“I think there’s an emergency!”
“The child is not in danger.”
“I think she is. The longer Rachel is forced to stay with Darby and Joan, the more they’re going to warp her mind.”
“Susan, I had to pull a lot of strings to get two weeks. Would you just ride with it?”
I closed my trap. “Anything I can do?”
“Yes, since you ask. You could become a model parent. Keep regular hours. Stay sober. I got a report from NDHS that says you’re not going to the IOP classes.”
Goddamn spies. “I can’t very well earn a living and support my niece if I go to classes all day long.”
“A sound point, but not one they’re likely to be sympathetic to. I’ll let you know if anything else turns up. In the meantime-keep your nose clean. For your sake, and Rachel’s.”
After that entertaining badinage, I got to work. My desk was already buried in paper. The reports on Murder Victim Two were just trickling in, but O’Bannon had sent over the voluminous reportage on Murder Victim One. I started at the top and tried to become familiar with the case, all the while pretending that I didn’t feel as if I’d been buried alive myself, as if my head weren’t throbbing, as if I didn’t desperately want a drink. Not to get drunk-that had been a stupid mistake and I wouldn’t do it again. I just needed a little pick-me-up, something to take away the pain so I could focus on my business. I’d stop after one.
I started with the autopsy protocols for the first murder and what little preliminary information they had provided regarding the second. I’d done this often enough to know I could safely skip the pages of minutiae on the body organs and glands, which would probably not be helpful and which I wouldn’t understand even if it were. In both cases, the coroner reported an increase in serotonin and histamine levels. In the first murder that was to be expected. She had a long, painful time to be terrified before she finally suffocated. But it was present in the second victim, too. What’s more, the second victim’s gum wounds showed much higher histamine than serotonin. So she lived a good while after the teeth were removed. O’Bannon was right-she’d bled to death, aspirating blood making it increasingly difficult to breathe. A slow, painful passing.
With considerable reluctance, I opened the envelope marked PHOTOS. Death had caught Victim One’s face in a hideous rictus, eyes and mouth wide, terrified, like that Edvard Munch painting. She died screaming, with no one to hear her.
The forensic analysis reports on Murder One were not helpful. The criminalists had vacuumed and grid-searched thoroughly. Even taken the trap from the vents and examined them. Found a few soil deposits, but nothing useful. Organic stains were unavailing. The preliminary victimology reports were even more of a joke. We didn’t know who either victim was, making it almost impossible to speculate as to motives or why the victims were chosen.
Now here was an interesting tidbit-Victim Two was pregnant, just barely. Did the killer know? Was that why she had been chosen? Or why she had been killed?
I read the handwriting, ink, and paper analysis that had been performed on the two messages left with the corpses. Although the notes were handwritten-probably a necessity given that many of the characters used don’t appear on a standard keyboard-the writer was probably not using his usual hand. A rightie using his left, or vice versa. It was the most common way of concealing handwriting. It would account for the shakiness of the lines, the inconsistency in character size. But that made it impossible for the expert to draw any conclusions regarding the personality being masked.
The handwriting expert did provide one interesting bit of information: the writer was using a fountain pen, gold-tipped broad nib. In this day and age. When you could find a fifty-cent Bic in any drugstore. He was using a fountain pen and a blotter.
I spent the rest of the workday messing about in the database for psychological profiling of serial killers maintained by the FBI’s Behavioral Science experts. I am a huge admirer of the work John Douglas did, interviewing serial killers and cataloging the patterns and similarities in their backgrounds, as well as their modus operandi. But I didn’t find much that pertained to the case at hand. With each new piece of information, however small, I got a growing sense that we were dealing with something entirely out of the ordinary, something I had never seen before.
Maybe something no one had seen before.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department-Central Division-was more hectic than M &M World on a Saturday night. Chaos reigned supreme. You’d think they had slots in there, the way people wandered in and out, back and forth. Twenty conversations going at once, not to mention a few scuffles and one flat-out fistfight between a plainclothes vice cop and a young lady of the evening he had in custody. The room was humid and noisome, reeking of sweat and stale coffee and fetid breath.
How did people work under these conditions? he wondered. What utter banalities these officers were, with their rolled-up sleeves and underarm stains. All they needed were Irish accents and a box of crullers to complete the picture. It seemed unlikely that this crowd could apprehend a purse snatcher. And these were his adversaries?
He was astonished. And in all honesty, a bit disappointed.
Where was she, the raven woman? The one who tried to understand.
He’d chosen his disguise with exquisite care. It had to be subtle; she would detect any major attempt at subterfuge. And he did not want to bury himself so deeply that she could not perceive his true self. Just enough that any formal description she might give at a later time would be useless. He wore a false mustache, a simple bit of misdirection, but one that seemed to alter the entire character of his face. He’d forgone his contact lenses and was wearing the wire-rimmed glasses of his early youth. And in his boldest stroke, he’d darkened his hair. He had considered going blond-he’d always fancied the effete, sensitive poet look-but he sensed that she would be more comfortable with dark hair. Black, like her own. Black like the raven.
He would be forced to prevaricate, for his own safety, and he wasn’t happy about that. A southern gentlemen does not tell tarradiddles. Except, he felt it fair to add, in self-preservation. His appearance itself was a lie, come to that, so what additional damage to his integrity could a few words do?
He waited for what seemed an interminable time but saw no traces of her. In fact, he saw no female at all, discounting the ones wearing handcuffs. How was he to learn anything about her when he didn’t even know her name?
He approached the front desk clerk. “Beg pardon, sir. I need to speak to someone.”
The clerk looked up. “Wanna give me a hint?”
“It’s about the young woman found at the Transylvania.”
“Okay,” he said wearily. “What about her?”
“If you don’t mind, I need to talk to someone working on the case.”
“Granger isn’t here.”
“Actually, I need to speak to the woman…”
The clerk seemed lost. “The dead woman?”
“No, the one working the homicide.”
“Granger hasn’t brought in any female detectives.”
Patience, he told himself. Patience. “I wonder if perhaps you might be mistaken. I’m quite certain I saw her yesterday at the crime scene.”
No reaction from the clerk.
“I don’t recall her name, but she was quite tall. Slender.” He paused. “And hair the color of the raven.”
“You talkin’ about Pulaski?”
“Perhaps I am.”
“She isn’t on the case. Not officially, anyway. She isn’t even on the force anymore. She’s just been brought in to give advice or something. Weirdos are her specialty.”
“Do tell.”
“Yeah.” He lowered his voice. “Big mistake, if you ask me.”
“You don’t care for… Miss Pulaski?”
“Not that I’m one to talk out of school.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Bitch and a half.”