"Raskolnikov's MO," I said.
Karen frowned.
"Yes," said Chet. "He's taken the page from Dostoyevski, although I doubt he's read Crime and Punishment."
"How do you know what he reads?" Karen asked.
"Nobody who misspells hypocrite or ignorance reads the masters," I said maybe a little snottily. I was hoping to buy Karen's kindness with forensic competence, but the tone of voice came out wrong. She colored and looked away from me.
Chet gave me a very odd look at that moment but nodded, first to me, then to Karen, then studied me again. "Yes."
"Nice, Chet, but a yard-long pipe dangling from a man's shoulder isn't exactly hidden," Karen said.
"That is correct. And that is why, as Kim told Russell, the Midnight Eye wears the green robe."
The green robe turned out to be a blanket-an inexpensive acrylic blanket, fibers from which Chester had already placed at all three scenes. It was likely old. It was very dirty. Fibers of it were found at the Wynns', mixed with decomposed granite and beach sand just inside and to the left of the master suite's door.
"Holding a blanket around you still takes a free hand," I said. "If you're going to keep it over your shoulders."
"He takes it off once he's inside-the CS team found the fibers tightly grouped in all three scenes. He has set down the blanket, in each case, just inside the bedroom door, always on the left, using his freer right hand to slip it down and off."
"Like taking off his warm-up jacket," said Karen. "I wonder if he uses pine tar on his club, for a better grip."
"No evidence of pine tar, Karen. But I had Evidence send up the Wynns' screen door this afternoon, for a closer look the cut. The jagged ends of the mesh were rich with green acrylic fiber-the top, where his shoulders went through, and the bottorn, too, where the blanket dragged across."
Karen looked at me a little wearily. "Nothing on the blanket, Russ. It's too easy to ditch and get another. Winters said okay on physical description and method of entry only."
Chester coughed quietly. "I would not release information on his facial hair, for roughly the same reason, Karen. A man with a full beard is much easier to spot than one who is clean shaven."
"Too late, Chet. We're going with the picture."
Chester shrugged.
Karen hesitated for a moment. A flutter of confusion crossed her eyes. It was then that I realized she was truly making the calls for me, that for all her carping about Winters this and Dan that, Karen Schultz herself was in charge of me and what I wrote. That's why she'd been sitting on me so hard. A mistake was hers and hers alone.
Chet coughed again, cupping his hand to his mouth. It struck me as a little nervous. I assumed he was plugged into Karen's distress at my presence.
"We know he carries a knife-short-bladed, and I would guess a substantial handle for… leverage. It is likely a hunting knife, or one for skinning. So," he said. "That is the picture I've drawn for you. What do you see?"
I gathered my thoughts for a long moment, drawing Chester's images and information, extrapolating what I could, trying to let a coherent whole emerge. "A beach bum. One of the homeless you find in beach cities. He's got long hair and beard because he can't afford to have them cut. He wears blanket for warmth, and to hide the club. He spends his time at the beach because it's free, he can panhandle, use the public rest rooms, check the dumpsters for edible trash, steal from the tourists. On the tapes he made, I heard waves in the background, and voices. He hangs out at a place where the cops are halfway lenient, where other homeless people congregate-no use standing out, and at six two he's not exactly inconspicuous to start with. Venice Beach is a possibility, but it's too far north. The cops would run him out of Huntington or Newport, so Laguna is the best bet. I'd look for him in Laguna. He steals cars to get around because he's too poor to afford one of his own. He gets them in Laguna, leaves them there when he's done. You'd find beach sand in the floor mats, green acrylic fiber on the upholstery, and if you were lucky, Chet's mystery polymer on the headrests. He's a Rastafarian-or thinks he is-from all the Jah shit he paints all over the walls. Rastas smoke a lot of dope-it's part of their religion-so I'd expect him to be around the smoke. Again, he can't buy it, not much of it, so he hangs with people who supply him. We know he's got access to a tape recorder, so I'd guess he stole it from a tourist who was out in the water, not looking after his things. He's either got a speech impediment or he's heavily under the influence when he makes the tapes-maybe both. Epilepsy is possible. We could figure out only half of what he said, and that didn't make a lot of sense. Last, I'd say he's pretty smart. He wears gloves, hides a three-foot steel club under his blanket. He's brave and he's getting braver. First, two people alone in an unlocked apartment, then a couple in a locked house, then a family of four. He won't stop because the more he kills, the hungrier he is for more. There's no sexual turn-on for him in it; he does it because he thinks he has to. Probably hears God-Jah-telling him he has to do this shit. Maybe that's who's talking on the tapes. That's what I see."
Chet said nothing for a moment, then finally looked Karen. She had her back to us, staring out the vertical slot window that constituted-twelve hours a day-Chet Singer view of the outside world.
"Good," said Chet. "I understand you have actually talk to him."
"News travels fast around here," I noted.
"Are you done?" asked Karen.
"I'm done. Thanks, Chet. I'll be careful with this."
"Good of you to visit," he said. "I'm sorry we lost you."
Karen had already pushed through the door ahead of me when Chet quietly called me back inside. He gave me that odd look again, as if I were a specimen under his microscope. "That was perceptive of you to remember the Eye misspells simple words, and to mention the similarity to Dostoyevski."
I waited, wheels turning inside my head, wondering what I'd done. "Thanks."
"But nowhere, in any of our crime scenes, did he write the word ignorance — correctly or not."
I could see ignorace on Amber's wall, clearly, as my mind streaked for the nearest plausible excuse. Even as I stood there, slack-jawed, probably, I saw a way to employ my befuddlement It was a superb lie, delivered with humility and aplomb. "I write and edit hours a day," I said with a minor smile. "I must have mistaken my ignorance for his."
Chester continued to study me hard for a moment, then smiled. "Well," he said, "we all certainly have enough of that go around."
For the next hour, I interviewed Erik Wald and Dan Winters to get Citizens' Task Force's information. The formulation of this force, I saw, was clearly a promotional move on Winters's part, a way of enlisting not only public support for the case but of enlisting votes in the next election-still two years away. I tried to remain uncynical. It was also, I understood, some kind of atonement-overatonement perhaps-for the fact that the department had taken so long to connect the Fernandez and Ellison killings. Still, the task force was theoretically a good idea, if it brought results. I personally thought the T-shirts and caps a bit much. Wald seemed almost to glow in his moment; he was sincere, glib, earnest, arrogant. I was reminded again that Erik was an outsider here and that no amount of infiltration of this department would ever render him a sworn officer. But for now, Wald would have heavy coverage, and his Task Force had already produced a potentially huge piece of evidence-the video and resultant photograph. Carla Dance dispatched a photographer who shot Wald during the last few minutes of our conversation. Before the shoot started, Erik brushed his hand through his curly hair and loosened his necktie.