"That we make up our minds who did it and then never investigate anybody else."
"It happens."
"Did Dr. Williams tell you Rick was seen leaving the boathouse where the body was found?"
"No."
"Did he tell you that DNA tests showed Rick had her blood all over his hands?"
"No."
"Did he tell you that her bra-with her blood on it-was found in Rick's car?"
"Wow."
"Wow is right. How'd you like to be the attorney who has to argue against that kind of evidence?"
"Who is his attorney, by the way?"
"Woman named Iris Rutledge. Two blocks down and around the corner. Upstairs. She's young and smart and good. But she's not going to win this one."
"More coffee?" the waitress asked. We both said yes, please. She filled our cups.
She said, "Do you bowl?"
I smiled. "Not so's you'd notice."
"Good. How about going bowling with me tonight?"
"Really?
"I usually go with a friend but she's got a cold. I need somebody to bowl with."
"Boy," I said. "Bowling."
"And afterward we can walk down to the DQ."
"Dairy Queen?"
"Right."
"Life in the fast lane."
"You know you want to go, Payne. You're just trying to be this big-city sophisticate."
"How do you know I want to go?"
"The way you're looking at me."
"Maybe I'm looking at your scar."
"Huh-uh. You're past that point. Now, you're looking at me. And I appreciate it. I guess I've still got some vanity left after all. Pathetic as it is." For the first time, I sensed her self-consciousness about the scar. And maybe a little bit of the pain.
I laughed. "My pleasure. You're still a good-looking woman. So do I pick you up or what?"
"I'll just meet you there. It's on the east edge of town. Night Owl Lanes."
"I don't have a bowling shirt."
"They'll probably let you in anyway."
She stood up. Picked up both checks.
"Hey."
"I'm also on the chamber of commerce board, Payne. I'm supposed to pick up checks like this." Then, "See you about eight o'clock."
Iris Rutledge's office was on the top floor of what had once been a grocery store. In the first-floor windows, you could still see some of the produce stalls and two of the aisles. Dust to dust. Rats roamed the place now. They left their little turds everywhere. Another era come and gone. It was sad somehow, and scary. Someday my era would come and go, too, my whole generation vanished utterly.
I walked up the outside steps to the second floor. They creaked and wobbled. I wondered if she did personal injury law. The stairs seemed on the verge of collapse. She might end up defending her-self someday.
There was a sign that read COURTHOUSE. BACK AT 3.
I went back down the stairs, and that was when I saw him. He hadn't been there before. Heavyset balding guy in a nondescript, forest-green, Ford four-door sedan. Illinois plates. White button-down shirt. Dark glasses. Motor running. He was intently writing something in a small black notebook. Then he abruptly pulled away. The bands in the automatic transmission sounded a little loose for such a new car. Down to the end of the block. Turned right. Gone.
I was just walking back to my own car when a girl pulled up on her racing bicycle. She wore black leather riding gloves, black latex racing shorts, and a white T-shirt inside of which bobbed merry little braless breasts. She was somewhere around eighteen, pretty in a freckled, prairie way. "You Mr. Woodson?"
"Afraid not."
"Oh. You work with Iris?"
"No. But I was looking for her."
"Me, too." She frowned. She had nice, long legs planted on either side of the bike on the cracked sidewalk. "I finally work myself up to telling her the truth and then she isn't even here when I stop by." She held out a gloved hand. We shook. "I'm Emily Cunningham, Sandy's cousin."
"Robert Payne. I am in town trying to find the truth about your cousin's death, though."
"Really?"
"Yes. I'm a psychological profiler."
"Oh. Silence of the Lambs."
"Something like that."
"'I had an old friend for dinner.' I love that line."
"That's a good one, all right." I wasn't sure if it was exactly verbatim but it didn't matter.
There was a breeze, carrying on it the heady smell of burning leaves. I thought of high school and football games and sitting in the stands with the girl who'd become my wife. All that sweet frantic necking in the backseat of the car later on, and a wolfed-down midnight pizza at Pizza Hut. Then more necking before she finally went in for the night. It was painful to confront my loss this way; and yet it was pain lined with pleasure.
"Are there really cannibals?"
"I'm afraid there are."
"You ever meet one?"
"Once. When I was with the FBI."
"Wow. You were with the FBI?"
I nodded.
"So how many people did he eat, the cannibal, I mean?"
I smiled. "Well, I don't think he ate whole people. Just little bits and pieces of them."
"You ever meet anybody who ate an entire person?"
"Not that I can think of."
She was a great kid. Cute and smart and curious, even if her curiosity did take a macabre turn here and there.
I said, "You think he did it?"
"Who?"
"Rick."
"Killed Sandy, you mean?"
"Uh-huh."
She looked at me. "Maybe."
I guess I was surprised she hadn't simply said yes. His history with Sandy. The blood on his hands.
"You think of anybody else who might've done it?"
"That's what Iris wants me to talk about."
"Somebody else you suspect, you mean?"
I could see her tense up. "You were really with the FBI?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Eleven years."
She watched me some more. "I still probably ought not to tell you anything."
"'Why not?"
"'Cause Iris'd get mad. She's got a terrible temper."
"She does, huh?"
"She got kicked out of court one day because she told the judge he was stupid." She checked her watch. "Well, I guess I'll ride over to Wal-Mart. I need to get some stuff. Then I'll stop back here."
"She left a note. She's supposed to be back in half an hour."
"Well, if you see her first, just tell her Emily Cunningham stopped by."
"Any other message?"
She smiled. "You just want to know what I want to tell her, don't you?"
"I sure do."
"We'll have to talk some more about cannibals sometime."
"I can't wait."
She looked at me and said, "Tell her I want to talk to her about Sandy's dad. And that baby picture. She'll know what I mean." Then she was gone.
I spent two hours in the library reading about Paul Renard and the asylum fire. The librarian, a sweet-faced woman with a slow, sad smile, said that this was the most exciting story in all of Brenner's history. She said she could remember seeing Paul Renard when she was a young girl and that he'd been quite handsome. She then gave me what she referred to as the "Renard File."
Renard had been a local boy of great means. He'd gone east to school and graduated from Princeton, then returned here to run his father's bank. His parties were famous. He'd once brought a string quartet in from Chicago. On another occasion, he got Robert Frost, who'd been doing a reading at the University of Iowa, to have dinner at his estate. Renard was cultured, smart, generous, and a heartbreaker. He flew women in from as far away as Los Angeles and New York for some of his three-day weekends. His manse had a pool, a tennis court, and a beautiful view of the Iowa River, complete with natural dam.
It was believed he killed his first woman when he was thirtyone. This was never proven-or at least, the local police didn't try very hard to prove it and he killed his second when he was thirty-three. Both were hitchhikers. Both took months to identify. He had buried them in deep pits. During all this time, he continued to run his bank and have his parties. There were those who believed he belonged in prison; and there were those who believed he was completely innocent, and that his accusers were merely jealous of his lifestyle. He was an awfully charming man, apparently, and a lot of people liked him. Six months after the discovery of the second body, an assistant county attorney went to the town council-behind his boss's back-and gave a rambling and melodramatic speech, the point of which being that Paul Renard should be indicted on two counts of murder. When his boss did find out about it, he fired the young man, who left town shortly thereafter.