“You have a cold or something? Or maybe swine flu?”
“You’d like that,” he says. “The crazy thing is, most people would thank me for making them famous, but not you.”
“Did you make me famous and I missed it?”
“I’ve written two books about you, anyway. But can I get you to return my calls? Not on your life. I swear it’s easier to get through to the chief than it is to you. And no, I haven’t been calling him, but if I did, he’d have the courtesy to pick up the phone.”
“This is the second time today I’ve been accused of ingratitude.”
He sniffs. “And yet you still don’t get the message.”
“Speaking of the chief,” I say, “you know the rumor is, he’s on the way out. He was Bill White’s guy, and whichever way the runoff election turns out, the new mayor will bring in somebody else.”
“That’s not a rumor; it’s a fact. The rumor is that the new chief will be promoted from within. This is the first time I’ve heard you talk politics, though, March. What’s the deal? Are you hoping to get the job?”
I laugh. “Not likely.”
“Anyway, I thought I’d bump into you last night, but I saw Charlotte and she said you’d ducked out early. I tuned into the news this morning and now I know why. Which call did you get?”
“West U.”
“The stabbing? Is it a juicy one?”
“No comment.”
One of the waitresses emerges from the Black Labrador’s front entrance dressed in a short khaki skirt and black knee-socks. She doesn’t look too happy with us for sitting outside. I order black coffee and Templeton gets the fish and chips. He cranes around to follow her with his eyes. All for show. He doesn’t swing that way.
“I have a question for you,” I say.
“Good.” He turns back to face me. “I have one for you, too. Which of us gets to go first?”
“Mine’s important.”
“Then go right ahead.”
I put my copy of The Kingwood Killing on the table. He snatches it up with a frown, inspecting the spine. “This doesn’t even look like it’s been read. Have you seen the reprints with the new cover? They did a much better job.”
“There’s a photo in there from the crime scene, remember? Here’s what I want to know. Has anyone ever written to you about that? Fan mail from readers, for example. Have you ever gotten a letter that seemed a little strange?”
“They all seem a little strange,” he says. “I was in the true crime section the other day, and there was this woman flipping through the latest book. At first I was kind of thrilled. I almost introduced myself. But then I actually looked at her, and March, this woman hadn’t brushed her hair for days. I mean, she was scary. I thought, I’ll be writing about you one of these days, sister, and I trucked on out of there.”
“I’m talking specifically about letters. Or emails. Somebody who seemed really obsessed with the details of the Fauk case, or maybe mentioned that crime scene photo specifically.”
He shakes his head.
“Are you sure?”
“I think I’d remember something like that.” He gazes at one of the nearby trees as it shifts in the wind. “The only person who fits that description is Fauk himself. You know Donald still writes to me?”
“You’re on a first name basis?”
“He sends me these long handwritten letters, trying to re-argue every aspect of the book. For a while, after he first read it, he wouldn’t talk to me anymore. During the interviews he thought I was leaning toward his version of events-”
“His version is, he confessed.”
He waves the book at me. “Hey, I wrote it. You don’t have to tell me what happened. The point is, he’s a self-justifying egomaniac with plenty of time on his hands. He writes a lot of letters. He’s frustrated that there aren’t any fan clubs on the outside trying to reverse his conviction. I actually have a letter where he says he’s the white Mumia Abu-Jamal. I should send you a copy sometime.”
“No thanks. But I’m serious about the question.”
My tone gets his attention. He narrows his eyes. “Why are you asking?”
“Again, no comment.”
“Is it the new case? There’s some kind of connection?”
I must be transparent as glass. The way he locks on to the truth so fast catches me off guard. I take the book from him and open it up to the photo section.
“You see this? Hold that for me.”
I shouldn’t do this. I know I shouldn’t. But I dig out my camera and scroll through the photos snapped at last night’s scene, landing on the one.
“Now, look at those side by side and tell me what you think.”
With the book in one hand and the camera in the other, he goes back and forth for a while, taking the comparison seriously. The waitress returns with my coffee and he doesn’t spare her a glance. He puts them both down on the table.
“This is legit?”
“Yes,” I say, leaning forward, not even trying to contain my excitement. “You see it, too.”
He nods slowly. “It’s a little creepy.”
“But there is a resemblance.”
“Definitely.”
“If you were me, you’d have a hard time believing that the perpetrator of the one crime had never seen the photo from the other, right? He has to have seen it and fixated on it, too, incorporated it into his fantasy. Because this didn’t happen by accident. He arranged everything to look a certain way. It’s not an exact copy, but if you ask me”-I tap my finger on the book-“this had to be his inspiration.”
His eyebrows wrinkle up. “And it just so happens you’re assigned the case? The same detective who investigated the original?”
“That part’s a coincidence,” I say.
“Which you don’t believe in, right? There’s a quote from you about that in here. Everything’s related. Nothing’s coincidental.”
The coffee tastes burnt, but I drink it anyway. Talking to Templeton can be frustrating, which is why I avoid doing it. He’s been strangely possessive of me for a long time, confusing the real life person with the character in his book. It doesn’t help that I’ve made liberal use of him, not just as a source of information but to do back-channel legwork. Thanks to his celebrated run at the now-defunct Houston Post and his voracious appetite for gossip, he knows everyone and knows everything about everyone.
“Listen to me, Brad. The woman who was murdered yesterday was young and carefree. Maybe irresponsible, but who wasn’t at that age? She was full of life. Her mother said all she wanted was to be happy, and instead she’s on a slab at the morgue waiting to be cut open some more. Now I need a way to link the man who did this to the scene. You can help with that, but you’re going to have to take this seriously.”
“I do take it seriously.”
“What I’m saying is, I need you to go back through any letters or emails or any kind of communication you’ve gotten, and make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Give me a name,” he says.
“What?”
“You have a suspect, so give me his name. That’ll make it easy.”
“I can’t give you a name, you know that.” I cut him off before he can object. “But I can tell you this. The victim’s name is Simone Walker, but her married name was Young. Because the guy she married, his name is Jason Young.”
“Jason Young,” he says.
“That’s the name of the husband.”
“Ah.” He reaches inside his jacket for a pen, then writes the name on a napkin, stuffing it away as the food arrives. “You’re not eating?”
“I don’t have the appetite. I’m heading to the ME’s office after this.”
“Better safe than sorry,” he says, digging in.
Between bites, he catches me up on his latest project, a book about Dean Corll, the notorious Candy Man serial killer from the early seventies, who terrorized the Heights neighborhood where I grew up, not so far from where Charlotte and I live now. Back then it was just as diverse ethnically, but more working class. Corll’s victims, mostly teenage boys, didn’t go unnoticed, but the police were all too quick to write them off as runaways.