Strip search sp-2

by William Bernhardt

  16

  The pills must've done their pharmacological duty; Iwas deep in the throes of the best sleep I'd had in weeks, certainly since I got assigned to this twisted face-melter case. I don't even think I was dreaming, or if I was, it must've been something so pleasant that it left me feeling tranquil and content. Talk about a sea change to the system. I might have known it wouldn't last. My blissful idyll was interrupted by the sound of seagulls, whistling winds, crashing water. The alarm clock was whooshing relentlessly, turning the increasingly loud white noise surf sounds into a thunderous tidal wave threatening to carry me and my sanity away with it.

  "Can you get that? You're closer."

  He didn't answer, which only irritated me all the more. I pushed up from my pillow. "Look, sugar bear, I know you're faking and-"

  There was no one there. Of course there was no one there. I'd done it again. How long was it going to take before I got it through my head that I wasn't married anymore? That I lived alone. That David…wasn't here anymore.

  All at once I felt the calm and tranquility falling away like a shedding skin. I reached across the end table, knocking over the alarm clock in the process, and clutched the good luck charm Rachel had so thoughtfully provided. I squeezed it tightly in my fist, then pressed it against my chest, as if somehow I could crush the solace out of it. Sure, I knew David wasn't going to appear to me anymore-he told me he wasn't-but if I could just access some tiny piece of him, some memory of what it was like when he was still there on the other side of the bed…

  Yes. There it was. Bless Rachel for saving what I had so carelessly left behind. I could feel him. Even though I knew he wasn't there. I could feel what it was like to have his arms around me, holding me, whispering in my ear, telling me everything would be all right.

  It's okay, he would whisper, his sweet breath warming the side of my face. Whatever it is. It'll be okay. We have each other.

  I will, Mr. Pulaski, I promised, looking his father straight in the eye. I'll look after your boy. We'll look after each other.

  The four-leaf clover was good, but at the moment, not good enough. I raced into the bathroom, upended the pill bottle, and swallowed a little blue pill, not even waiting long enough to pour a glass of water. In fact, I reflected, I should probably have two. Hell of a way to start your morning, and I didn't want it ruining my day. I had things I needed to get done. I stepped into the shower and immersed myself in near scalding water, but by the time it was over I still didn't feel much better, so I swallowed a third.

  Finally I felt a tiny amount of the-well, if not calm exactly, then stability-I'd experienced before returning to me. My hands were steady. I had a strong temptation to crawl back under the covers, but I managed to resist.

  I brushed my teeth and got dressed and even experimented with a tiny amount of makeup, not my usual face, but it couldn't hurt to shake up the boys at the office a little. Besides, today I was going visiting.

  Okay, three pills was too many, I knew that. The label on the bottle said NO DOUBLE DOSING and I'd just violated that prohibition and then some. But it wouldn't happen again. Last thing I needed was to become dependent on a new chemical. I trudged into the kitchenette and put on the coffee. I wasn't sure which I liked better about coffee, the taste or the smell. Or the warm sensation as it trickled down my throat. Come to think of it, caffeine was a chemical, too, wasn't it? What the hell.

  It was only this once. After today, I'd give Amelia her pills back or flush them down the toilet. This wasn't going to happen again. No way. I wouldn't let it. "HELLLLO?" a tentative voice on the other end of the line said.

  "Howdy, heap big chief," I said brightly. "How are things at the O'Bannon residence?"

  "Gooood," O'Bannon replied. "In a quiet sort of way. Umm…"

  "Yes? Something wrong?" There was no immediate answer. "You seem perplexed."

  "Well…I'm torn. I am impressed to know that you're up this early in the morning. But I don't know why the hell you're calling me!"

  "You know what traffic is like during rush hour. I wanted to get an early start."

  "Okaaaaay…that explains the first part of the questionnn…"

  "And I'm calling to see if I can take Darcy with me."

  "Susan, I already told you-"

  "Hey, I don't want to drag him to a crime scene. I'm just going out to talk to an expert who might be able to shed some light on that equation we found at the first crime scene."

  "I don't care what you're doing, the answer is-"

  "Yes. Yesyesyesyesyesyes!" a slightly higher voice interjected.

  "Darcy!" O'Bannon bellowed. "Are you on the extension?"

  "Please say that I can go with her, Dad. Please. Pleasepleaseplease-"

  "I thought you were reading."

  "I was, till I looked at the caller ID and I saw that it was Susan. Please let me go, Dad. Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-"

  "Would you stop that already!" He blew air into the receiver. "Pulaski, I can't believe you're doing this to me. I already made it clear-"

  "Chief, I'm driving out to UNLV. To talk to a mathematics professor."

  "I'm very happy for you. Is there a point?"

  "I flunked high school trig. I'm not going to understand a word she says. Your son, on the other hand, has more math knowledge than every member of the LVPD combined."

  "Be that as it may-"

  "Please, Dad, please!"

  "Darcy, would you get off the phone!"

  "Please, Dad. I promise that I will be good. I will stay out of trouble and not get in Susan's way. And if there are any murders, I will not look."

  I didn't have to see O'Bannon's face to know that his frustration level was climbing fast. And he probably hadn't even had his morning coffee. "Look, Darcy, it's just not a good idea. We have detectives who are trained to handle this kind of work. You're not going to be able to do anything that-"

  "That is what you said when you were looking for the Bad Man," Darcy said, cutting him off. "But I did help. I solved the puzzles no one else could solve."

  "That was totally different."

  "It is not different. It is exactly the same. Someone has left us a puzzle. I want to help solve it."

  I could imagine the range of expressions crossing O'Bannon's face-none of them pleasant. The silence was probably less than twenty seconds, but it seemed interminable.

  "All right, then, damn it. You can go."

  "Yippee! Thank you, Dad. Thank you so much. Thankyouthankyouthankyou."

  "But this is the only time, understand me, Pulaski?"

  "Loud and clear, sir."

  "Nothing else. And especially no crime scenes!"

  "Got it. Darcy, I have to stop by the office first, then I'll come for you. I'll be there around noon. And Chief-have a nice day."

  He slammed the receiver down without comment.

  I saw Granger standing near the top of the stairs at Central Headquarters reading a report, so I braced myself for the usual onslaught of threats and criticism, fortified by Valium and the knowledge that even if he was my superior in rank, I was his superior in, well, everything else.

  He barely looked up. "Morning, Susan."

  Now that was just weird. "That's…all you have to say? No pounding me for a psych profile? What's the deal?"

  He did that shrug again, the one that made me want to disconnect his head from his shoulders. "Personally, I've always thought psychological profiling was overrated. Good solid detective work-that's how you solve a case."

  Like hell. I peered into his beady little eyes. "You've got something, don't you?"

  "In what way?"

  "You know damn well. You've found something. Something you think is so brilliant and insightful that you don't need me. You think you've got it all figured."

  "Well, that is my job."

  "Come clean, Granger. What do you know?"

  He continued talking with that insufferable indifference, but from the corner of my eye I could see that we w
ere beginning to attract attention. In other words, once again, he was playing for an audience. Building his rep by trashing mine. "I know the killer is male. Right?"

  My eyes widened. "Wow! You must have a Ph.D. in psychology or something."

  "I know he's motivated by some kind of sexual obsession or deviancy."

  "And how did you decide that?"

  "Almost all serial killers are, right?"

  "There are exceptions. Aileen Wuornos-"

  "But most of them are sexually motivated, right?"

  "So far, there's no indication that the victims were sexually molested."

  "Which, as we both know, does not in any way rule out the likelihood that his crimes are sexually motivated. He's probably impotent."

  "You can't keep making assumptions in the absence of evidence-"

  He held up his hand. "But statistically speaking, I'm probably right, aren't I?"

  I tried to penetrate a little further into that titanium-reinforced skull. "You wouldn't be playing so high and mighty with me in my own ballpark unless you knew something. Spill."

  Granger stared at me for a long moment. Eventually, he turned around the paper in his hands so I could see it. It was a victimology report from one of his investigating officers, one who had been interrogating the friends of Mohamadas Amir. "Amir was a porn freak."

  I snatched the report out of his hands. "How do they know?"

  "It's more like, how could anyone not know. Everyone who knew him knew. Except his wife, apparently."

  I scanned the report as quickly as I could input the data. "So what wild and utterly unsupported conclusion are you drawing here?"

  He spread his arms wide. "Isn't it obvious? It's Jack the Ripper all over again."

  I squinted. "Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes."

  "Jack the Ripper was obsessed with everything he perceived as sexually obscene. Prostitutes were the easiest to get at, in nineteenth century London, but his notes to the police show that his sexual obsession didn't stop with ladies of the evening. He didn't have access to porn queens or those who favored them. But if he had, I'd be willing to bet he'd have gone after them with that great big knife of his."

  "How does this explain the equation? How does this explain the face peeling?"

  "Didn't Jack the Ripper mutilate his victims?"

  "Yes, but in a clearly sexual manner, at least most of the time. You're extrapolating too much from two bits of information that may or may not indicate a pattern. We need more empirical data before we-"

  He held up his hands. "Susan, Susan, Susan. I'm not trying to get you kicked off the case. I'm really not. But I think you'd be more useful if you worked with the evidence, instead of fighting against it." I could've lived with that, but he had to add: "Just because you didn't find it yourself."

  "I'm not-I just-" I tried to concentrate, get my head straight, but I was having a hard time focusing. "I can't explain, Granger. It just doesn't feel right."

  He smiled again and this time, just for good measure, added a little chuckle. "Like I said, I think psychological profiling is overrated."

  "You sorry son of a-"

  "Which reminds me." He pulled another document out of his pocket. "This is a consulting contract. I knew everything was all loosey-goosey and handshakes with O'Bannon, but now that you're working directly under me, I want a formal signed contract on file spelling out the terms of the employment-and grounds for termination."

  I snatched it out of his hands and read. "I agree to follow all instructions given by my superior officers. I promise to observe the chain of command and show respect to my superior officers." I pushed it back into his face. "I'm not signing this."

  "If you want to go on working on this case, you are."

  "I don't care how important you think you are. O'Bannon won't fire me. And I'm not signing this."

  He took a step closer. "So help me, Pulaski, if you don't-"

  I shoved the contract into my mouth and ate it. Chewed it up and swallowed it, the whole thing. The office spectators began to laugh. Granger fumed, swore under his breath, then pivoted on one heel and stomped away.

  Okay, so that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. I still don't really know why I did it. Well, I suppose I do, in a way. But I knew it would come back to haunt me. Granger would be in O'Bannon's office first chance he got, trying to get me booted, and now he even had a decent excuse.

  I decided to make tracks. They couldn't fire me if they couldn't find me, right? Besides, if I wanted to stay on this case, I needed to find out something they didn't already know. The faster the better

  "Did you know that the Eiffel Tower has exactly 2,500,000 rivets?"

  "What, like, exactly?"

  "Exactly."

  "I don't believe it."

  "It is true. Gustave Eiffel planned it that way."

  "Wow. That Gustave must've been…"

  "A master engineer?"

  I smiled. "A man after your own heart."

  I was driving Darcy to UNLV by way of the Spaghetti Bowl, what the locals call the loop formed by I-35 and US 93-95 as they circle around downtown Vegas, which seemed to be jammed with commuter traffic around the clock. Fortunately, I had Darcy to keep me company. I'd told him we were going to meet an eminent mathematician, so he decided to entertain me with more of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of numerical trivia.

  "Do you know how many Elvis impersonators there are in Las Vegas?" he asked.

  I couldn't hazard a guess. "Way too many."

  "Twelve thousand, six hundred and ninety-two."

  "No!"

  "Yes. The growth rate over the past decade has been exponential. If this pattern continues, by the year 2020, one in every six people will be Elvis impersonators."

  I couldn't resist a hearty belly laugh. "Darcy, you're cracking me up."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You-That-" I kept my attention on the gridlock traffic, but glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. "That wasn't a joke?"

  He stared at me blank-faced.

  What was I thinking? Darcy didn't even understand the concept of jokes.

  "Have you had lunch?" I asked him. "We've got time to stop, if you haven't."

  "Thank you, but I have already eaten. I had leftover chicken from our dinner last night. From KFC. Do you know what KFC stands for?"

  "Yes!" For perhaps the first time ever, I actually knew the answer to one of Darcy's questions. I felt as if I had won the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.

  "I had double helpings of coleslaw," Darcy added. "Although now I am thinking that maybe I shouldn't have. Do you know how many times the average adult passes gas each day?"

  "Uh, no, and what's more-"

  "Nineteen."

  "That-can't be right."

  "It's true. There was a study done at Cornell University."

  I wondered what lucky graduate student got to write that grant application. "Nineteen?"

  "On average."

  "Well," I said, veering onto the exit ramp. "I've never done it. Ever. In my entire life."

  His forehead creased. "Then you would be a statistical anomaly."

  I made a hard left and passed through the campus gates. "I've always suspected as much." I WAS SO HAPPY and it was so good to see Susan again it has been so long since my dad let me be a detective with her and I missed being a detective with her. I like being with her. I do not know if she's decided whether she will adopt me I wanted to ask but I was afraid to ask and I thought that if the answer was yes she would tell me so maybe I should not ask. I am glad that she wanted me to be with her but I hope I can help her I like math and math likes me but it is not always easy. At least numbers are better than words. Words can mean so many different things and you never can be sure what they mean because you have to know which meaning is right and you have to know how someone is saying it or see their expression when they are saying it and I can never understand how someone is saying it or why that should matter. Numbers are always
the same. One is always one. Two is always two. And one and two are always three. Unless you are not in base ten. But that would be different.

  Susan smells good today and she seems okay and her hands are not shaking and that makes me happy. But she is talking funny and that makes me worried. She is talking funny like she used to talk funny except not like she used to talk funny and I don't really know what I mean but something is not right and I do not like it when something is not right for Susan. For Susan everything should be right because I love Susan and I love Susan and Stop. Insert period. Start again. I do not like the way her words are running together, but she does not have that funny smell she used to have when I first met her and as long as she does not have that funny smell everything will be okay. I think. I wish I understood the world but I do not and I never will. That is why I need Susan to adopt me. She could help me. She could take care of me. And I would always try to take care of her.

  17

  I guess we got there early, because when we arrived, professor Goldstein was still teaching a class. It was one of those multitiered amphitheater classrooms with enough seats for at least a hundred students, and there wasn't an empty seat. What's more, there wasn't a bored face in the room; she seemed to have her students absolutely mesmerized, which was amazing, because I didn't understand a word she was saying.

  "Darcy," I whispered, "are you getting any of this?"

  He was staring at the problems written on the chalkboard, which looked to me sufficiently complex to create an atomic bomb. "I am working on it."

  "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "I…I have never seen anything like this before."

  "Does that mean you don't get it, either?"

  He continued staring straight ahead, eyes fixed. "I am working on it."

  I tuned into Dr. Goldstein's lecture. "The important thing to bear in mind about continuing fractions is that they're fundamentally no different from simple fractions-except that instead of being able to reduce them in one, perhaps two steps, it's going to be more like, oh, fifty or a hundred steps." There was a low ripple of laughter from the classroom. "But never fear-it can be done. And it's worth the effort. Continuing fractions made it possible for men to go to the moon, for us to send probes to Mars and beyond. They made it possible for us to decode the human genome, to understand the natural process of crystallization. And Tupperware. Never forget Tupperware."