Her morning with Thomas had been stressful, then Wall had pounced. The temptation to spread her bad attitude around had been irresistible, and Schultz was paying the price. There was only one thing to do: apologize.

  “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “All right then, where do we go from here?”

  “In plain English, Howard is bugging me for a dog and pony show on the computer by Friday. The only way I can have anything is for you to carry the entire field investigation by yourself until then.”

  Schultz grinned. PJ thought he looked a little like a maniacal elf when he did that. It must have been the way his cheeks rounded up and reddened.

  “Now that I can understand,” he said. “You just plant your butt here and tap your keys or flap your floppies or whatever it is that you do, and I’ll go track down who saw what at Burton’s place. Suits me just fine. Besides, I’ve got help coming on board, two officers who are studying for their exams to make detective. That looks like it’s going to be it: the two of us and the two of them. I guess Lieutenant Wall figures the computer means we can put fewer warm bodies on this job, and less experienced ones, too.”

  “I know about that. Howard told me this morning, in between making it clear that I won’t get any computer analysts anytime soon, and that I’d better have something to show by Friday all by my lonesome. I’ll be able to help out more as soon as I make some progress on this computer stuff. I’m not abandoning you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m a big boy. You don’t have to aim my dick so I can piss.”

  “How…colorful. I can assure you, Detective, that if I were to aim a man’s dick, it wouldn’t be so that he could urinate.”

  “Why, Doc,” Schultz said with a feigned look of shock on his face, “I didn’t know you cared.”

  Schultz left the office feeling good. Without any maneuvering on his part, it looked like he was going to get exactly what he wanted. The shrink and the computer were going their way, and he was going his. He had been rehearsing various scenarios leading to that end, and now it was dumped in his lap, at least for the rest of the week. With any luck, that could be all the time he needed.

  When Schultz held the report of the blood analysis in his hands, he had a feeling he couldn’t explain—wouldn’t even try—to anyone else. It was as though a thin shining thread ran from his hands out into the darkness, a shimmering cord that connected him to the killer. He would feel his way along the thread and at the other end he would confront a monster. He had gotten the same feeling once before, the only other time in his life he had worked a series of murders. That time, it had been a psychopath who burned the sex organs from young boys with a welding torch before crucifying them. Schultz had been on the case from the beginning, and he was there when the creep was hauled off and when the judge banged the gavel after reading the death sentence.

  The other end of this thread was indistinct, fuzzy, almost as if it had multiple terminations. Could it be a group of wackos at work? Schultz shuddered. One thing he knew was that this killer would take more victims, and soon. He wondered how many more graphic photos would be taped to the blackboard in PJ’s office before he worked his way to the end of the thread.

  Crime studies showed that serial killers tended to kill in batches, usually of three victims, then mysteriously disappear, only to surface weeks or months or years later in a new locality. Then again, the patterns were loose, and whenever law enforcement officers tried to predict behavior, the results were inconclusive. These killers were people who by their very nature didn’t fit the mold, who couldn’t be grouped with the rest of humanity. The ones who were caught were usually caught because of an arrogant mistake. There was no telling how many acted out their fantasies for a lifetime and went to their own graves leaving behind a secret cache of victims far more ponderous than Jacob Marley’s ghostly chains.

  Schultz had other reasons for feeling good. When he got home last night around eight pm he found a note from his wife saying that her weekly card group had changed from Wednesday to Tuesday nights, so she wouldn’t be home until after midnight and could he please take out the trash before he went to bed. He went out and got himself a hot meatball sandwich for dinner, with a bag of BBQ chips and a two-liter bottle of regular Coke replete with sugar and caffeine. He ate in the kitchen while reading the paper—a luxury, since Julia didn’t like him to read at the table. He carefully bagged all the trash and took it out to the curb for pickup. Then Schultz took a long, hot shower, propped himself up on the bed with pillows, and mentally summoned Casey, the woman with the breathy voice from Vehicles. She was beautiful, adventurous, and remarkably sensitive to the time and attention needed to bring a man in his fifties to orgasm three times.

  On top of all that, his arthritis wasn’t bothering him much today.

  He tucked a notebook and a pen in his shirt pocket. Whistling, he hit the road in his orange Pacer, one hand dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the stick shift and the other tightly gripping the steering wheel as the car crabbed down the street.

  CHAPTER 8

  PAULEY MAC WAITED PATIENTLY in the dark in his 1991 red Dodge pickup. It was something at which he excelled, this waiting business. Dog could never have put up with it. In fact, the last time Dog had waited in the pickup, he had tested his teeth on the steering wheel. A disgusted Pauley Mac had covered it with one of those leather sheaths that laced up.

  The truck was parked in an alley which gave Pauley Mac a view of the stage entrance of Powell Symphony Hall. Inside there was a performance going on, a ballet Pauley Mac did not know the name of and did not care about. The focus of his attention was the guest performer, a man named Ilya Vanitzky, whose picture he had seen in the paper. He was handsome, blonde, lithe, and skilled in an area of the arts yet untapped by Pauley Mac. The last item was the one that interested him. Pauley Mac was not concerned with the appearance of his victims, their charm or lack of, or their sex. He was on a shopping trip to acquire a set of skills, and their packaging was inconsequential to him as the labels on soup cans.

  The newspaper article said that Vanitzky was known worldwide for his aerial abilities, leaps of uncommon height and grace. Pauley Mac considered it a stroke of luck that Vanitzky’s performance schedule brought him to St. Louis during this particular killing cycle. He pictured himself sailing through the air, cartoonishly suspended at the top of a leap, given a special dispensation by the force of gravity.

  My son, the human Mexican jumping bean, Pa said derisively in Pauley Mac’s head. Couldn’t do jack-shit as a real man, wants to be some kind of faggot toe-twiddling dancer.

  Dog growled, and Pauley Mac complacently stepped aside as Dog put Pa back in his place, hounding him and snapping until Pa retreated.

  Pauley Mac wanted to
try something just a little different, something audacious, this time. He had gone to Powell Symphony Hall a couple of days ago, with his janitor uniform and props—a mop and a rolling bucket filled with dirty suds. He knew he was invisible dressed that way; busy performers rushing this way and that to rehearsals just didn’t notice him, or anyone who looked like him. It was nothing personal. It never was.

  He had been searching for a special place, a place where Dog could do his self-portrait quietly but within the ambiance of Powell Symphony Hall, which was as grand a place as he had ever seen. Eventually he found it, as he knew he would: a deserted dressing room at the end of a hallway. The door was unlocked, and inside there was a marvelous old style makeup table, with a mirror bordered on three sides by bare round light bulbs. He cleaned the mirror and wiped each of the bulbs before flipping the switch. Only a couple of the bulbs were burned out; the rest gave a marvelous light, just right for detail work. There was only one problem. Vanitzky would have to remain unconscious throughout. The walls seemed thin, and Pauley Mac did not want to risk any screams being heard in the more populated areas of the Hall. Dog wouldn’t be able to fully enjoy the carving process.

  A small price to pay, in a life full of terrible accommodations.

  Getting Vanitzky into the empty dressing room was a puzzle Pauley Mac worked on for a couple of days. For the last two nights, he observed Vanitzky leaving by the very same stage door he now watched from the dark cave of the pickup’s interior. Each time, the performer was met by a tall black-haired woman about twenty-five years old, who clung possessively to his arm and guided him to her car parked in a nearby lot. The two went back to his hotel, undoubtedly for more than a drink and small talk, and she left about two hours later.

  Finally he settled on a plan. When the woman walked to the door, he would sneak up behind her, knock her out, and remove some article of her clothing, probably her underpants. Then he would meet Vanitzky at the door, make up some story that his woman had a pleasant surprise for him, wave the underpants close enough so that Vanitzky could pick up her juice smell, and tell him that he should wait in a certain out-of-the-way room for her.

  You wouldn’t want to miss this, no sir, he would say. The door’s unlocked, and inside you’ll see a mirror, and in the mirror—well that’s part of the surprise.

  Headlights in the alley behind him brought him out of his fantasy. It could be a police car, and Pauley Mac had to be careful. He had all of his things with him tonight, all of the special things he needed to improve himself, resting on the passenger seat next to him. It wouldn’t be good to be stopped by the police, especially hanging around in an alley where he had no plausible reason to be. He started the pickup and rolled slowly ahead. A sudden inspiration hit, and he rolled down the window and aimed the White Castle bag that contained the remnants of his dinner in the direction of an open dumpster. The cops, if it was a cop car behind him, would think that he was just a night worker on the way to his janitor job or wherever who had been having a bite to eat before starting work. An uncharacteristically lucky toss, the bag hit the lid of the dumpster and bounced in. Pauley Mac stuck his arm out the window and raised two fingers for the two-point shot. One of his victims—he really did prefer the term guest—in a previous cycle was a college basketball player named Leonard Wolper.

  Thanks, Lennie, you really came through for me that time, he thought.

  There was no response. Lennie was kind of a sulker; in fact, he hadn’t said a word since joining the assembly of voices in Pauley Mac’s head.

  Rolling up his window, Pauley Mac kept right on going out of the alley and made a right turn on Grand Avenue. The car behind him, which he could see clearly now under the street lights, was a police car. It turned left. Pauley Mac was acutely aware of the pickup’s license plates, which spelled out BAD-DOG. It had been a delicious joke but an unconscionable moment of weakness when he got those plates. He hoped that the cops didn’t make the tenuous connection between his license plates and the dog carving on the body of the pianist. He needed freedom of movement, and he didn’t want to get rid of the pickup. As he drove home, he mulled over the idea of stealing a plate. But he had other things on his mind, more important things. It would be too dangerous to go back to the alley now and wait for the woman to come to the stage door. If he was caught in the alley again, the cops would remember that the pickup had been there earlier, and he couldn’t very well get out of it by throwing another fast food bag.

  This was already Friday evening. Tomorrow night was Vanitzky’s last performance in St. Louis. If Pauley Mac wanted those dazzling leaps for his own, and he did, then it had to be tomorrow night.

  Or tonight, at Vanitzky’s hotel. Pauley Mac smiled. Time for Plan B. He only had to wait a couple of hours until the woman, with Vanitzky’s come sliding down her thighs, left the hotel. He knew a lot of ways of getting into a hotel room. He had once been a room service waiter, studying hotel guests as he delivered covered trays. He would later imagine them feasting, gulping down the hot entrees in the privacy of their rooms, eating in the uninhibited manner of people who knew they weren’t being watched, wiping their greasy hands and lips on the pristine napkins he folded into decorative shapes that only he could appreciate.

  He flipped on the radio, and let Dog howl along with Elvis.

  CHAPTER 9

  PJ TOOK A BITE of a doughnut and slurped some coffee that she had reheated in the microwave down the hall. It was too hot, and she knew right away that she had burned the tip of her tongue. It was late Friday evening, and tomorrow was going to be a busy day. She and Thomas were moving into the house she had rented. In one whirlwind shopping trip last night, she had purchased an entire houseful of modest furniture. She had brought very little with her from Denver: personal items, clothing, office things that were important to her like the Mickey Mouse clock, her computer, her collection of wildlife prints, and the odd assortment of prized possessions of a twelve-year-old. Her ex-husband Steven and his floozy Carla were living in her ex-house and sitting on her ex-furniture and having sex in her ex-bed, probably on her ex-favorite sheets. But that was in the past, she reminded herself. It had been her choice to leave Denver abruptly.

  Thank goodness for Mastercard. Rather than deplete her cash which she was keeping for emergencies, she had charged the furniture. Some adjustment was necessary now that she was going to have to get by on one income, and a reduced one at that. But she took comfort in the fact that millions of single parents had walked that path before her, and they had found the inner resources to make things work out.

  Her tongue still tingling from the hot coffee, she gazed in frustration at the computer screen. It was nearly eight pm. She had phoned Thomas at the motel hours ago and told him that she would be late. He had, miraculously, wanted to invite a friend over for the evening, a boy named Winston he had met at school. PJ hadn’t met Winston yet, but she had given her approval, keeping her fingers crossed that the kid wouldn’t turn out to be a junior terrorist or a smoker or something. Thomas had said that Winston liked computers and cats, so he couldn’t be all bad.

  She knew that Thomas still resented the move to St. Louis. He had not fit as seamlessly into school life as she had hoped, so the prospect of a friend for him was a bright spot. She hadn’t been able to get beyond his antagonism in more than a superficial way, although she admitted to herself that she hadn’t really been trying too hard this week. The time just didn’t seem right for either of them to make any breakthroughs in their difficult relationship. PJ felt that once she demonstrated her worth at work, she would have the emotional energy to deal with Thomas. It had become important to her to prove to Wall and Schultz that hiring her was a good decision.

  After the initial excitement of discovering the blood under the cat’s claws, she seemed to be running in place. It was painfully obvious that Schultz was not just ignoring her, but doing it gleefully. After putting in long hours in her tiny office, she made some progress profiling the killer and developin
g a sketchy VR for the crime scene. But her playbacks still seemed crude and jerky due to their hasty development, and didn’t seem to be shedding any light on the investigation.

  With parental thoughts buzzing around in the back of her mind, she tried to focus on the simulation she was putting together. The demonstration for Wall had gone well this afternoon, at least from his viewpoint. He was amazed because he had never seen VR techniques applied to crime scene analysis before, so anything would have looked good to him. But PJ knew the potential of what she was doing, and she knew how far she was from realizing it. For several years she had been interested in computerized simulations as an extension of her work in marketing research. She had developed, in her free time, an advanced program which allowed her to define a world by scanning in photos or drawings. The computer would then extrapolate the two-dimensional input into three-dimensional representations, first in black and white wireframe mode, and then in solid form, with colors and realistic shading. It was her own personally-developed software which she brought with her to this new job, and which had left Wall practically speechless, an accomplishment she cherished.

  Regardless of how convincing she could make the three-dimensional effect, it was still on a flat screen, and she couldn’t really get into the virtual world that way. She needed a crucial piece of hardware for the next step, a piece that the Department didn’t have. It wasn’t likely to be made available in the forseeable future, either. She needed a Head Mounted Display—HMD—to really take the user inside this virtual world.

  PJ was the type who hated to go home until she got to a natural stopping point in her work. She had been plugging away all evening, trying to resolve what she felt should be a simple issue. How did the indentations in the carpet in the murdered man’s apartment relate to the murder? She popped the rest of the doughnut—a double mouthful—in her mouth, and almost simultaneously heard a soft knocking on her door. She hastily swallowed, using the hot coffee to wash down the soggy lump. “Come in,” she said, licking icing from her fingers. “The door’s open.”