Back at the Chevy he watched the CSIs dusting the window exteriors. The purse was already gone, bagged up and secure inside the CSI van. Hess stepped over the crime scene tape and looked through the dust on the driver’s side window.
“Are you done with the door handle?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”
“I’m going to open it.”
“It’s all yours, sir.”
Hess swung open the door, bent over and put his hands on his knees, looking in. The interior was alive compared to the Jillson and Kane cars, he thought: recent players; recent events. It was just a feeling. He thought he smelled something sweet and not unpleasant — Ronnie’s perfume, perhaps. Or maybe a man’s cologne. He remembered what Robbie Jillson had told him about smelling his wife’s tormentor when he got into her Infiniti a full day after she went missing. How did he describe it? Faint. Cologne or aftershave maybe. Real faint. But I smelled him.
He leaned further in, hoping for a more definitive whiff but getting none. A woman’s scent lay underneath it all, he thought, but something else?
A woman’s shoe lay on the floor, down by the pedals. It was a black sandal with a thick sole like the young people were wearing these days. Hess leaned in and confirmed that the shoe came up fairly high — above the ankle — and that it fastened with a buckle at the top. The buckle was burst open and the perforated length of leather, bent from hours of use, had sprung free of the broken buckle. He could see her fighting. He looked back up toward the headrest of her seat. One long dark hair caught in the stitching of the pad. Because you were being pulled back? Because he’s behind you with, what? A cord? A club? Just his strong hands? No chance, really, with him coming from behind in the dark. You could have a .45 in your purse but it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t help you, anyway. No warning. No purchase. Nothing but your fists and your nails. He could see her unlocking the door, swinging her purse in, dropping herself to the seat and closing the door at the same time. She’s just about to put the keys in the ignition when he moves. After the door closes; before the engine starts. Keys still in her hand.
Keys. We always say to use the keys as a weapon.
Hess saw that they were still in the ignition, a fat bunch and a small flashlight on a ring. The flashlight had a good surface for prints. The Snatcher had touched at least one of those keys, for certain. Hess used his pen and a pocketknife to guide the ignition key almost free but keep it from falling out. In the smoggy morning light he did not see what he hoped he’d see: darkened blood in the slot and on the teeth of the key. He saw nothing but the clean old metal of well-used metal.
It made him angry and Hess thought, Sonofabitch, I’m going to find you. And if Merci Rayborn takes target practice on your face I might look the other way.
It was easy to get worked up about what had happened to a young woman like this, when you were close enough in time and space to smell her.
Hess backed out, gently shut the front door and opened the rear one. There you were, he thought. Your place. Not much room, really. Hess wondered if he just sat on the seat, unmoving and dressed in dark clothing — maybe a dark ski mask pulled down — and let darkness, reflections on glass and people’s general inattentiveness be his cover. Maybe.
You find the woman and you know her car, which means you must have seen her in it. You are on foot now, in the parking lot, where Kamala Petersen first saw you. You walk purposefully and deliberately: a gentleman going to or from the mall, to or from his car. Alert. Observant.
You override her alarm if she has one; jimmy the door lock; get in. You carry the Jim where? Down your pants? In a bag or box? Along with the “cell phone” override? Along with your choke cord or sap?
You wait in the back; overpower; take the keys and drive away.
Hess tried to picture the Purse Snatcher slugging his victims unconscious with a sap or a club. But he couldn’t see it happening — the headrests kept getting in the way.
He shut the back door and looked at one of the CSIs. “Do your best.”
The CSI nodded. “We’ve already got a lot of prints, sir. But cars are traps — you know that. Can I mention something? Did you notice a smell in the car?”
“Yeah, I can’t place it.”
“I think I can. My cat was operated on a few months ago. They let me watch because the vet’s an old family friend. Typically they put the animal under with a ketamine and Valium shot, then keep it down with halothane gas. But last time, my cat got real sick with either the ketamine, the Valium or the halothane. He’s old. Almost died. Anyway, they tried chloroform. The vet’s an old guy — he used it decades ago and he was good with it. But I got that same smell, sweet and kind of nice, when I opened the door of this car.”
It made the kind of sense that sent a little shiver of recognition to Hess’s heart.
“It knocked out that cat in about two seconds. And you know how uptight and nervous a cat at the vet is?”
Twenty-Two
They found Ronnie Stevens’s Santa Ana address and parked right out front. It was a fifties’ suburban home in a tract that looked well tended and peaceful. A big acacia tree bloomed purple in the middle of the front yard. An older Chevy — a model once driven by Sheriff Department deputies, Hess noted — sat in the driveway.
“I hate these,” Merci said. “Maybe you can do the talking.”
Ronnie Stevens’s mother was tall and dark-haired, an aging beauty, Hess saw. He wondered that a sixty-seven-year-old man with ten-pound fingers would consider a fifty-year-old woman aging. She’d been cleaning the house.
Hess stumbled through his lines as best he could. He felt his face flushing and heard his voice crack as he told her that her daughter was missing and presumed dead. He hated these moments, too: tragedy revealed, and irrefutable evidence of his own failure. Of the failure of his entire profession.
Eve Stevens received the news with a small nod, an uncertain wobble of chin and eyes filling quickly with tears.
“We’re going to get this guy, Mrs. Stevens,” Merci said.
Eve Stevens excused herself and left the living room. Merci was standing by a cabinet that housed family photographs and mementos. Hess saw the eager shine of trophies and the twinkle of keepsakes.
“Brothers,” said Merci. “Baseball and archery. The girl, Veronica, she was a swimmer.”
Hess heard a toilet flush. He heard the low keening from the bathroom, then the toilet flush again. When Eve returned her face was a sagging mask of tragedy and her eyes looked like they’d been burned.
Eve could only talk about Ronnie for a few minutes. She sobbed steadily the whole time, but Hess was impressed by her courage. Ronnie was a conscientious young woman, had been a good student and reliable worker since she was sixteen. She had graduated from high school a semester early to go full time at the jewelry store. She had no ambitions other than to travel and see some of the world. She saved her money, had a few friends, stayed out late on Fridays and Saturdays. No steady guys. Eve didn’t think Ronnie had much interest in drugs, had never found any or seen her intoxicated or overheard her talking about them with friends.
Then she stood, and Hess knew the expression on her face.
“May I?” she asked.
“Please.”
With this, Hess went to her and hugged her, very lightly, almost formally, and not for very long. He let her break it off when she wanted to.
“Thank you,” she said.