I shake my head, trying to keep a similar pace to Schroder’s shake a few minutes ago. He thinks I have no friends. He doesn’t know about Pickle and Jehovah. “You guys are the only friends I have, Detective Schroder.”
“Have you ever heard of a copycat killer, Joe?”
I stop shaking my head before whiplash sets in. “Why would somebody kill cats?” There’s another long sigh from Schroder, and I realize I might be laying it on a bit thick.
“Not quite, Joe. A copycat killer is somebody who kills to imitate a serial killer.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they can. Because they want to. Because they’re insane.”
“Oh. Then why are these people out there, Detective Schroder? Why don’t they get put in jail?”
“That’s a good question,” he says, and I smile at his praise. “And it comes with a simple answer. The world is screwed up. You know when you turn on the news and some bastard has gone and shot his family and a few of his neighbors?”
I start nodding. Stab thy neighbor. I’m familiar with it.
“The family, the other neighbors, they all say what a quiet guy he was. He had a collection of gun magazines and problems. Then we use hindsight as a preventative, even though it’s too late by then. There’s nothing to prevent, because everybody’s already dead. . I’m sorry, Joe,” he says, sighing. “I’m rambling on a bit. And venting. I shouldn’t be burdening you with any of this.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I just wish we could do more. I mean, we see these guys every day, but can we do anything about it? No. Because they have rights. Just like the rest of us. And until they finally kill somebody-and they often try to-those rights make them untouchable. Do you know what I mean, Joe?”
“Kind of, Detective Schroder.”
He waves his hand at the wall. “A hundred to one we’ve spoken to this guy at some point in the past. We know he’s got either a drug or a mental problem, but we could never do anything about it. Right now he’s watching us, mocking us, laughing at us. I guarantee we’ve wanted to lock this guy up before, but weren’t allowed. I guarantee we’ve had this guy in this building before.”
He’s right and wrong, but I can’t point this out to him. Can’t take a bet on his odds. With all his sermonizing I quickly lose faith in Schroder as an appropriate suspect.
“I understand, Detective Schroder.”
“You’d be one of the few if you do, Joe. You want to know something funny?”
“Sure.”
“Serial killers like to stay ahead of the game, and you know how they do that?”
Fact is, I do know. They hang around the edges of the investigation. They might come into the station and say they saw something going on. They come in and try to get a feel for the investigation. Some even hang around in cop bars, listening to idle chitchat, even participating in conversation. Or hang out with reporters looking for an inside scoop.
“No. How?”
He shrugs again. “Sorry, Joe, I shouldn’t be chewing your ear off like this.”
“So what about the cat killer?” I ask.
“Some other time,” he sighs, and he says it in a way to indicate the conversation is over. I leave him staring silently at the wall of the dead.
I reach up and run my finger across the nameplate on my office door. To the sides of it are four small screw holes. There never used to be anything on it until Sally showed up one day with a small sign with my name on it. Inside I swap my thoughts for a mop and bucket, and then go about cleaning the toilets. Before lunch I carry the vacuum cleaner into Detective Superintendent Stevens’s office just as he is leaving. Stevens is the guy everybody answers to, even though he doesn’t do any of the footwork, groundwork, or thought work that goes into solving this case. Stevens has been flown down from Wellington, and is one of the highest-ranking detectives in the country, though I can’t see why. All he does is sit in his appointed office, ordering people about while demanding answers. Occasionally he walks back and forth, grabbing a pile of papers or a folder, just trying to look as though he has something to do or someplace to be. Most of the time he’s a pretty pissed-off guy. I don’t like him, but can’t do anything about it. Murdering a police superintendent would be like playing with fire.
Stevens is in his late fifties, has thinning black hair, and looks like the sort of policeman you wouldn’t approach for help. He is just over six feet and solidly built, but has these black eyes that any author would associate with crazed serial killers. He has a long face with wrinkles that run its entire length, like shallow knife wounds. His tanned skin is pitted with old acne scars around his neck. When he talks, he has a deep voice and an accent that sounds Caribbean, but that’s probably because of the cigars he’s always smoking. He’s one of those useless bastards who wear sports jackets with elbow patches sewn into them.
I wonder if the ballpoint pen that was left behind was his. I look into his black eyes, searching for the evil that fiction suggests should be there, but I can’t see any of it.
He tells me to do a good job, says he’ll be back after lunch. That gives me plenty of time. So it’s just me in his office, me and Mr. Vacuum Cleaner. I sweep it around the carpet like it makes a difference, looking left and right for any information that will help. Like the conference room, Stevens’s office looks out onto the fourth floor, meaning people can look in if the blinds are open, as they are. Ten minutes of sucking the same piece of carpet go by, and it’s not getting any cleaner. I drop a rag behind his desk, bend down, and use the chance to peek into his desk drawers. I rummage through them, finding a roster of everybody involved in the case in the third drawer I check. I slip it into my overalls. Then I start coughing. Yep, Joe the retard needs a drink. I head to the water cooler. On the way back I pass the photocopying room. It’s empty, so I step inside and photocopy the roster. Walk back to the office. Place the document back into the folder. Finish vacuuming in time for lunch.
The sun is shining through my office window, so I sit in front of it and pretend I’m getting a tan. I’d have to pretend really hard for other people to see it. Sally knocks on my door, then steps in and hands me a small parcel of food. I give her a small thank you in return. She asks me again if I want to join her outside, and I make the mistake of saying maybe next time. She positively beams at this before she leaves. I stare out the window on the chance I might see her out there, but my view doesn’t overlook the river so the only people I see are strangers. On the horizon I see something I haven’t seen in weeks-rain clouds. They’re too far away to tell which direction they’re moving.
I eat my sandwiches while looking at the list. With over ninety names on it, ninety-four to be exact, it’s pretty big. I don’t know what I expected-maybe half a dozen or so-but ninety-four suggests a lot of people running around not knowing what’s going on. Dozens more officers took statements, but it’s only the detectives who work the scene. Only the detectives who see the body.
I begin to panic: this could take me forever. The feeling that this is going to be a big waste of time is creeping deep into my thoughts. But not all of the people on this list would have been to each of the crime scenes, right? Maybe half of them at each one, maybe not even that. The trick is to figure out which of these ninety-four people went to Daniela Walker’s house.
Call sheets.
Daniela was discovered late on a Friday night. Therefore, several phone calls had to have been made to the people who are on this list. None of the detectives would have been working that late. They were off eating with their wives or girlfriends and were interrupted with the news that dinner was over. Only one of them already knew, because one of them had built up an appetite by strangling Daniela and throwing her pen across the wall. Lunch isn’t over yet, but I’m too excited to keep eating. I head into the records room and give it a good spring cleaning. I take extra time near the hard copy of the phone records, giving the area around it an extremely thorough polishing.