“Yeah. Let’s get into it some other time, okay?”
“You start off with what you know for sure. Out on the Ortega, when I was looking down at the ground, I saw how neat the blood was. It wasn’t splashed out in a struggle. It didn’t spurt out in a fight. It came out slowly, and the source wasn’t moving much, if at all. So, she’s restricted somehow as she bleeds. Okay. You know what I saw first? A woman in a cocoon. Then I saw a woman in a spider web. Stillness. Immobilization. I’m still wondering if he’s poisoning them somehow. Anyway, I know I’ve got a dead woman, bleeding. Then I see what’s left of her when he’s done — nothing. Because he’s taken her with him. That requires a lot of work and energy and planning. I saw him walking back to his car with a suitcase in each hand. Hard luggage, made out of plastic. Washable. Waterproof. Round edges, gray. But that didn’t make sense because she was too big and too heavy. And according to what we found, he didn’t cut her up. He took her. Because he values her. He knows he values her. So, he’d planned to take her from the start — and he didn’t want to mess her up. He didn’t want to spoil her but he wanted her blood drained and he wanted her body? Why, of all the millions of spots along the Ortega, did he bring her here? I looked up and saw the branch — low enough but strong. I remembered a deer hanging, bleeding, after my father shot him out at my uncle’s place in Idaho. So I climbed up and found the notches.”
She said nothing. Hess wasn’t sure if she’d heard. His voice sounded like it was coming from a canyon twenty miles away.
Hess unlocked his fingers from behind his head and picked up the newspaper again. He wanted to appear strong and well. He tossed the newspaper aside as if it annoyed him and folded his hands over his lap. His hands were shaky but he could feel his heart slowing down now and Merci was no longer silhouetted in red neon. His face still felt warm but the burning of his knuckles was over. He breathed in deeply and it felt right.
“It’s easy to understand, on paper,” she said. “But when I went out there and tried it, all I saw was what you had seen.”
“You need to do it alone.”
“It’s hard, eliminating the things you assume, because you need to assume some things. Like with the tree, you had to assume that the body was there. When in fact, he could have bled her somewhere else, contained the blood and just poured it out where we found it. Right? You assumed the body and the blood were together.”
“There’s some of that, yes.”
He could feel the cadence of his heartbeat slowing and his vision coming clear again. But it was still like he had melted to the chair and he couldn’t imagine getting out of it.
“Do you ever see things that are wrong?”
“They’re not as clear as the right ones.”
“I don’t see pictures. I see video, and it’s blurred.”
He looked at her. She was sitting backward in the swivel chair, leaning forward, her feet spread. Her arms were along the top of the backrest and she was resting her chin on her wrist.
“Seeing a lot of bad stuff helps. The older you get, the more of it you see.”
Hess expected some comment like I don’t need these pithy aphorisms all the time, and he really didn’t blame her. Instead she was quiet for a long beat.
“I’ve worked thirty-eight homicide cases. How about your?”
“Eight hundred and fourteen.”
“Bigger library.”
“Forty-three years’ worth. Plus Korea.”
“How come people who have been in wars always mention it?”
“We’re proud.”
“Just in the obvious ways?”
“Yeah, they’re obvious. Like coming out alive.”
“I’ll never be in a war.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“It is, if I’m building the library.”
Hess thought about that. It was a delicious feeling to get a clear thought, after his body had rebelled like it just did.
“About that library — you’re a lifetime cardholder. The things you see don’t go away. All the clichés and stories about burnout and booze and depression and suicide. Well, they’re true.”
“But they don’t always have to be true.”
He looked at her and smiled. It was half because he enjoyed her optimism and half to portray a heartiness that he didn’t feel. She was quiet again. Her chin was still on her wrist and she was looking at him with an expression of frank thoughtfulness and curiosity, like a boy might examine a new green bug found under the porch light.
“This is a hard one, Hess.”
“They’re the worst. A guy who doesn’t regret it in the morning. Just starts planning the next one.”
“But isn’t that a weird look in the sketch? In his eyes, like he’s sorry or sad or something?”
He nodded. He was proud of her in that moment and wished there was a way to say so without making her feel small.
“I’ve never seen a look like that,” she said. “I wonder if Kamala Petersen might have added it.”
She stood then and slid the chair under the desk with a push of her foot. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him uncertainly. “Well, it’s Friday evening, Lieutenant. Want to get something to eat?”
Hess said fine with me before reminding himself that it was going to take considerable effort to leave his chair.
Too late now, he thought. He lay his arms along the rests and set his feet squarely and looked at Merci again to see if she was registering his weakness. She was standing close by with one of her large hands out and he took it before he realized everything that taking it would mean.
He glided upward on her strength.
Eighteen
Colesceau sat in his darkened living room at 12 Meadowlark and listened to the chanting of the crowd on the street outside. The blinds were closed and the lights were off. He stared openly at the images on the TV screen but his attention was outside with die mob. His heart felt heavy enough to stop beating. Five days before the nightmare would end, and this is what they do to you. He felt a rage so overwhelming his arms trembled with the power and urgency of it. He felt the weight of ice picks in his hands.
When the chanting stopped he went over and worked the blinds open just a crack so he could see out. But as soon as they saw the plastic louvers move they started yelling again. It had gone like this for two straight hours now, and six hours yesterday after work. It amazed him how a news story in yesterday’s morning paper hatched a crowd so instantly. One day he had privacy; the next he had these... concerned citizens howling for his blood. And photographers bushwacking him as he got out of his little red truck.
But he looked through the thin crack anyway, at the outraged and outrageously beautiful face of Trudy Powers contorted into a mask of purest hatred. She raised and lowered a sign in rhythm to the chant:
MAKE our NEIGHborhood
SAFE for the CHILdren!
MAKE our NElGHborhood
SAFE for the CHILdren!
Her sign said RAPISTS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS and Trudy waved it up and down like a fan at a soccer game.
Jesus, thought Colesceau, I don’t exactly love children but I’ve never even considered hurting one. He wondered what the police had told these people. Did they know his convictions were only for attempted rape of very old, pathetically ugly and helpless women, not the glowingly healthy children of people like Trudy Powers? Did they know he was pumped full of female hormone and quite harmless? He was astonished. He touched his crotch — a bag of dumplings.
The reporters were still there, too. They were different ones but you could tell what they were — cameras and microphones and grim, hungry faces. There were two big news vans parked on the other side of the street. One of them was from the channel he was watching!