She returned Ed Izma’s stare.
Merci saw the giant’s pelvis start to move. His hands were still on the bed. His head was small and distant, like a remote controller left on top of the set.
Hess stood. “I’m going to show her what’s in your closet, Ed.”
“Don’t touch, please.”
Merci felt the blood rush from her head as she stood. “Keep your balls in your shorts, pinhead. I’ll be right back.”
She followed Hess into the back room.
Hess gestured toward the open closet. At first Merci was startled, then it made some kind of sense, then she was just chilled. There were five of them in there, standing along the wall of the closet, looking at her.
“These are what made the carpet impressions you were looking at. He had some of these sweethearts back when he took Lorraine Dulak.”
Four were mannequins dressed like tradeswomen — construction worker, a Post Office employee, a mechanic or plumber, a cop. The fifth wore a smart little skirt and had a head of luxuriant black hair that suggested to Merci her own. This last one held a card in her hand. Merci leaned in and read it: Lorraine Dulak, TrimCo. The mannequin bases were square.
“I should have puked when I first got here, gotten it over with.”
“I’m sure he does the hair and makeup himself. Probably changes them around, buys different clothes. I don’t know why he wanted to hide them from us. Maybe he thought I’d be envious. Or you’d be jealous. Or maybe he thought he was being a bad boy.”
She saw his small dry smile and shook her head. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Hess. I mean, what did he really tell us?”
“He doesn’t understand himself well enough to help us on purpose. But I thought we might see something in him that we could apply.”
“Well, did you?”
“I think the Purse Snatcher loved Janet Kane and Lael Jillson the same way Izma loved Lorraine. I think the Purse Snatcher is a collector. He’s collecting them like Izma does mannequins and pictures of mannequins. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you.”
“It makes me want to vomit.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a lie. And I’m sick of creeps who try to justify what they do by calling it love.”
“It doesn’t matter what they call it. It’s only a lie to us. To guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher, it’s the truth.”
“Fuck guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher. You spend an hour with this guy to find out that?”
“It was worth it. We’ve been here exactly thirty-two minutes. I learned something about our man and you got a chance to understand something you don’t understand yet.”
“Yeah? What.”
“That other people don’t think like you. So you have to think like them. They don’t feel like you. So you have to empathize. They don’t behave like you, so you have to get a feel for what they’re going to do next. That goes for creeps, so you can catch them, and everybody else, so you can get along with them.”
“And what if I just decide not to?”
“Then you won’t make sheriff by sixty.”
The rage hit her heart like a shot of speed. “Fifty-eight. And that’s not a joke to me.”
“I’m not joking. And you could handle that job, so long as you understood that the only person in the world who thinks like you is you. Being a good hunter isn’t about being in touch with your feelings, Rayborn. It’s about being in touch with everyone else’s. That’s how you find the people you need, no matter what you plan on doing to them. Creeps or husbands, you find them the same way.”
“I don’t want a husband. And you picked a helluva time for a lecture on feelings.”
“It was important.”
“I’m not convinced. Now, can we just get the hell out of this room? I’ve had enough. And if I spend another two minutes with that... gentleman out there who thinks and behaves differently than me, I’m going to draw my cheap Chinese Italian stiletto, cut off his tiny gonad-sized head and flush it down the nearest toilet. Can you understand me and my feelings now?”
He shut the closet door. “I don’t feel that great either.”
Thirteen
That afternoon after work Tim Hess received his first treatment of thoracic radiation. The stifling atmosphere of Ed Izma’s room was still within him as he lay back and the technician aimed the contraption at his chest. Hess wondered if the radiation could kill the sickness of Izma’s soul that had surely gotten into him. The doctors had told Hess it was intended to “clean up” any small cell carcinomas residing in his lymph system. If they’d found any there during his operation, they’d have sewed him shut and he’d be dead in half a year. They’d found nothing, but the radiation came heavily recommended.
It was painless and took about thirty seconds. But the radiologist told Hess that the side effects — fatigue, hair loss, appetite drop, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset — built up over time and he’d feel a whole lot worse after six weeks of daily treatments than he did right now.
“If you guys don’t kill me I don’t see how a little cancer will,” he said.
The radiologist smiled serenely. “We’re doing everything we can, Detective.”
To kill me or save me, Hess wondered as he made his way back through the waiting room.
Back home he called Barbara, certain that he wanted to say things, uncertain what they were.
“How are you, Tim?”
“I feel strong.”
“Do you really? Or are you just being strong?”
“It hasn’t been bad. Thanks for the letter and the flowers.”
“I felt helpless.”
“I didn’t call because I was kind of out of it.”
A lifetime of booze and cigarettes had caught up with Hess after the surgery. Delerium tremens, nicotine withdrawal, three days of mostly unremembered paranoid lunacy that he pieced together afterward from doctors, nurses and friends. At one point he had fled the IC unit, popping IV lines and catheters on his way to freedom. Three orderlies had brought him down.
He heard her breath catch. “I was so worried.”
“Come on, Barb, cut it out,” he said gently.
“I can’t help it. I’m just so sentimental about you, Tim. I know it’s ridiculous. But I can’t talk to you without feeling like I’m sixteen again. That’s so trite but it’s so true. First love, and all that. I feel like I let it get away.”
“We had different things to do, Barbara. It’s okay we did them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He pictured her like she was when they’d met, bright and pretty, with a smile that would stand up to the decades. And her feet always on the ground.
“I just wanted you to know I was okay, not to worry. You hear things, rumors get started.”
There was a long silence then, which Hess felt obligated to fill.
“To tell you the truth, though, I’ve been... thinking some thoughts I never thought before. I mean, forty-odd years as a deputy and I never worried about dying. I never really thought about it. I had guns pointed at me and knives thrown and plenty of threats from unhappy creeps. Then, I get a routine scan as part of a physical and there’s a spot on my lung the size of a pencil eraser. And that scared the hell out of me. I’ve got as good a chance as anybody else, Barb, but it can take you down pretty fast. And if it does, I want you to know that of all the people I’ve known in my life you’re the best. You’re the best human I ran across on earth. Not that I was in the kind of business where you run across a lot of really good ones. I didn’t mean that like... you know how I meant it. Anyway. True story.”