Distemper (32 page)

Both Cody and Mad shifted in their seats. “So it’s possible,”
Cody said, “that they all might have seen the same doctor, at least once?”

“Possibly. I could take a closer look at the records. As could your investigators, I imagine.”

“And what about some other connection? An assistant or something?”

Emma gave a long sigh. I could smell the booze on her breath from halfway across the room. “Difficult to know. One doesn’t
keep track of who assisted with a procedure, did a test, that sort of thing.”

“Could you figure it out from whose handwriting is on the charts?”

“I’m afraid not. Doctors write up their own notes, fairly impenetrably I might add.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Mad, it’s less than an hour to deadline. We’ve got to file something or we’re dead.”

He looked at his watch and stood up. “We’d better call Bill. At least now we’ve got something to…”

“Hold it,” Cody said, in as authoritarian a voice as I’d ever heard come out of his mouth. “You know damn well you can’t print
this.” His tone made Mad sit right back down, which was quite a neat trick. “Think about it. It looks like the Benson clinic
is the one thing that links these women together. You go breaking the news that the victims took their dogs there, and you
blow any chance we have of catching our guy off guard. He knows we’ve made the connection, he knows we’re onto him. He picks
up shop and starts killing women someplace else.”

“The goddamn
Times
already broke the fact that Smith had a dog,” Mad said. “It’s just a matter of time until Band figures all this out for himself.
Why should we let…”

“Gordon Band doesn’t have access to the same resources,
so he’s hardly in a position to dig through patient records. That’s confidential information.”

“He’ll find out,” I said. “Believe me, Cody, I know him. Sooner or later, he’ll get his hands on all of this.”

“And how the hell will he do that?”

“I have no idea. He has his own kind of mojo. But trust me, it works. He may be a little off his game right now, but he’ll
dig it up eventually.”

“And there’s probably no use in trying to talk some sense into him?”

“None at all.”

“Even if he knows what it will cost the investigation?”

“That’ll just make him want to print it sooner.”

“Sounds like one cold son of a bitch.”

“Sometimes. Let’s just say he’s the journalistic equivalent of a pit bull.”

“Then maybe his editors would listen to reason.”

“They might. Frankly, I have no idea where the
Times
draws the line between flackery and good citizenship.”

“Well, I’ll deal with that particular crisis when it comes. Right now what I’m worried about is you.”

“Come on, Cody…” Mad started, but I cut him off.

“Look, I’d like to rub Gordon’s nose in it as much as you do. But I have to go with Cody on this one. How are we going to
feel if this bastard flies the coop because we went off half-cocked?”

“Yeah, and I wonder why you’re so eager to agree with…”

“I think you better shut your mouth. Because if you’re about to say I can’t think straight because of who I’m screwing, I’m
going to have to kill you right in front of a cop. And then what’ll become of me?”

He seemed on the verge of fury, then just decided to drop it. “Oh, fuck. You’re right. Band and his Canine Killer are driving
me insane.”

“Since when do you take this stuff so personally?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Band always rubbed me the wrong way, I guess. Didn’t get to me so much when we were on the same side,
but now…”

“Yeah, I know. I kinda miss him, but mostly I want to wring his neck.”

“So are we settled on this?” Cody asked.

“The usual terms,” I said. “We keep Marilyn and Bill in the loop. That way, they know we’re being good citizens, not just
incredible dunderheads. If they have a problem with this, they can hash it out with you and the chief. Frankly, I’m just as
happy not to be at the top of the food chain.”

“And when the story breaks,” Mad said, “we get it first.”

Cody smirked. “An arrangement Alex and I came to quite a while ago.”

“That’s just as well,” Mad said, picking up the phone and dialing Bill’s direct line. “Because if Alex has to start sleeping
with the chief, his wife’s gonna be really pissed. And I happen to know she has a gun of her own.”

C
ODY AND HIS MEN—OR, AS HE’D PUT IT, HIS “BUNCH OF
Gomer Pyles”—started trying to dig up info on the Benson vet hospital the next day. It was a delicate operation, he told
me, because you couldn’t know who to trust; even the most well-intentional source could inadvertently open his big mouth and
tip off the wrong person that the police were sniffing around.

And frankly, they had no idea where to begin. All they knew at that point was that the hospital seemed to be the nexus, the
one thing that all the women had in common. That sounded like it narrowed things down considerably, but it still left a hell
of a lot of possible suspects. The killer could be someone who worked there full-time. It could be a student (either undergrad
or vet), or a professor, or a doctor who rotated through. It could be one of the volunteers who came in a few hours a week
to groom and play with the sick animals, sort of the vet version of a candy-striper. But then again, it could be somebody
who didn’t even have a direct connection to the clinic—
one of the hundreds of people who work in the adjacent buildings and see the pets and their owners in the parking lot, on
the sidewalk, or just by staring down at them from their office windows.

In other words, Cody had his work cut out for him—off the record, at least. But officially, the investigation was pretty much
at a standstill, and that meant Mad and I didn’t have a whole lot to write about. Beyond breaking the story about Patricia
Marx and Cocoa, we were reduced to rehashing sad tales of the victims, and reminding our readers on a daily basis that it
would be a good idea if they locked their doors at night and didn’t talk to strangers.

Ironically enough, I also did a story on the fact that so many women had gotten dogs for protection, the Walden County SPCA
was out of them for the first time in its history; even ratty little wiener dogs and poodles were being snapped up as soon
as they came in. (This seemed rather strange, since everyone knew by now that the victims had dogs themselves, and it hadn’t
done them a damn bit of good. One woman I interviewed probably summed it up best when she said that regardless of the logistics,
she was just too damn scared to live alone anymore.) The piece ran with a sidebar about how the same thing had happened in
other cities in similar situations, like Boston during the Strangler case. And as I filed it, I hoped like hell that none
of the women decided to bring their new pets to the Benson clinic for a checkup.

Bill also sent me over to the historical society to research the last time Gabriel had a murder spree, which happened just
before the Civil War and involved two maiden aunts who decided people’s tea would taste better
with a little hemlock in it. Even from the fading daguerreotype we ran on page three, you could tell they were total loonies.

Writing these various stories was enough to make me want to chew my own foot off, not so much because they weren’t interesting
but because they were so far from what was actually going on. It wasn’t that I thought we’d made a mistake by cooperating
with the cops—at least not in theory—but the reality of it was pretty galling for someone who’s as fundamentally nosy as I
am.

Not that Mad had it any easier. True, he did a couple of good pieces on the psychology of serial killers and the like, but
he also got saddled with one whopper of an apology story. After the barrage of outrage that greeted our lovely photograph
of Marx and Cocoa (including a full page of letters to the editor detailing how much we suck), Mad had to trot up the hill
to talk to some Benson sociologist about the media’s prurient obsession with crime victims, or some such; frankly, the whole
thing smacked of a nymphomaniac writing about what a shame it is that people like to screw—and running it in
Hustler
. Anyway, when the story came out I blew it up on the copy machine, wrapped it around a large box of double-chocolate donuts,
and left it on Mad’s desk with a note that said
EAT ME
.

I was patting myself on the back for this cleverness when my phone rang.

“Newsroom. Alex here.”

No one said anything at first, and I was just about to hang up when I heard a woman’s voice, but faintly. “Is this… Is this
Alex Bernier?” She pronounced my name
wrong, so it ended with “yer” instead of “yay.” I disliked her already.

“Yeah, this is Alex Bernier. What can I do for you?”

“Well, it’s about that story you ran, about the missing girl…” She was whispering so efficiently I could barely hear her,
but from what I caught she sounded like she wanted to talk about this like she wanted a root canal.

“What missing girl?”

The silence went on so long I thought she’d hung up, but then she spoke again, even more quietly than before. “You’re not,
uh, recording this are you?”

“No.”

“Or… tracing this or anything?”

Who did she think we were, the CIA? “No, we don’t do things like that.”

More silence. “I wanted to tell you… Needed to tell you… something. About the missing girl. Not really missing… I mean, the
girl they found in the snow last spring.” She paused again, and I decided the best tactic was just to shut up and let her
talk. “I know I should have said something back then, but I wasn’t really sure. But then you had her picture—I mean, that
drawing—in the newspaper again this week, and I really just thought it had to be…” Something hugely funny must have happened
over at the sports desk just then, because the whole corner exploded into chuckles. I stuffed my finger in my ear and hunched
over the phone. “… or anything, will you?”

“What was that again? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“You won’t tell anybody I called, will you? Can this be, um… a secret tip?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“So I can tell you anything and you can’t tell anybody else?”

I was torn between being honest with her and saying whatever I had to to get her to spill her guts. I opted for the moral
high ground. “Well, I can’t tell anybody where I got it from, but that’s not the same as never repeating it. I mean, you obviously
have something important you want people to know, right?” I could hear her breathing on the other end, which seemed a good
sign that she’d neither slammed down the phone nor dropped dead.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m just imagining…”

I summoned up the most gentle motherly tone I’ve got. “Don’t you think you’ll feel better if you get this off your chest?”

I caught Mad out of the corner of my eye, ripping open the donut box and preparing to bean me with one, but I made some frantic
throat-slashing motions and he got the message. “Yeah, I guess,” she was saying. “But I really can’t talk about it…”

So why the hell did you call me, you loser
? “I know it’s hard for you…”

“Yeah, well, it’s my own fault what happened. I mean, why I can’t… Oh, boy, I’d better start at the beginning. You promised
not to tell anybody you talked to me, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, see, I work in an office at Benson. I don’t want to say which one. But when I first saw that drawing, I thought… It
seemed like I recognized that girl, that she was the same one who’d come into our office for something one time.”

I waited for her to say something else. She didn’t. “That’s it?”

“Um… yeah.”

I was starting to lose my sense of humor. “You know, that’s really not very helpful.”

“It isn’t?”

“Could you be just a tad more specific?”

Click
.

“Toss me one of those donuts,” I said to Mad as I hung up the phone. “Chocolate takes the pain away.”

“What happened?”

“Some squirrelly dame called me trying to tell me who the first murder victim was, and I scared her off.”

“Nice work.”

He handed me a donut, and I shoved a quarter of it into my mouth. Then the phone rang again, and Mad stood there smirking
as I tried to gag the donut down before whoever was calling me gave up.

“Urgh,” I said into the phone, hoping it sounded somewhat like a word.

“Hi, listen, I’m sorry I hung up on you a minute ago.”

“Oh, uh, no problem.”

“Well, I was thinking about what you said, and I do want to help them catch whoever killed that girl…” She trailed off again,
and this time I really did keep my mouth shut. “I know I already asked you this, but you have to swear you’re not going to
give anybody any details about me.”

“On my honor as a journalist.” Luckily, the woman didn’t know enough to laugh and hang up again.

“Okay… I work as a secretary in the admissions office at the Ag school. Last fall, this girl came in for an interview
to get in as a transfer student. We don’t get too many of those, so that’s mostly why I remember her, but it was also because
she seemed really scared. Not just nervous like she wanted to do okay on the interview, but like she was really scared of
something or other.