She started to turn toward the door and he grabbed her wrist. “Hold on, now, hold on.”
Her face hardened. “Please let me go.”
He immediately released her. “I know what I’m telling you sounds crazy. I don’t blame you for thinkin’ I’m just like the rest of these poor folk, but whoever took Myra’s body didn’t come here to play patty-cake.”
“Then why is she here?”
“Hard to say, but she knows somebody. Somebody in this hospital. And she wants to communicate.” He paused. “Maybe more than that.”
“And she winds up here just by coincidence?”
Solomon shook his head. “You aren’t paying attention. There ain’t no coincidences. That’s The Rhythm doin’ what it does. Makin’ sure all the pieces come together at the right time, in the right place.”
Another curt smile. No warmth. Not even tolerance this time. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. St. Fort.”
She turned to leave again and Solomon grabbed her arm a second time. “Listen to me. I don’t know what happened to the woman who’s taking over Myra’s body, I don’t know if she had an accident or if somebody killed her, but—”
“Let go of me,” the nurse lady said, pulling her arm free. Then she threw open the door and shouted, “Security!”
“You’ve gotta listen to me. Let me have some time with her. If it ain’t too late, I might be able to reverse the change. Get Myra back before anything bad happens.”
“Security!”
A split second after the word left her mouth, a big guy in a uniform showed up, looking ready to bust some heads.
“Get him out of here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The guard grabbed Solomon by the shoulders, pushing him toward the door.
But Solomon resisted, turning toward the nurse lady. “You gotta let me see her. I might be able to—”
“Shut your mouth,” the guard said, roughly wrenching his arms behind him and spinning him around.
Glancing over his shoulder, Solomon thought he saw a troubled look on the nurse lady’s face, a look that said she might just believe him after all. But it wasn’t enough to get her to stop the guard from dragging him away.
In the end, he supposed it didn’t much matter. The Rhythm would do what it had to do.
And whatever that turned out to be, neither one of them would be able to stop it.
38
The man known as DickMan229 lived in a squat, two-story apartment building not far from Blanchard Beach. A big block of cement, it housed about twenty units overlooking a small, oval swimming pool that looked like it had been pissed in at least one time too many.
According to Janovic’s Palm Pilot — and a subsequent check of Todd Hastert’s arrest record — Hastert lived in one of the upstairs units, apartment 2F. After signing out a fresh new sedan from the motor pool, Blackburn took the ride over, climbed the stairs to the second floor, knocked on Hastert’s door—
— and got nothing. No answer.
So he decided to wait.
From his parking spot on the street, he had a good view of the apartment. He’d brought Abby Tolan’s murder book along with him, hoping to catch a minute to take another look at it, and figured now was as good a time as any. Clipping a copy of Hastert’s mug shot to the visor, he pulled the blue binder onto his lap and cracked it open.
She had been discovered in her studio darkroom by the cleaning crew who regularly serviced the building, which was located in a trendy section of Ocean City proper, just off Main Street. Some hapless janitor had gone in to dump the waste basket and found her on the floor. Or at least parts of her. Piled in the center of the room like firewood.
Her body had been doused with photo chemicals, the bottles scattered around her.
She had been dismembered in a way that was nearly identical to the seven previous victims. Hands and feet severed at the wrists and ankles. Head severed just below the chin. Arms at the shoulder and elbow. Legs at the torso and knee. And the torso itself had been sliced open, the intestines removed and wrapped around it.
This had all been preceded by several vicious knife blows to the chest and abdomen.
And the removal of her left ear.
Crime scene technicians had found traces of her blood in a small shower located near the darkroom. It was assumed that the killer had cleaned up before leaving, but no evidence was found that might lead them to his identity.
Investigators had known immediately that they were dealing with another of Vincent’s conquests and a look inside the victim’s mouth confirmed it. The now familiar burn marks had been created by what the crime scene techs determined to be a battery-operated PowerBlast cauterizing or line-cutting tool, often used by fly fishermen. This determination, while based on tests done in the laboratory, was considered to be a “best guess.”
The tool, which looked much like an oversized fountain pen with a needle-sharp point, was sold via Internet, at thousands of tackle and bait shops, and at approximately twenty different retail department store chains throughout the country, so the chances of narrowing down a purchase were fairly slim.
Time of death was estimated to be between 6:00 and 11:00 P.M. Despite the condition of the body, they had no trouble identifying the victim. Her face and hair matched several of the self-portraits they’d found hanging in the adjacent gallery. Later, fingerprint and dental matches confirmed that she was Abby Tolan.
A search of her purse uncovered a cell phone with a message from “Michael” waiting on it. Because of his recent fame, investigators assumed this to be the victim’s husband, Dr. Michael Tolan. When detectives failed to find him at home, they called him at the number on the victim’s cell phone and notified him.
Tolan was described by the investigator who made the call — Jerry Rossbach — as “distraught” over the news of his wife’s murder. He returned home immediately and was subsequently questioned. Because the investigators had already identified Vincent as the killer — a fact later confirmed by the medical examiner — they did not treat Dr. Tolan as a suspect and questioned him accordingly.
This, to Blackburn’s mind, was a mistake. While he understood their reasoning, he felt they should have thrown a few hardballs at Tolan, just to see how well he handled them. It’s never fun to beat up on the victim’s family, but you never know where it might lead.
According to the victim’s profile, Elizabeth Abagail Tolan was thirty-two years old, born in Mississippi, and raised in New Orleans by a single parent, one Margaret Elizabeth Fontaine. Fontaine was a known prostitute.
A search of the crime databases revealed that the younger Fontaine had been arrested twice by the NOPD. The first was a misdemeanor prostitution charge when, at seventeen, she solicited an undercover vice detective. The second was an assault charge at twenty-five, when she attacked a former boyfriend whom, she claimed, had stolen one of her prized cameras.
She was convicted and paid a fine for the first charge, but the second was dropped due to lack of cooperation by the assault victim.
Abby Fontaine’s career as a photographer began to blossom the year she turned twenty-six. Having moved to New York the previous year, she quickly earned a reputation as an Annie Leibovitz in waiting. Her stark black-and-white portraits of up-and-coming rock stars put her on the map, and a feature story in Rolling Stone magazine had made her the celebrity photographer of choice. Those who talked about her often used the word “artist.”
Fontaine met her husband at age twenty-eight, when she was hired by his publishing company to shoot his portrait for an upcoming book. A year later they were married, and Fontaine, now Abby Tolan, joined her husband in Ocean City, California, where she opened up a studio and gallery.