“I’m not asking to become a girl.”
“No, but you’re asking to become something almost as odd—a eunuch. You want to thwart your own masculinity, but you need a chemical crutch to do it. It would be irresponsible of me to authorize this treatment without intensive counseling. Why are you adamant about this? You show no signs of being a sexual predator or of being sexually dysfunctional. A couple of failed relationships are not reason enough to give up. Everyone has failed relationships, you know. One needs to be right only once. Then you realize everything else was part of the journey.”
He had reached into his pocket, found his lanyard key chain, squeezed it. “Have you gotten it right, Doctor?”
He blushed. “I don’t talk about my personal life. Surely you know that.”
“But you’ve gotten it right, or so you think. For how long?”
“Well, it’s been two years—”
“My parents were married for twenty years. It would be forty now, if my father had lived.”
“Most admirable. That should bode well for you, assuming it was a loving marriage.”
Sharply, instantly. “It was.”
“So why are you here?”
“I know what I need.”
“That is still to be determined.”
In the end, they had to agree to disagree. Dr. Michael Shaw, who had heard so much but listened to so little, had become another loose end to be tied. As Billy waited in the rain that day, he imagined his mother, narrowing her eyes at a piece of thread, snipping it and licking it until she could force it through the needle. The Bible said it was easier for a camel to pass through such a hole than it was for a rich man to go to heaven. But Dr. Michael Shaw, in his brief ride on the hood of that borrowed car, had passed through this life without a whimper. He couldn’t guarantee that Dr. Shaw went to heaven, but wherever he went, he went easily, without a sound. There was only the rain and the quiet beneath it. No one heard a thing.
CHAPTER 36
“Michael Shaw was part of a program that treated rapists.”
Tess had begun babbling as soon as she found Carl, perched on the edge of one of the Adirondack chairs that were scattered about the grounds. He listened intently, managing to make sense of the jumbled details about Depo-Provera and chemical castration.
“That’s why he had a dormancy period,” she said. “He stopped.”
“Or tried to,” Carl said. “He must have understood enough about his own behavior to know there was a sexual component to what he was doing. He assumed the treatment would kill his sex drive and he would stop killing.”
“But the original program had been disbanded, so it’s possible he never received Depo-Provera at all, just traditional therapy.”
“You told me earlier that a psychiatrist has to tell authorities if he thinks his patient has committed a crime or is a genuine threat to someone. Why would Billy Windsor kill Shaw if Shaw didn’t know anything?”
Tess, who had been pacing back and forth, sank into the chair opposite Carl, leaning back in its broad arms until she was staring through the trees and the smoky blue sky overhead. It was a Code Red day, unseasonably warm, a harbinger of how horrible Baltimore’s summer might be. The air was thick, almost chunky.
“I have a theory,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“But I don’t want to have theories, I want facts. Theories are for shit.”
Carl shrugged. “What else do we have at this point? A name, a mother.”
“No one really gets close to this man. His mother, the women he professes to love—they see only one side of him. But in order to get the treatment he wanted from Dr. Shaw, Billy Windsor would have had to reveal some part of himself he normally conceals. He wouldn’t have confessed to murder, but he might have told the doctor other things, made revelations that he came to regret. He let Mary Ann live because they didn’t reach that point of no return, for whatever reason. He gave up on her.”
Carl nodded. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about Hazel Ligetti. Why kill her unless she’s an accomplice, unless she’s started making noise about blackmail? But a woman who meant to blackmail someone wouldn’t list him as a beneficiary.”
“She’d write a letter,” Tess said, remembering how she once did the same when she feared Luisa O’Neal and her husband might harm her. “Put it somewhere safe.”
“He got rid of her because she knew him. Really got rid of her— burned her place to the ground, wiped her off the face of the planet.”
“Which also took care of any incriminating paperwork she might have taken home with her from work,” Tess pointed out. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“The first time I went to Sharpsburg, I looked for Hazel’s grave. She was Jewish, which isn’t something a casual friend would have known. The name is a classic Ellis Island screw-up, Italian by way of Hungary. But someone had been to her grave, left a small stone.”
“A stone?”
“Jewish custom. At the time, I thought it was just a passerby, someone who felt sorry for one of the few Jewish headstones in the cemetery.”
Carl understood. “He was marking the trail for you. He wanted a day to come when you would make that connection.”
“But why does he want me, Carl? I don’t look like the other girls. I’m not working in a convenience store, waiting for Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet and set my life right. My life is fine.”
They both looked north, to where bulldozers had begun ripping up a huge portion of the parklike campus. As Dr. Armistead had told Tess at their first meeting, Sheppard Pratt could survive only by selling off its one asset, its land. The mentally ill no longer spent their lifetimes here; the hospital no longer needed all this acreage. But the trees that were being uprooted had long screened the hospital from the world. Now the world was looking back, if one could call this exposed fringe of suburbia a world.
“Did you see anything in the cemetery that day?” Carl asked. “Another person, a car? It would sure help if we knew what he drove. Even a partial description—”
“He doesn’t have a vehicle. His last car was titled to his last girlfriend. Remember? Mary Ann Melcher bawled just thinking about him putting that van in her name. The state police ran all his identities through the computer. Nothing came up.”
“Still, he’s gotta have a car. And it would be risky, titling and retitling a vehicle to himself. Creates a paper trail of links, which he’s managed to avoid. He’s never put two of his names in the same place. You had to make that leap, when we were looking at the rental car records in Spartina.”
“Are you suggesting he has yet another identity, one that he uses exclusively for vehicle registration? Or an out-of-state car?”
“None of the above. Did you notice that Drey Windsor lives in a pretty swanky retirement home for a waterman’s widow? Someone’s paying her bills. Someone’s taking good care of her. I bet she returns the favor, however she can.”
“So his mom buys him a car,” Tess said, saying it out loud, testing it. Then she shook her head. “No way. The first time he gets stopped— and everyone gets stopped eventually—he’s hosed. How’s he going to explain he’s driving a car titled to some strange woman?”
“Well, here’s where having been a Toll Facilities cop comes in handy.” Carl smiled, and Tess realized it was his way of showing he had forgiven her that insult. “All he needs is a letter, signed by Audrey Windsor. Something like, To Whom It May Concern, so-and-so has my permission to drive this automobile. As long as the insurance is current and the vehicle doesn’t come up as stolen, no one’s going to raise an eyebrow. If someone had ever gone so far as to call her, she would have vouched for him.”
“Let’s go,” Tess said, getting to her feet and pulling him out of the deep-seated chair. His knee was still giving him trouble; he winced when she brought him to his feet too fast.
“Motor Vehicles Administration?”
“No, I want to visit my friend who does comp
uter work for me. Because even if we confirm your hunch that Drey Windsor has more than one car titled in her name, where are we going to go from there? I want someone who can hack her way through all the state’s databases if necessary.”
Technically, Dorie Starnes worked at the Beacon-Light as a systems manager. But finding reporters’ lost stories and tinkering with the company’s balky e-mail software took up only 50 percent of her time— and brought in only 30 percent of her income.
The rest of the time Dorie used the powerful machines at her disposal to do computer-assisted reporting for a few select customers—clients such as Tess—who could be trusted not to betray her hobby to her employer of record. Dorie had a few cards up her sleeve if the Beacon-Light ever turned on her. On a regular basis, she hacked her way into the company’s e-mail system. Her stash of private correspondence conducted by several high-level managers provided her all the job security she needed.
Still, she wasn’t happy when Tess breached their usual protocol and showed up at Beacon-Light downtown headquarters.
“You know you’re supposed to call me on the cell if you want something.”
“But I’m not sure what I want. I don’t know everything you can do, and I didn’t want to wait.”
“Who’s the guy?” Dorie was not shy about pointing, and she all but poked Carl in the nose with her stubby index finger. Round, with an upper body that appeared to be all chest, and short hair that was full of cowlicks, Dorie looked like a pigeon who had been caught in the rain.
“My new partner.”
She offered this explanation because it was less complicated than the truth. But Carl smiled as broadly as if she had just given him an equity stake in Keyes Investigations. Well, he was welcome to it. There was no money in this enterprise. The only thing at stake was Tess’s life.
Dorie took them into her office, an almost eerily neat space hidden in an alcove far from the newsroom. The Beacon-Light had undergone an expensive renovation since the last time Tess had crossed its threshold, but the building had an innate shabbiness that no decor could defeat. Newspaper people were notorious slobs, and the reporters had quickly trashed their shiny new spaces, piling papers and files around their desks, leaving food and drinks out to rot.
“Do you still have mice?”
“Yeah,” Dorie said. “They’re getting better at poisoning them, but the mice have a bad habit of crawling off into these little crannies to die, and they can’t find them until they start to stink.”
It took her less than ninety seconds to establish the fact that Audrey Windsor currently had two cars in her name: the black Buick that Tess remembered from the driveway and a van, a blue one, that had been purchased two years ago.
“So he got a new van after he left Mary Ann,” Tess said. “Maybe he gets a new van after every relationship. Because the vehicle created his alibi with Tiffani and Lucy, he wouldn’t risk using the same one twice.”
“He needs a van,” Carl said. “It’s perfect for transporting your girlfriend’s body after you’ve chopped off her head.”
“Who is this guy?” Dorie asked in an uncharacteristic fit of curiosity. Information was just something she sold, and the facts she dug up might as well have been in Hebrew. “He chopped a woman’s head off and he’s still at large? Get out.”
“He’s just some guy who’s killed at least five people,” Tess murmured absentmindedly.
“Six,” Carl corrected. “The five on your original list, plus Becca Harrison. Seven if you count Eric Shivers, and what do you want to bet he had a hand in that, too? Serial killers start young.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dorie said. “Why aren’t the police looking into this?”
“They are,” Tess said quickly, shooting Carl a look over Dorie’s ruffled head. “We’re just helping. So where else does a vehicle show up? What traps should we check next?”
“Well, there are no holds on the registration, but that doesn’t mean he’s never gotten a parking ticket.” Dorie began typing rapidly, and within a matter of seconds a list of the city’s parking scofflaws was on her screen. “Lookee there, the editor of the editorial page seems to have trouble feeding parking meters on her hundred-thou-a-year salary. That sporty little Saab of hers is one ticket away from a boot. I could get it booted today with just a few keystrokes.”
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, greedy for mischief.
“The guy we’re looking for isn’t stupid enough to get a parking ticket,” Tess said. “He doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
“Everyone gets parking tickets,” Carl said, his eyes bright. “The Son of Sam got parking tickets.”
“What?” Tess and Dorie chorused.
“That’s how they caught David Berkowitz. A woman saw a Ford Galaxie get a ticket for parking by a hydrant near the scene of one of the murders. It was Berkowitz’s car. Cops went to his house and saw it parked outside, with a weapon and a Son of Sam note visible on the seat. Our guy wouldn’t be dumb enough to do that, but chances are he’s gotten a few parking tickets over the past seven years.”
“That’s true,” Tess said, thinking of how many $24, $48, and $76 fines she had kicked back to the city for the privilege of parking beneath its broken streetlamps. “What time is it?”
Carl checked his watch. “Almost four.”
“Good, we have at least thirty minutes.”
“To do what?”
“We’re going to the Wolman Building to insist on paying a ticket that our sweet little aunt, Audrey Windsor, remembers getting in Baltimore one day last month, but it got all wet in the rain and the ink ran and she couldn’t figure out how to pay it. They don’t get a lot of people at Wolman who want to pay tickets they haven’t gotten. They should be very helpful.”
Tess’s hunch was right: Going to the city’s municipal offices and insisting on paying a parking ticket for which there was no record was a sure way to get prompt, courteous attention. It didn’t hurt, having the registration information and Audrey Windsor’s name and address. It also didn’t hurt that she kept pulling out fistfuls of bills and waving them around, desperate to put them in some employee’s hand. Just the sight of those ATM-crisp twenties made the clerks perk up.
“You see, she’s afraid that, even though you say there’s no record, she’s going to find a hold on her registration at year’s end. She’s scared to death to come to the city again. She thinks you’re going to boot her. She thinks there’s a warrant out for her arrest.”
The overworked clerk clicked wearily through the computerized files. “I just don’t see… there isn’t. Wait, here’s something. Your aunt’s van got three tickets in this one block of Lancaster over the past two years. That part of Lancaster’s in a residential zone, but a lot of people miss that, because one block over, there are no restrictions. We get a lot of complaints, believe me. Like there’s not a sign saying it’s permit parking. Like people who drive can’t read. But your auntie paid promptly, every time. She’s free and clear.”
“Residential zone?” Carl asked. Tess couldn’t speak. Her chest was tight. She knew where Lancaster Street was. She knew all about the parking restrictions in that neighborhood.
“In some of the busier neighborhoods, like Federal Hill and Fells Point, you need a residential permit to park for more than two hours. Otherwise, the people who live there could never find a place. You can imagine what it’s like, fighting the bar traffic or the Orioles traffic to park within walking distance of your own house. But like I say, these tickets were paid. We keep those records, because they’re often in dispute. Although, usually it’s the other way. Your auntie paid it within the twenty-five-day window. Didn’t even have interest on it. I can’t believe she got a notice. Look, if she gets another one, come back. I’ll give you a printout of this, just in case.”
“Sure thing,” Carl said, shaking her hand and taking the sheet of paper showing the van’s brief history of parking fines.
Tess was edging backward out the door, smiling a
nd nodding, her chest still so tight she wasn’t sure she could draw a breath. As soon as they were out of the woman’s view, she ran for the stairway and to the front doors. Once on Holliday, she spun in a circle, as if she expected to see someone waiting for her on the busy street.
“What’s wrong?” Carl asked, panting from trying to keep up with her. “It’s only three parking tickets, spread out over two years. It’s a lead, but I wouldn’t get too excited.”
“I’m not… excited,” Tess said, “but I know that block of Lancaster.”
“So?”
“It’s about six blocks from where I lived, up until eighteen months ago.”
CHAPTER 37
They drove straight to Lancaster from the Wolman Building. Normally, Tess might have detoured by her office and crisscrossed the block first, compiling a list of longtime residents. Older people were more prone to notice who came and went or to complain about parking. But she didn’t want to waste a single minute of the late spring light. Tess knew she didn’t like to see anyone’s shadowy figure on her doorstep past dinnertime, even if it was just a Jehovah’s Witness or a child selling band candy.
And she had felt that way before she knew someone wanted to kill her.
“You take the south side of the street,” she told Carl. “I’ll take the north.”
“We only have one photo,” he said, unfolding the enlarged driver’s license, the one that showed “Alan Palmer” with a heavy beard and shaggy hair.
“It’s the van that counts. On a narrow street like this, people will remember that behemoth because it takes up so much space. When you live in a neighborhood where parking is hard to come by, you find yourself cursing the big vehicles.”
“Okay, but don’t go into anyone’s house alone,” Carl said. “Wave to me, and I’ll come over.”
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