The Darker Side

  I’m struck, as always, by how inadequate the location of death is when compared to the truth of death itself. I saw a pretty young woman once, staked out in the dirt. She was naked. She’d been strangled. Her tongue lolled from her swollen, beaten mouth. Her open eyes stared at the sky. She still had some of her beauty, but it was fading fast, being eaten around the edges by the coming entropy. Dead as she was, she still put the dirt to shame. There was no forest, no ground, and no sky, there was only her. No canvas exists that can really add to an ended life; death frames itself.

  “I see blood on her seat cushion,” Callie observes, jarring me from my thoughts. “Easiest thing to do will be to just take the whole cushion. Take hers, take his, then search for prints. That’s a good avenue. It would have stood out if he’d worn gloves. Then vacuum everything for trace. That’s pretty much going to be it.”

  “I think he would have taken something,” James notes.

  I turn to him. “What?”

  “A trophy. He left something in her, the cross. He’s into symbols. He needed to take something.”

  Not all serial killers take trophies, but I agree with James. It feels right.

  “Could have been anything,” Alan says. “Jewelry, something from her purse, a piece of her hair.” He shrugs. “Anything.”

  “We’ll go through her belongings, see if something obvious is missing,” I say.

  “It’s only getting colder, so what’s the game plan, honey-love?”

  Callie’s right. I’ve started to get the smell of him but there’s nothing else here that’s going to help me.

  “You and James are going to stay here and finish processing the scene. Call me when you’re done. Alan, I want you to drop me off at Lisa’s place, and then I want you to interview the witnesses. Flight attendants, passengers, anyone and everyone. Follow up on how he bought his ticket as well. Did he use cash? A credit card? If he used a credit card, it was probably a false identity. How’d he make that happen?”

  “Got it.”

  Callie nods her assent.

  I take a final look at the window Lisa had died next to, turn, and walk away from it forever. It’ll fade eventually, I know. Someday I’ll be sitting at a window seat on an airplane and I won’t even think of Lisa Reid.

  Someday.

  6

  ALAN AND I ARE ON THE FREEWAY HEADING BACK TO ALEXANDRIA. We don’t have much company on the road; just a few other night-drivers who, like us, probably wish they were in bed.

  Alan is silent as he drives. We have the heaters blowing full tilt to deal with the cold. Darkness has really settled in, darkness and silence and still.

  “What is it about the cold that makes things seem more quiet?” I wonder out loud.

  Alan glances over at me and smiles. “Things are more quiet. You’re used to Los Angeles. Doesn’t get cold enough there to drive people and animals inside, usually. It does here.”

  He’s right. I’ve experienced this before. Between the ages of six and ten, before my mom died of cancer, we used to take family driving trips. Mom and Dad would synchronize their vacation time and we’d spend two weeks trekking halfway across the U.S. and back.

  I remember the hard parts of these trips; the unending sound of the wheels on the road and the world rushing by, the intense, almost painful boredom. I also remember playing car games with my mom. I-spy, counting “pididdles” (cars with only one headlight working). Raucous, off-tune car songs. Most of all, I remember the destinations.

  In a four-year period, I saw great parts of Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore. We crossed the Mississippi in a few places, ate gumbo in New Orleans. We rarely stayed in hotels, preferring to camp instead.

  One year, Dad got especially ambitious and drove us all the way to upstate New York in the fall. He wanted us to see the Catskill Mountains, where Rip Van Winkle was supposed to have snoozed. It was an unbearably long trip and we were worn out and cranky by the time we arrived. We pulled into the campground and I got out of that car as fast as I could.

  The trees were incredible, either evergreen or with leaves on the turn, short and tall, young and old. It was cold, cold like it is here, and I remember the bite of it on my cheeks, my breath in the air.

  “Not only do I have to pee in the woods,” my mother had groused, “but I have to get goose bumps on my ass while I do it.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful, though?” my dad had said, a little bit of awe in his voice, oblivious to her anger.

  That was one of the things I loved about my dad. He was eternally young when it came to viewing the world. My mom was more careful. Like me, she had a cynical edge. Mom kept our feet on the ground, which was important, but Dad kept our heads in the clouds, which had its own value.

  I remember her turning to look at him, ready with some smart quip that died on her lips when she saw the actual joy on his face. She’d pushed her grumbling away and turned to look as well, finally seeing what he was seeing, getting infected with his wonder, stumbling into his dream.

  “It is,” she’d marveled. “It really is.”

  “Can I explore?” I’d asked.

  “Sure, honey,” Dad had replied. “But not too far. Stay close.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” I’d agreed and had bounded off, heading into the trees.

  I’d kept my word and stayed close. I didn’t need to go far; fifty steps and I had found myself alone, more alone than I’d ever been. I’d stopped to take this in, not so much afraid as interested. I’d arrived in a small clearing, surrounded by a number of tall trees with dying leaves that hadn’t given up the ghost just yet. I’d spread my arms and tilted my head all the way back and closed my eyes and listened to the stillness and the silence.

  Years later I’d find the body of a young woman in the woods of Angeles Crest and remember that stillness and silence and wonder what it was like to be killed in the middle of nowhere, to have that solitude as a cathedral for your screams.

  I was ten years old on that trip to New York, and it was the last trip we took before my mom got sick. When I think of my parents, I always think of them then, at that age, just thirty and thirty-one, younger than I am now. When I think of being young, I remember those trips we took, I-spy and pididdle and are-we-there-yet and my mother’s complaints. I remember my father’s wonder, my mother’s love for him, and I remember the leaves and the trees and the time when stillness held beauty instead of the memories of death.

  LISA’S CONDO IS NEW CONSTRUCTION, located near the center of Alexandria. The buildings are nice, but don’t really fit their surrounds.

  “Kind of like California in Virginia,” Alan observes, putting voice to my thoughts.

  The condo is brown wood and stucco on the outside, with its own small driveway. No one has entered yet; there’s no yellow crime scene tape on the door. We pull in, exit, and walk up to the front door. Alan will clear the condo with me before leaving to go chase up on witnesses.

  We’d swung by the morgue so I could grab Lisa’s keys. I am fiddling with them in the bad light from the streetlamps to find the one we need.

  “Probably that one,” Alan notes, indicating a gold-colored key.

  I fit the key into the deadbolt lock and it turns with a click. I put the key ring into my jacket pocket and we both pull our weapons.

  “Ladies first,” Alan says.

  THE CONDO HAS TWO BEDROOMS, one of which doubles as a home office. We clear these as well as the guest half-bath and the master bathroom before holstering our guns.

  “Nice place,” Alan observes.

  “Yeah.”

  It’s decorated in earth tones, muted without being bland. Catches of color appear throughout, from maroon throw pillows on the couch to white cotton curtains with blue flower trim along the edges. It’s clean and odorless, no smell of pets or dirty clothes or food left out. She didn’t smoke. The wooden coffee table facing the couch is covered in a happy disarray of magazines and books. Lisa was tidy but not fastidious.

&
nbsp; “Okay if I go?” he asks.

  I glance at my watch. It’s now 5:00 A.M.

  “Sure. Before you get on to chasing down witnesses or following the money, get a search going for murders with a similar signature.”

  “The cross, you mean?”

  “The cross, or just the symbols he left on the cross. I don’t think we’re going to find any really old crimes, but we might find some new ones.”

  He frowns. “You think he’s been operating for a while and only just decided to come out into the open?”

  “I do.”

  “Bad idea on his part.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  ALONE NOW. I LEAVE THE lights off. The dawn has arrived and I want to see the living room as Lisa would have seen it. I sit down on the couch, brown microfiber, a couch like a thousand others, except that this one had been hers. She’d sat here, time after time. I’m able to pick out her favored spot, a cushion that’s just a little bit more worn than the others.

  A medium-sized flat-screen TV faces the couch, placed a comfortable distance away. I imagine her sitting here, lights out, shadows dancing on her face. I see a bottle of nail polish on the coffee table and smile. Watching TV while painting her nails. I find a book on a side table, a silly romance novel. Guilty pleasures, maybe reading while her toenails dried.

  This place was a sanctum, a refuge, and I’m going to root through it with impunity. I reflect that in this way, I’m very like the killers I hunt. I will move through this home and open her drawers, read her e-mail, peer into her medicine cabinet. Cross all boundaries of privacy until there’s nothing left to find.

  Once upon a time, Lisa could turn the lock and keep the world outside from finding out her secrets, but not anymore. The killers I hunt are empowered by this concept.

  My motives are purer, obviously, but I learned a long time ago that I won’t survive doing what I do if I am dishonest with myself, and the truth is, I feel just a little hint of that power when I go through a victim’s home, the slightest thrill of the voyeur. I can look where I want, touch what I want, open any door I want. It’s heady and I can understand, just a little, why it has such a draw for psychopaths.

  I get up and move into the kitchen. It’s small but functional and very clean. Brown granite countertops. Stainless steel refrigerator with matching over-the-counter microwave, stove, and dishwasher. I open a few cabinets and peer inside. White china, neatly stacked.

  The refrigerator is nearly bare. I see a note/shopping list posted on the refrigerator door. It says, Need bottled water, napkins, mac and cheese.

  Never going to happen now, I think.

  The kitchen drawers reveal nothing. Silverware, a phone book, some pens and Post-its. I’m not really surprised. Lisa was someone used to having to hide in public. She wouldn’t keep her secrets out here where a guest could find them by accident.

  I move to the bedroom. It’s medium-sized, with a lush beige carpet. The bed dominates the room, a California king. The earth tones continue here. Lisa had found her own sweet spot in terms of décor; feminine without being girly.

  I move to the common repository of secrets for women: the nightstand. I open the top drawer and am not disappointed. There’s a plastic bag of marijuana with some rolling papers. I also see some baby oil and a magazine filled with photographs of well-muscled naked men. I glance around, note the CD player.

  I can imagine Lisa, putting on a CD, lighting up a joint and inhaling while she flipped through the pages of the magazine to find the right visual spark. Finding it, lying back, grabbing the baby oil…

  And that’s where we part ways, Lisa.

  My fingers, when they travel down there, arrive at a different tactile experience. I’ve never had a penis, never wanted one, but I’ve held them in my hands. I know what they feel like, smell like, taste like, but I don’t know what it’s like to hold one and feel it being touched at the same time.

  Did that bother you? You were attracted to men, you longed to be a woman. When your hand found a penis, was it alien? Did you transform it in your fantasies to something else?

  I strain to arrive there, to feel it as she would have felt it, but the experience eludes me.

  I close the drawer and open the one below it, find only some paperbacks.

  I move to her dresser and rummage through the drawers. I could be looking through my own. There are no male items here at all. Bras, panties, some T-shirts and jeans. The closet reveals the same, a mix of dresses, slacks, and a ton of shoes. She had good taste, just to the left of classy, a muted flair. Hinting at mischief without giving away the store.

  I leave the room and enter the bathroom next to it. Again, I’m struck by the fact: this is a woman’s place. Makeup, loofah, lavender-scented soap. Bath beads, pink razors, a hand cream dispenser. Even the toilet seat is down. Did she sit to pee, or stand?

  The medicine cabinet belongs to a healthy person. I see aspirin, bandages, the basics. No antidepressants or prescription painkillers. In fact, no medication of any kind, which puzzles me until I work it out. She would have taken her medication with her on her trip to Texas.

  The area under the sink provides another contrast. No tampons there in that easy-to-reach-while-sitting-on-the-toilet position. Just a hand cloth and some tile cleaner.

  There’s a digital scale on the floor, and I step onto it out of habit, still trying to be Lisa. I ignore its lies, as I imagine she would have. A last pause and look around and I leave the bathroom to go check out her home office.

  The office is decorated in the same earth tones as the rest of the condo. There’s a desk placed under the window. She’d have been able to look outside when she felt like it, but her flat-screen computer monitor would have been protected from the sun’s glare. The desk itself is made of dark wood, neither substantial nor rickety, something in between. Lisa liked wood, I think. I’ve seen very little metal in the furniture here.

  There’s a file cabinet next to the desk. A six-foot high bookshelf leans up against an opposing wall, more dark wood. I glance at the titles on the book spines. They’re almost all travel guides with a gay/ lesbian emphasis. Gay Travel in Italy, Madrid—Simply Fabulous, stuff like that.

  A check of the file cabinet reveals nothing of immediate interest. We’ll have to go through it all, but that’s not why I’m here right now. I’m looking for something, anything, that jumps out, that could help put us on the right path.

  I examine the desktop. It’s clean, just a slate cup-coaster and a pen. I close my eyes, try to imagine her morning routine. I slip off my shoes, because that’s how she’d have walked around in here, that’s why she had these plush carpets.

  I imagine her waking up, walking to the coffeepot, pouring a hot cup of coffee and heading over to sit, bleary-eyed, in front of the computer…

  No, that’s wrong.

  There had been a crucial difference between Lisa and me. When I wake up in the morning, my hair might be a mess, I may have bags under my eyes, I might even think I need to wax my upper lip, but I never have to worry about someone coming to the door unannounced and finding out I’m not a woman.

  Lisa would have had that worry, a constant concern. I close my eyes, and retrace my mental steps.

  I imagine her waking up. First stop would have been the bathroom. Shower, shave her legs if needed, brush her teeth. Do her hair. Do her makeup—nothing fancy, just making sure that it is a woman’s face looking back at her. We’re all slaves to the mirror in some fashion, but it would have had a whole new dimension for Lisa.

  Clothes could have remained casual, a T-shirt and sweatpants were fine, but she would have done her face before getting her coffee. She would have woken up and prepared for the possibility of being seen by the world.

  Now the rest of it feels true; cup of coffee, walking into this office in her bare feet.

  I sit down in the chair and start up her computer. Her wallpaper is a striking photograph of the pyramids of Egypt silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky
.

  I open her browser and look through the history to see what sites she visited. It’s a mix of business and shopping. I find her own website, Rainbow Travels. There’s a photograph on the first page. Lisa, smiling, beautiful. I’d never know, from this picture, that she hadn’t started her life as a woman.

  Pictures…

  I stand up, walk out of the office, and go back through the living room, the bedroom. I was right—there are no photographs on her walls. No pictures of her family, of Rosario or Dillon, or even of herself. There’s a Picasso print and an Ansel Adams black and white, but that’s it.

  I wonder about this. Why no photographs? Had the idea of seeing her parents’ faces every day been painful to her? Or was it simply a continuation of her protecting them from her life, of keeping visitors from making the connection?

  I walk back into the office and continue going through her computer. I check out her e-mail. Lots of business e-mail, e-mail relating to online purchases, but again, the oddity—nothing personal. It’s the cyberspace version of no family photos.

  I’m starting to get an idea here that belies Rosario’s vision of Lisa’s contentment. The condo was nice, Lisa ran her own business, she had her flat screen and her weed and baby oil and that was all great, but I think this was a place of solitude, of daily routine and loneliness.

  I don’t see any e-mail to or from friends, any visits to dating sites, no evidence of any outreach at all.

  I sigh and lean back in the chair. I feel dissatisfied. Where is Lisa in this place? Where’s her soul?

  My foot kicks against something underneath the desk. Frowning, I move the chair back, crouch forward, and pick it up. When I see what it is, my heartbeat speeds up a little.

  It’s a brown leather book, embossed with the gold letters Journal on the front.

  “Now we’re talking,” I murmur.

  The first entry is dated about a week ago. Lisa has nice handwriting, a looping, legible script. I read.