Douglas hooted, then dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe. "No offense intended," he said.
"None taken," said Step. "And vice versa, I hope."
This really wasn't the best beginning to their conversation, Step realized. And since the kids were still asleep, or at least quiet, DeAnne sat down across from Douglas in the living room while Step went back and quietly closed the kids' bedroom doors. When he got back, they had apparently got right down to business, because DeAnne was showing him the list.
"Well, you know, this could have been written anytime," said Douglas.
"It's not evidence anyway," said Step. "I mean, how could it be? But if you need corroboration, Stevie's psychiatrist at the time, Dr. Alice Weeks, has a copy of this list--which DeAnne gave her back in early June.
And she made her own list of the others."
"We deliberately kept the nicknames out of the papers," said Douglas. "We do that, among other things, so that we can tell the hoaxers from the real thing. Like they'll 'remember' seeing a man dragging a little boy along saying, Hurry up, Alex, only we know that Alexander Booth would have told anybody who asked him that his name was Sandy. So it's a fake."
"And so you took us seriously," said Step.
"Jack was the clincher," said Douglas. "Your wife was telling me while you were down the hall there that these are the name's your son gave to his imaginary friends."
"That's right."
"Pretty amazing," said Douglas. "And then this forty-five, this record. Comes in the mail. Every breath you take."
"We didn't think that much of it, after a while. Till the article."
"I'm not surprised."
"But, I mean, an anonymous package like that, it had to be meant to scare us."
"Oh, no doubt about it," said Douglas. "The trouble is, it doesn't help us much."
"No?"
"It almost certainly didn't come from the serial killer."
"Oh," said Step. "Well I guess that's a relief."
"But how do you know that," said DeAnne, "since you don't know who the serial killer is?"
"We've got psychological profiles. Some guys, they try to tease the cops. Son of Sam, you know. Taunting us. They want to get caught. But then there's the Ted Bundy types. Smart. Cool. All they care about is not getting caught. Bundy never sent letters to the papers. Bundy never tipped his hand to anybody. I mean, he had a girlfriend that he was sleeping with during half the time he was going out killing those women, and she never had a clue. She knew he did some shoplifting and stuff, but had no clue about the killings. This serial killer-if there is one, cause it's not like we can prove it yet-he's like Bundy. He's smart, and he doesn't want to get caught. He's scared of getting caught, and he doesn't like being scared. He isn't in this for the thrill. He's in this for-something else."
"What?" asked Step.
"I'm not here to tell you about serial killers," said Douglas. "It'll ruin your sleep for a long while. It's sure as hell ruined mine. Begging your pardon for my language, ma'am."
"I just wonder how you know all this about him," said Step.
"We know it because we haven't found the bodies. Not a trace, not a clue. If he was a talker, after seven disappearances we'd've heard from him by now. Especially after the article. That's why we called in the press on this-we hoped we could flush him out. But he's the other kind. If he exists. He's the kind who can't stand the idea of public attention being focused on him. So now that the article's been run, I expect him to lay low for a while. He's been hitting every couple of months, but I imagine he won't hit again this year. All depends, though."
"On what?" asked Step.
"On how strong it is, whatever it is that's driving him to kill."
"I hate this," said DeAnne. "Because he has something to do with my son."
"Maybe not," said Douglas. "I'd like to meet your boy, if I could."
"I don't want him interrogated," said Step immediately.
"Oh, no, that's not my way. He's a boy, and he's a troubled boy. I've got children of my own. I just have to-make some sense out of him coming up with these names, don't you see. And if I meet him, get a feel for who he is, then that might help me understand what to make of this."
"I really don't want you to," said DeAnne. "We'd have to tell him you're a policeman, and then he'd—"
"So you wouldn't consider telling him I'm an uncle from out of town?"
"He knows all his uncles," said Step. "And he's not stupid."
"Why not trust me?" asked Douglas.
"Why can't you just-work from the envelope the record came in? We've still got it, and the record sleeve.
You could take fingerprints or something."
"I'll tell you what," said Douglas. "Who do you think might have sent it?"
At once Step and DeAnne both became reluctant. "Well," said Step, "it would only be speculation. We don't want to get some innocent person in trouble."
"You see?" said Douglas. "You already have some people in mind who might have sent that record. You've got enough people you're thinking about that you know most of them are innocent, but one of them probably sent it. Right?"
"But the one who did-- " said Step.
"The one who did is not the serial killer. That's just a plain fact. If there's one thing I've learned about serial killers, they don't change their pattern. Once they've got it set, they don't change. Even the ones who think they're changing it every time, they're only changing stupid meaningless details. The basic pattern remains absolutely the same because that's part of the ritual, you know? If they didn't do it the same, it wouldn't give them ... what it gives them. But make a list of your acquaintances who might want to send you a threatening message. I won't go question them. I'll just hang on to the list. And then I'll compare it to other lists we've got, and if they show up on another list, then we'll go question them, and they'll think we're bothering them because of the other list, not yours. And if they don't show up on any other list, we leave them alone. Fair enough?"
"All right," said DeAnne.
"As for your record-sender, well, someday he might turn into a killer, but if he's still at the anonymous threat stage, he's got a ways to go. The evil is still creeping up inside him. Hasn't taken him over completely yet.
In other words, he's still a basically civilized person. And he may keep that evil under control, too. May control it till the day he dies. Nobody'll ever know. And all he ever did, the worst thing he ever did was mail somebody a forty- five rpm record by the Police. Let's hope that's how it works out. That's how it usually does."
"Usually? There are a lot of forty-fives getting sent around?"
"A lot of anonymous messages. More than you could imagine. I'd say most people get a couple of them during their lives, and maybe most people send one or two. You get so filled with rage, you want to hurt somebody, only you don't have enough hate in you to poison them or burn their house down. So you send a letter.
You throw trash on their lawn. You call them on the phone and then hang up-again, again, all night, until you start getting afraid that they might be having their phone traced so then you stop. You ever got strange calls like that?"
"Once," said DeAnne.
"Me too," said Step.
"It's going on, all the time. There aren't enough policemen in the world to track down all of that. And most of the time it's just what you thought-somebody you know who's angry at you. Maybe even your best friend, only they can't bring themselves to confront you, so they send you a record and it gets it off their chest and nothing more ever happens."
"That's a relief," said DeAnne.
"Well, you should be relieved. But you should also find out who's at the door before you open it, and make sure you know who the next package is from before you open it. Because one time in ten thousand, the guy's not kidding."
"With one hand he giveth comfort," said Step, "and with the other he taketh it away."