She waved her gun at Mickey, just for effect. She was suddenly aware of how bizarre she must look. Much of her hair had come loose from her braid and was flying around her head, her white shirt was crusted with dirt and dead leaves, her black linen skirt was still halfway up her hips, displaying the full glory of her now-ripped pantyhose, cut-rate DKNY purchased in bulk at Nordstrom Rack. The Preppie Avenger.
“I’m the one who almost killed someone today,” she said. The catch in her voice, almost a sob, caught her off guard. “Do you realize that? I almost shot you in my home, and no grand jury in the world would have indicted me, not under these circumstances. But it would have fucked up my life, just the same. You want to give me nightmares? You came damn close. Thing is, you would have been too dead to enjoy it.”
“I told you I didn’t know you had a gun,” Pechter stammered, afraid again.
“You never know who has a gun in this world. Or who has a concerned family friend who’s willing to wreck your life for the sheer fun of it. You can’t know anything about anyone. So you shouldn’t pick fights, because you may not win. Don’t flip people off in traffic, don’t pull macho shit in bars. We live in a world where people will kill you for one rude look. How can you not know that? Are you too busy trying to pick up underage girls to read the goddamn papers?”
“I know,” he said, “that you are one crazy fucked-up cunt.”
“Hey, watch your language.” But it was Carl who objected to Mickey’s rhetoric, not Tess. “You shouldn’t talk like that, not in front of a woman. Not in front of anybody.”
Mickey began to edge toward the door, unnerved by Carl’s intensity, although Carl couldn’t even stand, much less go after him. Tess blocked Mickey’s way.
“I’m calling my lawyer tomorrow and I’m filing for a restraining order against you,” she said. “If I ever see you again-in my rearview mirror, or standing outside my office-”
“I know,” Mickey Pechter said, sneering at her, “you’ll shoot me. Big talker.”
She put her gun on the floor and grabbed him by the collar of the windbreaker with both hands, bringing him nose to nose.
“I’ll burn something else off next time. Something that doesn’t grow back. Tell that to Judge Halsey if you like. Tell him any fucking thing you like. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t been angry enough up to now.”
She let go of him as suddenly as she had seized him and he staggered backward, hands shooting instinctively for his groin. Then he turned and ran for his van in a wobbling stride, hands still cupped in front of him. Tess was pretty sure it was the last she would see of Mickey Pechter.
“Of course, Mickey wasn’t the only one following me. Was he, Carl?”
Carl had moved to an upholstered mission-style chair, which had cost Tess the approximate bluebook value of her thirteen-year-old Toyota. His left leg was stretched out on a matching ottoman, a second dish towel balanced on his knee, where the first had left a dark wet spot. Tess had poured him a shot of Jack Daniel’s, feeling like some saloon proprietress tending to an injured cowboy. Now she replenished his glass and poured herself a little more white wine while she was up. She asked Crow if he wanted anything, but he just shook his head and went back to his obsessive cleaning.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been watching me too. I know it wasn’t coincidence that you stopped by today. Were you parked at the bottom of the hill so you could watch the entrance to my little street? Or have you been everywhere I’ve been today? The funeral, the cemetery?”
The only sound in the room was Crow’s dust mop going back and forth across the floor. Swish swish swish. Swish swish swish. Tess’s mother had given Crow this new kind of mop, a Swiffer, for Hanukkah, and he loved it, the way men often love things for their sheer novelty. He had the wet cloths for the kitchen and bathroom floors, the dry ones for the wide-planked pine floors that ran through the rest of the house. Their floors always gleamed.
“I wouldn’t say watching,” Carl said. “Checking in, from time to time. I’ve been worried about you.”
Tess knew there was good reason to be worried about her. But Carl didn’t, or shouldn’t. He didn’t know what Luisa O’Neal had told her.
“I saw the thing about Julie Carter in the paper,” he said, as if anticipating the question. “I remembered her from your original list. Let me guess. She was small, with light eyes and dark hair.”
“Yes.”
“Lucy. Tiffani. Mary Ann. He’s definitely got a type. Although I think Lucy was the prettiest. Even dead-” He did not finish the thought.
“Major Shields said you’re obsessed with Lucy.”
“It’s as good a word as any, I guess.” He sighed. “I liked to think of myself as Dana Andrews in Laura, only she never comes through the door in a raincoat, still alive. But when I dream about Lucy, she’s whole. In my dreams, her head is with her body. She’s not the way I found her.”
“You dream about her?”
He nodded, his face doleful. “Every few nights.”
“Is that why you cracked up on the job, got disability?”
“I got disability for my knee.”
“That’s not what Major Shields told me.”
“Then he’s a liar.”
“So you didn’t have a nervous breakdown at work?”
“Oh, I cracked up.” Carl’s tone was mild, as if he were telling a funny story on himself. “But when I cracked up, I screwed up my knee, and that’s why I had to take disability. You see, I really did slip on the ice in the parking lot, in January the year after Lucy was killed. I was out a month. By the time I came back to work, the state police had pretty much taken over the investigation. They didn’t need me. As Sergeant Craig was quick to point out.”
“But you didn’t stop, did you?”
“I just couldn’t stop talking to people, thinking about it. They warned me, told me to back off, and maybe if I had kept going the way I was going, they would have disciplined me.”
“So what happened?”
“One day-I’m still in a brace, on pain medication, walking like Walter Brennan-I drove to the bridge where I found her. I started walking. I crossed the Susquehanna: about a mile, I guess, no more. I turned back and did it again. Then again. About the fifth or sixth time, I’m in so much pain I keep thinking I’m going to pass out. Apparently I was talking to myself too, muttering like some old man on the street, although I don’t remember that part. I was trying to figure out how the head came to be there, how he had slowed to leave it there, without anyone seeing him. Even in the middle of the night, another car could have come along. He was risking so much-” His voice trailed off.
“What happened?”
“One of my old co-workers called our supervisor. I was admitted to the hospital in Havre de Grace that night. They released me forty-eight hours later, although they recommended I try some post-traumatic stress counseling. It’s not like I was nuts. But my knee was so screwed up I had to get replacement surgery, young as I am. I was out the rest of the year.”
“Carl, if that’s not obsessive, I don’t know what is.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I be obsessed? I found a severed head on a bridge. I think I’ve come by my obsession pretty honestly.”
“Yet when Mary Ann Melcher called the tip line and tried to tell you her ex-boyfriend matched the description of Alan Palmer, only he was dead-”
Carl shook his head. “I knew more by then. I knew the guy we were looking for wouldn’t kill himself. He might be dead, but not on purpose. I was just stalling for time, trying to figure it out.”
“But it did make sense. There were no killings after Mary Ann, no evidence of any activity on his part.” Until Julie Carter was shot and killed.
“Everything always makes sense with this guy. What’s the one thing we know about him? He plans things out in advance, in minute detail. I think he decided to stop, for some reason, and he wanted to cut off his own trail if the cops ever came looking for him. I don’t think he’s dead or reformed.” He gave her a level look. “And neither do you.”