“If it’s okay to tell me, how did the others die?”
“If you’re the killer, you already know. And if you’re not the killer, it won’t hurt to tell you.” Sometimes George’s logic fascinated me. “We had a white female, forty-seven, drowned in her bathtub. And we had an African-American female, twenty-four, hung in her kitchen.”
“Oh.” Max frowned. “Oh.” He knew, as we did, that serial killers had a type. Ted Bundy liked white teenage girls with long brown hair parted in the middle. (His last victim, poor dear Kimberly Leach, twelve, was picked in frenzy or desperation.) Aileen Wuornos killed white men she solicited on Florida highways, men aged forty to sixty-five. Albert Fish liked killing children. Martha Ann Johnson liked killing her own children. Jeffrey Dahmer liked teenage boys and young men.
These varied individuals had one thing in common—well, several wretched disgusting terrible things in common, but they all had a type. Some criminologists believe that means the killers are murdering the same person over and over and over.
So who was Sussudio killing over and over?
If we knew who, we’d know who.
“It’s like JBJ,” George continued. “It was only after we knew who the killers were that we could see what the vics all had in common.”
“Were the other scenes like this?” Max asked, pointing to the living room, which, though it was covered in fingerprint powder and crime-scene tape, was still neater than, say, mine.
“Yeah.”
“So how’s he killing them without making a mess?”
“That’s just what we’ve been asking ourselves!” George cried. “When we catch him, we’ll make sure and ask him.”
“I’ve fed the other two, the other two are in HOAP.2,” Paul said. “Now HOAP.2 can eat this one and then we’ll know we’ll know what color it is.”
“Did you say eat?” Emma Jan asked.
“HOAP.2 can taste colors HOAP and HOAP.1 could not.”
“That doesn’t reassure me at all.”
“Is HOAP a friend of yours?” Max asked politely.
No. Paul explained in Paul-isms exactly what HOAP was (that would learn Max Gallo to ask questions at crime scenes he was invited to!).
In the beginning there was nothing, and it was really really really hard to catch serial killers. Nobody even knew what a serial killer was until the twentieth century (though they’ve been around since we were painting on cave walls).
And then God created ViCAP. God = Pierce Brooks. Pierce Brooks = legendary crime-fighter and lead investigator of the Onion Field murder. ViCAP = the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
ViCAP is a system designed to track and correlate the deets of (violent) crimes. It collects info on homicides, sexual assault cases, kidnappings, etc., and can kick out possible connections to same, including serial killer “signatures.” It does that by analyzing crime scenes, personality traits, patterns of behavior … like that.
So in the beginning there was nothing, and then there was ViCAP. And then Paul Torn was born. Fast-forward thirty years, and then there was HOAP (Homicide Apprehension and Prevention, or as we refer to it, “the great white HOAP”).
Paul used ViCAP as a jumping-off point for his own research and software design. Because that’s what brilliant people do: they take an innovative, incredible invention that took mankind millennia of murders to come up with and used it as a jumping-off point. Thus, the great white HOAP.
ViCAP, like Wikipedia, is stupid: it only knows what people tell it. If an Operations Captain in Southern Pines, North Carolina, decided to enter the violent deaths of several circus clowns at the hand of an avenging lion tamer, ViCAP will accept those murders at face value and cough up a signature for a killer who doesn’t exist.
HOAP actually thinks about the data it gets. It imagines probabilities. It can tell itself to pull data resembling anything for a series of murders, from anywhere. It can figure out which departments to query, even if it’s looking for data compiled before computers. Before typewriters. Because it’s a program and not a person, it’s better at spotting patterns than a person could be. A huge downside to other programs was, if the info we needed predated computers, we’d be stuck. Paul designed HOAP specifically to get around that. And also possibly to take over the world. Because HOAP (except by then it was HOAP.1) was, I’m not too proud to say, the main reason we caught JBJ a few weeks back. We did the footwork, but HOAP.1 did the thinking. Perhaps there won’t be much need for law enforcement soon; the computers will instantly analyze everything and know who the bad guy is. It’ll give us the command to arrest, and off we’ll go. More efficient, but less satisfying. At least on my end.
Max nodded politely while Paul explained allllll that to him in Paul-speak. Then he turned to George with what is best described as a helpless expression. “Just take his word for it,” George suggested in a rare demonstration of pity. “HOAP is—”
“HOAP.2 HOAP.2 you have to say the right color.”
“—is gonna eat the data and then tell us who the bad guy is. Paul’s been feeding it lesser local crimes for a few weeks now. Rapes and robberies are HOAP’s amuse-bouche.”
“No no no no no no wrong color that’s wrong it might still have the wrong color!” (Paul disliked it when colleagues had high expectations. Which was weird, because he not only always met them, he exceeded them.) “That’s why it took so long with JBJ, the pattern was wrong but then HOAP.1 was able to smell blue could finally smell blue. Then I saw the body. So it could.”
“See?” George said. “Perfectly understandable explanation.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Paul told Max, who was looking a little terrified.
“I’ll try, but trying to follow your thinking is scary for me.”
I liked how he said that. Very matter-of-fact, not scared to admit being scared.
“For me, too.” Paul smiled a little. “I remember toilet training. Toilet training is black. Like George.”
“Oh, Kuh-rist,” black-as-toilet-training George replied, appalled. I might have tried to come up with something comforting, but I was laughing so hard it was all I could do not to fall into fingerprint powder.
chapter twenty-two
There was more to do, but it was late and we were all exhausted. And while we were reasonably sure Dr. Gallo wasn’t the killer, knowing what we knew about the late Mr. Seben meant we had more research ahead of us. It was interesting that the killer had murdered at least one person who’d contemplated murdering himself. Could that be the key to the others? It was almost too sick and twisted to contemplate; too bad my job was to do exactly that.
Was I thinking about that? Man’s inhumanity to man and the like? Was I planning ahead to tomorrow’s investigation? Making a mental note to check in on Paul first thing in the morning because we still had to ease him into the news about BOFFO’s funding loss?
No. I was thinking how dreeeeamy Max Gallo was. And I was thinking that because I was in Max Gallo’s car. And I was in Max Gallo’s car because he was giving me a ride home.
Right about the time we all decided to quit for the night, I remembered George’s awful car had swallowed me, brought me here, then spit me out on the sidewalk. Max rightly interpreted the look of dismay on my face and quickly offered to give me a ride. And I quickly took him up on it. Because when I’m not an FBI agent, I’m apparently a great big ninny.
“It’s just down along here,” I said, giving him directions to the house. “Maybe five more miles.”
“No problem.”
“I really appreciate this.”
“No problem.”
Was it out of his way? Did I want it to be? Maybe he lived across the street; I hadn’t met any of our neighbors yet. Maybe he lived in South Dakota and had a killer commute. Did I care? I cared. I definitely should not care.
We rode in silence most of the way, but it didn’t feel especially charged or awkward. He was thinking his thoughts, I figured, and I was thinking mine. Or not thinking
mine. Mostly I was thinking that I wasn’t thinking about what I should be thinking about. Oh, and wondering where he lived but too scared to ask.
Max’s car was like his clothes: worn, but immaculately maintained. It was a black Volkswagen Passat, at least five years old. It had been recently vacuumed. There was a small garbage can on the passenger-side floor (empty), and several issues of NEJM, The Lancet, and People in the backseat. That was it, though I hadn’t gotten a look at the glove compartment or the trunk. At my glance at the mags when we got in and buckled our seat belts, he grinned and said, “I enjoy sitting in judgment on celebrities I’ve never met and don’t know and shouldn’t judge but do anyway to feel better about my non-celebrity lifestyle.”
“No wonder you run a group for guys thinking about suicide.”
He laughed. “Oddly, reading People doesn’t make me wish I had a gun.”
I kept mum about my addiction to Us Weekly. And about my collection of guns.
“Did I hear right, you were moving today?” he asked as we passed out of Mendota Heights and into Eagan, where Patrick and I now lived.
“Yes, my baker and I moved in this morning.”
“Your what?”
“Boyfriend,” I corrected myself. I could feel myself blushing like a loser ninny idiot. “My boyfriend and I moved in. To the house you’re driving me to. Today.”
“Oh. I…” He didn’t finish. Did I want him to?
No, I preferred to spend these last five minutes of alone-time imaging what he might have said.
I … was going to whisk you away, but since you’ve got a baker, I’ll just forget about the whole thing.
I … hoped you were single, but since you aren’t, I’m doing a Mafia drop. Ready … jump!
I … can’t believe I’m wasting my time giving you a ride to your baker. D’you know what unleaded premium costs these days?
I … will think of you while I’m writing GoT fan fiction later tonight.
I sighed, which he interpreted as … I dunno, a shiver? Because what he said was, “I can turn the heater up if you want.”
Hopeless. Goddamned hopeless.
“Sorry?”
Damn it! Spoke out loud again. I didn’t mind so much when I did it in front of Jesus. Doing it in front of Max was not cool. Ditto all the swearing. Stupid goddamned swearing.
“Sorry. Thinking out loud. The case, you know.” Not that we said things like the case or the perp, probably like he didn’t ever say Stat! But Max wouldn’t know that. Probably. He was different, and knew all kinds of things I wouldn’t expect a doctor to know. Turbulent childhood. I could imagine, oh yes I could. “Yes, the case. Definitely thinking about the case. That would be the thing I am thinking about.”
“You seem a lot better.”
“Better at what?”
“Uh…” He laughed a little, eyes on the quiet suburban streets. It was nearly midnight; nobody was out. We were the only car on the little side streets. No snow meant no ice meant no problem driving, but he was concentrating like we were in a blizzard. Why?
Was he uncomfortable around me the way I was around him?
No chance.
“Feeling better, I meant. You’re obviously feeling better.”
“Oh.” Whatever, Gallo. “I am. Yep.”
“You were shot? Just a few weeks ago?” He said it in a teasing voice, like I’d forgotten and this was our little joke because of course nobody forgets about a gunshot wound mere weeks after it happened. That sort of thing was traumatic and tended to stay in the mind for a bit. “Remember?”
“Oh, that.” Shiro had been shot. In my shoulder, thanks very much. Max had been there and had been, of course, cool and heroic and totally unflappable and commanding and awesome. Maybe that’s where this adolescent crush was coming from.
You never had an adolescent crush. So how would you know?
Fine fucking time to start! I was twenty-five, for God’s sake.
“I heal pretty fast,” I said, and for a change, it was the complete truth. I was still sore, but I’d been passing up the Vicodin for over two weeks. I hadn’t had too much trouble getting around, either, despite having to bundle up for the cold weather. If you’re gonna get shot, do it in a body rigorously maintained by someone who has multiple black belts and runs. Not jogs. Shiro was a runner. Adrienne didn’t exactly spend all her time lolling on couches eating licorice, either. Also, get shot in front of a doctor who can give you on-the-spot care and then personally supervise your recovery. Things go so much easier, trust me. “I hardly even think about it anymore.”
“Huh.”
I knew at once it had been the wrong thing to say. Of course I didn’t think about it … it hadn’t happened to me. But that’s not something a
(real)
normal person would say.
I cast about for something—anything—to say that would either explain the unexplainable or distract him from the not-normal thing I’d just said.
Nope. Nothin’.
Max took a breath, and I brightened. Oh, good, he was gonna talk! “I didn’t know you … uh … had a … that your living situation … I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”
Oh, shit. He was gonna talk. “Oh?” I would not sound interested, or excited, or intrigued, or breathy, or gushy, or girlie. Cool detachment. That’s what I was going for. “Uh … ohhhh?”
“Yeah, since you staggered into the blood bank and sort of collapsed into my arms and then told me about the family who killed my nephew and all those other boys and then passed out cold.”
That had also been Shiro. Slut!
“Yep.” I thought hard. Say something. Anything. I had to make a sound because “yep” was not gonna cut it! “It sure was a wild night.”
That made him take his gaze from the (clear, clean, un-icy, un-snowy) street. “A wild … yeah.” He laughed. “A gift for understatement, that’s what you’ve got. You’ve done that before. Downplayed stuff. Downplayed amazing stuff. And … you’re so different tonight.”
“I am?” Different? Who, me? Or the other two people who live in my body? Nobody here but us multiples, Dr. Gallo.
“Yes. It’s almost like you’re…”
I held my breath, then gasped because I needed the oxygen. Shit! Shit! Shit-crap-poop-shit!
He must have been holding his breath, too, because all of a sudden he gasped a little and then said, very fast, “Listen, I jumped at the chance to give you a ride because we-haven’t-really-had-any-more-time-alone-since-you-were-in-the-hospital.”
“Okay.” I put every shred of neutrality I could into that one word. I didn’t want it to be a question: okay? Or bitchy: o-kay! Just … neutral.
“And I wasn’t really your doctor, so it’s not a question of ethics, but I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t,” I lied. It was not his fault I was a quarter of a century old and had an adolescent crush.
He took another breath. “I respect that you’re with a baker but I just— I thought what you did for Luanne, getting shot for her … I thought that was incredible. Unbelievably brave. Unbelievably brave. And then to come find me when you were still hurt and bleeding and tell me the whole background, all those murders of all those boys…” He shook his head, and went back to looking at the street. “It was incredible.” And then, in a softer tone, “I think you’re incredible.”
I leaned toward him. He again (yay!) pulled his gaze from the street and looked at me, and his dark gaze filled the car, the world, my world. My lips parted and
chapter twenty-three
“Take a left at the corner.”
Gallo jerked back. “What? Oh. Sure.” The car swerved and then he got it under control. Poor idiot. Poor Cadence.
Poor me.
(Cadence, I’m sorry. I will not let you ruin what you have with your baker because I have a silly infatuation.)
Cadence’s “adolescent infatuation” … such a thing had never happened to us before, but I suspected s
he was feeling my infatuation with Dr. Gallo. Too much had happened to us too quickly, and the shadow of serial murder had fallen over the entire sordid affair. No one was thinking clearly. I could not expect Cadence to understand, or have the presence of mind to
(Kiss him.)
maintain her self-control.
“I hope this was not terribly out of your way.”
“What? Oh. No, it was no trouble.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why was it no trouble?”
“Oh. Uh.” Dr. Gallo seemed to be mentally flailing, as it were. For a fact he was confused, but that was all right. So was I, so was Cadence. Likely the only one who was not was Adrienne, and she was psychotic. “Because I live in Golden Valley.”
“Golden Valley is all the way across the Metro Area from Eagan,” I observed. “That is the polar opposite of ‘no trouble.’ Right at the corner.”
Rattled, he obeyed. He kept glancing me with his periphery vision. “Sag—”
“Right at this corner as well.”
“Okay. Why did you?”
Let me out of this car. I have to get out of this car. “Why did I what, Dr. Gallo?”
“Oh, it’s Dr. Gallo now?” he muttered. Then: “Why did you find me not twelve hours after being admitted for a gunshot wound to tell me things I know damn well you could have gotten fired for telling me. I know why you passed out,” he added, back to muttering to himself. “That’d be the gunshot wound. The rest is a puzzle.”
“Third house on the right.” Because you deserved to know. Because your nephew’s death wasn’t your fault. Because evil is never truly punished, but occasionally can be stopped. Because I think about you all the time. Because I am a fool and you are, too.
He smelled like clean laundry and an underlying scent, faint but definable, like wood smoke. Perhaps his apartment had a fireplace. Perhaps I would like to fuck him in front of his (alleged) fireplace.
I have to get out of this car.
“Here it is.”
“Sag?”