I looked off across the water, understanding that now another divide had been crossed, and there was no way back. It was a different lake now. It was a different world.
WHEN WE GOT BACK to the cabin I felt almost as naked walking up to Marge and Don as I actually had been on the island, but to my surprise and relief neither of them seemed to sense anything different about Diana or me. By the time we had finished the steaks, yams and buttered onions Don cooked on the grill for supper that evening, I had myself convinced we were completely in the clear as far as Diana’s parents were concerned. This didn’t solve the L.A. problem, but she was still over a thousand miles away, so at least for the moment we had some breathing room.
Later we fell asleep in front of the fire again, and of course I dreamed of the—or maybe I should say a—dead girl, not necessarily Tricia Venables or anyone in particular this time, but still as real as ever and still wanting something from me: She stares at me in silence for a long time, her skin blue-gray, the whites of her eyes not really white, I notice for the first time, but pink from the small hemorrhages caused by strangulation. She looks down at the big red and white fishing lure in her hand, and then her eyes come back to mine. She lifts the lure to her mouth, tears off a chunk of it with her teeth and chews slowly, the wood crunching, hooks tearing the bloodless flesh of her lips and tongue, her eyes never leaving mine.
I sat up suddenly, gasping, my T-shirt drenched with sweat, the fading echoes of a scream ricocheting through my mind. I threw the sheet aside, pulled on my jeans and took the stairs four at a time, grabbing the flashlight from the kitchen counter on my way out the back door and running as hard as I could down the slope to the dock and out its length to the boat. I tore open the tackle box, scrabbled around in the bottom until I found the muskie lure and shone the flashlight’s beam on its sheared-off end and the grooves cut by the gigantic fish’s teeth, my hands shaking.
I felt footsteps on the dock behind me, too heavy to be anyone’s but Don’s. “Jim, what’s going on?” he said.
I turned to him, my mouth almost too dry to speak. “It wasn’t Hot Earl,” I said.
7 | Findings
THERE ARE A LOT of ways a thing can become real, especially if you have no defense against it. How it affects you depends on things like who you are, what you already know, and how strong you are. Sometimes you’re a player in what’s happening, which has its own risks and consequences. But other times, without being any less powerful, it can be like watching a movie, only with real people: Don Chamfort—looking like what he is, a man who in the last thirty-six hours has driven more than a thousand miles without stopping for anything but gas and hasn’t slept at all—walking into his kitchen through the door from the garage with three other men, setting the crate of files he’s carrying on the end of the Formica dinette table and taking off his jacket. Hanging it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, saying, “Will, Vern, Fergo, y’all want anything to eat or drink? It’s the only supper you’re getting this time, so grab something if you’re hungry.”
Vern saying, “Beer’d be good,” grabbing a chair, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar, blowing out a huge breath.
None of them having any idea they are being watched.
Now Will: “Got any coffee?” He wasn’t a drinking man anymore but he was hell on the Luckies and joe, a long-legged brick-red guy with a twinkle in his eye, the kind who wore cowboy boots every day. His face was long too, and on the rough side, and there was next to no hair on the top of his head. What hair he did have was trimmed close and rust-colored except for the white sidewalls above his ears. Semper fi never wears off, Don had said in that tone of special connection one Marine has with another.
Ferguson pulled on his nose as he looked into the fridge, deliberating, wanting to be sure he got this exactly right. He squatted down and peered around among the pickles and leftovers. Then he stood back up, finally grabbing a can of tomato juice from one of the door shelves, shaking it and opening it to take a hit.
More coats came off. It wasn’t jacket weather; the coats were to cover the handguns holstered on the men’s hips or at the small of the back, and the badges on their belts. There was the sound of shoe leather on linoleum, chairs being moved, an ashtray and cigarette lighter sliding across the tabletop. There was Aqua Velva in the air. Don laid his weapon in its holster on the counter, placed his hands on his lower back and pushed, groaning. His back chattered out a half dozen pops.
The men were into the cabinets and breadbox, bringing out pretzels, chips, cheese puffs.
“We got anything to dip with these?”
“This buttermilk still good?”
“Buttermilk can go bad?”
Don waggled the root beer bottle he’d been drinking from, set it down and leaned over to pick up a folder from the top of the crate. “Appreciate you guys coming in after hours like this. I know you don’t have enough to do as it is.”
“Sheeit,” said Ferguson. “Policin’ is our passion. We live to pertect and serve.” He turned a chair around and straddled it, though he probably wouldn’t be on it long. He was a freckle-faced joker who was always moving.
“Hell, yeah, Don,” said Will, lighting a Lucky with his Zippo. He threw one leg over the other. “Idle mind’s the devil’s workshop.”
Vern took a swig of beer, belched and scratched under his arm. He was like a big woodchuck, with extra chins but otherwise not much sign of a neck.
“Anyway,” said Don, “I’m glad for the help. There’s never been a task force across divisions like this before, so we’re making it up as we go along. Not exactly an easy sell, but for now Carsey green-lighted as many get-togethers on this as we need. We can keep the group intact until we hear different.”
“What about support?”
“We get OT and clerical help only as and when approved, flextime if we need it. And all the table scraps you guys can find around here.”
“Bring a tear to a glass eye, the generosity of that man,” said Will, pursing his lips like a puritan.
Another editorial belch from Vern.
“He’s in a corner,” Don said. “Everybody thought we had these killings cleared, and now this. He knows the press is gonna crack his bones and suck the marrow.”
Ferguson was eating cheese puffs in three quick bites: nip, nip, and in with the tail. No visible sympathy for the chief. “Goddam perp out there chewing on the girl’s windowsill,” he said. “Can you fuckin’ imagine?”
“Tells you something about the guy’s state of mind,” Will said.
“What it tells us is he’s got a full set of teeth,” Don said. “Which we wouldn’t know about if it wasn’t for Jim.” He opened the folder and took a deep breath. “So okay,” he said, rubbing his temples. “Our hero Earl’s off the hook and we still got murders to clear.” He looked around at the other men. “By way of recap, anybody want to say anything about the Unrelated theory at this point?”
The men looked at each other. No one said anything.
“About even one of the vics?” said Don. “Any doubt at all?”
Still no response.
After a moment Don ran a hand over his short hair and said, “Okay. Me either. Meaning we’re back to zero suspects.”
“Earl’s gotta be good for something.”
“He’s probably good for plenty,” said Don. “All you have to do is look at what he tried to pull with the kids. But I was there when Doc Henley looked at his gums—he hasn’t worn dentures in at least a year. And all indications, he’s more inclined to boys anyway.”
Head shakes, shrugs and munches around the table. Dead ends clearly didn’t faze these guys. Nothing new there. Neither did it seem to bother them a hell of a lot that their former suspect had sat in jail all this time without having actually committed the crime he got locked up for. Ferguson ripped off a bite of cold fried chicken.
Don went on: “What we’re talking about is an unknown subject who I think probably lives here in the city a
nd for his own nutball reasons committed all three homicides. Due to the age of the victims we can’t rule out that the perp is also young, possibly even a teenager, which might’ve given him an in with them. Or they may have known him from somewhere, even though we came up dry on all our interviews. I’m told by our shrink it’s likely the guy’s been through the system already, probably isn’t too successful with the opposite sex and has shown violent or sadistic tendencies in the past.” Don unfolded a city map and spread it across the table. “Personal hunch here based on the girls’ residences and the dump sites, he lives south of the Trinity within a mile or so of Marsalis Park.” He clicked his ballpoint and drew a circle on the map, taking in a couple of square miles. “The murders, at least the ones we know about, occurred over a period of not quite six months. No idea why the guy chose these particular victims or why the killings were spaced out the way they were. All the victims lived in this area, but no other connection we know about. Victim One, Amanda Peyser, found behind the screen of a drive-in theater by the manager.” Don held up his thumb. Ferguson got up to look in the refrigerator again.
“Three and a half months later, Victim Two,” said Don. “Marybeth Nichols, found at the back of the old Clarkson Lumberyard site by uniforms rolling on an anonymous call.” Index finger. “Four weeks ago, Victim Three, Tricia Venables, found by our kids at the overpass.” Second finger.
“Which means—” said Vern.
“He’s pickin’ up the pace,” said Ferguson.
“And somebody else’s little girl is fixin’ to die somewhere in that fuckin’ circle,” finished Will.
A moment of silence. Then Don nodded and said, “Unless one of you clowns figures out a way to catch him first.”
“What else we got?” asked Vern.
“Only deviation from MO we know about for sure is the partial absence of the characteristic mutilations on the first one, Peyser,” said Don. “Which looks nonsignificant to me.”
He took out a handful of glossy eight-by-ten black-and-white photos showing various views of the nude bodies of girls lying in grassy areas. He passed them around, the men surely having looked at them before but looking again anyway because what you didn’t see the first time you might see the second or third. Or tenth. Vern looked at each one right side up first, then again upside down and sideways, like a man trying to see rather than assume. All of the girls lay on their backs with their legs spread and their hands over their breasts. The only marks visible on them in the photographs were on their necks, wrists and ankles.
“This ain’t no way to kill people,” said Will, stubbing out his cigarette in the small glass ashtray before him, a muscle jumping in his jaw. There were a couple of grunts from the others. “I mean, get drunk and shoot your brother-in-law over the six-pack he owes you or cut your cheatin’ husband’s gullers out with a razor, maybe kill a clerk at the Handy-Rob for three dollars and twenty cents—that’s how it goes. I carried a stick in this town for four years, been in soft clothes for eleven, and this right here’s the first thing like it I ever caught.”
“Fuckin’ head case,” said Vern.
“Special kind of a twitch, though,” said Ferguson. He was chewing chicken and thinking out loud. “It’s not revenge. He’s not after money.”
“He’s after the hard-on,” said Vern.
“Exactly.” Don nodded. “He had sex with them one way or another, but the killing was the main thing.”
“Ought to let me take care of the punishment phase. Time I got through with the cherry-pickin’ sumbitch they’d have to put a new chapter in the Bible to cover what I done to him.”
Don returned to the file. “No particular order here, so bear with me. Victims were thirteen to sixteen years of age,” he said. “All three estimated to be between a hundred and five and a hundred and fifteen pounds, sixty-two to sixty-five inches in height, hair and eye color you can see in the photos, brown-brown or black. Per the families, all of them were wearing jeans, sneakers and sweaters or pullover tops when they were last seen. None of them wore glasses. Good kids, stayed out of trouble, had homes and families, went to school. Venables was an honor student. Kind of interesting here: all the girls were more or less at the juncture of Tanner stages three and four.”
“What’s that?” asked Ferguson.
“Sexual-development classification the docs use. Stage three going into four in females would mean some breast development but not adult volume yet, aureoles and nipples enlarged but not as much as an adult, pubic hair present but maybe still a little sparse, getting close to full development of characteristic feminine body shape, beginning of menstruation, things like that.”
“Yeah, that was Marcy around fourteen, fifteen,” said Vern.
“Uh-huh,” said Don. “Says here girls can hit that stage anywhere from ten to seventeen in industrialized countries. Genetics along with nutrition and health can affect the timing.”
“What you’re saying, the girls were different ages on the calendar but all developed to the same point physically.”
“Presto,” said Don.
Ferguson got up to look in the cabinet, returning with a box of raisins. He brought them back to the table. “What does that signify?” he said, everyone in the room of course understanding his question to mean, How does that get us the collar?
“Wouldn’t I like to know,” said Don.
“It ain’t coincidence,” said Will.
“Right,” said Don. “The guy had a picture in his head and he was making it come true in real life. No information on how he was able to snatch the girls, whether they recognized him or he suckered them some way, or maybe just jumped out at them from somewhere. Sure would like to know exactly where he got them.” Don tapped his fingers absently on the folder, reworking old ground in his thinking.
“Figure he had some kind of wheels,” Vern said, because a cop always expects a perpetrator to do things the laziest possible way. “Maybe marked like a service truck or even an emergency vehicle to keep from spooking the victims. Got up close enough to yank ’em in, controlled ’em however, got ’em out of sight and gassed it out of there.”
“Maybe it really was a service truck, or an emergency vehicle,” Vern said.
“Like a cruiser?”
“Meaning . . .”
A silence, then Ferguson said, “Fuck that. It’s not a cop. No way it’s a cop.”
Another silence. Finally Don said, “I don’t care if it’s the goddamn mayor. We bust the piece of shit no matter who he is.”
Grunts of agreement.
“What we needed here, we needed just one damn concerned citizen out walking his dog or something—but where the fuck are they when you need ’em? Just a partial plate number, vehicle description, anything—that too much to ask?”
“Been me out there with my fly open, there’da been twenty-four registered bird-watchers on hand to call it in,” said Vern.
“Somebody ought to send around a master list of these kind of calls,” said Will. “Probably happens all the time, couple cases look just alike except they fell in different jurisdictions and nobody’s the wiser.”
“Yeah, maybe have some kind of permanent network,” said Don. “Not sure exactly how you’d work it but I’ve been thinking it’d be good for us to do something like that on our own, even if it’s just the metro area. I’ve got a feeling this won’t be the last time we need it.” He scratched his stomach and stared off into space, thinking.
If he had focused his eyes a little to the left, through the kitchen archway and across the living room to the top of the darkened stairs, he probably could have seen me there watching and listening, L.A. and Diana right behind me. We’d been up here when the men came in and were trying not to give away our position.
We had left Duck Lake less than an hour after my run down to the dock, and I’d only had a couple of hours of sleep since then. Tired as I was, I was still too buzzed to relax. But I had experienced two huge rushes of relief—finding L.A. and Gram
safe was the first, and the second came an hour or so later on the back patio at Gram’s where Diana met up with L.A. and me after a quick shower and change at home. She lightly touched the back of my neck with her fingers as she passed behind me and sat down with her knee against mine under the table. She and L.A. looked at each other for a couple of beats, there was a little bump in the flow of time and I felt some kind of adjustment happen between them that I understood had very little to do with me. Now L.A. knew it all, her expression telling me instantly that it hadn’t come as a surprise to her and that she was okay about it. All my fear had been for nothing, and the feeling was like an illegal drug surging through my veins.
Later at the Chamforts’ place Diana and I hadn’t noticed right away when Don and the others came in, but of course L.A. had, radio or no radio. If you want to practice sneaking up on somebody, forget L.A. and try your luck with a fox. She had shushed Diana and me and we all had tiptoed out to the head of the stairs.
“Anyway,” said Don now, “we sure as hell know about three of them right here smack in the middle of our midst, all by the same fuckin’ artist.”
“The forensics and other stuff you wanted are pulled together in the blue folder,” said Ferguson.
“Thanks,” said Don. He picked up the file and thumbed through the reports and summaries, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“All the postmortem findings are consistent with known means-and-manners,” he said. “Suggests a single perpetrator following a more or less fixed MO. None of the girls was menstruating at the time of death. Two of them, Peyser and Venables, were virgins when abducted. All three well nourished, normally developed and in good health, no surgeries, previous fractures, distinctive scars or birthmarks. No items of clothing other than the famous scarves and no jewelry found on or in association with the bodies, even though two of the girls had pierced ears. No leads from or matches on cigarette butts, empty bottles, hairs, fibers or anything else found at the scenes. One foreign hair found on the Nichols girl. Caucasian, medium length, brown.”