The city’s seedy underbelly has always been one of Templeton’s obsessions. His first book, which I’ve never read, was about a Houston real estate mogul from the late forties who was found hanging from the rafters in his stable. It would’ve passed for a suicide except that the man’s mistress had been strung up, too. During the interviews he did for The Kingwood Killing, he talked a lot about Dean Corll, so I’m not surprised he’d gone back to the story. Recent events may have contributed.
“They’ve found another one of his victims,” Templeton says, using his fork to punctuate. “One of the bodies, I mean.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“So I was thinking maybe it was time to revisit that case. Tell the story from a fresh perspective. I’ve always been interested in Corll, you know that.”
“The serial killer thing leaves me cold,” I say.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It just does. The whole cultural fixation. There are so many books written about these people that they’re practically celebrities. They’re the ones you’re making famous, not me. It’s no wonder you have imitators, the way the pathology’s been glamorized.”
“That’s so naive,” he says. “The next thing you’re gonna tell me is that listening to gangsta rap turns good suburban kids into stone-cold thugs. It’s ridiculous. You can’t blame writers for turning people into serial killers-and anyway, I don’t think it’s possible to glamorize a man who tortured and murdered young boys.”
“You’re right,” I say. “Maybe you should write about him. It’ll keep you out of my hair, for one thing. I was just a kid when it all happened. Unless you’re looking for some insight into what it was like in the Heights for an eleven-year-old.”
“I actually would be interested in that,” he says.
“It wasn’t like anything. We had no idea what was going on. I certainly didn’t. Compared to now, we were sheltered.”
He puts his fork down and starts chuckling. “Sheltered in the seventies? Drugs and the Sexual Revolution? Disco? Where were you, man?”
“I was eleven. And disco came later, anyway.”
His smile fades. “But you’re not being honest with me, March. All the time we’ve known each other you’ve been holding back. You knew I was into the Corll thing, and you never said a word. I can hardly believe it-but then, it’s you we’re talking about.”
“You know what? I’ve got to get going.”
“Not so fast. I’m helping you with your investigation, so you have to help with mine.”
“I don’t have any help to give, remember? I didn’t work that case.”
“March,” he says. “I’ve been talking to your cousin.”
“My cousin?”
“Tammy Putnam. You know who I mean. She runs a website devoted to the victims of Dean Corll, including her brother Moody. Now, I knew about the site, but I didn’t know until I actually interviewed her that the two of you are family. She says you and Moody were inseparable.”
“Brad, listen to me-”
“She also says you’ve essentially kicked her out of your life, and this is why.”
If I hadn’t been up all night, if I wasn’t operating on a diet of black coffee and the bagel Aguilar fed me four and a half hours ago, I could handle this bombshell a little better. But I have, and I am, so I handle it by slamming my mug on the table, sloshing the last of my coffee onto the last of his fish and chips. He scoots back in a rush, but his eyes alight with glee.
“A palpable hit,” he says. “Now fair is fair. I want to know the truth about your cousin’s theory. She says Moody knew Dean Corll’s friends, was definitely taken by him, and that you know it too, but refuse to admit it.”
“Tammy’s a lonely woman with a lot of bitterness about how her life’s turned out,” I say. “She never even heard about Dean Corll until she saw a thing on TV about him, and then she became obsessed. Moody, her brother. . his disappearance is to her what the Kennedy assassination was to Oliver Stone. The moment when everything turned bad.”
“So she’s making it up?”
I shake my head. “She believes it. It’s just not true.”
“Have you actually looked at her website, though? I did and it seems pretty convincing. I can tell you the Corll experts respect what she’s doing-”
“Then they’re not too bright. No disrespect, but a lot of these armchair theorists aren’t. And no I haven’t read it. I don’t need to. I know for a fact Moody wasn’t kidnapped by Dean Corll. Please.”
“And you didn’t become a cop in the first place because of his disappearance? That’s what she seems to think.”
The sneer on my face must speak volumes.
“You deny it,” he says. “But if you’re so sure your cousin wasn’t a victim, then what did happen to him? Answer me that.”
“Like I said, I was just eleven. Moody was fifteen and that’s a world of difference. His sister wants a glamorous explanation for what happened to him, and in our sick and twisted society being the victim of a serial killer is glamorous. But that doesn’t make it true.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“And I’m not going to, Brad. All I’m going to say is this: don’t spread around what Tammy tells you like it’s holy writ. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. There’s a reason I don’t return her calls-and if you want me to return yours, then drop it.”
“You already don’t return my calls.”
“Exactly,” I say. “And you wonder why.”
I’m awake now and burning with anger, the same smoldering rage I feel every time Tammy Putnam’s name comes up. Charlotte knows better now than to even mention her. The woman is certifiable, and has a knack for dragging other people into her insanity.
First she’d ruined her own marriage and poisoned her kids against her, then left alone had started chipping away at the rest of us. Before he died, she even had my uncle all turned around, the man who pretty much raised me, halfway convinced his flesh-and-blood son had been murdered by a psychopath-and I, his adopted son, was keeping the truth from him. She’s never had any idea the kind of grief she’s stirring up, and wouldn’t care anyway. Everything she does is about herself. It’s always been that way, even in the spring of 1973.
I run a couple of lights on my way to the medical examiner’s office, and screech to a halt in the mostly empty parking lot. Inside, I follow a path of bright corridors to my brother-in-law’s lab, but Bridger isn’t in. The shades are drawn and the door locked tight. I continue down the hall to Dr. Green’s lair, wishing I’d gone home to sleep like Bascombe told me instead of wasting my time on Brad Templeton.
“You’re early,” Sheila Green says.
“Fine,” I snap. “I can come back later.”
“Who put the burr under your saddle, huh? Is that any way to talk to a lady?”
“I retract my statement.”
“Good boy. Now let’s go downstairs and get started. I’m looking forward to this.”
In the elevator she takes out her cell phone and shows me the pictures she snapped on Friday, the day of the snow. Her Mercedes in the ME’s parking lot, blanketed with an inch of white powder. A five- or six-year-old kid standing next to a stunted snowman in the front yard of a hulking brick two-story. Dr. Green and a distinguished-looking gray-haired man I assume is the other Dr. Green, the cardiologist, each of them palming snowballs like they’re about to start a fight.
“What about you, March? You take any?”
“I was working.” I rub my eyes. The snow seems like ages ago, but it’s been less than forty-eight hours since it came and went.
“You were working,” she says. “So was everybody else, but that didn’t stop us from going outside and enjoying ourselves. I mean, when was the last time it snowed like that in this town? Oh, right: never. All people do around here is whine and complain about the weather, how hot it is, how miserable, all the mosquitoes flying around. I get sick of hearing it. Then something like this happens and you don’t even take a moment to experience it?”