by Robert Pobi
Rafferty waved it away. “I have a set of wheel dollies that’ll take care of that. Can I see the vehicle?”
Jake asked him to wait outside while he went through the studio; he didn’t want anyone getting a look at the crazy shit his father had painted all over the room. He went into the garage and lifted the old door about three feet and Rafferty crawled under.
Rafferty walked around the car, examining it with professional scrutiny. He scoured the vehicle with a flashlight, occasionally leaning in close to examine something that caught his eye, getting down on the floor, balanced on his gloved palms and the tips of his booted toes, to peer at the undercarriage. It took him five minutes to go around the car. When he was done he stood up, went back outside under the half-closed door, and came back in with a sealed bag the size of a large pillow.
He pulled two static-free plastic jumpsuits out of the bag and handed one to Jake. “Pull this on over your clothes—it won’t pick up any dirt or contaminate the car. Use the hood, it’s not too hot in here so we won’t sweat too much.”
Rafferty pulled on his own, standing on one foot at a time, balancing as the other went through a leg hole that seemed designed for someone a lot shorter and heavier. Jake stepped into his and when he closed his eyes it smelled like he was putting on a new shower curtain.
Rafferty pulled the rest of the contents out of the bag, a folded sheet of polyethylene. They stretched it over the Mercedes and Rafferty taped the corners. When the car was encased in the plastic, he ran a second piece beneath it, protecting the undercarriage.
Jake knew that the plastic would protect it from contamination and losing evidence on the way into the truck.
Jake’s phone rang.
Without being asked, Rafferty said, “I can take care of myself.” And with that he opened the garage door.
“Jake Cole.”
“Jake, it’s Hauser. Two things, I wasn’t able to reach the Farmers, but I spoke to their daughter—she lives in Portland—said her folks rented the house to ‘some nice people’ they met through an online real-estate rental service. There was no computer in the house and the Farmers live in Boston. I’ve asked for a warrant to access their email accounts but that will take until the morning to clear since we’ve only got the daughter’s word on this and it doesn’t look like the Farmers are in any way involved in the murder. I have, however, been able to get to their banking records.
“They’re renting the place out for four grand a month. Not very much money for a place like that. Funds were in the form of postal money orders. They were bought with cash. I’ve put a trace on them and when they come back we can check with the actual branch that sold them; unfortunately no one keeps track of postal money orders. You’re not allowed to purchase them with a credit card and if you’re paying cash, no one really asks questions unless you buy ten grand. It will take three days and it’s probably a dead end.” Hauser sounded frustrated. “So each step takes us further and further away.”
“Nice people implies more than a mother and child, doesn’t it?” Jake went back into the studio, closing and locking the door behind him. In here, in the womblike dark, there was a soft silence.
“One of the neighbors—she wasn’t home the night of the murders—walked by the Farmer house on Tuesday afternoon and thinks she saw a woman and child walking on the beach. She couldn’t give any sort of a description other than she looked thin and the child had a lot of energy. They were too far for her to get any solid details. Saw them twice. But no husband. No boyfriend.”
“Could be the man works a lot. Could be she has a girlfriend,” Jake offered. “If she saw the child on the beach with a woman more than once—and she couldn’t identify the woman—maybe there were two women.”
There was a pause as Hauser digested this little bit of possibility. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“How long have they been renting the place?”
“Two weeks back. Looks like an end-of-season rental. Daughter said her folks were happy that they had found someone who wanted the place for the fall. It was short notice.”
“Why come here in the fall on short notice?” Jake paced the studio, painting the pixels of data into the 3-D model he had assembled in his mind the night before when he had walked onto the set. “When did the first money order get deposited?”
“August thirtieth.”
“September first lease. They’ve been here more than two weeks. Someone has seen them. Guaranteed.”
Hauser let out a sigh. “Problem is, most of the neighbors have packed up and left.”
Jake remembered the advancing storm. “How long until it’s too late to leave?”
“The wind will get bad tonight. Rain, too. Serious rain by the morning. By supper things will be intense. I’d say leaving at two p.m. tomorrow is cutting it short. Just in case something goes wrong—and something always goes wrong.” There was a pause. “You thinking about your wife and child?”
“I’m thinking about all of us.”
“When are you getting on the road?”
Jake thought about lying but it wasn’t something he felt good at. “I’m staying.”
“Jake, the Southampton hospital is a solid building that is going to resist the storm surge and winds. It was designed to withstand a hurricane. Hell, any municipal building erected after the big one of ’38 was designed to withstand a missile attack.” There was a pause. “I will personally look in on your old man. You don’t need to worry about him.”
What could he say to that? I really don’t give a flying fuck? Because when it comes down to it, it’s everything else that has me on edge. It’s the woman and her child up the beach. It’s the studio with the bloody men in the flat-black sky. It’s these canvases that my old man spent years painting—these lousy dead meanderings of a diseased subconscious. It’s my mother’s car, sitting out there for the past quarter-century like some pop art shrine, my father perched in his Star Trek chair, guzzling back scotch and doing what—? Weeping? Laughing? Screaming his fucking lungs out? Too many loose threads for me to walk away from. All he said was, “It’s not just my old man. It’s everything else. The case. All of it. What was the second thing you wanted to tell me?”
“The ME’s people just finished going over the house. If you want to take another walk through, now’s the time. We can go up there together before things get too bogged down with this storm. And after the storm there may not be a crime scene to visit.”
Jake pulled his eyes away from the ocean, then swiveled back to the house and headed inside. “When can you pick me up?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
31
Hauser’s new Charger sounded like a German Panzer from half a mile off, the supercharged Hemi growling as it tore up 27. It made a statement but Jake saw the car in the same light as he viewed a lot of American industry—yet another rehash in a once innovative field that had been reduced to copying its glory days. He had to step back when the sheriff swerved off the road onto the gravel shoulder. The taste of electricity in Jake’s mouth was replaced with dust and exhaust. He climbed in.
“Ever lose anyone to this car?” Jake asked as he strapped himself in.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
Jake realized that this was the first time he had seen Hauser look even remotely comfortable around him; it was probably a home-court advantage. “City asshole tried to outrun me with his Ferrari and hit the corner at Reese’s dairy doing one-eighty. Went straight off the point and disintegrated. By the time we picked up all the pieces from the rocks, it was a different season.”
Jake shook his head. “In this line of work you get to see people at their best, no doubt about it.”
Hauser’s eyes slid over to Jake for a second. He swallowed and the comfortable body language of a few seconds ago was lost. “How’d you end up doing what you do?”
Jake reached into his pocket for a cigarette, then realized that Hauser wouldn’t want that new
cop-car smell to get fucked up by his Marlboro. He let the smokes fall from his fingers and put his hand on his thigh. “Bad luck, I guess.”
Hauser shot another sideways glance at him and said, “You and those rose-colored glasses. You need yoga or tai chi. You ever try any of that?”
“Smoking relaxes me.”
They lapsed into a silence that lasted until Hauser’s cell phone pinged the national anthem. “Yeah?” the sheriff said into his hands-free earpiece.
Hauser listened for a few seconds, then glanced in the mirror, flipped the siren and cherries to life, and pounded down on the brakes. He spun the wheel and hit the gas and the big rear end of the Charger swung in an arc of squealing tires. The car fishtailed in a 180-degree high-pitched scream on the faded asphalt and pulsed forward in a smoking cloud of rubber, heading back the way they had just come.
He snapped. “Yep. Yep. Yep. Six minutes.” And threw his earpiece violently into the dashboard.
Hauser turned to Jake, his mouth curved down like the edge of a hunting knife. He punched the gas and the big Hemi pulled the car into the future. “Your skinner just hit a woman in Southampton,” he said.
32
It was a neat neighborhood of postwar cottages with single-car garages, predictably pruned yards, and lawn chairs set up on small concrete porches. Cars were being loaded for the evacuation, some on the grass in front of the concrete steps, some in the driveway, trunks and doors open, pet carriers and prized televisions waiting to be loaded. Some houses were already empty, shutters fastened over windows—some neatly done in plywood and cut to size, others haphazard patches of scrap lumber. One home had duct tape over the windows in a sloppy silver weave. Jake watched the hurried, nervous movements of the people leaving their homes, and wondered when, exactly, the American motto had changed to, I’ll give you my television when you take it from my cold, dead hands.
From the end of the block Jake saw the police cruiser parked at the curb, lights blinking, yellow lines of tape strung out in the web of a giant 1950s science fiction film spider. A police officer stood on the lawn, just back from the perimeter, his back to a bunch of kids that were milling about. Jake recognized the posturing gestures of a man trying to look like he is in charge. It was a few hundred feet before he recognized the officer as Spencer.
Hauser rolled to the curb and both men rose from the interior, Hauser in his crisp khakis, Jake in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. As they moved toward the police line, the children’s attention focused briefly on Hauser but quickly shifted to Jake, eyes going wide at the ink covering his arms and creeping out of the collar of his T-shirt. Many of them backed up from their positions near the tape. Spencer held up the yellow line of defense as Hauser and Jake crossed under.
The cloud cover had lost a little of its translucency and the lawn had grown dark. The house shifted in hue with the overlay of clouds, and Hauser and Jake led Spencer away from the line of children waiting at the yellow tape like a contingent of the world’s tiniest paparazzi.
Hauser faced the house, locked his jaw, and spoke through clenched teeth. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
Spencer had the same eerie complexion he had had last night at the house up the beach, his pale skin pulsing blue and red in the lights of the cruiser parked at the curb. This afternoon it was mixed with shock and a good dose of revulsion. He took a few deep breaths and began, his eyes locked on the toe of a boot that he used to pick at the grass. “Neighbor called in, said she knocked and there wasn’t any answer which she found weird because the car was in the driveway.” Spencer jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Prius. “The victim was supposed to be home. Neighbor thought maybe she was in the shower and came back an hour later. Still no answer. She peeked in the window and saw some blood on the kitchen floor. Called us. I did a walk around. Peeked in a few windows. Went in the back door.”
“And?”
Spencer swallowed hard. “And she was right.”
“You found some blood on the floor?”
Spencer looked up, his eyes two pinholes in the fabric of his face. “Some? No, Mike, there ain’t some. There’s a lot.”
“You call the ME?” Hauser asked in a thousand-yard voice.
“Right after you.” Spencer was running his tongue over his teeth and Jake knew it was the coppery taste of blood he was trying to make sense of.
Jake took a step toward Spencer. “What’s inside, Billy?”
“Another one,” he said, his eyes dancing nervously away.
“Another one what?”
Spencer’s blue-and-white skin seemed to tighten on his body and he pursed his mouth. “Skinned like a hunting trophy, Jake. Fucking bucketloads of blood everywhere.” He turned away, spit into the grass.
“Don’t do that. If you have to spit or puke or contaminate the crime scene in any way, do it across the street. Don’t embarrass yourself and don’t fuck up the crime scene.”
Spencer’s complexion pulsed red. “Embarrass myself? It’s a horror movie in there, Jake, and you tell me not to embarrass myself? What the fuck is wrong with you? You have any emotions?”
Jake pointed over his shoulder. “You want to look like some hick cop on national news?”
A news van came down the street. It picked up speed when it saw the yellow bull’s-eye of police tape.
Jake pursed his lips and grumbled, “Try to look professional,” just above a whisper.
Hauser turned to him. “I thought the media was our friend. Let them help us and all that.” Hauser’s voice carried a thin veil of sarcasm. The distant wail of a police siren was getting closer.
The van rolled to a stop at the curb and the crew rushed out. “Every single news team in the country is going to be here if they think we have a serial killer.” He turned to Spencer. “Don’t let them past the tape.”
“And if they try?” Spencer asked, tapping his sidearm like he had last night at the gate to the Farmers’.
“Warn them twice real loud. Then fire a round into the air. Then warn them one final time. Warn that you will fire if they do not cease and desist. Then shoot someone in the leg.” Hauser eyed the news crew heading over. “Those are specific orders.”
Spencer smiled and a little of the color returned to his face with the prospect of being able to deal with a situation that was familiar.
As the news team marched over, lugging lighting, cameras, and microphones, Jake leaned over and whispered in Hauser’s ear. “Tell them it’s an unrelated crime that as of yet is uncategorized. If they ask if it’s a murder say you cannot make comments that might jeopardize the investigation.”
He turned back to Spencer, wishing he was working with a proper bureau team right now. “Spencer, you make sure they don’t talk to the neighbor who found the victim. Tell her that if she talks to the media she could face prosecution for tampering with a murder investigation. Tell her it might make her look like a suspect. Scare her but shut her up. Assign a cop to her to make sure she doesn’t get bullied.”
He turned back to Hauser who was already breathing like a cornered animal and trying to smile for the cameras. “Tell them you’ll make a statement as soon as you can and you’d appreciate it if they’d stay across the street to leave the scene clear for emergency vehicles.”
A Southampton cruiser drifted around the corner and Jake recognized the big form of Scopes behind the wheel. Hauser seemed to be a little more in control with the sight of Scopes pulling up. He walked up to the line of tape and into the bright glare of the camera crew.
“I have no comment at this time. If you’ll wait across the street I promise to give you a statement just as soon as information becomes both available and pertinent.”
Across the street Danny Scopes climbed out of the cruiser.
“Officer Scopes will escort you across the street where you will wait for me.” Hauser turned away from the now disgruntled news team and nodded at Jake. “Geronimo,” he said.
They left Spencer standing by the
line of tape.
Around back and out of sight of the news team, they both slipped their hands into nonpowdered latex gloves.
The screen door creaked open on a hydraulic closer and Hauser held it with the tip of his boot. The inner door was slightly ajar and the sheriff reached up and pushed it open from the top. It swung silently in and the warm smell of blood, feces, and burned food boiled out.
33
The kitchen looked like hell had crawled out of the walls and emptied onto the floor. Blood was splattered in great gusts that had pooled in the low troughs of the linoleum, etching a pattern of symmetrical death in the space. The floor wasn’t level, and a bucket of blood had gathered in one corner under the cabinets in a dark cracked triangle, the top skinned over like wrinkled pudding. It had run in from the hallway, a thick sloppy soup the color of the Ganges in spring, mud and silt and garbage and iron oxide. From somewhere beyond the kitchen door came the hum of an electric appliance left on, its motor whining noisily.
Hauser eased along the counters, carefully minefielding his way over the caked black topography of the linoleum. Jake stood at the door, taking in the space, committing details to the memory banks of his reconstructive CPU. He focused on the long isosceles triangle of blood, followed its inflow over the once-yellow fake tile, out to the hallway. Hauser poked his head through the door, into the hallway, stiffened, and lurched back to the sink and was sick.
He retched out one violent cable of vomit, coughed, spit, and looked over at Jake. “Sorry,” he said, yellow spittle hanging from his bottom lip.
Jake looked down at the sink, usually the primary source of evidence in any messy murder, and once again wished that he was here with some of the hardened bureau boys. He had seen lifers throw up down their own shirts in order not to contaminate murder scenes.
Jake moved past Hauser, like a slow spider. He got to the door to the hallway and saw why Hauser had chucked his doughnuts.
A woman lay on the floor. Or, rather, what used to be a woman. Like Madame and Little X, she was skinless, lifeless. She lay like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on the rug, arms and legs splayed, scabbed to the floor with lines of glop and fluid that had hardened. There was no small electrical appliance humming away—Jake had been mistaken—the sound came from the black writhing mass of flies that swarmed over her body like an insect exoskeleton. Where the hell had they come from?
