by Saul Black
‘We’re also aware of the possible irrelevance of the objects,’ she continued, for Carla York’s benefit. ‘There are really only two ways to look at them. Either they have meaning – useful meaning, meaning that will help us figure out who these guys are – or they’re just them fucking with us, giving us Serial Killer Standard Practice because they’ve seen the movies too.’
Everyone, Valerie knew, was sick of the objects. Each of the victims’ before and after photos on the murder map had a label naming the object found inside her. It was soul-destroying to have to keep seeing the word ‘balloon’ or ‘goose’ attached to the image of a mutilated female body. It was exactly the sort of thing some twisted fuck would get a kick out of.
‘Nutshelling it: our guys abduct the women in one state, do what they do, then dump their bodies in another. Which obviously requires either a travelling job or no job at all. They could be independently solvent, but BSU is telling us that doesn’t fit the profile.’ Valerie felt Carla York not interjecting. Not yet, at any rate. Myskow would no doubt have told York that there was, to put it mildly, doubt among the team about the usefulness of profiling. Let me guess, Ed Perez – uber-FBI-sceptic – had said before Myskow had even got started, we’re looking for a white male between the ages of twenty-five and forty, with delusions of grandeur and a history of abuse. Low affect. Maybe a harelip or a speech impediment. Am I missing anything? It wasn’t fair, Valerie knew. Behavioural science had long since ditched the cookie-cutter psycho. The Bureau’s 2005 San Antonio Symposium on Serial Murder had devoted a lot of time and energy to exposing ‘Myths About Serial Killers’, many of which, they admitted, had been bred by early behavioural science’s own reductive optimism. The problem was, obviously, the more they conceded it wasn’t an exact science, the less useful it looked to investigating officers.
‘Either way, the high mobility is self-evident,’ Valerie said. ‘The good news is Leah Halberstam and Lisbeth Cole were found less than seventy-two hours after their deaths. We have dry casts of tyres that put a Class B RV within a mile of each burial site. The pool of compatible makes and models is big, and since more than eight million Americans own RVs, you can do the math. Plus we can’t rule out the possibility they’re using multiple vehicles. We’re working through traffic enforcement footage but if they kept off the major routes we’re blind.’
She glanced at Deerholt. That’s enough – right? We’re wasting time. Deerholt’s eyes flicked agreement. Wrap it up. Everyone’s still fucking depressed anyway. ‘With all the usual probability caveats,’ Valerie said, ‘we’re looking for two white males. One dark-haired and dark-eyed, the other almost certainly a redhead. One at least with ties to the Bay Area. Shoe sizes ten and eight, respectively. Footwear prints lead us straight to Kmart shitkickers, so no help there. We’ve got everything we could possibly hope to get from Serology, and as I said, they’re not shy with their DNA. But all of that’s evidence dressed up with nowhere to go if we don’t have suspects. We’ve been working on this for seven months. To date we’ve conducted more than two hundred and fifty interviews and questioned six suspects, all of whom have been ruled out. We’ve got good liaison with law enforcement in eight states, not to mention the Bureau – and yet here we still are. It feels like we know nothing. But one thing we do know is that they’re speeding up. There were approximately eight months between victims one and two. Since then the intervals have been getting shorter. The last two victims are separated by only seven weeks. Acceleration breeds mistakes. They’re going to make one. Let’s not forget that.’
This was for Deerholt, and he knew it. Lead investigator rallying the troops.
The troops didn’t believe it.
Neither did Valerie.
FOURTEEN
‘You feeling OK?’ Carla York said to Valerie. They were in Valerie’s Taurus, en route to Katrina’s parents’ place out in Union City. It was snowing, the pointless sort that wouldn’t stick, tiny flakes whisked by skirls of wind. Will Fraser was on a lead. What he called a lead. He’d been scouring vehicular refrigeration suppliers in the Bay Area (and beyond, though only Valerie knew this), convinced that if the killers were transporting corpses hundreds of miles, they’d want to keep them on ice. RV freezers aren’t big enough for a body, Will had said. Not unless you cut it up, which our guys aren’t doing. What if they broke down? What if they got pulled for a busted tail-light? If it were me I’d have a dummy shelf stocked with frozen steaks and waffles.
Valerie missed him. More acutely in the presence of Carla York, who knew nothing about her. Who’d spent the last hour of Valerie’s time giving her what felt like a recap exam. Why don’t you just go away and read the fucking reports? Valerie had several times been on the verge of saying. Savvy or paranoia had stopped her: there was a calm to Carla’s hazel eyes she didn’t trust. She imagined the FBI briefing: We’re a little concerned about the lead on this. She’s showing signs of stress. Word is there’s a no-joke drink problem. Go up there and take a look at her.
And now, on Deerholt’s instruction, she was riding with Valerie until further notice.
‘I’m fine,’ Valerie said. ‘Can’t shake this damn cold.’ Which she regretted, immediately. All the investigators had at one time or another been forced to attend the department’s stress awareness seminar. ‘Physical Warning Signs and Symptoms of Stress’ was the first component. ‘Frequent Colds’ was one of them. As were inexplicable aches and pains, nausea, dizziness, chest pain and rapid heartbeat. As was, probably, throwing up in the middle of brushing your teeth.
‘Not that it matters much any more,’ Valerie said, ‘but are our guys psychos?’
Take control. Make her answer some questions.
‘The alpha killer, maybe,’ Carla said. ‘But my money’s on not both of them. It’s more likely the beta’s in thrall to him in some way, though it’s obvious from the serology that he’s at the very least getting his jollies with the corpses. Like a scavenger. It’s unlikely the alpha would let him interfere while they’re actually alive.’
Valerie sneaked a sidelong glance at her. Carla was staring straight out the windshield. Her hair was pulled back so tight it looked painful. Small face (squirrelish, Valerie thought), clean features and a maddeningly neat little mouth. Attractive? Not to men who were looking for surface glamour. But there wasn’t a spare ounce on her, and her skin was flawless. The good thing about getting older as a man, Blasko had said to Valerie once, is that you get better at seeing beauty in women. Well, not beauty, maybe, but sexual wealth, sexual… character.
‘If the alpha’s a classic,’ Carla said, ‘then the control has to be all his. Which won’t stop him blaming the beta for everything, including the murders. It’s a good bet that’s the dynamic. But the alpha will probably kill him when he’s done.’
‘Done?’
‘If he ever gets done. Which he won’t, because we’re going to stop the motherfucker.’
The profanity was a jolt. Until now Carla might have been speaking to a class of grad students. Valerie’s cynic stepped in: She’s just mirroring. She’s heard you swear, so she swears. It’s what no-hopers are coached into doing on dating shows. It’s what psychopaths learn to do.
Ostensibly Valerie was seeing Katrina’s parents because the mother, Adele, had called to say she’d found something that might be significant. In reality, the visit was just to let them know they hadn’t been forgotten. That their daughter hadn’t been forgotten. That the hunt for the man or men who killed her was still live. There were, of course, victims’ liaison officers, who kept all the families updated, but Valerie had spent a lot of time with the Mulvaneys in the early months. Too much, according to Will, who’d warned her about victim surrogacy. It wasn’t Valerie he was worried about – Will was one of the people she caught looking at her with a little sadness these days – it was the parents.
‘We found this in the basement,’ Adele Mulvaney said, handing Valerie a plain black shoebox. ‘It should have been in one of the p
lastic crates when she moved, I guess, but it was under a pile of Dale’s junk. I thought you’d want to take a look at it.’
Dale was Katrina’s father, and he wasn’t home. The victim liaison officer had told Valerie he’d been drinking a lot. No surprise: one murder took more than one life. Adele was trimly dressed and her greying hair was still cut in its nifty bob, but you could see the wreckage in the light brown eyes, the broken world, the loss from which there would be no recovery. The house was cursorily decked for Christmas (they had grandchildren from Katrina’s older brother, and the family would huddle to get through the holidays) but you could feel it had nearly killed them to do it. Even the tinselled tree had something strained and plaintive about it.
‘It’s just oddments,’ Adele said. ‘Ticket stubs and pens and some jewellery she’d outgrown. But there are some photos, and I thought… I knew how much time you spent going through the photos on her phone and computer. I don’t know. I just…’
‘You did right to call,’ Valerie said. ‘Would it be OK if we looked through this at the station? I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can.’
They stayed for a half-hour. Drank the obligatory coffee. Did their best to sound as if investigative energy was high.
Dale Mulvaney staggered onto the porch as they were leaving. Raw bourbon breath. To her own disgust, it made Valerie want a drink. Again.
‘How many is it now?’ he said.
‘Dale, honey—’
‘How many?’
‘Seven,’ Valerie said. ‘Mr Mulvaney, this is Special Agent York. I know it must seem—’
‘Special Agent? What’s special about her?’
‘Dale, stop it.’
‘You told us you’d get him,’ Dale Mulvaney said. ‘Except now it’s two of them. Now it’s them. You stood right there where you’re standing now and told us you’d find him. And now seven girls are dead. What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?’
‘You should just go,’ Adele said. ‘It’s better if you just go. Dale, come on inside.’
Dale Mulvaney put his back against one of the porch posts and slid down to his bottom with a bump. ‘It’s a rhetorical question,’ he said. ‘I know what the fuck you’re doing. You’re doing nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.’
In the car on the way back to the station, Carla said, ‘Don’t let it get to you.’
‘What?’
‘The father.’
Valerie bristled. The assumption that it was getting to her. For a moment she was so annoyed she couldn’t reply. Then she said, very calmly, ‘I don’t let it get to me.’ She’d almost said: It doesn’t get to me. Altered it at the last second. Then wondered which version was the truth.
‘Well,’ Carla said. ‘It’s the brutal part of the job.’
Again, Valerie found herself unsure what the right rejoinder should be. Everything that came out of Carla’s mouth sounded like part of an elaborate mental sting operation, innocent remarks designed to expose the guilt of your responses. It was the woman’s self-containment. She had a way of watching you without looking at you. Plus her plain physical neatness made Valerie feel like a slob. Carla smelled of freshly laundered clothes and slightly citric shampoo.
‘Brutal is having your daughter raped and butchered,’ Valerie said. Which also felt like the wrong thing to say.
But Carla just nodded and said, quietly: ‘Right.’
While Carla went to get a sandwich Valerie sat at her desk and looked through the shoebox. Half a dozen barrettes and scrunchies, a travelling toothbrush, a lunch monitor pin, ticket stubs from concerts – Radiohead, the White Stripes, Nick Cave – a set of ridiculous wind-up chattering teeth, a clean white handkerchief, a half tube of L’Oréal foundation, some My Little Pony fridge magnets and fourteen photos, all but one of them featuring friends or family Valerie was sure they’d already interviewed.
The exception was a Polaroid of Katrina that looked to have been taken when she was around ten or eleven years old. She was wearing cut-off jeans (you could just make out the crescent birthmark on her left leg) and a bright yellow T-shirt that said Hoppercreek Camp and she was standing in front of what Valerie could only think of as a deformed tree – in that it appeared to have two trunks, one upright, the other growing at a thirty-degree angle to join it about five feet from the ground. Katrina had put one hand on her hip, in the mock-sexy way young girls did, and she was smiling, squinting into the sun. The same outlook of cautious optimism, tempered only slightly by juvenile awkwardness.
She put all the items back in the box and made a note to get someone to double-check there was no one in any of the other photos they ought to have spoken to but hadn’t. It wasn’t likely. Adele had given them a boxful of a mother’s desperation.
Valerie’s cell phone rang. It was Will.
‘No joy,’ he said. ‘There’s a guy in Santa Cruz had a big freezer unit installed in his Freelander four years ago. Turns out he’s a sixty-four-year-old taxidermist with severe macular degeneration and a Seeing Eye dog. Had to give up driving and stuffing critters two years back.’
‘Sorry,’ Valerie said. ‘Worth a shot.’
‘How’re the traffic cam numbers?’
‘Restricting it to the four days before Leah and Lisbeth were found we’ve still got more than a hundred and fifty Class B RVs on the possible relevant interstates unchecked. They’re doing it, but it’s slow.’
‘And Miss Quantico?’
‘I think we’re being evaluated. Or I am. So don’t come in drunk.’
‘But I just opened a bottle of Cuervo.’
‘Don’t even.’
The thought of a shot of tequila had made Valerie’s salivary glands contract. And it was barely gone noon.
‘All right,’ Will said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’
Valerie dropped her phone. When she bent to retrieve it, pain shot from the base of her spine all the way into her shoulder blades. Enough to make her freeze for a few seconds, eyes shut.
When she opened them and sat back up, slowly, Blasko was standing in front of her desk, with his hands in his pockets.
‘Hey, Skirt,’ he said. ‘Long time no see. You look terrible.’
FIFTEEN
Xander King – who had not always been Xander King, and was reminded of that fact when things like this happened – couldn’t believe it. What kind of country place didn’t have a milk jug? He’d been through every cupboard in the kitchen. Just a plain fucking milk jug! Or even a gravy jug. Preferably brown. What they called earthenware. It didn’t matter what they called it. There wasn’t one. If there was one he could put this mistake – which was Paulie’s fault – right. This mistake could be… not corrected, exactly, but… brought into line. How far out of line this was was a terrible irritation, to him, like roaches scurrying under his skin. Mama Jean flickered and bloomed on his peripheral vision, smiling at the mess he’d made. It was Paulie’s fault, goddammit. Let me do one. I want to do one. And Xander had said OK. What was he thinking? If Paulie had done it it wouldn’t be his problem. But of course, useless shit that Paulie was, when the time came he, Xander, had had to take charge, because Paulie chickened out. Which made the whole thing his. Which meant there should have been a jug.
‘I should go in there,’ Paulie said. He was sitting on the floor in the kitchen gripping his injured knee. His face was wet with sweat. Xander – who, in desperation, was standing on one of the worktops and running his hands along the top of the wall cupboards, just in case for some reason there was a jug up there, maybe chipped or with a missing handle, that they hadn’t used for years – ignored him.
‘Xander?’ Paulie said.
Still no response.
‘Hey. I’m saying—’
‘Shut up,’ Xander said. Then, after a pause, ‘You hear the way I’m saying that?’
Paulie radiated silence. But after a few moments said, ‘That’s not right.’
Xander got a splinter in his palm. The small pain made his scalp
hot. He got down off the worktop. There was no jug. This couldn’t be put right. The bit of ease he’d got from what he’d done to the cunt in the living room was all gone. All the knots were as tight as ever. He was trying not to dwell on how all this had cheated him. But it was as if the whole day were laughing at him.
‘Go get the RV,’ he said.
‘It’s not right.’
‘Go get the RV. I’ve said that twice. Do you want me to say it a third time?’
Paulie looked away. Xander examined the splinter. Now he was going to have to look for tweezers. The roaches darted under his skin.
‘I can’t fucking walk,’ Paulie said.
‘It’s not far,’ Xander said. ‘You’ll do fine.’
Paulie didn’t move. Then, quietly, he said, ‘When we’ve got her inside, then.’
Xander was wondering if he shouldn’t just do Paulie right here and now. But this whole thing was enough of a mess already. And he was bone tired.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘When we get her in there.’
Paulie struggled to his feet, wincing.
No point telling him yet that she wasn’t going in the RV, Xander thought. No point telling him that this couldn’t – since there was no milk jug – be fixed. No point telling him that they were leaving her and her son where they were and driving away. No point telling him until he’d fetched the vehicle. No point telling him much of anything any more, because soon he’d be dead.
SIXTEEN
Nell didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming, alive or dead. Nothing was certain. Something dragged her through the snow. When she was small Josh had terrorised her with talk of the Abominable Snowman. A monster – Nell had pictured a huge creature covered in long white hair with eyes like ragged black holes and a mouth filled with blood – who loomed up, suddenly, in the midst of a blizzard and just… took you. (Nell had had mixed feelings. To her it seemed the sort of creature so ugly and alone you could feel sorry for it – if only it weren’t taking you. To its cave. To lift you in its pure white hands and bite your head off and crunch your skull between its teeth.) Something dragged her through the snow and she thought: Oh, it’s the monster. It was a light thought. It came and went, not bothering her much. Many things came and went, snapshots that flashed in and out of complete blackness. Snow falling out of a dark sky. An old-fashioned iron stove like a dwarf with a pot belly. Someone’s hands touching her face. An old man crawling towards her on all fours, his face twisted. She hadn’t gone to heaven after all. But it didn’t feel like hell. Or she was having a fever. Her mother would be somewhere near: Poor Nellie, you’re burning up. Josh whispering: Is she going to be OK? Abominable Snowman got confused with Abdominal Cramps. Her mother had had those.
