“Correct. Just like plums in the market.”
“And if he can get them to the woods under their own power, it saves a lot of hard work,” said Hess. Lately, he had become acutely aware of what it was to be tired and to save energy. It was hard for him to imagine carrying a human body even the hundred feet or so from the dirt road to the oak trees. Not to mention hoisting them up with a rope. Check the hunting and camping stores, he thought: see what new gadgets they’ve got for hanging a carcass.
“Of course,” said Dr. Page, “he has to drive a vehicle large enough to carry a body in. Trunk, most likely. Maybe a van or a pickup truck with a camper on it.”
“Physically, what can we look for?”
“Compact and muscular. He wouldn’t even think about waiting in the backseat of a car if he was large. Note, however, that he’s picked out fairly spacious cars.”
“What else can I use for parameters? That partial print is all we’ve really got. I want to send it through CAL–ID with all the blessings we can give it.”
Page nodded curtly, folded his fingers under his chin and shut his eyes. The sunshine came through the lattice in little rectangles and landed on his face. Hess saw the Mandevilla blossoms nodding in the breeze like they were talking to each other. Between the doctor’s elbows were photographs of ground soaked in at least two quarts of human female blood and the words of a young man currently employed in the shoe department of a major department store: anyway, when someone that beautiful smiles at you, you remember. At least I remember...
“Tim, a man who has reached this level of specialization has had a long and... thorough journey to this point. Look for a juvenile record of academic failure, truancy, exposure, peeping, breaking and entering to take underwear or other fetish items, or perhaps a masturbator, urinator, defecator. Fire setting, of course. If he’s got the sheet I think he does, look at the sex crimes. No matter how far off the mark they might seem, remember that he’s grown, changed. Anything but pedophilia, that’s its own world. I honestly believe you will have run across him before. You, meaning law enforcement. His need for risk will be his undoing, if you get him He’ll have to give you more and more. And forget your stooges and snitches and jailhouse songbirds — the Purse Snatcher will have told exactly nobody on earth about his deeds. That’s why he has to tell you about them. That’s why he left the purses.”
Dr. Page set his hands on the table top. His fingers looked seventy and his face looked fifty. He was staring down at the pictures still lying between his arms.
“No one’s had a look at this guy? Not one single eyewitness at the malls? Someone lurking, following, checking out the cars, anything out of the ordinary?”
Hess considered. “Rumor has it we’ve got some kind of witness. I guess I’m not supposed to know. Rayborn hypnotized her for the sketch artist, but I haven’t seen the results.”
“Then a witness is what you don’t have. In court.”
“Right. Dalton, do you see the Purse Snatcher trying to get himself close to the investigation?”
“I doubt it. He’s not that naive. He would be more likely to send you a body part, UPS.”
“Something from the inside, though.”
“Correct. Something from the inside. He doesn’t want to spoil her appearance.”
Twelve
It angered her to pose for a rapist but she knew Hess was right: if Izma got interested he might talk to impress her.
Hess talked to the manager while Merci stood in the lobby and read the LA PALOMA HOTEL RULES sign:
1. No checks
2. No overnight guests
3. No loud music after 10 P.M.
4. No hot plates
5. No solicitors
6. No kidding!
“Three-o-seven,” said Hess.
“How come I haven’t seen this creep’s name on the SONAR lists?”
“He’s not considered high risk.”
“A low-risk rape-kidnapper.”
“That’s what they say.”
They took the stairs to the third floor and walked down the hall. Merci touched the gun that was snugged against her ribs the way a Catholic might touch a medallion of St. Christopher. It was for luck and for something more than luck: it was for peace. Her last qualifier was her best in ten years, putting her fifteenth overall in a big department that had a lot of good shots.
Mercy had drawn down only once in her life and didn’t have to fire, but she was steady on target in a Weaver stance and would have hit him clean if she’d pulled. She liked what she’d said to the creep, something unrehearsed, something that just came out and worked real well, at least on this guy: Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole?
That had done it. Luck. Peace. The nine.
Before they got to the door Hess said, “Let me lead it. I know a little about him.”
“Just stand there and look my best?”
Hess stopped outside 307 and turned to her. “It would be better if you sat. He liked them small and helpless.”
“I’m five-eleven.”
“He’s six-ten.”
When Ed Izma opened the door Merci’s heart gave a startled flutter, then settled uncomfortably. Part of the reason was the size of the man, his head coming almost to the top of the seven-foot door frame. She leaned back reflexively to look up at him. She could feel the willingness of her right hand to move up under her coat, so she made a point to keep it at her side.
He was not an ugly man at all, in fact his face had an economy of line that was interesting, and his eyes were a placid and unthreatening gray. He was smiling and his teeth were large and even. Merci thought his head looked small.
“Sorry to upset you,” he said. “But nice to meet you. I’m Ed.”
He offered his hand. Merci took it and understood instantly that he had her now, could easily force her any direction he wanted, or snap her into the room and right out the third-story window if he wanted. It seemed an awful long way to his eyes or balls, and she doubted she had the speed and strength to damage them.
“Sergeant Rayborn, OCSD.”
He smiled down on her and let her hand go. His eyes had light in them. “You know, I haven’t committed one serious crime in the last thirty-five years, Hess. In fact, I’ve only committed one serious crime in my entire life.”
“It was kind of a whopper.”
Merci, in the center of the room now, turning to her left, saw Ed Izma’s gaze bearing down on her. Hess had told her Izma raped his victim a dozen times in the two days he had her. The cold of the freezer had actually helped keep her alive; that and Izma constantly putting her in and yanking her right back out for various reasons. She’d had the luck to be put in an old freezer with bad wiring, a poorly fitting top and a shot gasket. She’d needed a blood transfusion when they got her to the hospital.
“By today’s standards? I don’t think so. I never took another life.”
“One that we know about, anyway,” said Hess.
Merci was suddenly aware of multiple facts: hot room, thick air, useless air freshener, a fen oscillating to her right; Hess and Izma to her left, five hundred plus pounds of antagonistic male bulk. There was a large bed that took up most of the room. It was made. She felt like she was looking at things through a hot fog. Dizzying. Another room behind: bath and bedroom but too small for the bed? She was aware of being stared at. Didn’t the room smell like air freshener and semen? Where was the real air in here, anyway?
“Something to drink, Merci?”
“Water. Ice if you have it.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have either.”
“What do you have?”
“Nothing, actually.”
“Thanks anyway, shitbird.”