“No,” Tess said, with her best girly smile.
“Not really.” Carl was playing the country boy. Tess glanced over at his Huckleberry Finn visage, all freckles and sunburn, and thought about the confidence he had just shared. He must have been an exceptionally patient and deliberate little boy, waiting all those years to be big enough to beat the crap out of his father. You had to be strong to be that patient.
You had to be a little scary, too.
“Well, we’ve got one,” the major drawled.
“Yeah?”
“Down in Saint Mary’s City. Want to come?”
Tess and Carl looked at each other. It was as if he was trying to shake his head no without moving it at all. She, too, sensed a trap. But she couldn’t see how they could say no to any opportunity. Could they have found him?
“Sure,” she began, even as Carl said, “No.”
“No? I thought you’d be glad to be included in the investigation, Carl. Why don’t you want to go to Saint Mary’s City?”
“Well, we’re pretty busy here.”
The major walked around the table and looked at their map. “Why, this looks very… interesting. But it will wait, won’t it? Saint Mary’s City is a long way, and I want to get down and back before rush hour, if possible. Besides, this gal doesn’t have all day. She has to go to work at three P.M., she says.”
“What gal?” Tess asked.
“Just a gal who says she knows something. Might be a wasted trip, for all we know. But I got a good feeling about this and thought you should be there. After all, you brought this to us. We owe you.”
Tess looked at Carl and tried, as casually as possible, to point to Saint Mary’s on the map: water. Saint Mary’s City was also on the water. Carl nodded, but he didn’t look happy. Later, thinking back, Tess would recognize the expression. It was the face of a man who was cornered.
Saint Mary’s City was where Maryland had begun, with the arrival of two ships, the Ark and the Dove. It had been years since Tess had ventured this far south along the bay’s Western Shore, and the usual desecrations had sprung up in this once-lovely country: the drive-through burger joints, the fast-oil-change places, the strip malls that looked as if they had been built overnight.
“Where are we going?” she asked the major, who had insisted they ride with him, not follow in Carl’s car, as Carl had suggested. “I know you said Saint Mary’s City, but where exactly?”
“Just outside of town.”
“And this woman-what does she know?”
“She may have seen our guy. That’s a pretty significant break.”
“Recently?”
“No. Been almost two years ago. But she’s pretty sure she saw him.”
“You forget.” She leaned forward, so her head was even with Major Shields, who sat in the passenger seat while Sergeant Craig drove. “Carl has seen him too. He interviewed him. So what’s the big deal?”
“Oh, I think this could be a very big deal,” Major Shields said. “Don’t you, Carl?”
Why did he keep addressing Carl, who was slumped in the backseat, arms folded across his chest? The major had never struck her as sexist before, but he was suddenly acting as if Tess didn’t even exist.
“Why?” she persisted. “Why would it be significant?”
The major took so long to respond that she wondered if he had heard her at all. Men, in her experience, often retreated so far into their own worlds that some voices-women’s voices in particular, it occurred to her now-reached them as if on a delay. Even Crow, whom Whitney had once dubbed the perfect postmodern boyfriend, could become absentminded and dreamy, until she had to tug on his sleeve and bring him back to earth.
For some reason, this made her think about Dr. Armistead. As much as he irritated her, he always listened. He wasn’t always good on the nuances, but he at least heard every word. Maybe that’s what it took to get a man to listen to every word you said: $150 an hour.
Even as Tess reached a hand toward Major Shields’s shoulder to jolt him into response, she was thinking again about the man they sought. He listened. Oh, how he listened. From the moment he arrived in a woman’s life, he was the most attentive and solicitous of men. He listened because he was gathering information, preparing for the day he would betray the trust of these young, naive women. Because he was the perfect man, the perfect boyfriend. He listened because he was less likely to betray his own complicated history if he didn’t talk about himself.
“It’s up ahead and down to the left,” the major said. He turned his head to face them, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Tess was so close to him, hovering near his ear.
“Let’s go,” he said as Sergeant Craig rolled to a stop and put the patrol car in park.
“What, are you a Wild Bunch fan, too?”
“Never saw it.”
“You should,” Carl said. Tess realized it was the first time he had spoken since they had merged onto the Baltimore beltway two hours earlier. “It’s only one of the best movies ever made.”
“But it’s all the usual outlaw shit, right?” Major Shields’s easygoing drawl had taken on a new hard edge. “I don’t get those movies where the good guys are obsessed with the bad guys, as if they’re locked in some sort of immortal relationship. When you’re an officer of the law, you lock up the bad guys and move on. It’s not personal. It’s not about individual glory or vendettas. It’s a job, and you conduct yourself like a professional.”
His eyes flicked at Carl, quick as the blue-yellow flame from a cigarette lighter, and moved away.
“In fact, let me show you how it’s done.”
CHAPTER 25
The apartment complex was newish, a place with mild aspirations to class that began with the name-Dove’s Landing-and ended at the front door. Once inside, the common areas were extremely common. Tess noticed that the carpet was dingy and a smell of ammonia lingered in the air.
“She’s in 301,” Major Shields said, beginning the climb to the top floor. Carl fell back. Tess glanced over her shoulder to see if his knee was troubling him, but he was simply moving with extraordinary care, as if he had no desire to reach the top.
The woman who answered the door to 301 wore an orange smock with a name tag, MARY ANN. Petite, with a face at once fine and coarse, foxlike. Much of it was hidden, however, by an extraordinary mane of dark curly hair styled in the feathery blown-dry wings of the late 1970s. The girl could not have been alive when this haircut was first popular, Tess thought. Tess herself had been barely alive, a grade-schooler who had yearned for such big hair, if only because her mother kept hers barbershop short.
“Miss Melcher?” Major Shields asked.
“Uh-huh,” she said, showing them in. The apartment was neat but not quite clean. The carpet crunched beneath their feet. The framed posters, which ran to large-eyed kitty cats, were dusty and streaked. A cat was clearly on the premises as well, for Tess picked up the telltale odor of a litter pan that needed to be emptied.
Their hostess settled in a small rocker, while Major Shields and Sergeant Craig took the sofa, an overstuffed monstrosity of white cotton, its side shredded by the phantom cat. Tess took the only other chair in the room, while Carl was left standing.
“The cheese stands alone, huh?” said Major Shields, sliding over and patting a spot next to him on the sofa. “Have a sit, buddy.”
“That’s okay,” Carl said, pulling a chair in from the dining alcove and setting it up at the edge of their circle, as close to the door as possible.
Mary Ann looked nervous. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, her head seemed to wobble a bit on her neck. Maybe it was the weight of all that hair, Tess thought. Then she did a mental double take.
That hair. That smock. Mary Ann Melcher was the living prototype of the killer’s victims. Were they going to save someone’s life? Had they actually arrived in the nick of time, like the cavalry in some old Western?