Starting again, with Marissa Bonpaine, finding nothing out of the ordinary but the plastic hypodermic. An hour in, I got drowsy. The smart decision would have been to crawl back in bed. Instead, I lurched to the kitchen. Spike was curled up on his mattress in the adjacent laundry room, flat little bulldog face compressed against the foam. Movement beneath his eyelids said he was dreaming. His expression said they were sweet dreams—a beautiful woman drives you around in her truck and feeds you kibble, why not?
I headed for the pantry. Generally, that’s a stimulus for him to hurry over, assume the squat, wait for food. This time, he raised an eyelid, shot me a “you’ve got to be kidding” look, and resumed snoring.
I chewed on some dry cereal, made a tall mug of strong instant coffee, drank half trying to dispel the chill. The kitchen windows were blue with night. The suggestion of foliage was a distant black haze. I checked the clock. Forty minutes before daybreak. I carried the mug back to my office.
Time for more tilting, Mr. Quixote.
I returned to my desk. Ten minutes later I saw it, wondered why I hadn’t seen it before.
A notation made by the first Seattle officer on the Bonpaine murder scene—a detective named Robert Elias, called in by the forest rangers who’d actually found the body.
Very small print, bottom of the page, cross-referenced to a footnote.
Easy to miss—no excuses, Delaware. Now it screamed at me.
The victim, wrote Elias, was discovered by a hiker, walking with his dog (see ref, 45).
That led me to the rear of the Bonpaine file, a listing of over three hundred events enumerated by the meticulous Detective Elias.
Number 45 read: Hiker: tourist from Michigan. Mr. Ferris Grant.
Number 46 was an address and phone number in Flint, Michigan.
Number 47: Dog: black labr. retriev. Mr. F. Grant states “she has great nose, thinks she’s a drug dog.”
I’d heard that before, word for word. Paul Ulrich describing Duchess, the golden retriever.
Ferris Grant.
Michael Ferris Burke. Grant Rushton.
Flint, Michigan. Huey Grant Mitchell had worked in Michigan—Ann Arbor.
I phoned the number Ferris Grant had left as his home exchange, got a recorded message from the Flint Museum of Art.
No sign Elias had followed up. Why would he bother?
Ferns Grant had been nothing more than a helpful citizen who’d aided a major investigation by “discovering” the body.
Just as Paul Ulrich had discovered Mate.
How Burke must have loved that. Orchestrating. Providing himself with a legitimate reason to show up at the crime scene. Proud of his handiwork, watching the cops stumble.
Psychopath’s private joke. Games, always games. His internal laughter must have been deafening.
Hiker with a dog.
Paul Ulrich, Tanya Stratton.
I paged hurriedly to the photo gallery Leimert Fusco had assembled, tried to reconcile any of the more recent portraits of Burke with my memory of Ulrich. But Ul-rich’s face wouldn’t take shape in my head, all I recalled was the handlebar mustache.
Which was exactly the point.
Facial hair changed things. I’d been struck by that when trying to reconcile the various photos of Burke. The beard Burke had grown as Huey Mitchell, hospital security guard, as effective as any mask.
He’d gone on to use another Michigan identity. Ferris Grant . . . the Flint Museum. Another ha ha: I’m an artist! Reverting to Michigan—to familiar patterns— because at heart, psychopaths were rigid, there always had to be a script of sorts.
I studied Mitchell’s picture, the dead eyes, the flat expression. Luxuriant mask of a beard. Heavy enough to nurture a giant mustache.
When I tried to picture Ulrich’s face, all I saw was the mustache.
I strained to recall his other physical characteristics.
Medium-size man, late thirties to forty. Perfect match to Burke on both counts.
Shorter, thinner hair than any of Burke’s pictures— balding to a fuzzy crew cut. Each picture of Burke revealed a steady, sequential loss, so that fit, too.
The mustache . . . stretching wider than Ulrich’s face. As good a mask as any. I’d thought it an unusual flamboyance, contrasting especially with Ulrich’s conservative dress.