She wrote her home and cell phone numbers on the back of a business card and set it on one of the benches.
“I expect to hear from you, Jack.”
Seventeen
That afternoon Hess sat in an empty conference room at Sheriff headquarters and studied the pages in the fat blue binders, comparing the mugs with Merci’s sketch. She had already gone through the registry once, then asked Hess to do it, separately. Something about “comparing independent data,” which was fine with Hess. He felt an odd roiling in his blood, like it was hot, like it was starting to bubble inside.
Of the 3,700 sex offenders then registered in Orange County, 335 lived in areas patrolled by the Sheriff Department. Some 259 were considered “serious,” 11 others, “high risk.” High risk is three or more violent sexual attacks. Serious is two or less. Sex Offenders Notification and Registration — SONAR — was instituted to keep track of them all.
He’d already eliminated the 11 high-risk offenders. He was now at “D” in the serious category. He was surprised that a two-time rapist, recently released at the age of thirty-six, for instance, could be considered less than high risk.
D’Amato. Darcet. Davis. Deckard.
Too fat. No. Too old. No.
According to the sign-out sheet, four of the thirty-five binders were checked out to the SONAR team, who were transferring most of the information onto compact disc for public release. New state law required that agencies make their sex offender registries available to the public in areas of high population. SONAR was deleting addresses — but not zip codes — from the files before making them public so as not to encourage trouble from neighbors. The SONAR deputies were finishing up the last three books, “T” through “Z”, and also a supplemental registry for the criminally insane.
He studied the artist’s drawing again. Kamala Petersen’s man was mustachioed. Wavy blond hair. He’d never seen a composite wearing a coat and a vest. The artist had given something sad — perhaps even something damp — to the man’s eyes. Or was it Kamala’s “hyperromantic vision,” as Rayborn had put it?
An interesting face, Hess thought: handsome, groomed, unusual. Unusual in what way? Not typically Southern Californian. Mustaches are out. Long hair is out. The appearance wasn’t simple or casual, or offhand. It was formal. Created. A “look.” A look of what? What are you supposed to be? A model, like Kamala said? Actor? Celebrity? Quick now, describe him in three words: intelligent, secretive, regretful.
Regretful. In forty years of law enforcement Hess couldn’t remember describing a sketched suspect as regretful. Later, in court, maybe. Maybe.
Could be way upstream in juvenile court, but somewhere he’s felt the lash.
Regret, thought Hess. You regret what you’ve done. You regret who you are. Or is that part of your look — the appearance of sorrow?
Personally, thought Hess, if I had taken two people from their cars, hung them in trees and bled them, I would feel sorrow indeed. But not everyone would, and that was what made the worst people in the world different from the rest of us — no regret, no remorse, no feeling for anyone but themselves, no conscience. The tricky part was that Hess knew a lot of people like that who weren’t criminal. Some of them were cops and deputies. Some were accountants and mechanics. Some were teachers and housewives, though if the truth be told, most of them were men.
Delano. Dickerson. Diderot.
No. No. No.
Then there was Eichrod. Hess popped open the rings and worked it out. Eichrod, Kurt; 32 years old; 5’10", 185, brown and brown. Hair long and wavy. Mustache. Possession of obscene material; solicitation; indecent acts; peeping; battery; assault with intent to rape. Two of the sexual assault raps got him a total of four years served. Released on parole in 1995, parole satisfied late last year.
Hess set Merci’s sketch beside the binder page and considered. They were close but not close, alike but different. Something more in the attitude than the physical.
What disturbed Hess was Eichrod’s rising line of intensity, from porn to sexual assault in a six-year span.
You don’t just go out and start with something of this magnitude. You work up to it. If nothing else, you work up to the how of it.
The how of it, Hess thought: hunter, butcher, packinghouse worker? Embalmer?
Eichrod’s jacket would tell. He set aside the binder page to copy later.
Gilbert. Greers. Gustin. Gutierrez. No.
It was amazing how many sexual criminals were out there. And these were only the ones who had been caught, convicted and registered. Police scientists said the realistic number would be more like quadruple what the registry held. Hess was ashamed of some of his gender for failing to mate legitimately, then turning furtive or brutal. Desire for sex was at the center of almost everything that went wrong in a guy’s head. That, and desire for money.
He turned to Ed Izma’s page and looked at the picture of the huge man. Reduced to a three-by-four image, Izma lost all of his panoramic menace.
Jackson. James. Jerrol.
Mickler, Mondessa, Mumford.
No. No. No.
Then there was Pule, Ronald E. Abductor, rapist, torturer. A user of pliers. Fourteen years back in Georgia. That was ten years ago. His only offense. High risk, due to special circumstances — abduction and forcible sodomy. He was forty years old, which put him out of Dr. Page’s profile age. He wasn’t a builder, apparently. He just exploded on the scene, skilled beyond his years, fully formed. He was big and probably strong enough to hoist a full grown woman over the branch of a tree: 6’3", 220 lbs. Too big for the backseat of a car? Maybe. Long blond-brown hair, mustache. And there was that something different in his eyes, too, the thing that Merci’s artist had tried to capture. Remorse? Self-pity?
Hess put Pule on top of Eichrod and continued.
An hour later he was at his desk in the investigators’ bullpen with the arrest files for Eichrod and Pule. It was almost seven and Hess was the only one there. He looked at his watch and saw that it was Friday, the thirteenth. He had already photocopied their registry sheets and made a note to get “S” through “Z” and the supplemental volume from the SONAR team when they came to work the next day, first thing. He realized now that the next workday was three days off. As a young investigator it had angered him that people could be hard to get on weekends. It threatened to anger him now, but he sighed and told himself that “T” through “Z” and all the psychopaths would just have to wait.
There was nothing in either file that suggested Eichrod or Pule were experienced as meat cutters, packinghouse workers or embalmers, anyway. Hess hadn’t expected anything.
He stared at Ronald Pule’s registry picture again, then compared it to the sketch. Promising. But his arrest mugs didn’t look like the sketch at all — his face was wider, his eyes smaller, his tight mouth nothing like the full-lipped man that had stirred Kamala Petersen’s interest.
Of course, Kamala had probably exaggerated his virtues.
Hess watched Rayborn come toward him with thick blue notebooks under both arms and a newspaper propped across the top of each armful. With her hair loose it framed her face. She looked intent as always.
She set one stack of binders on his desk, then the other, saving the two papers for herself.
“‘T’ through ‘Z’, and the crazies?” he asked.
“I got them from Carla Fontana, the shrink for the SONAR team.”
She plopped the newspapers onto the desk beside Hess’s, and swung herself into the swivel chair. “Let me guess — you picked out Eichrod and Pule.”