The Darker Side

  “What about Lisa?” Alan asks.

  “Lisa’s own diary shows her repentance,” James points out.

  I nod. “Good, James. Let’s go with repentant. Back to methodology: the coup de grace is a poke in the side just like Christ got on the mount. He leaves crosses in the wounds, and inscribes them with numbers, which may or may not be a counting of his victims up to now. If it is a count, he’s very prolific and thus very accomplished. VICAP doesn’t come up with earlier similar crimes, which means he’s only just decided to step into the limelight.”

  “Another contradiction,” James murmurs.

  “How do you mean?” I ask.

  “The cross. It’s his symbol, its placement is ritualistic. When ritual is involved, it’s everything. If he has killed over a hundred people, how did he resist placement of the cross prior to this point? We would have heard about corpses turning up with crosses in their sides. We haven’t.”

  It’s a good point. Murder is always an act filled with significance for the organized serial killer. How it is done is specific, important, sacred. She must be blonde, she must never be more than a C cup, her toenails must be painted red when she dies—this is a signature and once developed, it is never deviated from. Our killer stabs them in the side and places silver crosses in the wounds. If he really has been killing for years, this should not be a new behavior.

  “Only a few possibilities in that case,” Alan notes. “He’s changed his pattern, the numbers are a bluff, or he disposed of the bodies of his past victims so they’d remain undiscovered.”

  “I think it’s the last,” James intones.

  “Wonderful thought,” Callie says.

  I stare at my own writing on the board, willing something else to jump out at me. Anything. Nothing does.

  “Well, that’s all well and valid, but we’re dead-ended,” I admit.

  “That’s it then?” Alan asks.

  “For now. I’ll go brief AD Jones. Use the time to get your paperwork up-to-date and keep your fingers crossed that we’ll get a break that doesn’t involve another dead body.”

  “SO BACK OFF IT FOR now,” AD Jones tells me. “Sometimes that’s what you have to do, give yourself some distance.”

  “I know, sir, it’s just…”

  “I know, I know: he’s not taking a break. That’s tough, but that’s how it goes sometimes.” He examines me, speculative. “You’ve been spoiled the last few years.”

  Annoyance flares up at this observation. I can barely keep the edge off my voice.

  “How do you figure that, sir?”

  “Don’t get your back up. What I’m saying is, you’ve had a good run breaking cases quick. A real good run. It’s not like that all the time. Everyone has their Zodiac, Smoky. The one they never catch. I’m not saying that’s what this is, I’m just saying that you won’t win them all.”

  I stare at him and try to keep it from becoming a glare.

  “Sir, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t want to hear that right now.”

  He shrugs, unsympathetic. “No one ever wants to hear it. The stakes are too high. But you better be ready for the day that you fail, because that day is going to come, guaranteed.”

  “Wow. Great pep talk, sir.”

  He barks a laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll keep running interference with Director Rathbun. Do what you have to.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I SURVEY THE OFFICE. CALLIE is chattering away on the phone with her daughter, Marilyn, about the wedding. The fact that Callie has a daughter, much less a grandson, is still a little disorienting. She was always the picture of a female bachelor, enjoying men like a gourmet meal. Her only permanent ties were here, with us, the job.

  She’d buried a moment in her past, along with the pain it had caused her, until a case and a killer brought her and her daughter together again.

  It irks me, now and again, that a mass murderer was responsible for giving Callie this gift.

  Alan is out of the office and James has his nose buried in a file.

  I stare at the white board until my eyes burn.

  “A whole lotta nothing,” I mutter underneath my breath. “Oh well for now.”

  Putting a case aside is not like placing a file folder in the “to do” pile. You open your arms and close your eyes and fling it as far away from you as possible. It sails away and you head into your normal life at a dead run and pretend it’s not out there, circling like a bat.

  It is out there, though. Tethered to your wrist with sticky-string, tugging and chuckling and waiting for the wind to change. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the night to find it there, perched on my chest, staring at me with those big black eyes and smiling at me with a mouth too wide for its face. It loves me. It’s horrible that it loves me.

  I’m about to go see Bonnie, so I open my arms and fling. Force of will works, again, for now.

  20

  I CONSULT MY GROCERY LIST IN THE CAR TO MAKE SURE I GOT everything. Bonnie and I always choose the weekly recipe together. This week we’re feeling ambitious and are trying a steak with a Madeira-balsamic vinegar sauce. The mere fact that it involves the unlikely mixing of wine, balsamic vinegar, and Dijon mustard is a little terrifying, but we had agreed to stray outside our comfort zone.

  I read the list back to myself in a mutter: “Delmonico steaks, cracked pepper, olive oil, yep, all there.”

  Satisfied, I head toward what is always the highlight of my day, week, month, and year: picking up my adopted daughter to bring her home with me.

  “SMOKY!”

  It’s a cry of sheer delight, followed by a twelve-year-old crashing into me. I return the hug and marvel, with a mix of amazement and regret, at just how tall Bonnie has gotten. At twelve, she’s five feet one, which might seem reasonable to an outside observer. It means she is taller than me. The fact that two years ago I could look down and see the top of her head emphasizes the changes she is going through.

  I never got to experience this with Alexa, watching her morph subtly from girl to young lady. Bonnie teeters on the cusp of becoming a teenager and she is definitely her mother’s daughter. Annie was a beautiful, blonde early bloomer. Bonnie has that same blonde hair, the same striking blue eyes, the same slender frame. She is changing from awkward to coltish before my eyes. I note again, and always with the same mix of sadness, anxiety, and helplessness, that her chest is no longer boy-flat, that her walk has become less clumsy and more loping.

  A dark thought comes to me: the boys. They’ll start noticing you soon. They won’t know why, not exactly, but you’ll be more interesting. You’ll catch the eyes of the normal ones, but you’ll also catch the eyes of the hungry ones, because they’ll smell you like a dog smells meat.

  I shove this thought away down deep. Worry later. Love now.

  “Hey, babe,” I say, grinning. “How was school?”

  She pulls away and rolls her eyes. “Boring but okay.”

  “She did fine,” Elaina says. “A little distracted maybe, but she’s ahead of her grade level.”

  Bonnie smiles at Elaina, basking in the praise. I can’t blame her. Praise from Elaina is like sugar cookies or a patch of warm sun. Elaina is one of those genuine people, who always mean what they say, say what they mean, and err in the direction of kindness. She’s been another mother to Bonnie and to me. Our love for her is fierce.

  “Goddammit,” Alan mutters.

  He’s sitting on the couch in front of the TV, and appears to be having troubles with the remote.

  “Language,” Bonnie scolds.

  “Sorry,” he says. “We just got TiVo and I’m having some problems figuring it out.”

  Bonnie gives Elaina and me another eye roll and walks over to Alan. She grabs the remote from him.

  “You’re such a Luddite, Alan,” she says. “Here’s how you do it.”

  She walks him through the steps of picking programs to record and how to watch them when they have, answers his questions with patience. Elai
na and I look on, bemused.

  “And that’s all there is to it,” she finishes.

  “Thanks, kiddo,” Alan says. “Now beat it so I can watch my programs.”

  “No hug?” Bonnie admonishes.

  He smiles at her. “Just testing you,” he says, and reaches out to engulf her in those massive arms.

  The affection between the two is a constant. If Elaina is another mother, Alan is a second father.

  “Okay, now beat it,” he says.

  “Come on,” I tell her. “We’ve got a steak to ruin.”

  She grabs her backpack, gives Elaina a final hug, and we head out the door.

  “Luddite, huh?” I say as we reach the car.

  “Vocabulary. See? I listen,” she says, and sticks her tongue out at me.

  “MAN’S GUIDE TO STEAK,” I complain. “Why did we choose this cookbook? Hello—two women here.”

  “Because it’s made for cooking retards like us,” Bonnie replies. “Now come on, we can do this. What does he say?”

  I sigh and read aloud from the cookbook.

  “‘Rub the surface of the steaks with salt and pepper.’”

  “Check.”

  “We’re supposed to use a half tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet.”

  “Check.”

  “Uh…then we heat the olive oil to high heat. Whatever that means.”

  Bonnie shrugs and turns the knob to high. “I guess we just wait till we think it’s hot.”

  “I’m going to cut the slit in the middle of the meat.”

  This is our cheat. The first few times we tried to cook steaks, we followed the various dictates of a cookbook. “Three to four minutes on each side,” or whatever, and ended up with meat that was either too cooked or too rare. It had been Bonnie who suggested slicing the meat all the way through in one place so we could actually watch the color of the center change. It wasn’t pretty, but it had worked for us so far.

  “I think it’s ready,” Bonnie says.

  I grab the two steaks and look at her. “Here goes nothing.” I throw them on the pan and we are rewarded with the sound of sizzling.

  Bonnie works the spatula as I look on, pressing the meat to the pan. “Smells good so far,” she offers.

  “I have microwave mac and cheese in the freezer if we really screw it up,” I say.

  She grins at me and I grin back. We really have no idea what we’re doing, but we’re doing it together.

  “How does that look to you?” she asks me.

  I bend forward and see that the center is brown, but not too brown. We have managed to do this without turning the outside surface of the steaks into charcoal. Miraculous.

  “They’re done,” I decide.

  She uses the spatula to remove them from the skillet and onto the waiting plates.

  “Okay,” I say, “now comes the scary part. The sauce.”

  “We can do it.”

  “We can try.”

  She holds up a stick of butter. “How much?”

  I consult the cookbook. “A tablespoon. But first it says to reduce to medium heat. Maybe we should give it a second to cool down. I think butter can burn.”

  We wait a few moments, still mystified.

  “Now?” she asks.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She digs into the butter with the spoon and drops it onto the pan. We watch as it bubbles and turns liquid.

  “I don’t know,” Bonnie says. “Doesn’t seem like much butter to me.”

  “You think we should add more?”

  She frowns. “Well…it’s just butter. It’s probably safe.”

  “Do another tablespoon.”

  She does so and we watch it melt and become one with its brother.

  “Now what?” she asks.

  “It says we’re supposed to stir in the shallots…oh crap.” I look up at her. “I don’t remember anything about shallots.”

  “What’s a shallot?”

  “Exactly.”

  We stare down at the pan of now bubbling butter. Look back at each other.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Bonnie replies. “Maybe the extra butter will make up for it?”

  “Works for me,” I say. I giggle.

  Bonnie points the spatula at me. “Get it under control, Smoky,” she says in a stern voice. Then giggles herself.

  Which of course gets me giggling again and now this train is really in danger of leaving its rails.

  “Oh Lord,” I manage to sputter, “we’d better finish this up or the butter is going to burn.”

  Bonnie giggles again. “Because butter burns.”

  “So I hear.” I consult the cookbook. “Back to high heat.”

  She turns the knob.

  “Now we stir in one cup Madeira wine and one-third cup balsamic vinegar.”

  We pour the cups in and are rewarded with an acrid, stinking cloud of vinegar fumes.

  “Wow!” Bonnie sputters. “That smells terrible! Are you sure that’s what the book says?”

  I blink my eyes to clear them and consult our current bible. “Yep.”

  “How long do we cook it?”

  “Stir it until…let me see…till it’s reduced by half.”

  Three minutes later, to our amazement, the mix has done exactly what the cookbook predicted.

  “Now we’re supposed to whisk in three teaspoons of Dijon mustard,” I say.

  We plop the mustard into what is beginning to look somewhat swillish. Bonnie whisks away. The odor is not as strong as it was before, but it doesn’t smell great.

  “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of a practical-joke cookbook or something?” she asks.

  “Oh, hey,” I say. “Turns out we’re supposed to use three tablespoons of butter after all. The two we already did, and add another one now, just until it melts.”

  The butter does not make our witch’s brew look any more appetizing. A few moments pass. Bonnie frowns at me.

  “Think it’s done?”

  I peer at the concoction. It’s a yellowish gray color. It smells of butter, mustard, and vinegar. “Too late for prayer.”

  We take the skillet off the stove and spread the sauce over each steak as the cookbook directs. Bonnie takes our plates to the table as I pour us each a glass of water.

  We’re poised over our steaks now, forks and knives in hand.

  “Ready?” she asks me.

  “Yep.”

  We each cut off a piece and pop them into our mouths. There is silence and chewing.

  “Wow,” Bonnie says, amazed, “that’s actually…”

  “—really good,” I finish for her.

  “No, like really good.”

  “As in delicious.”

  She grins at me, a spark of mischief in her eyes.

  “Shallots?” she says. “We don’t need no stinking shallots.”

  I’d taken a drink of water and I choke on it as I laugh.

  “I THINK NEXT TIME WE might even try adding a side of vegetables,” I say.

  We’d had just the steak and some dinner rolls.

  “Maybe some shallots,” Bonnie jokes.

  I smile. We’re sitting on the couch, barely watching some reality talent show. Dinner had been great, and the evening has been wonderful. Normal. I crave normal a lot, but get it rarely.

  “So, I want to talk about school,” Bonnie says.

  So much for normal.

  I chastise myself for this. What could be more normal than a kid wanting to go to a school with other kids? I can see from the anxiety in her face that she’s so worried about how what she wants will make me feel.

  Oh hell.

  I focus on her, give her all of my attention.

  “Yes. I’m listening, babe. Tell me.”

  She shifts her legs up under her, and pushes a lock of hair back behind her ear while she searches for the right words. This gesture gives me a strong feeling of déjà vu; the ghost of her mother. Genetic possessi
on.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot, lately.” She glances at me, smiles a shy smile. “I guess I think a lot all the time.”

  “It’s one of your better qualities, bunny. Not enough thinking in this world. What’s been on your mind?”

  “What I want to do when I grow up. Well…when I’m an adult, I mean.”

  Interesting distinction.

  “And?”

  “I want to do what you do.”

  I stare, at a loss for words. Of all the things she could have said, of all the professions she could have chosen, this I like the least.

  “Why?” I manage. “What about painting?”

  She gives me a smile that says I am deluded but nonetheless charming.

  “I’m not that good, Momma-Smoky. Painting is something I’ll always enjoy. It brings me peace. But it’s not what I’m meant to do.”

  “Baby, you’re twelve. How can you be meant to do anything?”

  Her eyes snap to mine and fill with a coolness that shuts me up fast. Right now, she looks anything but twelve.

  “Do you know the first thing I see, every time I close my eyes?” Her voice is calm, soothing, almost singsong. “I see my mother’s dead face. Just like I saw it for those three days when I was tied to her.” She stares off at nothing and everything, remembering. “She was stuck in a scream. I cried on her a lot the first day. I remember feeling bad about that, because some of my tears went into her eyes and I thought that that just wasn’t right, she couldn’t brush them away or anything. Then I stopped crying and I started trying to sleep. I pretended like she wasn’t dead, and she was just holding me. It even worked, for a little while. Until she started to smell. After that, it was all grays and blues and blacks. I paint those colors sometimes and think about that last day, because that last day wasn’t real, but it was the most real day of all. When I dream about that last day, all I dream about is screaming and rain.”