I left my invisible podium and stepped up to the table, leaning on it for emphasis. “On a personal note, I want to thank you for all you’ve done. We did our jobs as we should have, and it’s a credit to the system that, even this late, we can catch a problem and correct it. We still have to find a rapist, and I’m confident we’ll do just that. Right now, though, I want you all to go home and get some sleep. We’ll reconvene at seven o’clock tomorrow morning to receive specific assignments.”
I straightened up and added, “One word of advice: In a town this small, people are bound to find out your phone numbers before long. If you’ve got ’em, use your answering machines to screen calls. Or unplug your phones and keep your portable radios on so we can reach you. And if the stress starts to get to you, talk to me or Billy or someone you trust. Don’t let this get to you.”
“Come to my office,” Tony said as we left the room, and led the way.
I followed, curiously buoyant. Despite the somber mood of the meeting, I couldn’t shake off a certain elation-the sense of having successfully hurdled some half-seen barrier. Bob Vogel was no longer our primary suspect, and the real rapist would soon be feeling the heat. I felt back in control, and that my instincts had served me well.
A small, slight, peaceful-looking woman with a benevolent expression and long gray hair tucked back in a neat ponytail was waiting patiently for us in Brandt’s office. Megan Goss was a criminal psychologist who’d spent years working with killers, sadists, rapists, and victims of abuse, sorting through the debris of their minds in an effort to understand them, or repair the damage they had suffered. I had known her for years, and the department had used her talents several times in the past. She always brought a thoughtful, measured tone to bear, often shedding light where confusion, politics, or tension had made for impenetrable shadow.
She rose and greeted me warmly. “I hear you have a problem.”
The three of us sat in a tight circle of chairs, like conspirators sorting through details. This was the one aspect of our revitalized investigation that I most wanted kept under wraps. Given the bumbling image of us that was about to appear in the headlines, I didn’t want Goss’s services misconstrued-or even identified. But if my hunch was right, her special knowledge of the criminal mind was going to be of enormous assistance.
“Have you been following the case?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yes. And I’ve been working with Susan Raffner in dealing with some of the emotional fallout. An assault of this nature never has just one victim.”
“We’re now thinking Bob Vogel was framed by someone who copied his MO.”
She raised her eyebrows but otherwise remained silent.
“Would you be willing to review this case from the ground up-to visit the crime scene, study Vogel’s style, interview Gail, look at everything we’ve got-to see what we might have missed?”
Goss sat back in her chair, tapping her lips with the index finger of her right hand. “Yes. But I want to concentrate first on the actual crime. I don’t want to see any evidence or any suspect profiles-not yet. If that is how you were led astray, it might be helpful for me to avoid it.”
I couldn’t repress a grin. “Great. When can you start?”
“The crime took place in the middle of the night, correct?”
“Right.”
“Then perhaps we should begin immediately. Can you take me to the scene now?”
The odors that had once given Gail’s house life-the smell of fresh food, live plants, clean laundry, and myriad others that arose from her daily routine-had been replaced by a deadened staleness. It reminded me of visits to the homes of the very old, whose tenuous grasp on life saturated the walls around them.
Without a word, I led the way up the familiar set of stairs to the lofty bedroom high overhead, noticing as I went the dead plants, their leaves gray with a fine coat of dust.
I reached for the light switch.
“No. Wait,” Megan said quietly, placing her small hand on mine. She stood in the doorway, looking into the darkness ahead of her. “Can we turn off the downstairs lights from here?”
“Sure.” I reached back onto the landing and plunged the entire house into obscurity.
“Thank you.”
We stood there for a minute or two, motionless, before she added, “Does she always leave the drapes open?”
Thinking back, I stared at the disheveled bed, dimly glowing in the indirect moonlight, remembering how we’d enjoyed chatting side by side, gazing up at the night sky. “Damn,” I muttered, “the moon was directly overhead that night.”
Megan kept her voice very still, as quiet as ours had been on those evenings. “A full moon?”
I furrowed my brow, berating myself for having missed the obvious: “No, not quite, but it was much brighter in here.”
I saw her nod thoughtfully in the near gloom. “That’s quite the clock.”
Surprised, I looked across the bed to where the radio alarm’s large glowing numbers were still counting off the minutes on the night table, to the right of the headboard. The clock was the most prominent feature of the room in the half light, apart from the large, pale expanse of the bed. I was beginning to see things the way Megan was-the way Gail’s attacker had. It made me grateful we hadn’t waited twenty-four hours to do this, when the weather report was calling for a freak, premature snowstorm straight out of the Canadian north.
“When you two were together, did Gail sleep on the right or the left side?”
“The right. The side nearest the clock.”
Megan stepped farther into the room, her eyes fully adjusted to the gloom. She stopped at the foot of the bed. A small shiver went down my spine while I imagined the attack just a few weeks earlier, coming as Gail slept peacefully.
Megan moved silently to the night table on the far side of the bed. She picked up the radio alarm clock and balanced it in her hand. She then replaced it and took one last long look around the room. “All right. You may turn on the lights now.”
What leapt up around us was a blinding, chaotic contrast to the sinister, half-seen mystery of seconds earlier. Now it was the crime scene I knew all too well, where one life had ended, and from where a new one would have to be rebuilt.
And yet Megan Goss altered it, even now. She didn’t proceed with Tyler’s scientific detachment, with cameras and tweezers and small white evidence envelopes. Instead, she hovered, paused in thought, only rarely touched something, and that usually with just the tip of one finger, as if checking for signs of latent energy.
As she proceeded, she had me read aloud from Gail’s statement, made on the morning following the rape. When Gail told of being assaulted, Megan moved to the foot of the bed, staring at it throughout that part of the transcript; when I read of the rapist’s rampages around the room, Megan mimicked his movements, pausing before the shards of the broken plate that used to hang on the wall, and running her fingertip across the dusty surface of the expensive, uninjured television set.
Two hours later we were both back at the door, as I read of Gail listening to her attacker putting his clothes back on before leaving the house.
I finally stopped and waited. Megan stood silently, peering into the room, lost in thought. At last, she turned to me. “She didn’t smell him?”
I stared at her in astonished embarrassment, remembering Vogel’s rank breath in my face, just before he stabbed me. “I… It didn’t come up.”
“Odd, don’t you think?” Her smile was kind, conspiratorial, as if together we’d opened the last lock of an intricately closed box.
22
Susan Raffner's voice was fogged by sleep. “Hello?”
“It’s Joe Gunther. I’m sorry to be calling in the middle of the night, but I need to talk to Gail-and to you, too.”