The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  McKnight and Jackson, both shaken and irritable, excused themselves to write up their reports.

  Martinez turned to me. “What’s your background, Doctor? Are you an M.D.?”

  “Psychologist,” I said. “I teach at SMU. How about you?”

  “Fifteen years with the DPD. Became chaplain a couple of years ago.”

  “How do you get to be a chaplain with the Dallas Police Department?” I asked.

  “You end up being the one people call. The one they don’t mind confiding in. You know how that is. Probably happens to you all the time. Eventually, the department just makes it official. Throws you a couple of hundred bucks a month to add it to your résumé. And I took some theology in college. That helps.”

  “Really? Where did you go to school?”

  “Trinity University in San Antonio. I grew up down there.” He shrugged. “Yaya wanted me to be a priest.”

  “How does she like you being a cop?”

  “I waited until she passed before I joined the force. She’s probably still bugging St. Jude about it, trying to get him to talk me into changing my mind. Poor guy.”

  I smiled. “Maybe the chaplain thing is a good compromise.”

  “It’ll have to do for now,” he said. “And your spiritual background, Dr. Foster? Do you mind if I ask?”

  “Just a regular, white-bread American type of Christian person. We don’t know about curanderos. Or Yayas.” I decided to confess. “I studied theology, too.”

  “How’d you end up in psychology?”

  “I’m not well-behaved enough to be a professional Christian. I thought I’d go for civilian life instead. Besides, like you, I suspect, I like working with people. I’m more interested in their stories than their sins.”

  “So what’s his story?” he said.

  “You mean Pryne?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t know. I think there’s more to it than meets the eye. Do you know anything about him? His background? Where he grew up or anything?”

  “We’ve got it all in a file somewhere, I’d bet. Want to take a look at it? I can probably get that cleared.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll give you a call tomorrow. We’ll find a time to meet.”

  I wrote down my number for him.

  “You look tired,” he said, reaching for the card.

  “Headache. I think my brain’s trying to escape my skull through my eye sockets.”

  “I have some aspirin in my office.”

  “I’d be grateful,” I said.

  He nodded and left. I massaged my temples, my eyes closed against the light.

  The tape was still running. I heard something on the monitor as someone came back into the empty interrogation room. I looked over and saw a janitor wheel in a mop and bucket. He pushed the table and chairs back against the wall and then walked toward the camera, his image becoming huge and finally dissolving into a dark swatch of shirt as he reached for the tripod to move it.

  The image cleared as he scooted the camera out of his way. It was pointed at the mirror now—Pryne’s view during the interview.

  I squinted at the monitor and froze the image. I could see the whole room now, including that corner that made everyone so nervous. I pushed play and watched for a few minutes until I saw it.

  There. In the mirror. A quick, fleeting image and he was gone.

  Peter Terry was there. Standing in the corner. Laughing.

  21

  Free-range anxiety is a lot like a free-range rooster. It can move about at will, and if provoked, it just might peck you to death. My anxiety, already pushing hard against the fence, broke loose at this point and jumped the chicken wire, clucking madly and scattering feathers everywhere.

  Out of sheer gut will, I got myself home in one piece so I could fall apart in private, thank you very much, with only the demon inhabiting my home as a witness. And the rats. I’d almost forgotten about the rats. They could enjoy the show, too, for all I cared.

  Before I left, I asked Martinez for a copy of the interrogation tape, which he promised he would get for me, along with the copy of Pryne’s file. The cop who drove me home seemed to sense my distress. He walked, or rather slid alongside me to my door, checked the place for bogeymen, and salted my sidewalk for me before he left.

  My house was cozy with the smell of chili, which I’d completely forgotten about. After I checked every lock in the house three or four times and turned on my space heaters, I pulled the chili out of the oven and spooned myself out a big helping, loading it up with cheddar cheese and sliced jalapenos for zip. I ripped open a bag of Fritos—since Fritos are made out of corn, I was counting that as a vegetable—and sat myself down to supper.

  I ate like a plow horse after a long day of sod-busting. I tried to block out visions of fat cells exploding in my thighs as I crunched my way through the first handful of Fritos. I thought about the rats as I ate, wondering if they were watching me, their little beady eyes mapping out grids on my kitchen floor in preparation for a late night reconnaissance mission for Frito crumbs. The smell of chili warming in the oven all afternoon must have driven them crazy, the nasty little vermin.

  Speaking of nasty little vermin, Peter Terry knew Gordon Pryne, it turned out. And Gordon Pryne clearly knew Peter Terry. I felt my stomach flip as I let this thought enter my conscious mind.

  Could Peter Terry be Gordon Pryne’s accomplice? But no, it was the fingerprints that had pointed Jackson toward a second offender. I didn’t know enough about demons to know if they had fingerprints, but it seemed unlikely.

  I couldn’t think clearly. The day had been too long. It would be an exercise in foolishness to let myself speculate about fingerprints and demons and stalker notes and ax murderers. I could feel my brain winding up for it, the clucking and pecking getting louder by the second, urging me to run blindly around in circles, only to get nowhere and scratch myself all to pieces on the way.

  I got up from the table and paced a circuit around the kitchen instead, pausing to open the water heater cabinet. My water heater stared back at me, opaline white, a glowing, sanctimonious reminder of my obsessions run amok. I knew better than to check underneath it for rat poo. Instead, I reached out my hand, felt the heat, then shut the cabinet and cleared the table.

  I cleaned the kitchen, allowing myself the small comfort of a Comet-scoured sink and a humming dishwasher, and got ready for bed, besotted with gratitude that my water heater still worked.

  Sometimes Jesus just throws me a little bone.

  I tossed up a quick prayer of thanks, tucked myself in, and proceeded to toss and turn for the rest of that long night.

  With morning came a break in the weather, along with the general collapse of my mania. I simply could not keep it up any longer. I’d finally worn myself out.

  I fixed a cup of tea and looked out my kitchen window.

  The lumpy rain had stopped, and the sun was making a welcome but meager showing through the clouds. I pried the newspaper off the front porch and checked the weather. The temperature was supposed to ease all the way up to thirty-four, starting the melt that would liberate the city by late afternoon. If it froze again that night, we’d be in for another slick day tomorrow.

  I sat, wrapped in one of my mother’s quilts (I still had no bathrobe), drinking tea at my kitchen table and listening as my eaves began to drip onto the hard, crunchy snow. I scribbled on notepads all morning, trying to bring some order to my thoughts and generate a to-do list.

  Randy of Randy’s Right-Now Rodent Removal made an appearance just after noon. I listened grimly as he assessed my situation.

  “With your rats,” he said, nodding gravely at me, “you’ve got your entry problem and your exit problem.”

  “My entry problem and my exit problem?”

  “Let’s start with your entry problem. By that I mean, where are they coming in? What is their point of entry?”

  “They’re coming in behind the water heater.” I pointed dum
bly at the hole. Was the man blind?

  “Yes, but your original point of entry is what I’m asking, Miss Foster.”

  “I don’t follow you, Randy.”

  He took a scrap of paper and a ball-point pen from his pocket protector, clicked the pen like he was cocking a gun, and began to draw.

  “Your walls of your typical house in this neighborhood are framed like this, sitting on a foundation you call a pier and beam. What you have with a pier and beam is a crawl space, some sixteen to eighteen inches in clearance, between your subflooring and your ground. We do it like this in Dallas because the ground in North Texas likes to move around a little bit here and there. A slab foundation, like you might have up in the panhandle or somewhere, would crack quick as a wink.”

  I nodded, already overwhelmed with unfamiliar and, to my mind, unnecessary information.

  “Now you have a concrete base on this pier and beam construction, and if you’re lucky, a high performance vapor barrier above the soil in your crawl space. If that barrier is damaged in any way,” he punched the pen at his drawing to emphasize what I hoped would be the climax of his little speech, “you can get yourself rodents, mold, all manner of problems.”

  “So you’re saying my vapor barrier is damaged, you think?”

  “House this age probably never had one, Miss Foster. I hate to tell you that, but it’s the awful truth.”

  “So how can I find out?”

  “What I’m going to do is, I’m going to slip on my coveralls and go down there and take a peek. I’ll be right back.”

  He left for a moment and came back from his truck wearing a pair of filthy white coveralls with a red-and-white patch on the back in the shape of a mouse, with Randy’s Right-Now Rodent Removal stitched into it, and the motto below: “Because you needed us yesterday.”

  “Where’s your trap door?” he asked me.

  “My trap door?”

  “House like this, you have a trap door that goes down to the crawl space. Usually in your bedroom closet. Mind if I take a look?”

  I shook my head no and trundled along behind him into my bedroom. I tried not to feel violated as he opened my closet door and parted my clothes with his thick, hairy arms. He removed handfuls of blouses and tossed them on the bed. I grabbed them up and placed them neatly in stacks, holding my hand out for him to hand me the next batch.

  Randy let out a mighty grunt as he eased himself down on one knee and began taking my shoes out of the closet, shoving them off to the side. I placed them in tidy rows on the hardwood floor, arranged by type and heel height.

  Going through my closet tickled an inkling to return to Drew’s room. I made a mental note to go back over there and take another look.

  Randy located the trap door, pried it open with the largest screwdriver I’d ever seen, and squished himself through the gap. He completed this maneuver, miraculously, without the aid of the slab of butter I’d deemed essential to get a man that size into a hole roughly the width of a couple of shoeboxes.

  Frigid stale air snuck into my already-chilly house as I waited by the open trap door, peering through at the dirt below. I could see Randy’s flashlight bobbing in the darkness, illuminating cobwebs and dead bugs I was better off not knowing about. I backed away from the hole and sat on the floor by my bed.

  He was back in a minute, smashing his elbows into his ribcage and puffing back up into the room in a cloud of dust.

  “Miss Foster, I’m sorry to inform you that you have no vapor barrier.”

  “That is unfortunate news.”

  “Additionally, your foundation is cracked directly underneath your water heater. A recent crack, it looks like to me. Have you had any unusual settling in your house lately? Heard any loud creaks?”

  “Something like that, yes.” My hatred for Peter Terry bloomed into a red-hot, billowing mushroom cloud in my head.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you until you address your foundation problem, Miss Foster.”

  “You mean I’m stuck with the mice?”

  “Rats.”

  “Whatever. Can’t you just run them off or something? I thought that was what you did.”

  “Well, this is getting right into your exit problem, Miss Foster. See here, right now they have both. Entry and exit. You can do whatever you want, but they will continue to enjoy full access to your property. What you have to do is seal off that crack and then address your rodent infestation.”

  “Infestation? Is that an official word? What exactly is that?”

  “That’s a significant rodent problem, Miss Foster, which is what you have here.” He took out his pen again. “Now what I can do,” he said, drawing me yet another diagram, “is fix a steel plate over the hole behind the water heater. And I can seal up the crack in your foundation, but it will only be a temporary fix. You’ll have to call for foundation repair for a more permanent solution.”

  “That’s expensive, isn’t it?”

  “I can recommend someone who’s reliable and very reasonably priced.”

  “You don’t have a brother named Fred, do you? Fred’s Forever Foundation Repair?”

  Randy didn’t laugh.

  “In the meantime, I can leave you some glue traps,” he said sternly.

  “I bought a humane trap a few days ago.”

  “Caught anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll leave you some glue traps.”

  “Why can’t you just poison them?”

  “Back to your exit problem. Seal off your exit and you’re stuck with dying rodents between your walls. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  I would.

  He went to his truck again and spent the next hour drilling and hammering and applying various fixatives to my water heater closet and to the crack in my foundation, then handed me an astronomical bill, a stack of glue traps that smelled like new tires, and a business card for Metroplex Foundation Repair. I thanked him, wrote a check that almost cleaned out my teensy checking account, and sent him on his way.

  I loaded my clothes back into my closet, re-sorting them by type, fabric, and color, of course, which gave my brain something to do besides worry. I found a pair of flowery jeans I’d forgotten about and a neato Bob Dylan T-shirt someone had given me last year for my birthday. I have a thing for him since I’m named after him. I showered, slipped the T-shirt on underneath a roomy sweater, and started making phone calls.

  Sharlotta was first. She said I could come back tonight to take another look at Drew’s closet. I tried to reach David on his cell phone, but had to leave a message. Then I called Helene to see how her knees were, and Maria Chavez to see if she’d moved back into her house since Gordon Pryne had been arrested. I left messages for both of them. I checked my messages at the office. Nothing that couldn’t wait. I’d return the calls tomorrow when everyone was back in action. No way we’d get away with another snow day, no matter how slick the streets were. We’d already had two days off—unheard-of wealth in a Texas winter.

  By the time I’d finished making phone calls and fussing around the house with chores, the sun was almost down again, the thin January daylight dimming and the freeze bringing the dripping water to a dead stop.

  My doorbell rang then, and despite my recent bad luck answering my door, I ran to open it, glad for the company.

  It was David, carrying a bouquet of grocery-store roses, a fluffy new pink bathrobe with matching slippers, and some news.

  “Linda Fortenberry called me today.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked, as I started filling a vase for the roses.

  “She’s the medical examiner for Dallas County.”

  I looked up.

  “You met her at the Christmas party,” he said. “I had lunch with her Tuesday.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She owes me a favor. I asked her to call me about Drew’s autopsy.”

  I turned off the faucet. “What? What did she say?”

  “Drew Sturdivant wa
s pregnant when she died.”

  22

  She was only four weeks along. She may not have even known she was pregnant. The ME’s office was running DNA tests to begin the process of identifying the father.

  I was back at Drew’s apartment within an hour, poking through her closet and digging through her drawers, with Sharlotta’s toe shoes thumping against the floor in the next room and Melissa the redheaded bunny rabbit hopping around my feet.

  Once again, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I made myself hold back and observe without jumping to any conclusions about anything I saw. It’s an old therapy trick. Curiosity is the key to learning anything about anybody. If you allow yourself to indulge in a little unfettered curiosity, even the most stubborn, predetermined conclusions tend to evaporate pretty quickly, opening up any number of possibilities you may have otherwise overlooked.

  Drew had the wardrobe of an anarchist. An anarchist with talent and a quirky sense of style. Almost everything she had was black or camouflage fabric, with whimsical dashes of Drew-like originality thrown in. A bright yellow fake fur collar was sewn on to a ripped denim jacket with poetry written on the back in black Sharpie. Lace spilled from the pockets of a pair of camouflage painter’s pants. Delicate pink ribbony trim was sewn on to a black leather micro-miniskirt.

  She owned only five pairs of shoes—admirable parsimony in the birthplace of Neiman-Marcus. (We take shoes seriously here in Dallas.) There was a pair of black stack-heel Mary Janes, two pairs of combat boots—one red leather, one black and scuffed—a pair of black sneakers, and a pair of black ballet flats.

  Necklaces and scarves hung on plastic racks just inside the closet door. I ran my hand along the scarves. A faded black leather newsboy cap hung on a peg.

  The top shelf of her closet was stuffed with cardboard liquor boxes. I climbed onto her desk chair and pulled them down, one by one.

  The boxes, stained and weakened by time and use, held Drew’s childhood. Stuffed animals and dolls were packed in one. Another held her school papers and report cards from the Jesus commune. The report cards bothered me. In addition to the usual marks in writing, math, and history, there were courses with names like “Biblical Behavior,” “Spirit-filled Living,” and “Submission to Authority”—as though such things could be mandated and quantified. Drew’s grades were abysmal, as mine would have been in such a militaristic, follow-the-dictator environment.