“Thank you, Travers. That’s how it’s done.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Hello, McGuire, what do you have for us inside?” Travers’s tone changed from grumble to greeting without missing a beat.
“Similar scene. Parents, one boy dead. Another boy survived—ten years old. Atlasia was going to kill him, but he managed to lock himself in a closet. Alex, I think his name is.”
“Let me guess,” Jade said. “Ears cut off, ‘HNE’ written on the wall in blood.”
McGuire looked at Jade for a moment. “Pretty close, Marlow. Tongues, and ‘SNE’ again.”
Jade raised a finger to brush the scar on his left cheek. That made sense, he thought, in light of the fact that the ears had been cut out of the picture of him that Allander had left on his back counter.
“Huh,” he said. “So the teachers are the speakers. That leaves us with the lawmakers who can’t listen.”
McGuire looked at Travers as Jade wandered trancelike into the house. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Travers replied, “that he’s not as dumb as he looks.”
Jade headed through the entranceway, staring into the mirror splattered with blood. He wasn’t looking at the blood though. He was watching the reflection of Allander as he moved through the house.
The scent of Allander lingered about the bodies. I just missed him, Jade thought. He walked around this house less than an hour ago.
He squatted over the mother’s body, on the floor. Linda Johnson. The name, like the woman, meant nothing to him. Looking at her lifeless form, Jade could not even imagine her as having once been alive. The battering she had received from the iron had left her somewhere outside of reality. She was grotesque now, something out of a fantasy.
Jade turned his gaze to the bloody letters, and his hand absently went to the woman’s face, brushing her cheeks. He felt his fingers dip into the pool that filled her vacant mouth, and a sticky warmth spread over them.
Some of the agents turned and looked at each other with raised eyebrows, but Jade didn’t notice them. He inhaled the heat rising off the body as he felt the moisture of Allander’s making. Even the air seemed to hold its breath during the long pause before he rose from his haunches.
The fingers of Jade’s left hand dripped blood as they lifted from the mouth. He held them up before his face as the blood made its way under his cuff. The last three fingers on his hand had been submerged in the woman’s mouth, and the line of the gory sheath ended neatly before his thumb and index finger.
With this ring, I thee wed.
He wiped his hand on his jeans. More agents scurried in.
Jade paced around the family room, walking laps around the woman’s body and the forensics team working on her. He would have killed for a cup of ice right now.
The mother and older boy both had had their tongues cut out. The boy was past puberty, so Allander would have found him intimidating. He would have felt that any sexually potent male posed a threat. But Alex was young, like the children from the first house. Why had Allander told him he was going to kill him? Why would he want to kill a prepubescent child now, but not earlier?
“The boy,” he asked one of the other agents in the house. “What was he like?”
“See for yourself,” she replied. “He’s out back.”
“He’s still here?” Jade said in disbelief. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
The agent shrugged, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown.
Jade stormed through the sliding glass doors that opened to the backyard. Rather than ending at a fence, the backyard sloped off into a grove of trees and the hills beyond. Jade felt as if he had just stepped into a forest; the lawn and a toolshed were the only indications that a home was nearby. He spotted a small huddle of adults on the far corner of the lawn by the toolshed. He assumed Alex was in the middle.
A woman turned and saw him coming, and she straightened up, blocking Alex with her body. She had bags under her eyes that Jade noticed even before he crossed the lawn. Brown curly hair, streaked with an occasional glimmer of white, fell randomly over her face. She did not look like she was familiar with a brush.
“Oh no, Mr. Marlow,” she said. “I was warned about you. You absolutely cannot talk to him now.”
Jade was almost impressed with himself. He was practically famous.
“Look, Ms.”—he pulled the tag clipped to the front of her cheap suit so he could read it—“Perkins of the Emergency Children’s Advocate State Agency.” He stopped and whistled. “That’s a lot of capitals.”
“They told me you were charming,” she said flatly. “You can’t talk to him. I’m sorry.” She waved some piece of paper at him. “He has his rights.”
“Then why’s he still here?” Jade asked, standing on his tiptoes to peek at the kid. Alex was sitting Indian style on the edge of the lawn with his arms crossed, refusing to be moved.
“Well … he doesn’t want to go. We’re talking things through.”
“I need to speak with him.”
“That’s certainly possible, Mr. Marlow, just not now. We’re trying to move him somewhere more neutral. After he settles down, if he’s ready, you can speak to him then.”
Jade groaned. “You’ll dilute him. That does me no good.”
“I’m sorry. Those are his rights.”
What was it about this kid that made Allander want to kill him? Jade stared at the woman’s determined face and considered busting past her. If he could just get the kid alone for a few seconds, he might see what Allander had seen.
“Then how come you’re letting the agents interview the little girl in the house?” he asked.
“A little girl?” she asked dryly. “Inside?” She looked fairly hesitant, but she was worried despite herself.
Jade nodded.
“This better not be a game, Mr. Marlow.” She walked vigorously across the lawn toward the house.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Jade walked through the group of adults gathered around Alex, hooked a hand under his arm, and hauled him toward the toolshed. It was only about five steps away, and the social workers and EMT s were so shocked they didn’t even respond until he tossed Alex into the small room and swung the door shut behind them. Alex fell to his bottom and skidded toward the far wall.
Jade grabbed a hoe and slid it through the metal door handles. He turned back to Alex. Several hands thudded the door outside, rattling the hoe fiercely. It wouldn’t hold very long.
“Open up immediately!”
“You open this fucking door, now!”
Jade stepped toward him and Alex bounced to his feet, backing against the far wall. His back struck a protruding shelf, and his arms went to it, groping for something to grab hold of. His right hand found an ax handle that had been leaned against the wall. Jade smiled as he saw his little fingers tighten around the wood. That’s my boy, he thought. That’s my boy.
“Okay,” Jade said, holding his hands out to his sides passively. “That’s it. It’s okay.” Alex slowly lowered the ax handle, and Jade stepped forward and rested his hands on the boy’s head. “It’s okay.”
The hoe broke, sending splinters of wood scattering across the floor, and a group of people rushed past Jade, almost knocking him over. They surrounded Alex protectively, as they had on the lawn. Ms. Perkins was back, leading the charge. Jade resisted a smile as he thought about the reception she must have received from the agency men inside. Trying to run into a crime scene after an imaginary girl.
Her nostrils flared angrily and her hands were clenched. For a moment, Jade thought she might strike him. “This is entirely unacceptable,” she said. “You will hear from our legal department, Mr. Marlow.”
“You keep me away from that asshole,” Alex yelled over her shoulder.
“You are not to see him again,” she continued.
“That’s fine,” Jade said. “I don’t need to.” As Jad
e headed back to the house, the group remained huddled together in the shed as though they’d been caught in a storm.
Alex was a tough little bastard, Jade thought. After witnessing his own father’s murder, he wasn’t in shock. And that was the least of it. He was a fighter. Of course, he was extremely upset, but he wasn’t the kind of kid to fold right away. He reminded Jade of himself at that age.
Jade bet it would have been difficult for Allander to keep full control over Alex. The whimpering brats at the first house weren’t worth Allander’s time. But he would have viewed Alex as a challenge. And Allander loved rising to challenges.
Jade stepped back through the sliding doors into the family room. The bloody letters on the window partially blocked the light shining through, causing it to fall unevenly across the room. He stared at the iron tangled around the woman’s feet. It was covered with blood and wisps of hair.
Allander had had time to plan, but he hadn’t brought any weapons to the crime scene. Again, they had been taken from the house. An iron, a shotgun, two knives. He was striking the family from within, killing them with their own tools. It was another way to show a family’s repression and hypocrisy. All the tools for self-destruction lay behind their very own doors.
One of the forensics agents worked on the mother’s body. He withdrew a swab from the corpse’s vagina. “Looks like he didn’t rape her,” he said loudly to no one in particular.
Jade looked down at her and grimaced. “Would you?” he asked.
“That’s completely inappropriate and unprofessional,” Travers yelled from across the room. “Even for you, Marlow.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. He’s a totally different animal. We shouldn’t think like him,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Let’s hold him at arm’s length while we try to run him down. Good thinking.”
The forensics agents stopped mid-procedure and looked at one another uncomfortably. Jade sensed their unease and realized that his and Travers’s tempers ran a lot hotter than he thought. It took a lot to make these guys uncomfortable.
“I just don’t think of contemplated rape as casual conversation,” Travers shot back.
Jade gestured to the surroundings. “Good. Then look around, sweetheart, ’cause this isn’t a place for casual conversation. If we’re gonna get to him, we’re gonna have to think in ways that aren’t pretty.”
“I’m well aware of that, Marlow. You’re not the only agent in town with field experience. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop talking to me like I’m two steps out of Quantico.”
“Fair enough,” Jade said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop talking.”
The same controlled anger that he had noticed at the meeting at FBI headquarters flashed behind her eyes. They faced each other across the woman’s corpse, which looked up at them blankly.
“The weapons,” she said. “Taken from the house. They’re not a choice for power, not like Berkowitz’s forty-four.”
Jade nodded. “So where does he derive his power?”
“From the actions themselves. From a prolonged sense of control.”
“But he doesn’t enjoy the usual intimacy with the victims. Doesn’t track them, lure them, keep them alive and savor them. Why not?”
“Because he’s self-aware. He’s committing patricides and matricides, but they’re very conscious. He’s not displacing. He knows he’s implicating his parents. He knows his killings are symbolic—even illustrations of Freudian thought. That’s why he thinks he’s so much smarter than other killers. His killings don’t divulge who he is. They affirm who he is. They’re part of his self-definition.”
“Bravo,” Jade said. His tone was so genuine that Travers didn’t even find him condescending. “And that’s probably why he leaves the bodies in the house. The killings are about the family and home. But even though he’s highly conscious of what he’s doing and how he’s going about it, it still doesn’t put him that much ahead of us. He can’t help himself. He acts as if he’s leading us along, but that’s only because he doesn’t want to admit just how much he loves this. How much he needs it.”
“How do you know?”
Jade pointed at the corpse between them. “The answer is always in the body. Multiple wounds this time. A full battering with an iron. At the first house, the killings were very neat. One awl through the eye, two swift swings of a hammer. His rage this time is less controlled. There’s more anger here. The fewer the wounds, the more controlled the rage.”
Travers looked at him. “Don’t you only shoot once, Jade?” she asked.
He matched her smile, then his eyes narrowed and a serious expression spread across his face. Travers would have been scared if she hadn’t recognized that expression. She left him alone with the body.
Jade finally left the house as night filtered in through the windows. On his way out, he went to the earthquake room and yanked on the rope. The deafening clang of the bell startled the agents still on the scene, and they glared at Jade as he walked to his car.
He didn’t notice though. He just wanted to have the sounds of the bell in his ears as he left the scene.
41
ALLANDER placed his toe in the hole of the faucet as he settled back among the bubbles in the steaming bath. He whistled a lighthearted tune, filling it with baroque trills, his notes resonating off the bathroom walls.
It was astounding how easy it had been. He had hot-wired an old truck he’d found in a neighboring barn and had sped off before anyone had even noticed the chiming bells, let alone phoned the police so they could set up roadblocks. It was doubtful that anyone would notice that the old truck was gone before tomorrow, and even more doubtful that it would be noticed and reported before then. The owners would probably consider it a blessing that the decrepit thing had been removed from their property.
As he had driven slowly through the streets of Palo Alto, Allander had noticed a Land Rover with suitcases and surfboards on the roof, and inside a smiling family. He watched as the car pulled out of the driveway of a somewhat secluded, colonial-style home.
After circling the block, Allander returned. He was about to break a window to get into the garage when he noticed a thermometer on the wall. Even though night was drawing near, it still showed eighty-seven degrees. He tapped it, holding a hand underneath; a plastic hatch opened on the bottom and a spare key fell out.
It fit the garage door, so Allander opened it and moved the truck inside, parking it next to a beautiful red Jeep. Getting into the main house was not a problem given that he had access to a full set of tools in the garage, and he smashed the alarm unit out of the wall and clipped the appropriate wires before it fully activated. The things you learn growing up in and out of prison, Allander thought. A practical education.
The large calendar on the refrigerator indicated that the family was gone for the week. He would steal nothing and leave everything precisely as he had found it, ditching the old truck when he got a chance. The only thing he couldn’t fix was the alarm unit down-stairs, but he doubted that would attract much police attention if everything else was in order. It pleased him immensely to realize he was brilliant and uncatchable, daringly irresponsible and wildly imaginative. And he was relaxing in a warm bath.
He pulled himself out of the tub and walked around the upstairs without toweling off. Glancing at the cut in his fingertip, he noticed that it was healing well. He stopped in the hallway underneath a ceiling fan. The coolness of the air on his moist skin felt wonderful. He walked into the study, admiring the dark wood bookcases and the shelves of hardbacked books.
On an antique wooden chest in the corner sat two matching cell phones. How cute, Allander thought. His and hers. He walked over and checked the numbers, written neatly in the slots on the back. They were different. He picked up one phone in each hand, bouncing them lightly to feel their weight. They might come in handy.
Crossing the room to lean over the imposing oak desk, Allander turned on the computer. An Internet icon came u
p on the desktop, and he double-clicked it. He bit his lip and concentrated, casting his mind back to the computer magazines he’d read in prison. It made him sad to realize how much of the world he had missed during his years locked in a cell. There was so much he’d never seen.
The Internet screen came up, complete with a search box. Allander carefully moved the cursor to the box, then typed in a name. Jade Marlow.
After searching through a few dead ends, Allander came upon several entries from the San Francisco Daily. He was not surprised to see his own picture in the most recent newspaper article featuring Jade. The headline, “Marlow in Hot Pursuit of Serial Killer,” stretched above an extremely unflattering photograph of Allander taken at one of his many court appearances. Allander read the caption aloud in a deep, booming voice, then chuckled. “Serial killer,” he repeated disdainfully. “Don’t these people have a sense of humor?”
He clicked through the rest of the newspaper headlines. “Black Ribbon Strangler Identified.” “Michael Trapp Dead in Shoot-out.” “Missing Girl Found.”
Quite an American hero, this Jade Marlow, Allander thought. He did everything but rescue cats from trees. He was about to shut down the computer when he saw one entry dated several years prior to the rest. January 2, 1973. A painfully familiar year.
He opened it. It was a small story, buried on the sixteenth page. “Retarded Boy Bullied to Death,” the headline read. The picture showed a mother embracing a boy around the chest as a father rested a hand lovingly on her shoulder. The boy had light brown hair, and the drooping features of a developmentally delayed child. It was the same boy he had seen in the picture he had moved from Jade’s bedroom.
Also in the picture, but in the background, stood another boy by himself, a baseball cap backward on his head. He faced sideways, unaware of the camera. Although the picture was blurry, Allander recognized him right away.
Jade slammed the door behind him and headed straight to the boxing bag in the garage. He attacked it relentlessly, driving lefts and rights, not at the bag, but straight through it. His form was perfect, his rhythm exact. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
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