"I appreciate that, sir. But that killer's still free. And -"
"But I don't know anything. I mean, what could I possibly tell you that -"
"We have a sample of the killer's handwriting – we found some of his notes in a copy of your book. And we'd like to compare it to any letters from fans you might've received."
There was a long pause. Finally the author whispered, "So he did use my book as a model."
"I'm afraid he did, Mr. Carter."
Altman heard nothing for a moment, then a cryptic noise – maybe a sigh. Or maybe the man was crying softly.
"Sir, are you all right?"
The author cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I can't help you. I just… it'd be too much for me."
Altman often told young officers under him that a detective's most important trait is persistence. He said in an even voice, "You're the only one who can help us trace the book back to him. He destroyed the library computer so we don't have the names of who checked your book out. There's no match on the fingerprints, either… I want to catch this man real bad. And I suspect you do, too, Mr. Carter. Don't you, now?"
There was no response. Finally the faint voice continued, "Do you know that strangers sent me clippings about the killings? Perfect strangers. Hundreds of them. They blamed me. They called my book a 'blueprint for murder.' I had to go into the hospital for a month afterwards, I was so depressed… I caused those murders! Don't you understand that?"
Altman looked up at Wallace and shook his head.
The reporter gestured for the phone. Altman figured, why not?
"Mr. Carter, there's a person here I'm going to put on the line. I'd like him to have a word with you."
"Who?"
He handed the receiver over and sat back, listening to the onesided conversation.
"Hello, Mr. Carter." The reporter's gaunt frame hunched over the phone and he gripped the receiver in astonishingly long, strong fingers. "You don't know me. My name is Gordon Wallace. I'm a fan of your book – I loved it. I'm the one who found the circled passages… No, I'm not with them; I'm a reporter for the Tribune here in Greenville… I got that. I understand that. My colleagues step over a lot of lines. But I don't operate that way. And I know you're reluctant to get involved here. I'm sure you've been through a tough time.
"But I just want to say one thing: I'm no great novelist like you – I'm just a hack journalist – but I am a writer and if I have any important belief in my life it's in the freedom to write whatever moves us. Now… No, please, Mr. Carter, let me finish. I heard that you basically stopped writing after the murders… Well, you and your talent were as much a victim of those crimes as those women were. You exercised your God-given right to express yourself and a terrible accident happened. That's how I'd look at this madman: an act of God. A couple of people got killed and you were injured because of that. You can't do anything about those women. But you can help yourself and your family to move on. And there's something else to consider: You're in a position to make sure nobody else ever gets hurt by this guy again."
Altman lifted an impressed eyebrow at the moving sales pitch. Wallace fell silent and, glancing at the detective, shrugged. He held the receiver to his ear for a moment, listening. Finally he nodded and glanced at Altman. "He wants to talk to you." Altman took the phone. "Yessir?"
"What exactly would you want me to do?" came the tentative voice through the phone.
"All I need is for you to look through your fan mail. See if you can find anything suspicious. Any fans who might've written something about these passages in the book." He told Carter which ones had been circled and then added, "And look for any letters from people who asked about how you researched the murders. Particularly from people within, say, a hundred miles or so of Greenville."
Carter protested, "I've got thousands of letters. It'd take a couple of days to go through them all."
"That's fine. We'll follow up on other leads as best we can… But I have one more request, sir."
"What's that?"
"Can we get those letters in person?"
"You want me to come to Greenville?"
"Yessir, I do." Silence.
The detective persisted. "Depending on what we find, it could be real helpful to have you here. The city'll pay for the mileage and a room if you stay overnight."
"Sir," Carter said slowly, "there's not enough money in the universe to get me to come to Greenville." Altman took a breath to set out his argument, though before he could speak the man continued, "but I'll come anyway."
Altman started to tell the author how much he appreciated the help, but after a moment he realized that the man had hung up and he was listening to dead air.
Andy Clark turned out not to resemble either a sinister artist or a glitzy celebrity but rather any one of the hundreds of white, middle-aged businessmen that populated this region of the Northeast. Thick, graying hair, neatly trimmed. A slight paunch (much slighter than Altman's own, thanks to the cop's fondness for his wife's casseroles). His outfit wasn't an arm-patch sports jacket or any other authorial garb, but an L.L. Bean windbreaker, polo shirt, and corduroy slacks.
It had been two days since Altman had spoken to Carter. The man now stood uneasily in the detective's office, taking the coffee that Josh Randall offered and nodding greetings to the cops and to Gordon Wallace. He slipped off his windbreaker, tossing it on an unoccupied chair. The man's only moment of consternation in this initial meeting was when he glanced at the top of Altman's desk and blinked as he saw the case file that was headed, Banning, Kimberly – Homicide #13- 01. A brief look of dismay filled his face. Altman was grateful that he'd had the foresight to slip the crime-scene photos of the victim's body to the bottom of the folder.
They made small talk for a minute or two and then Altman nodded at a large white envelope in the author's hand. "You find something helpful?"
"Helpful?" Carter asked, rubbing his red eyes. "I don't know. You'll have to decide that." He handed the envelope to the detective. "Oh, I wore gloves when I handled them. Not fancy ones like yours. Playtex. My wife's from the kitchen."
"Good thinking." Altman opened the envelope and, donning his own gloves, pulled out what must've been about fifty or so sheets.
"I looked through the e-mails from fans, too," Carter said. "But I didn't find anything that seemed suspicious."
E-mails wouldn't help them anyway; Altman was after a handwriting comparison.
"The ones on top," Carter continued, nodding at the correspondence, "seemed to be from the most… how do I put it?… the most intense fans."
The detective led the men into the department conference room and spread the letters out on the table. Randall joined them.
Some of them were typed or printed out from a computer, some were written in cursive, some in block letters. They were on many different types and sizes of paper and in many colors of ink or pencil. Crayons, too.
For half an hour they looked over the letters. Altman finally divided them into two piles. One, he explained, was of letters from fans who were, as Carter had said, "intense." These notes were eerie, nonsensical, angry, or disturbingly personal ("Come to see us in Sioux City if your in town and the wife and me will treat you to our special full body massage out side on the deck behind our trailer.")
"Ick," said Josh Randall.
Yep, definitely icky, Altman thought, but he set that pile aside and explained that they were the discards. "Those're your typical wackos and I don't think they're half dangerous. It's the other ones I'm worried about." He nodded at the second pile. "They're reasonable and calm and cautious… just like the strangler. See, he's an organized offender. Calculating and smart. He's not going to give anything away by ranting. If he has any questions, he's going to ask them politely and carefully – he'll want some detail but not too much; that'd arouse suspicion."