by Mark Schorr
Louise Parker made a few more notes to herself on a yellow legal pad. She had been relatively honest with Hanson. She had theories and ideas, but sharing them with a civilian would be foolish.
She wished she had more time to spend on his speculation but her boss, a Blue Flamer who was notorious for overzealous performance evaluations, would be interrogating her like a suspect if her progress reports on the computer-smuggling case were too slow.
Hanson was easy to talk to. He had a polite sincerity and intense way of listening that made her feel more willing to talk and to trust. She could understand why her uncle liked him.
She checked her voice mail and her e-mail, then resumed work on developing probable cause for a warehouse search warrant.
EIGHT
Hanson had taken the morning off and sat in the car facing Tammy’s old apartment, the stucco apartment complex where he had met Trixie, lie hoped to catch her, maybe just awakening, vulnerable to questioning but not doped up.
Bright daylight treated the place unkindly. There were rusted patches on railings, peeling paint, a drooping rain gutter on the mossy roof. Trixie and Tammy’s apartment was on the ground floor, sharing the corridor with one other apartment. A stairway led to what Hanson presumed were two similarly configured rental units upstairs.
Hanson strode to Trixie’s door and knocked. No answer. He checked her mailbox—the masking tape with residents’ names had been peeled up and there was only the sticky glue scabs on the surface. He peered into the narrow box and saw 110 mail. He pressed his ear to the door. Silence. He sniffed the air, and noted the distinct scent of curry overpowering the stuffy scent of the hallway. He tracked the smell to an apartment at the opposite end of the hall and knocked at the door. A tiny, dark-skinned elderly woman of uncertain ethnic origin opened the door.
“I’m looking for Trixie,” he said, pointing to the other apartment.
Her scowl made him momentarily embarrassed, but explaining he wasn’t a customer would have been ignored.
“She’s gone,” the woman said, starting to close the door.
“Any idea where?”
“She’s gone.” The door was shut in his face.
At the apartment directly above Trixie’s, a man with a Neanderthal jaw and brow and bristly facial hair said he’d heard her leave with someone in the middle of the night, a week earlier.
“Did she go voluntarily?”
The man grunted and looked perplexed. “Voluntarily?” The word was slurred, each syllable sounded out with effort. He was either drunk, developmentally disabled, or both. “What d’you mean?”
“Were voices raised? Did you hear threats?”
He squinted while thinking, then shook his head slowly. “I mighta had a few beers. It’s kinda blurry. Haven’t seen her in a while,” the man said, his hand rubbing his crotch.
Down the stairs, Hanson stared at Trixie’s front door, noting the gap between the frame and the door. With a little leverage from a tire iron, it would pop.
He glanced sideways and realized that he could peer into her apartment by going a dozen paces down the driveway. Hanson eased over and on tiptoes peered in.
The kinky pictures had been taken off the wall, obvious from unadorned nails and the shadow dirt line where frames had hung. The red couch and love seat were gone, as were the piles of adult magazines. The apartment looked more like a typical young working woman’s home.
“Hey, freak, what are you doing?”
A trio in their mid-teens, husky, with Eminem swagger and baseball caps pulled low on their heads, surrounded him.
“I’m a friend of Trixie, wondering where she is,” Hanson said.
“You one of her weirdo friends,” the apparent leader said. “A cash customer.”
“No.”
Hanson turned his back to the building wall and faced them. His coiled posture made them hesitate. He had let his shoulders drop, his lips curled in an unfriendly smile. He guessed the speaker would not be the first to lunge, probably the one to his right, who was the first lieutenant. The young man’s left shoulder had dropped, almost imperceptibly, and Hanson anticipated a southpaw jab. The leader was stepping to the side, the third bullyboy looking for an opening.
“Bet you’re a cash customer. Got a big wad you’re set to blow, freak. Come to get slapped around? We’ll take care of that. And your money too.”
Hanson’s hands were up in a conciliatory gesture, about a foot apart, chest high. His arms were loose, ready to block or plunge fingers into the bullyboys’ throats or eyes. “I’m not looking for trouble. But I’m not running either,” Hanson said, his voice low and husky with a Clint Eastwood rasp. “If you’ve made money rolling Trixie’s customers, that’s your business. But if you fuck with me, you make it my business.”
Fractions of seconds passed slowly; Hanson watched, waited.
Hanson was blissfully alert as the blade clicked open. It was the first lieutenant, eager to prove himself. Hanson shifted his feet, fluid energy flowing into his arms.
“Hey, what’s going on over there?” The shrill voice came from a white woman in her sixties who would be called scrawny before she’d be called slender. Sharp-featured, with gray hair pulled back into a bun, she had a solid grip on a black-bristled broom that was bigger than she was. If it had been a classic straw broom, Hanson could imagine her labeled a witch.
Before the bullyboys could answer, she waved her broom, “Johnny, is that you? You fixing to get into trouble again? Who’s that with you? Todd? Aaron?”
“We weren’t doing nothing,” said Johnny, the leader.
The knife had disappeared and they were trying to look like they just happened to be lounging in a semicircle around a stranger in the driveway.
“You be getting on now,” the broom lady said, with a hint of the Ozarks in her tone. “You don’t want me to be talking to your mothers now, do you?” She gestured with the broom, as if she were sweeping them up.
“No, Mrs. Jeter,” they echoed dutifully before slinking off.
Hanson leaned against the wall, feeling the adrenaline surge. He noticed a strange emotion, disappointment. Violence interruptus. He had been eager to test himself against the trio.
“Dr. Hanson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He was surprised she knew his name and momentarily wondered if she was a witch. Then he realized she had called him Doctor, which so many of the older clients, like Louis, preferred to do. He searched his memory, trying to identify her.
She seemed to know. “You never shrunk my head, if that’s why you’re scrunching up your brow thinking.” She leaned on her broom and grinned, showing ill-fitting dentures. “Was my grandson you helped, Rupert.”
He nodded as if he remembered.
“I don’t expect you recall him. He’s the same age as Johnny and his dunderheads. Used to hang out with them, had a few arrests. You worked with him. He’s in the Army now, getting an education. Made sergeant. I reckon he’d be glad you knew.”
The name Rupert was unusual enough that Hanson did remember. The boy fit the classic profile—no good male role models, poverty, chaotic home, lack of job skills, lack of structure, too much testosterone. The military had been an ideal solution. Even through the trauma of his own war experiences, Hanson recognized that the military, 12-step programs, and a healthy partner had probably changed more lives positively than all the psychotherapists in all the offices throughout the country.
“I do remember Rupert. A decent kid. Liked the Mariners, always wore their cap.”
Her grin grew wider. “Son of a bitch. He’d be tickled to know you didn’t forget him. I’m gonna e-mail him tonight.” She saw his surprised expression. “You think an old coot like me can’t log on to the Internet? Heck, I get half my medications off the Web. Now, what’re you doing snooping around those girls’ apartment?” She gave him a lecherous look. “Maybe that’s a dumb question. You are a man. My Ezra, he was damn close to ninety when he passed on. I was a child
bride, you see. Anyway, no sooner do I get the computer, than I catch him looking at those girlie sites. I didn’t mind. Put a little fire back in the old locomotive.” She smiled at a memory.
“I’m not here about their business.”
“Which means you’re here about yours?”
“I can’t say,” Hanson said, lapsing back into his professional mode. Even his innocuous remarks about Rupert were a confidentiality violation, but he was still off kilter from the adrenaline.
“I reckon either one of those girls could have created enough business for several headshrinkers. ’Cause if it weren’t for men coming around like hound dogs after a bitch in heat, they wouldn’t have been like that.”
“Any idea where Trixie might have gone?”
She shook her head.
“Did you ever see anyone suspicious hanging around?”
“They had as many customers as a McDonald’s drive-through window. Most of them looked out of place.”
“How’s that?”
She waved the broom in a big circle. “Too fancy for this neighborhood. They were like those white boys you see going into the ghetto to get drugs. Only most of these were older, dressed snazzy, fancy cars. I guess in their minds they felt they were going on a date.”
“Any hunches about what happened to Tammy?”
“Woman’s intuition?”
He smiled. “It’s more often right than not.”
She smiled back. “I always said you were a smart one. The men I know ignored it. That’s why they’re all dead, and I’m still going out dancin’ on Saturday nights.” She pointed to a small, well-kept house across the alley. “That’s where I live. I let the two of them sunbathe in my backyard.” She pointed to an area with a six-foot cedar fence. “Made them mint juleps, shared a few laughs. Tammy didn’t tell me much, but you know who her father is?”
“The former deputy chief.”
“Right. And she’s got those brothers and cousins and uncles who are poh-lice.” The old woman snorted back a laugh. “Of course from what she told me, sometimes she did play a police officer. Maybe or the mean nurse. Or the nasty teacher.”
“You think her father knows something?”
The woman nodded. “She told me she had the feeling he was watching her. Not quite watching over her, but keeping an eye out. A couple of near arrests she got off with a warning. And the cops would call her Ms. Grundig. Another time she was beaten up by one of her customers. She told me later it had become a police priority. When they found the john, shortly thereafter he was in an emergency room looking like he had been hit by a tractor trailer.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
She took her broom abruptly and began sweeping the driveway. “No, nothing.” She began moving away without a good-bye, intent on her sweeping, as if the idea of being any sort of a witness had suddenly become unappealing.
Wolf double-checked the mug shot and verified he had the right target. Police suspected Lou Ray of a couple dozen robberies of convenience stores. In an independent store, the Asian owner had reached for a pistol under the counter, and learned why the big franchises had a no-resistance policy. The owner left behind a wife and their six children, ranging in age from twelve to twenty, all of whom worked in the store. The immigrant dream wiped out by Lou Ray and his sawed-off shotgun.
Wolf knew his history and had instructions that he was to disappear.
“There’s no warning to be sent on this one,” he had been told. “We’ve been having too many deaths. Just have him leave.”
“How persuasive should I be?” Wolf had asked coyly.
“As persuasive as you need to be.”
Wolf followed Ray to a loud North Portland bar. There were a couple of big Harleys outside, their chrome reflecting the streetlight. The windows of the bar were blacked over in violation of state liquor authority regulations. Wolf suspected that was the least of the violations at the place. The faded sign, “The Happy Hour,” was crudely painted black on white.
An occasional shout or loud laugh escaped the bar. Wolf waited in his car close to an hour before Ray walked out stiffly with the effort of someone resisting the influence of alcohol.
He drove over the St. John’s Bridge and Wolf presumed he was heading to his small wooden frame house in the hills above the industrial area by U.S. 30. There was a slight weave to his driving. Wolf hoped no cop pulled him over—it would mean an unfortunate delay in Ray’s departure.
A quarter mile from the house, Wolf sped ahead of Ray. He reached the isolated street before the armed robber and parked his car by a vacant house. Wolf made sure no one saw as he crouched in the overgrown brush near Ray’s front steps.
Ray parked and stumbled up the steps, his intoxication more evident. He had left his front door unlocked, either confident that no one would dare bother him or not caring about his crappy belongings in his shabby house.
As he opened the door Wolf pushed in behind, slamming him down to the floor. The sudden jolt activated Ray’s bar-fighter reflexes. He rolled and came up swinging. Wolf parried easily, then punched him hard in the stomach. As Ray doubled over, Wolf brought an elbow down on the top of his neck, and Ray collapsed.
Wolf lifted the barely conscious man up, at the same time taking out his K-bar. The brass-knuckle-handled knife was a daunting sight, but Ray stayed tough. “Fuck you, I ain’t got money,” he said.
Wolf made a small flick of the blade. Ray yelped as blood poured from his lip. Wolf pressed the foot-long knife against his throat. “I don’t tolerate cursing. Especially from a low-life sack of shit.”
“What do you want?” Ray demanded.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Sure.”
“What’s her name?”
“Peggy. Peggy Lee.”
Wolf flicked the knife again, and Ray screamed. He was bleeding from an earlobe with a half-inch cut. “I admire Ms. Lee’s taste in men. I need you to come into the kitchen and write her a note.”
“What kind of note?”
Wolf put the razor-sharp edge of the knife against Ray’s throat. The bleeding armed robber had sobered. “I’ll dictate,” Wolf said. “Don’t worry, I won’t use big words.”
Wolf kept one hand locked on Ray’s shoulder and the knife by his throat as they walked to the kitchen. Flies hovered over plates of rotting food piled up in the sink.
“Who are you?” Ray asked.
“I’m from the Health Department. Get paper and a pen.”
Ray noticed that Wolf had a small Army surplus backpack on and was wearing latex gloves, with hospital booties on his shoes. He abruptly realized how close to death he was. Here,” he said, eagerly producing a legal pad and a greasy Bic from a kitchen drawer. “Whatever you want.”
“Good. You write what I say, then we go to your car, you drive off, and don’t come back. Understood?”
“Understood.” Ray eyed a steak knife that was lying on the worn gray Formica kitchen counter.
Wolf followed his gaze and shook his head no, so slowly and confidently that Ray didn’t even seriously consider the move. His only hope was in complete obedience.
“What do you call Ms. Lee as a term of endearment?”
“Huh?”
“You got a pet nickname for her?”
Ray looked embarrassed, then muttered, “Honeyjugs.”
“Sweet. Write ‘Honeyjugs, I got to get out of town. It’s been nice knowing you.’ ”
Ray’s hand shook as he tried to write.
“Take it easy, tough guy,” Wolf said. “You’re almost done, and on your way out of here.”
Ray calmed enough to write the note, slowly printing, each letter an effort. “Hunyjugs, I got to get owt of town.” When the armed robber was done, Wolf glanced at the note, made sure it was adequate, then stepped behind Ray.
“Okay, now let’s walk toward the door.”
As Ray relaxed, Wolf grabbed his jaw and shoved the K-bar into the back of his head, pithing him like
a frog. Ray jerked for a moment. Wolf lowered the body. The killer used a paper towel to wipe the blood from the kitchen floor. He used another paper towel to wipe the blade of his knife clean, then put both paper towels in a Baggie and tucked it in his pocket.
“A lot less painful than it was for the grocer,” Wolf said to the corpse, setting the note on the counter.
He took a six-by-eight tarp, a small carbide-bladed saw, a blowtorch, and three large trash bags from his backpack. With the indifference of a slaughterhouse worker, he severed Ray’s head and both legs from the torso. He burned away much of Ray’s face and fingertips. Each part went into a trash bag, which was then sealed. He carried the two legs and the head out to the car in one trip, and the torso with arms attached in another. He drove two hours east of Portland, then buried the torso about a quarter mile off a backcountry logging road. He drove another five miles and repeated the routine with the head. Then another three miles to bury the legs. All were more than two feet deep in the soft earth, with rocks casually strewn on top to keep coyotes and other scavengers from uprooting them. Jorge Gonzalez was in a similar grave about a half mile south.
“As persuasive as you need to be.” With characters like Lou Ray, force was better than persuasion. One less scumbag on the streets meant that dozens, if not hundreds, of people could be safer. Wolf left a window open as he drove, blasting his face with cool night air. He was tired, but content.
“You seem more at peace,” Betty Pearlman said, sipping a Diet Coke and gazing at Hanson over the top of her half-frame mock-tortoiseshell glasses. “You’ve taken a few days off. Good for you.”
“It’s been helpful,” he said, feeling guilty but not telling her that the time had been spent trying to gather information about Tammy LaFleur’s final weeks. Plans of tracking down a killer seemed obsessive, not in keeping with the therapeutic ethos. If he found a serial killer, what would he do? Particularly if he thought the police wouldn’t act?
