‘My take?’ Miller asked. ‘I’m not the forensic pathologist—’
‘I’m not the detective,’ said Hemmings interjected.
‘I think Sheridan was a copycat,’ Miller said. ‘I think it was a copycat. And then our guy read the papers, watched the TV, learned who we were, followed us, saw who we were talking to, and then killed Natasha Joyce.’
‘That’s Tom Alexander’s opinion as well,’ Hemmings said, ‘but I don’t have it. The one thing. That’s what you call it, right? The signature for this guy? The one thing.’
‘I can hope, can’t I?’ Miller said.
‘You can hope. Democratic society, Detective Miller. Hell, you can pretty much do anything you please.’
‘As our friend has done,’ Roth said.
‘He hasn’t done what he pleases here, Detective Roth, he’s done what he needed to do. This kind of thing isn’t done for pleasure. Jesus, this shit is about as far from pleasure as you can get for these people. You ever read any books about this stuff?’
‘Only the required reading—’
‘Up there,’ Hemmings said, and indicated a shelf above the filing cabinet.
From where he stood Miller could read the spines of several of the volumes: Geberth, Practical Homicide: Tactics, Procedures and Forensic Techniques; Ressler and Shachtmann, Whoever Fights Monsters; Turvey, Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis; Ressler, Burgess and Douglas, Sexual Homicides: Patterns and Motives and Egger’s The Killer Amongst Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and its Investigation.
‘A little hobby of mine,’ Hemmings explained. ‘Extracurricular interest you might say.’
‘So the deal with these people—’ Roth started.
‘The deal,’ Hemmings said, ‘is that they have to do this. This is not a question of predilection or anything else. It isn’t like they wake up one day and say, “Hell, shit, of course, I’m gonna be a serial killer. Why in God’s name didn’t I think of this before?” This is not a matter of choice at all. There’s a drive somewhere, a really basic and fundamental impulse, a compulsion to do this stuff, and the vast majority of these people spend most of their time trying to hold all this shit inside. They don’t want to go out and rip people to pieces, they have no decisional concept at all. This, to them, is like putting out the garbage when you’re sat watching a ballgame with a couple of beers. You don’t want to, but you have to.’
‘Interesting analogy,’ Miller said. ‘And that helps us how?’
‘It doesn’t, except from the viewpoint that you’re looking for someone who needs to do this thing, rather than wants to do it. That’s a different angle, a different perspective to look at. I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m not a clinical psychologist or anything else. Personally, I don’t give a lot of credence to whatever passes itself off as psychiatry. Psychiatry is not a science in the same way as medicine and forensics. You want anything done on this, don’t talk to any psychs. These guys’ll have you inspecting your own navel and wondering whether or not you might have been the one to do it.’
Miller smiled. ‘That’s a little harsh isn’t it?’
‘You don’t see the damage that psych drugs do to people.’
‘I don’t, no,’ Miller replied. He stood straight, buttoned his jacket.
‘Where to now?’ Hemmings asked. ‘PD admin unit . . . we have to find a disappeared cop.’ Hemmings smiled, followed Miller to the door. Roth was ahead of them up the corridor and, as Miller started to follow him, Hemmings touched the sleeve of his jacket.
‘You dealing with this thing?’ she asked.
Miller frowned, smiled quizzically. ‘Dealing with what exactly?’
‘What’s happening here . . . this girl, the one you were questioning, the fact that whoever this guy is knows who you are, knows who you were talking to . . .’
‘Are you asking if I feel paranoid?’
She shook her head. ‘Hell, all of us feel paranoid every once in a while. I was thinking more along the lines of threatened.’
Miller tried to let nothing show in his face. ‘He’s after women,’ he said. ‘He kills women. That’s what he does. He doesn’t kill police.’
‘And Natasha Joyce . . . she had a little girl, right?’
‘Chloe,’ Miller said. ‘Nine years old.’
‘She with relatives?’
‘Child Services.’
Hemmings looked away for a moment, thoughtful perhaps.
‘What?’ Miller asked.
‘Nothing.’
A moment of something between them. Miller sensed it, and felt awkward.
‘What did you want to say?’ Hemmings asked.
Miller glanced at Roth. Roth started to walk back towards them but Miller raised his hand and stopped him.
‘Sometime—’ Miller started.
‘Sometime you wondered whether we could go out or something?’
Miller nodded. ‘Or something . . . yes, maybe we could go out and have some dinner or something.’
‘You always this sure of yourself?’
‘This isn’t a movie,’ Miller said. ‘I’m a normal person. I don’t have a collection of smart one-liners. I’m not a charming person. I’m a beaten-to-shit police detective.’
‘Makes the prospect of going out with you very enticing.’
‘You’re making fun of me,’ Miller said. ‘Forget I asked the question.’
‘You didn’t ask the question. I asked the question for you.’
‘You caught me on the back step,’ he said. ‘I didn’t come here to ask you out.’
‘Sure you didn’t,’ Hemmings said. ‘You wanna know something?’
Miller raised his eyebrows.
‘Couple of times I’ve been out with policemen . . . and you want to know what I think about them?’
‘Go for it.’
Hemmings smiled at Miller’s sarcastic edge. ‘They spend their whole working lives dealing with all the situations where the police have to be involved, know what I mean?’
Miller frowned.
‘They begin to believe that every situation in the world has something to do with the law being violated, with domestic abuse, with death and suicide and drug overdoses—’
‘So what’re you telling me? That I should stop taking my work home? Jesus, I get enough of that from Roth and his wife.’
‘I do the body parts stuff here . . . right here in forensics. I spend my working day cutting people up and having a look inside. Imagine what would happen if I took my work home.’
‘Think that’s a little bit different—’
‘Physically yes, mentally and emotionally no. You carry all this shit around in your head you’re going to—’
‘Okay, okay,’ Miller interjected. ‘Would it be alright if I called you? I don’t know when we’re going to see the light of day on this thing. I’ve got my precinct captain, he’s got the chief, the chief has got the mayor—’
‘I understand, Detective Miller. You know where I am. You call me when you get some breathing space and we’ll have this conversation then, okay?’
Miller felt no less awkward.
‘One thing on this,’ Hemmings said. ‘The thing about looking for someone who has to do this, not who wants to, right?’
‘I got it,’ Miller said.
Outside, walking down the steps and back toward the car, Roth said, ‘What was the deal there? Looked like she was hitting on you.’
‘She was.’
‘Okay, okay, okay . . . so now we have something here.’
‘Jesus, man, will you leave it out. I spoke to the woman. I might call her. What the fuck is it with you?’
‘I have an idea,’ Roth said. ‘Maybe we could go to a game together, you know? Like me and Amanda, you and Marilyn Hemmings. Hey, that’s a good idea. I’m gonna call Amanda and tell her—’
‘Tell her nothing,’ Miller said. ‘You’re not gonna call her and you’re not gonna tell her anything. Nothing at all is going on here. This is not the way my life works. Right now the only thing going on in my life is a visit to the Police Department Administrations Unit. We’re gonna go talk to someone in pensions and they’re gonna tell us where to find Michael McCullough. That’s my life right now, Al, and I really haven’t got time for anything else, okay?’
Roth said nothing.
‘Okay?’ Miller repeated.
‘Okay, okay . . . Jesus, what the fuck shit is this? What the fuck—’
‘What the fuck nothing, Al. Get in the fucking car.’
I
stood at Catherine Sheridan’s apartment door for a long time before I knocked. It was late, a little after ten. Sunday, April 5th, 1981, a day I would remember for the rest of my life. Such days as this ordinarily became important only after the fact. This was different. This was a day I knew would be important from the moment I woke up.
I raised my hand, and then I lowered it. I paced the hallway - back and forth, back and forth - and then I returned to the door and raised my hand again.
She opened it suddenly, unexpectedly.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she said, and started laughing. ‘You’ve been out there walking up and down for a good fifteen minutes. Either you’re going to knock on the damn door or you’re not.’
I stood speechless for a moment, my eyes wide, my heart missing beats.
‘So?’
‘I’m going to knock on the door.’
‘Okay, right . . . so knock on the damn door will you?’
Catherine paused for a split second. I took a step forward to enter the apartment, but she shut the door hard and firm in my face. I heard her laughing on the other side.
I knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘Jesus, Catherine, who the hell do you think it is? Let me in for God’s sake.’
She was still laughing when she opened the door. I followed her, closed the door behind me, and once inside the front room I stood there feeling a sense of sympathy for what me and Don Carvalho were putting her through.
‘I saw the films,’ I said.
Catherine’s smile disappeared. ‘So you understand why I want to do something about this?’
‘I understand.’
She stood there, waiting for me to tell her what I’d decided.
I didn’t speak
.
‘I just don’t get what the hell is going on with you, John Robey.’
‘Maybe there isn’t anything to get.’
Catherine shook her head like a disapproving parent. ‘There’s always something to get with everyone. You know who Lawrence Matthews is, and Don Carvalho, right? You know who Dennis Powers works for . . .’
‘I know who they are,’ I replied. ‘I know about Langley, about the CIA, about the recruitment program they’re running in the campuses . . . I know what they want, Catherine . . . I just don’t know whether I can do it.’
‘Whether you can do it, or whether you’re willing to do it? They’re not the same thing.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘So which one is it?’
‘I’ve seen the films. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to do something about what’s going on out there?’
She smiled. ‘People who aren’t in their right mind, that’s who.’
I walked to the right of the room and sat down. ‘Believe me, Catherine, it’s not a question of whether I want to do something, it’s simply a question of whether I have what it takes—’
‘You have what it takes,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘You sound very certain.’
‘Believe me, John, if you didn’t have what it takes to do this thing you wouldn’t be here. There must have been at least twenty-five or thirty people that came in with you. And how many of them are still here? This whole thing . . . it’s an Intelligence community. These people are actually very fucking good at what they do. This is a proving ground. This is like college for the CIA. People like Carvalho and Powers know more about you than you know about yourself.’
‘You don’t think I realize this?’ I asked.
‘Suspecting and knowing are not the same thing, John. These people see something in you that makes them certain you will do exactly what they want—’
‘And that would be what exactly?’
‘God, I don’t know, John. They want you to gather intelligence. They want you to listen to what people say. Watch people. They want you to evaluate possibilities and report back to Langley.’ Catherine looked away for a moment, and when she looked back there was something intense and disquieting in her expression.
‘We’re all on our own here,’ she said quietly. ‘None of us has parents. None of us has connections to the world that mean anything at all. We are the invisible ones, the ones who can vanish in a heartbeat. We appear, and then we disappear. We can go anywhere they want to send us. We can be the eyes and ears of the Intelligence community any place in the world, and if we are suddenly lost it doesn’t matter. There’s no-one to raise a question or file a missing persons report with the police. People like us don’t matter at all in the small details of life, but in the grand scheme of things we can actually count for something.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ I asked. ‘Because you want to count for something?’
‘Isn’t that what everyone wants . . . to feel that their life had some kind of meaning?’
I left her question unanswered.
‘Christ, John . . . sometimes you sound so definite, so emphatic, passionate even. That’s what they see in you. That’s why you’ve made it this far. They recognize that it’s people like us who can make some sort of impact on what’s happening.’
‘And you don’t question the way these things are done?’
‘Of course I question it. But there’s so much more right in this than there is wrong. This is no different from Vietnam, from Korea, Afghanistan . . . a thousand other places where some sort of injustice is being perpetrated on a daily basis. These people don’t have the organization to handle it themselves. They have been beaten down so many times they don’t have the strength to get back up again. There’s an awful lot of history here, John, and you can either be part of it, or you can make it.’