The weather had continued to deteriorate. By noon the clouds were hanging low over the area like a choking blanket of wet, slate gray smoke. With a steady drizzle settling in, it was destined to be one of those afternoons that men like to think would be perfect for spending under a blanket with some love-starved sex kitten. I probably would have dwelled on that rather intriguing thought, but when the phone rang, the images were whisked away by reality.
"Didn't think I'd be lucky enough to catch you on the first try," Lucy chimed.
"Just hangin' around the motel, watching it rain," I offered laconically.
"Before we get into the meat of this conversation, the scuttlebutt back here has it that you've got a girl with you."
Let me fix Lucy in time and space for you. Lucy Martin may very well be the world's longest running, never finishing anything, graduate assistant. My esteemed fellow academians back at good old Saint Francis inform me that Lucy, the perpetual student, has been there long enough to have tenure. She has achieved this distinction by changing her major several times, and at the rate of one class a semester, she may very well journey into senility without a degree. She embraces her questionable goal orientation by virtue of the fact that her father is stinking rich and endorses her "I'm interested in everything" philosophy. Still, Lucy has proven to be a valuable resource; I can trust her.
For the record, Lucy is a pint-sized, button-nosed, overly animated, pleasantly plump little blonde who has appointed herself guardian of my office, career and morals. Now she was giving me the needle about my female traveling companion.
"Just for the record, little Miss Snoopy, her name is Brenda Cashman and she's a graduate student at the University of Michigan, one of Cosmo Leach's whiz kids."
I could tell Lucy wasn't impressed. She allowed the silence to stretch on. It was a level-one reprimand.
"I take it you called me for a reason," I reminded her.
"Similarities," she repeated flatly. "You wanted similarities, so here's what the trusty computer came up with. It seems that all four of the incidents in the file happened in some very remote, almost inaccessible location. All had low population density profiles…"
I was scribbling notes frantically. "Got it. What else?"
"I suppose you've already taken note of the fact that each of these events took place on some sort of coastal terrain?"
I had. "What else?"
"Chambers Bay has the same topographical features as the sites in those reports."
"Like?"
"Rock composition, heavy forestation at the last three sites, and of course, the coastal caves."
I underlined the word "caves." "What kind of caves?"
"Oh, you know, the typical ones, a hole in the ground." She started to giggle. Her efforts at humor were few and far between, and I was never prepared for them.
I grunted to let her know that, as feeble as I considered the effort to be, I still acknowledged it. "Is that it?"
"Well," Lucy drawled, dwelling on the obvious, "should I even bother to mention that all of the incidents have been within the Canadian border?"
The last one was a cheap shot. She was still laughing when I hung up. Again I checked to make sure I had a complete set of notes; the stack of file cards was growing rapidly. So far there were no surprises; if anything, my hypothesis was holding a little more water than before. The one thing that still didn't make any sense was the two completely different kinds of crimes. On one hand there was more than ample evidence of some kind of cold, calculating and skilled pathological killer who deftly carved up his victims with the skill of a surgeon. On the other, there was evidence of an almost barbaric killing machine, mutilating and in some cases devouring, his victims. Needless to say, the two didn't go hand in hand. It was like having the pieces of two different yet similar puzzles in the same box. I lit up another cigarette. I was past the halfway mark and still had more than a half a pack to go.
Half an hour later I heard the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway. There was no mistaking the sound of the out-of-tune Z. The door slammed, and I heard footsteps darting through the rain to the shelter of the overhang in front of the unit. The door flew open, and B.C. stood in the middle of the doorway glaring at me. She was soaked to the bone. Her face was flushed, and her hair hung straight down like strands of wet rope. "This ain't what I had in mind when I volunteered for this damn mission," she fumed.
Given the opportunity, I probably would have hauled out my gallant act and offered the wet lady a drink. That opportunity never materialized, because Brenda Cashman marched defiantly past me and straight to the dresser. She grabbed the bottle of Black and White, an empty glass, combined the two and plunked down on the edge of the bed. She took two quick jolts, and within less than 30 seconds she had peeled out of her wet clothes and sat shivering in her bra and panties.
"What the hell happened?" I managed.
"I'll talk about it when I get out of the damn shower," she snapped.
With that she discarded what was left of her limited wardrobe and disappeared into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes and one steamy shower later, she re-emerged wrapped in two towels, one around her body and the other around her hair. She grabbed the glass again, took two more healthy gulps and refocused her glare.
"Do you mind telling me what happened?"
"Any further dialogue with one Percy Kramer is going to be conducted by one Elliott Grant Wages. I will have nothing further to do with that lecherous little bastard."
"So, druggist Percy has a thing for flat-chested girls, huh?"
B.C. gave me the iciest stare in her repertoire, pulled the towel up tighter around her and took two more monumental swigs of my patented firewater.
"Okay, I'm sorry. Now let's start at the beginning. What the hell happened?"
The moon child had fled the scene, and the street-smart side of my fellow investigator was still fuming. I could tell that at the moment she didn't know whether to cuss or cry. She took a deep breath, measured herself and began. "I did exactly what you told me to do. I went in and introduced myself. I told him I was a freelance reporter working on the whole series of bizarre goings-on that had been happening around Chambers Bay. Plus, I put a little icing on the cake by telling him that Jake Madden had even suggested that I talk to him. The old bastard couldn't have been nicer at that point. He took me back to his soda fountain at the back of the store, fixed me a vanilla coke and started telling me all kinds of stuff about this place." B.C. paused, took another stiff jolt of Scotch, wiped off her mouth and continued. "Then he started telling me about what he knew about Carson's horse and offered to drive me out and show me where it happened. I believed him."
"Look, Brenda, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you still haven't told me what happened. This sure as hell isn't the first time some guy paid you some unwanted attention, is it?"
B.C. was more angry than hurt. She was also calmer. I think the repeated blitzes of Scotland's finest were beginning to have an effect on her. "Percy has a pickup truck," she said haltingly, "and we crawled in it to drive out to the Carson place. We drove out there, turned off the highway and went back down this long lane. He started pointing out where this whatever it is that we're chasing tore up everything. Actually I couldn't see much except for a few broken branches, a place where a couple of very small trees had been knocked down and a few gouges in the earth. You know how I tease. Well, I told him, 'I'm disappointed if this is all there is.'"