Deja Blue (21 page)

And so it went on. For hours it went on this way. Until nightfall and exhaustion set in, it went on, the debate over cause, effect, reason, purpose, meaning, none of it coming clear.

“We don’t have much we’ve agreed on,” said Waldron just before adjourning for the night. “Certainly nothing in the way of a report back to Rae, and so long as that is the case, everyone, we’re failing her again.”

“Hold on!”

“Whoa up, there Dr. Waldron.”

“We…we didn’t fail her last time.”

“Your precious psychic failed us!”

The room had erupted with what had been seething underneath all along.

Lee Madden added, “Those damn images she sent from Phoenix were grainy at best.”

“The references were also obscure as hell,” agreed Singe.

“And-And yet we…well our art historian that is, amazingly enough, determined the images were paintings, obscure paintings at that!”

“Hanging in obscure museums across the Atlantic!” finished Madden.

Waldron shut them all up, saying, “And we didn’t do our job in time enough to be of help to anyone, not to Rae, not to Gene, not to the victims of the Carnivore Man, and I shouldn’t have to remind you of it!” She slammed down her gavel, an action she rarely took, declared they could all take an hour’s break in which to inform loved ones they weren’t coming home and that they were eating in. She finished with, “I hope you all like Chinese.”

This was met by a room fast filling up with groans and excuses and dodges.

Miranda handled each in turn, maintaining her calm in the face of a room full of upset geniuses.

EIGHTEEN

Rae had gotten rest, and by late afternoon, she was back at Charleston’s main police headquarters downtown. Work, work, work. She’d always been a workaholic, driven to do better than anyone else competing for the prize. Part of her nature. In the genes.

At headquarters, she’d been given a temporary office desk out in the open room where all the detectives worked various homicide cases. Consequently, the situation was far from perfect. The Charleston detectives and every uniformed officer was ostensibly on the Sleepwalker-slash-Hammerhead case as in any high profile murder spree or serial killings. Add to this the fact they’d already been briefed by profilers and behavioral scientists out of the same FBI that had sent Rae, and she knew the resentment must be doubled. All this with no results save the tacked up notes and typed up protocols that detailed the kind of man the killer might or might not be. The kind of behaviors that marked the killer had supposedly been pinpointed. All in the effort to focus and direct the search. Rae had read these reports with detached interest, and while she respected what the BS Unit did, their limitations ended where her wings began.

The list of attributes seemed familiar, as if an itemization of clichés:

The unsub\perp would be in his mid to late thirties, perhaps early forties.

He either lived alone or with a mother or wife who made him feel subservient and little.

He will have marginal contacts with women other than the mother or spouse.

He will have average to high intelligence, but working a menial job, a job that he feels is below him.

He’d be a high school dropout, and an underachiever, despite his intelligence. He would have problems with authority figures.

He might put on an outward face of being a regular guy and have superficial friendships at best.

His social skills would be nil, yet he is capable of luring victims with falsehoods and feints. He may play upon his victims’ weaknesses and their kindnesses.

He’s a stalker and has mastered the skills to locate his victims in their homes.

And so it went, ending with: He’s a master at picking locks.

These suggestions had set the Charleston detectives and police onto the trail of every locksmith in the city and surrounding villages. When this failed to bear fruit, the local authorities had gone after blue-collar workers, unhappy in their work, who had dropped out of one of the local schools. When nothing came of this, they’d begun investigating and ruling out blue-collar workers whose spouses had called in tips suggesting a husband might be the Hammerhead killer—given that her man was out to all hours of the night.

Who knows, she thought as she reviewed this information and some of the interrogation tapes so far, maybe the roulette wheel’ll turn up someone for the crimes.

“So when’re you gonna to tell Hatfield that his sister is in a good place?” It was Orvison, standing over her temporary desk, his eyes boring into her.

“I suppose next time I see him.”

“Hopefully, that won’t be over another corpse with nails driven into the head and eyes.”

“What do you make of the song lyrics, Chief? You think it’s really a suicidal plea to leave this world? What if it’s more a eulogy?”

“Eulogy?”

“To his victims.”

“Never heard of a serial killer providing a eulogy to his victims.” Orvison frowned and scratched behind his ear.

“I think he wants us to think well of him, that he’s complicated, sensitive even.”

Orvison’s laugh was derisive.

“I mean if we just turn our thinking about the song lyrics away from the monster and apply the words to his victims, they might make more sense. The floating woman in my visions is not our killer, and the song’s refrain is ‘float through the sky’ is it not?”

“My troubles and I,” he solemnly added.

“Suppose he’s really a nice guy inside his own head, and that he’s sending over these poor women who need his help, that he sees it that way?”

“Sounds like a possibility. One the other agents before you hadn’t considered.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she replied, her arresting black left eye and right blue eye holding his stare, “to bring a fresh perspective to things.”

“So how does it help us to know that this creep believes he’s doing good?”

“Maybe he even believes it’s the work of God.”

“Please, a religious nutcase?” “I know…the worst kind.”

“Be it worship of the Devil, or killing for the Lord,” he replied.

“Add one more trait to the list—he’s a churchgoer, maybe.”

“A churchgoing serial killer?” “An unhappy fellow working at a menial job, or what he perceives as menial, below him, living alone with his mother or a dominant spouse who acts the part of mother to him, a smart fellow, who frequents a meeting hall or church and is working from some religious fanaticism, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t know what is more vague, your psychic visions or your profiling techniques.”

“I don’t see him as anything but vague and green and without shape.”

“Green?”

“He’s formless, shapeless like a man in a mechanic’s overalls. This may well be how he feels…sees himself. That he is without form; that he is lost, perhaps.”

“Damn so many ways of seeing a thing,” he muttered in reply. “Gives a man the bends.”

She persisted, adding, “But…but he’s surrounded by the color green in some manner or other.”

“Hey, you don’t think he’s the Green Grass man, do you?”

“Green Grass man?” “Turn on any TV set in Charleston, wait fifteen minutes, and you’ll see an ad for the Greenup Company and the Green Grass man. He almost looks the part of the Green Giant, you know peas. But this fellow turns your lawn from yellow-brown to a glowing, eye-popping green.”

“Hmmm…well what kind of overalls does he wear?”

“Uniform is green slacks, green shirt, green hat, and a damn big green thumb.”

“A lot of blue collar workers work in green uniforms.”

“Was it a uniform you saw in your visions?”

“No…well, yes, and no. But everything one sees in a vision must be evaluated many times over. The symbolic often takes many twists in meaning. What appears clothing may well be an emotion.”

He scratched at his ear. “Again it’s a which is it?”

“I got the impression more of a jumpsuit, kind of like a sweat suit. Quite baggy, but as I say, it may not pertain to clothing at all.”

“I see. Kinda lets the Greenup man off the hook.”

“Well…actually the chemicals they use to green up lawns are bio-hazardous in nature, and I do recall the distinct feeling of suffocation around this guy, so...”

“So again who knows? Then we begin to look at everyone in the area who works for Greenup? Come on, this is Chemical Valley here. DuPont and half a dozen other plants other than the coal companies operate here. You see those smokestacks we passed going out to St. Albans?”

“It’s reaching, I know, and yes, I saw the billowing gases spewing forth.”

“I’ll put Hodges and Dicarpanella on it.”

She nodded. She’d had a polite introduction to the other two detectives earlier. “Any other green men in the area you know of, Chief?”

“Actually, there is another company I know of where the employees switch off from a brown to a green suit of sorts, and they certainly deal in chemicals.”

“A chemistry lab?”

“Not quite. Mountaineer Clean Machine.” “Mountain Air Clean Machine?”

“Mountain-eer, Mountaineer.”

“And they clean things with their big machines?”

“We have them on contract ourselves. They come in at night, tidy up the floors and toilets mostly, but they also do window facings, blinds. Cuts down on dust and germs. Their jingle goes something like “Real Mean on Clean.”

“That sounds like a menial task jingle to me.”

“It’s certainly menial enough, but most of these guys I’ve had words with…well they’re jovial, happy in their work.”

“Tell me, Chief. You say you have them on retainer for the department?”

“Yes.”

“And do you have them come in to tidy up after a crime scene like that at the trailer?”

“We can recommend them to the family, the owner, or the landlord—whoever needs the service. They do a helluva job cleaning up blood and fecal matter and anything else you find at a crime scene.”

“And they’re happy in their work?”

“So far as I know, yes.”

She tapped a pencil against the desk, thinking about this.

“Come on, Rae. Any mortician could fit the profile bill we have as well as any of those young fellas at Mountaineer.”

She nodded. “I suppose.” Orvison continued. “I mean a mortician has access to cleaning fluids and chemicals…does the embalming. They can’t all be happy in their work. Many of ‘em, I’m sure would tell you that they don’t need to drum up business, but they might also feel the work below them, and that they are unappreciated for the effort put in to become a—”

“I get your point, Chief.”

“I mean if we began locking up everyone unhappy in his work, we’d have more jails than condos.” “I got it.”

Kunati had come in earlier and had been banging about his desk, shuffling papers and files, occasionally grunting. She’d assumed he’d been going over the last crime scene photos. Still, he’d have to be deaf to miss the conversation between her and his chief, and now he kicked in with, “Hey, I wear a green suit, somewhat baggy, when I go to the Y for fencing. Does that make me a suspect?” He finished with a white-toothed smirk.

“You fence?” she asked, curious, surprised.

“He does,” replied Orvison for Kunati. And I hear he’s good.”

“How good?” she asked. “It happens to be a hobby of mine as well.”

Kunati smiled wide at this. “I’d sure like to find out how good you are, Doctor, sometime.”

Her eyes flared. “Is that a challenge?”

“It is.”

For the first time since bringing the two of them together, Carl Orvison saw the mutual smile for the contest. “Nothing like healthy competition,” he muttered.

“But I don’t have my foil or my uniform,” Rae lamented. “Don’t typically travel with ’em.”

“The arena provides for that,” countered Kunati, his white teeth gleaming against his jet-black skin. It was obvious that Kunati would love to embarrass Rae in this same arena he spoke of; he actually seemed elated at the idea of the test. With his large frame and long arms and stamina, he’d certainly have her at a disadvantage, but she’d trained with the best, and she knew that fencing was in itself a great equalizer, if no one cheated.