I abstractedly replied, “I think their deaths have nothing to do with where they lived.”
He didn’t agree or disagree. Snatching up his hand mike, he told the dispatcher he was EOT. He was marking off for the day. The tour was over.
“Ten-four, seven-ten,” the cocky voice crackled back. “Eighteen-forty-five hours, watch the sun in your eyes, same time tomorrow they’ll be playing our song . . .”
Which was sirens and gunfire and people crashing into each other, I assumed.
Marino snorted. “When I was coming along, you so much as gave a ‘Yo’ instead of a ten-four the inspector’d write up your ass.”
I briefly shut my eyes and kneaded my temples.
“Sure ain’t what it used to be,” he said. “Hell, nothing is.”
Chapter 9
The moon was a milk-glass globe through gaps in the trees as I drove through the quiet neighborhood where I lived.
Lush branches were moving black shapes along the roadside, and the mica-flecked pavement glittered in the sweep of my headlights. The air was clear and pleasantly warm, perfect for convertibles or windows rolled down. I was driving with my doors locked, my windows shut, and the fan on low.
The very sort of evening I would have found enchanting in the past was now unsettling.
The images from the day were before me, as the moon was before me. They haunted me and wouldn’t let me go. I saw each of those unassuming houses in unrelated parts of the city. How had he chosen them? And why? It wasn’t chance. I strongly believed that. There had to be some element consistent with each case, and I was continually drawn back to the sparkling residue we’d been finding on the bodies. With absolutely no evidence to go on, I was profoundly sure this glitter was the missing link connecting him to each of his victims.
That was as far as my intuition would take me. When I attempted to envision more, my mind went blank. Was the glitter a clue that could lead us to where he lived? Was it related to some profession or recreation that gave him his initial contact with the women he would murder? Or stranger yet, did the residue originate with the women themselves? Maybe it was something each victim had in her house or even on her person or in her workplace. Maybe it was something each woman purchased from him. God only knew. We couldn’t test every item found in a person’s house or office or some other place frequently visited, especially if we had no idea what we were looking for.
I turned into my drive.
Before I’d parked my car, Bertha was opening the front door. She stood in the glare of the porch light, her hands on her hips, her purse looped over a wrist. I knew what this meant-she was in one big hurry to leave. I hated to think what Lucy had been like today.
“Well?” I asked when I got to the door.
Bertha started shaking her head. “Terrible, Dr. Kay. That child. Uh-uh! Don’t know what in the world’s got in her. She been bad, bad, bad.”
I’d reached the ragged edge of this worn-out day. Lucy was in a decline. In the main, it was my fault. I hadn’t handled her well. Or perhaps I’d handled her, period, and that was a better way to state the problem.
Not accustomed to confronting children with the same forthrightness and bluntness that I used with relative impunity on adults, I hadn’t questioned her about the computer violation, nor had I so much as alluded to it. Instead, after Bill left my house Monday night, I had disconnected the telephone modem in my office and carried it upstairs to my closet.
My rationale was Lucy would assume I took it downtown, in for repairs, or something along these lines, if she noticed its absence at all. Last night she made no mention of the missing modem, but was subdued, her eyes fleeting and hinting of hurt when I caught her watching me instead of the movie I’d inserted in the VCR.
What I did was purely logical. If there were even the slightest chance it was Lucy who broke into the computer downtown, then the removal of the modem obviated her doing it again without my accusing her or instigating a painful scene that would tarnish our memories of her visit. If the violation did recur, it would prove Lucy couldn’t be the perpetrator, should there ever be a question.