Gray Matter

by Shirley Kennett

  This afternoon he was going to visit Rick and let him know that Pop was not going to try to keep him out of jail. He fully expected an emotional, maybe even violent, reaction from the young man when it became clear to him that he was going to have to face the consequences of what he had done. Then Schultz could begin the difficult task of rebuilding his relationship with his son, and there was always the chance that he wouldn’t succeed.

  After breakfast, Schultz decided to use the slack time before his doctor appointment by going in to work. He would rather occupy his mind with the circumstances of brutal killings than dwell on the prospect of what he faced with his son. As he sat at his kitchen table, draining the last drops from his coffee cup, he thought he felt Julia’s hand resting gently on his shoulder. Not the Julia of today, but the Julia of thirty years ago, when there was a kind of electricity, an innocent magic, in her touch. He tilted his head to brush his cheek against her hand, as he had done so many times, but the sense of her presence was gone. He realized that it had been gone for years.

  He put his coffee cup and plate in the sink and left.

  PJ slurped noisily on her straw, drawing up the last of the chocolate shake. Briefly she considered ordering another one, then decided that would be a bad idea. She had to get up on that ladder when she got back to the house, and she didn’t want to be overly full when she started her afternoon of work.

  Millie wandered over and sat down on a stool behind the counter across from PJ.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider delivering one of these shakes to my house at about four o’clock, would you?” PJ said.

  Millie laughed, “Well, Dearie, I just might consider it. Lunch was slow today. By four, this place is gonna be dead.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a coffee cup for herself. Glancing over at the commercial coffee maker at the end of the counter, she saw that both the regular and decaf pots were empty. That was the “quick fill” service area, and apparently it had been depleted during lunch. Face pinched in annoyance, she pushed herself off the stool and went into the kitchen where there was another coffee maker. PJ heard her voice drift out from the pass-through between the serving area and the kitchen.

  “Cut that out, I tell you. Whaddya think this is, the ball park? If I hear the “Star-Spangled Banner” outta you one more time, I’m gonna go nuts. For Christ’s sake, give it a rest!”

  Millie came out with a steaming cup of coffee and sat back down on the stool, her chest heaving with an exaggerated sigh.

  “I swear, that cook’s starting to get to me. It’s like a little kid saying ‘You can’t make me’ in that taunting kind of voice. The first fifty times you hear it, you shrug it off. Then on the fifty-first, you haul off and slug ’em. I’m afraid I’m gonna deck that guy some day, poor kid.”

  PJ chuckled. Millie was a strong woman with a lot of street smarts. There was little doubt she could do what she said. “I know how you feel. I used to have a patient who…wait a minute, did you say the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I think he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.”

  PJ closed her eyes. Memories were sliding into place like continental drift in reverse: all the land masses were fitting back together to form Pangaea.

  “Millie,” she said, leaning toward the woman and speaking in a low, flat voice, “I’m going to ask you for some information. I would appreciate it if you’d just go along with me and not ask any questions. It might be very important, or it might be nothing.”

  “Sure, Dearie. Ask away.” Millie’s voice matched hers, low and conspiratorial.

  “I’d like to know the name and address of your cook, the one who’s working now.”

  “That’s it? I thought it was going to be something hard. You just wait right here, and I’ll go get his paper.” She bustled off, leaving PJ fiddling with her straw and trying not to get a glimpse of the man in the kitchen.

  “Here it is,” she said, laying a coffee-stained form down on the counter in front of PJ. “Everybody who works here fills out one of these, so’s I can pay social security and workman’s comp. I do everything by the book here. If I don’t, my accountant, Eddie, screams at me with language I wouldn’t repeat.”

  “Thanks.” PJ pulled a notebook from her purse and copied down the man’s name, Peter M. Hampton, and his address.

  “Do you know what kind of car he drives? And when does his shift end?”

  “He’s got a red pickup, not new but real nice and shiny. Probably waxes it every week. Got those vanity plates, something like BADBOY…no, it’s BADDOG. I asked him about it once. He said it didn’t mean anything, just something easy to remember. He gets off at two today.” Millie’s eyes revealed her curiosity, but she had agreed not to ask any questions, and now it was a matter of honor to stick to that.

  PJ put a five dollar bill on the counter for her lunch and tip. “Where’s the phone?”

  “Over by the ladies’ room.” She leaned over and laid a hand on PJ’s arm as PJ rose from her seat at the counter. “Whatever you’re up to, Dearie, you be careful, OK? I don’t want anything to happen to my best tipper.”

  PJ nodded and headed over to the phone. She dug some coins out of her purse and called Schultz at home. She got an answering machine, and left a rambling message.

  “Leo, this is PJ. Something exciting just…I’m at Millie’s, and I’ve got an idea. You just listen, and don’t laugh, all right? You remember that video tape with the murderer humming the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’? Millie says her cook hums that very song all the time. Remember we talked about the killer wanting to take on the characteristics of his victims? We heard classical music coming from the kitchen, that’s Burton, the pianist. Then Millie said the guy broke some dishes dancing around the kitchen. That’s Vanitzky. Remember that awful painting of a baseball stadium? That’s Sheila Armor. Sheila said that the man following her was wearing a baseball cap. That waitress, Kelly, who gave you an eyeful of boobs, said the cook was watching her like a hungry dog looking at a steak. A hungry dog. Here’s the best part…”

  PJ got cut off by the answering machine, which apparently had a time limit for each message. She dialed back and continued.

  “This is part two of my message. The best part is that Millie says he’s got a red truck with license plates that spell BADDOG. This couldn’t all be coincidence, Leo. I think he’s the man. His name is Peter M. Hampton, and he lives at 8420 Long Drive in St. Ann. I’m not sure where that is, but I’ve got a map in the car. Millie says he works until two o’clock, so I’m going to drive out there and cruise by his house. If the red truck’s not there, I might get out and poke around a little. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  PJ hung up and, with her last thirty-five cents, called Schultz’s office number. No answer there, either, so she left a brief message on his voice mail telling him to check his machine at home. Disappointed that she couldn’t get him right away, she wondered if in the future they should each carry pagers. She considered contacting Dave or Anita, then decided not to. If this was a wild goose chase, at least she would only look foolish in front of Schultz.

  She left the diner. On impulse, she walked down the short alley that led to the parking spaces around the back for the employees.

  The truck was there, and the sight of it was disturbing. It was red and arrogant and threatening, like the engorged penis of a rapist. Shuddering, she wondered if she should just go home and let Schultz check out this man. Then she remembered what he had said to her earlier: that she hadn’t paid her dues. If she could get a concrete lead on this cook, maybe that would be a down payment. She shook herself mentally, plumping up her nerve as though she were fluffing a pillow, and headed for her old VW.

  “I need to have you on your hands and knees up on the table,” the X-ray technician said.

  Schultz, feeling a draft under his loose gown, scowled at her. Just the thought of resting his weight on his knees on a metal table sent little shivers of anticipated pain t
hrough him. “If I could do that, young lady, I wouldn’t need these X-rays in the first place. Can’t I just stand up for this?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said the tech, who had last qualified as a young lady two decades ago. “We have to get a shot of your knees in a bent position, from the side.” She was sympathetic but possessed enough determination for a half-dozen marathon runners. “There is an alternative, though. You can lay flat on your stomach, bend your knees, and raise your feet up in the air. I can put a couple of pillows under your calves and get enough of an angle that way.”

  Schultz pictured himself in the position she described, and it was clear to him that there was a problem with his gown, which was open in the back. “Just a minute,” he said. He went back into the small changing booth and took another gown from the top of the stack. He put it on over the other gown, but backwards, so that it was open in the front. Back-to-back gowns at least ensured that his posterior would not be offered for appraisal like a couple of hams in a cooking contest. “OK,” he told the tech, “do your worst.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Schultz,” she said with an enigmatic smile, “I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.”

  PJ drove slowly past the house. This was a neighborhood of boxy two-bedroom frame homes, built thirty or forty years ago. Most of them had two layers of shingles on the roof, aluminum storm windows, and single driveways with no garages on the narrow lots. PJ knew just by looking at them that the upscale houses here had air conditioning and finished basements with a third bedroom and a rec room with a bar, perhaps even a second bathroom.

  The street dead-ended a few blocks past Hampton’s house at a church with a school attached. For the second time, PJ pulled into the church parking lot and swung the car around. This time, she pulled up to the curb a couple of houses down and across the street, killed the engine, and studied the house.

  It was humble even for this neighborhood. A concrete porch with a green fiberglass roof sheltered the front door. White paint was peeling from the wood trim, and the chimney was ragged on top, missing a few bricks. There was no sign that anyone was at home. The red truck was not parked in the narrow, shrub-lined driveway. The owner was at work, frying hamburgers or mopping the floor when the flow of customers diminished.

  She pictured Peter Hampton fixing her lunch, sticking the little toothpick flag into her BLT on whole wheat. She thought about him using the butcher knives in the diner, quartering chickens or slicing onions, and on his hands the blood of her friend Sheila and who knows how many others.

  “Innocent until proven guilty,” she said aloud in the car. She was already trying and sentencing this man, and he might not be the right one. Perhaps he hadn’t held Sheila’s head in position by her long reddish-blond hair, hadn’t stroked her exposed throat with sharp steel.

  PJ noticed that most of the houses on the street had large, rolling trash cans at the ends of their driveways. It was obviously trash collection day. The rolling cans were identical and probably furnished by the city, St. Ann, or at least rented to the residents. They were the type that hooked onto the trash truck and could be raised overhead and dumped automatically. Hampton didn’t have one, or if he did, he had chosen not to put out the trash today.

  She sat with her hand on the door handle for several long minutes until she made up her mind. Peter Hampton, if he was the killer, had been to her house twice. It was about time she visited his.

  PJ got out of her car and walked toward the house. Glancing around nervously, she went down the driveway. There, behind some bushes which hid the area from the street, were a couple of old-fashioned battered metal trash cans. Evidently Hampton didn’t go in for the rolling kind. PJ knew that she couldn’t be seen easily from the street, but there was a house only a few feet away, and a curtained window looked out over the area where the trash was. She stared at the window. The curtains were pulled tight and there was no movement to suggest that someone was peeking out.

  She was about to do something that would probably get her in trouble with Schultz, and for which she had no good excuse if she were caught in the act.

  She was going to root through Hampton’s trash.

  She put out her hand and rested it on the lid of the nearest trash can. What if there was something terrible inside, bloody clothes or bags of brains tossed aside to be secretly disposed of later? Is that why Hampton hadn’t put his trash at the curb?

  Glancing again at the window of the house next door, she lifted the lid. The can was only half full. She leaned over to investigate and caught a glimpse of something hemispherical and pale, and almost dropped the lid in her anxiety, clanging it against the rim of the can. Taking a better look, she saw that it wasn’t a brain after all, just discarded cantaloupe halves, their sections neatly excised and the shells squeezed for the pulpy juice. In fact, the can contained only fruit and vegetable waste, no household trash or meat scraps. Banana peels, limp lettuce leaves, orange rinds, apple cores—there was a pungent smell of rotting produce, made worse by the heat of the day trapped inside the metal container. Even more terrible than the smell were the maggots. Like moist fattened grains of rice, they were moving on top of the produce waste and even, to PJ’s disgust, on the inside surface of the trash can lid she was holding. Evidently the can served as a compost bin. Looking out into the backyard, PJ spotted a small garden plot and a mound of leaves and old grass clippings near the fence, kept in place by a short circular structure made of chicken wire.

  Maybe her murder suspect was simply an organic gardener.

  She couldn’t bring herself to dip her arms into the muck, squirming as it was, and stir it to see what was underneath, and there was nothing handy to use, no stick or shovel. She replaced the lid, feeling rather foolish, and opened the next can. Inside she found the discarded things that might be in anyone’s trash: empty cardboard tubes from toilet paper and paper towels; junk mail, unopened; wadded up tissues; a cereal box; Styrofoam trays used to package meat from the grocery store; receipts; soup cans; newspapers. She noted that Hampton did not bother to recycle anything except organic matter. She dug in gingerly, regretting that she didn’t have any gloves with her and thinking that Schultz probably had gloves with him at all times, probably had them taped to his chest or something. She removed a few items and set them in the lid, which she had put on the ground next to the can. She was disappointed. It looked as though all she was going to get from this expedition was an urgent need for a shower.

  Something small and shiny caught her eye. As she groped for it, it eluded her fingers and slipped further down into the can. Reluctantly, she upended the can onto the driveway, figuring that either the neighbors would call the police or the red truck would pull into the driveway, trapping her. She hurriedly sorted through the pile, putting the items back into the trash can. After a couple of minutes, she saw the shiny object which had attracted her. It was a small plastic tube, about two and a half inches long and as narrow as a pencil. There was a red plastic cap on one end. Inside was a small white object, generally cylindrical in shape, barely a half-inch long. It had dull red stains on it.

  It took her a while before she was able to identify the object inside the tube: it was the stub of a styptic pencil, used to stop the bleeding from cuts or scrapes from a razor. Her ex-husband Steven had kept one in his side of the medicine cabinet. Years ago, when PJ had nicked her ankle while shaving her legs, she had grabbed Steven’s styptic pencil. Unpleasantly surprised by the chemical sting when she touched it to the bleeding area, she had pulled it away from the cut and put it back in the cabinet. She held a tissue to her ankle until the bleeding stopped. She had never used the styptic pencil again. As she recalled, that “pencil” was a white cylinder, pointed on top like a crayon. The one she held in her hand now was just a nub; the rest must have been used, broken off, and discarded earlier.

  She held the tube up and peered at the red stains. Blood had soaked into the white material: the killer’s blood that would match the blood earned by Sheila’s fingerna
ils and Megabite’s claws.

  She put it carefully into the pocket of her shorts and stuffed the rest of the trash back in the can, making sure that the lids were placed lightly on top, as they were before. She looked at her watch. It was five after two, time for her to leave. The cook should be on his way home.

  When she turned in the styptic pencil to the lab, she was given a rough time. It wasn’t a formally recorded piece of evidence and the weekend crew didn’t want to be accused of doing private work for somebody. It took all of her persuasive skills, plus liberal dropping of Schultz’s name, to arrange for a simple blood typing. After accepting the sample, the supervisor groused about PJ storing it in a sealed container without properly air-drying it first; the blood might have rotted. Also, the container itself might have fingerprints on it; had she used gloves? PJ asked her to do the best she could, and then left, her enthusiasm for the find waning. There was still time to do some more painting before heading to Mike’s house for dinner.

  On her borrowed ladder, she worked steadily, rhythmically applying the paint. She put her thoughts about the case, including today’s potential bombshell, on hold while she explored her feelings about Mike.

  Was she falling for him? They had spoken on the phone numerous times but met only twice: once for lunch when she picked up the VR equipment, and the other time when he brought a journal article to her office. He could have faxed it, but he had come in person and lingered, finally being evicted from his folding chair when PJ had to go to a meeting with Lieutenant Wall.