Distemper (26 page)

EMT unit A that is Adam en route
.

It was a police scanner. I should have recognized it right away, considering I’ve spent the past few years sitting on top
of one. I called myself a nasty name and opened the door.

My first impression of the place was that I’d walked into CIA headquarters, or maybe the bridge of the star-ship
Enterprise
. Every surface was covered with electronic gadgets whose indicator lights were blinking red
and white and green. The apartment was dark, lit only by a pair of halogen lamps turned halfway down, and the contrast made
the blinking lights seem unnaturally bright. It gave the room an aura that was equal parts calming and creepy.

I wasn’t sure if I should shut the door or not, so I compromised by leaving it the way I found it, just slightly ajar. That
erased most of the light from the hallway, plunging the apartment into slightly deeper gloom. Its occupant obviously wanted
it this way, and the mood of the place was starting to make me agree with Mad. I didn’t like this guy either.

I ventured farther into the room, although I sure as hell didn’t want to. There was something suffocating about it, but I
couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Maybe it was the sense that the whole elaborate setup was geared toward feeding someone’s
even more elaborate obsession. Or maybe it was just that the place was so dark, a whole cadre of knife-wielding maniacs could
have been hiding in the corner and I wouldn’t have seen them.

One by one, I checked out the various devices and gadgets. Most of them left me clueless, but I’m one of those people who
needs to assemble a team of experts to plug in my stereo. And, come to think of it, there was nothing like a stereo in the
place. There was no television, either, and no CD player or VCR. Whatever all these high-tech gizmos were, they clearly weren’t
a home entertainment system.

But then again, maybe they were.

I counted a total of three computers, all of them way fancier than mine. One was connected to a flatbed image scanner, another
to a laser printer, and another to
an eyeball-shaped camera that, as far as I knew, was recording my every move. Although the police scanner looked nothing like
the one in the newsroom, I recognized it because it was still spewing details about the nonexistent blaze. I wondered how
long it would be before somebody figured out that the only fire in the building was a few smoldering embers outside apartment
6-N, and hoped that the fact it was on the top floor meant I wouldn’t be caught anytime soon.

As I made my way to the other side of the room, I heard what sounded like another scanner coming from the opposite corner.
The volume was much lower, probably because it was near the wall that abutted the twins’ apartment.

Base to unit nine
.

Yo, Chrissy, how you doin’, sweetness
?

Save it, Stimpson. I got a message from your wife
.

Finally wants to go for a three-way, huh
?

Yeah, right. She says don’t forget to pick up diapers on the way home
.

Stimpson, you are so ball-busted, man. You gonna pick up some baby powder while you’re at it
?

I stared at the black box. This was no ordinary scanner. It wasn’t just picking up the normal dispatcher calls that we get
at the
Monitor
. It was somehow tapping into the car-to-car chatter that’s broadcast on a separate police frequency, and is most definitely
not for public ears. The box had a series of buttons on the front, and I pressed one at random. Brian Cody’s voice came out
so clearly he could have been standing there.

…
back at the station. Tell him I want the autopsy results yesterday. You got it
?

Yes, sir
.

I’m leaving the scene now to do the notification. If you need me try my cell. Cody out
.

Poor Cody. He was on his way to do just exactly what he’d been dreading—drag another family out of bed to tell them that their
daughter or wife or sister was dead. I wondered whether he’d want me to comfort him after such a thing, or if he’d just as
soon be by himself. I really didn’t know him, not down deep, and it occurred to me that maybe that was why I enjoyed his company
so much in the first place. There’s a lot to be said for simplicity.

Okay, so it wasn’t the greatest time for romantic introspection. I snapped myself out of it and kept looking around the room.
In a closet, I found a collection of photography equipment, including a tripod and a number of what appeared to be very expensive
cameras. On one bookshelf, I found a dozen cell phones nestled in their chargers, and I wondered whether the phone-cloning
business was how Vandebrandt financed his high-tech hobbies.

When I figured I’d seen all there was to see in the living room, I opened the door to what appeared to be the only bedroom.
It was completely dark, so I groped for a light switch and flicked it on.

What I saw next was the most fundamentally disturbing thing I’d ever had the bad luck to run into, short of an actual corpse.
No, there was nobody waiting to pounce on me. There was also nobody tied to the bed, nor a taxidermy collection, or even a
copy of the Satan-worshiper’s handbook.

But along one whole wall, the one you first saw when you walked in the bedroom door, was something that
might be generously described as a shrine. And the subject, quite simply, was me.

There were dozens of my bylined articles, pasted one on top of the other in a creepy college. Every one of my movie columns
from the past few months was up there, the little head shot of me and the logo
ALEX ON THE AISLE
repeated over and over. I counted four copies of the
Monitor
piece on me finding Patricia Marx’s body, plus several other versions of the wire story that ran in other papers across the
state.

That wasn’t even the scariest part. No, any psycho with a pair of scissors and a newspaper subscription could have accomplished
that much. But there were photographs too—pictures of me in the window seat at the Citizen Kane, opening the front door of
the
Monitor
office, covering the psychics’ protest on the Green, walking Shakespeare, getting into my car in front of my house.

He’d been watching me. He’d been following me, recording my comings and goings for what looked to be months. I couldn’t believe
that I hadn’t sensed it somehow, hadn’t once caught him in the act, but I’d never even suspected. It made me feel incredibly
vulnerable, like he’d not only stalked me but stolen something important—call it the illusion of privacy.

It’s strange to see your life laid bare like that, frozen in perfectly focused black-and-white. I hardly recognized myself,
and it took me a minute to figure out why. People rarely have their pictures taken without knowing about it, and in nearly
every image I’d ever seen of myself I was smiling or at least poised. Here, I was just going about my business, and I realized
with a start that this was what I must look like to the rest of the world—short, messyhaired,
and serious. Thank God he hadn’t resorted to videotape. At least as far as I knew.

The whole thing made me want to scream, but it was also absurdly fascinating. There up on the wall was every word I’d written
since April, not just the big stories but also the little stuff on potholes and blood drives. Jeffrey Vandebrandt was either
a dangerous nutcase or the one and only member of the Alex Bernier Fan Club; more likely, he was both.

There was nothing particularly threatening about the shrine, beyond its very existence. None of the photos of me were cut
in half or had the eyes gouged out. He hadn’t written KILL KILL KILL in his own blood, but maybe he was saving that sort of
fun for next semester. There were no pictures of any of the murder victims, which was curious; then I thought with a start
that maybe there had been, and once he was done with them he ripped the photos down and started over with the next victim.

I considered searching the place for evidence linking him to those four girls, but one look at my watch told me I had to get
moving. I walked out of the bedroom, and I’d made it halfway across the living room when the door opened.

There, gaping at me like I was the last person on the planet he expected to see, was Jeffrey Vandebrandt.

He was under five feet tall, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. He had blue eyes, and short, spiky black
hair, and the worst acne I’d seen since junior high. The picture didn’t add up to very much of a threat, but after what I’d
seen in the apartment I was a lot more worried about the guy’s brain than his brawn.

He didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorway with
his mouth open. I didn’t move either, mostly because I was scared stiff, and as the seconds ticked by I had the absurd image
of the two of us as duelists at the OK Corral. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly that well armed; I had the rape alarm in one
pocket and my Mace in the other. I was more than willing to use them both.

The silence stretched on for what seemed like an hour until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. “
Who are you
?” He didn’t answer. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but at the time it didn’t even occur to me. I mean, it was
obvious that there was no way I was going to talk my way out of the apartment, and the direct approach was the only thing
I could think of.

“Why have you been following me?” I said. “And why the fuck do you have all those pictures of me in your bedroom? Am I supposed
to be next?”

He still didn’t answer, just kept staring at me with those beady blue eyes. He closed his mouth and opened it again, but no
sound came out.

“Come on, answer me. Why are you stalking me?”

Again with the mouth closing and opening. Finally, his voice came out, slow and high-pitched. “I…” He stammered as though
the words just wouldn’t come. “I…”

“You what?”

“I l-l-l…”

I watched as he tried to get the words out. If he had a stutter, it was the worst one I’d ever heard.

“I l… I l-l-l…”

He seemed furious at himself all of a sudden. His face was turning red, and he was smashing one balled-up fist into his leg
hard enough for it to really hurt.

“I l… I l-l-l… I l-l-l… love y-y-you.”

Now it was my turn to stare at him with my mouth open. “You love me?”

He nodded. It made me so angry I forgot to be scared.

“You
love
me?” He nodded again. “You crazy
jerk
.”

And then, for no good reason that I can think of, and with a calm I still can’t explain, I walked across the room and punched
him in the nose.

Mad has told me more than once that in a world of weird chicks I am the weirdest of all. What he found when he came running
into the apartment ten seconds later did nothing to change his mind. There I was, standing over Vandebrandt in the closest
I ever get to a fury. Our suspected serial killer was on the floor, clutching his bleeding nose and blubbering like a baby.

Mad looked from me to Vandebrandt and back again. Then he pulled out his flask, tipped his head back, and shook the few lingering
drops of Bacardi into his mouth. “Seems like you’ve got everything under control.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Our boy here gave me the slip. I came back up to save you.”

“Oh.”

“Do I need to save
him
?”

“Call the cops.”

“Where’s the phone?”

“Take your pick. They’re all over the place. No wait, I’ll do it myself.”

Mad kept an eye on Vandebrandt while I called Cody on his cell phone. It was something like one in the morning by then, but
from the background noise I could tell he was in his car, either on his way to notify the latest victim’s
family or on his way back from the dirty deed. He was in the midst of telling me that he didn’t have time to talk when I finally
got it through to him that it wasn’t a social call. I explained what was happening, and the anger I could hear in his voice
even over the scratchy connection made me think that maybe Mad was going to have to save me after all.

Cody got there about fifteen minutes later, just as the firemen were nosing around the ashes in the hallway. We’d spent the
last quarter of an hour getting our stories straight—Vandebrandt huddled in the corner while Mad coached me on how we’d seen
some drunken student waving a pack of flaming Dunhills—but by the time Cody showed up it was obvious he’d squared things for
us somehow. He shook hands with the fire lieutenant, who mumbled something about getting one of his men to clean up the mess,
and I gathered they were going to chalk the whole thing up to the usual student hijinks. Personally, I doubted Cody was going
to let me off the hook that easily.

But at the moment, yelling at me was hardly the first thing on his mind. His expression segued from irate to downright bewildered
as he took in the sniveling suspect and his collection of electronic toys. Without elaborating, I cocked my head toward the
bedroom door. Cody went in, and when he emerged he looked at Vandebrandt with a new flavor of rage. “Do you like to stalk
women, Jeffrey?” he growled from six feet above the cringing kid. “Do you like to hurt them? Do you want to hurt women you
can’t have?”

If there was a right way to approach Vandebrandt, this wasn’t it. He just went farther into the fetal position,
pulling his legs tighter into his chest and rocking back and forth.

“Why did you do it, Jeffrey? Was it just for the thrill? Or did they make you angry because they wouldn’t give you the time
of day?”

Vandebrandt’s mouth opened and closed like it had before. He looked pathetic, and it made me want to throttle him. “L-l-l…”
he started. If he said he loved me again, I was going to punch him even harder. “L-l-l-l…”

“What? Come on, spit it out, you little freak,” Cody shouted at him. I doubted they endorsed this sort of thing in the department’s
sensitivity training manual. “What the hell is it?”

“L… L-l-l-l…” He seemed determined to answer, probably because Cody seemed equally determined to kick him if he didn’t. L-l-l…
Lawyer.”