Distemper (6 page)

“Agreed.”

“If you’ve covered cops for any length of time, you know how the police work. We don’t rule out anything lightly. We know
that even though the obvious answer is usually the right one, it isn’t
always
the right one. At this point, we think the same person killed both those girls. Common sense says it has to be. The M.O.s
are too similar for it to be a copycat. There are a number of details that I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. But if you’re
asking me if you’re right in thinking the two victims were physically similar to each other, they were. Both were
small, five feet or under. Both wore their hair roughly the same way, shoulder length and parted down the middle. But beyond
that, in terms of their facial features, you could say that they looked enough alike that they could be related.”

“Do you think they were?”

“No comment.”

“What about Marci?”

“Who?”

“My roommate.”

“We’re not sure that these two women were killed because of the way they looked. That’s one theory, the obvious one. Or it
could be a coincidence. There might be a whole other connection.”

“So how do you figure it out?”

“We’ve got people on it.”

“Who?”

“No comment.”

“Who around here is possibly equipped to deal with this sort of thing? You said it yourself. The cops hardly ever see anything
more mysterious than a hunting accident. So who are you bringing in? Don’t tell me the Staties. Didn’t you hear about that
evidence tampering scandal a couple of years back? Practically the whole unit went to jail…”

“Oh, hell. No, it’s not the state police.”

“Sheriff’s?”

“Give me some credit.”

“Holy shit. The FBI’s all over this, aren’t they? Behavioral science, right?”

“That is not for publication.”

“Why not? If Quantico’s involved, people have a right to…”

“People have a right not to be scared to death for no good reason. You say FBI, everyone is going to think
Silence of the Lambs
. Hysteria isn’t good for anyone.”

“Maybe that isn’t far off.”

“You gave me your word.”

“I realize that.”

“Look. If I were your roommate, I’d be careful. I’d keep the doors locked. I wouldn’t go out alone at night. Tell her to use
common sense, look both ways before she crosses the road, and we’ll catch the bastard. Now, you really need to leave.” I was
on my way out the door when he called after me, sounding at least five points higher on the decency scale. “Listen, Alex.
I don’t want your friend to be scared. How about if I send someone by in the next couple of days, do a security check on your
place? It’ll only take an hour. The officer can give you some tips about locks, that sort of thing.”

“That would be great.”

“And, Alex, be careful. Our file on you is thick enough already.”

“H
E REALLY LET YOU IN THE BACK OF THE COP SHOP?
Y
OU
gotta be shittin’ me.” Mad was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter while I cooked, and with at least two dozen people
spilling out into the living room, he had to shout.

“I shit you not.”

“So what was it like?”

“Nothing fancy. Messy, in a… neat sort of way.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You know, papers and files all over the place. But organized. Lots of framed certificates. They’re big into framed certificates.
‘Officially certified to kill you at a hundred paces,’ that sort of thing.”

“But what about the guns?”

“What guns?”

“You know, the guns, Bernier. The
guns
. What kind did they have?”

“Christ, I don’t know. They don’t have them hanging on the wall or anything.”

“They don’t?” He looked like a trick-or-treater with an empty plastic pumpkin.

“Oh, come on, Mad. You’re a grown man. You didn’t really think the cops kept an arsenal back there like the goddamn A-Team.”

“I had fantasies.”

“Poor baby.”

“You got another bottle?” He dropped an empty magnum of something red into the recycling bin and it went
smash
.

“You just opened that”

“I had to share.”

“Tonight’s really sucking for you, isn’t it?”

He looked over my shoulder into the living room. “Not totally.”

I turned around to see what he was leering at. Emma. “You picking favorites?”

“Me? Never.”

“Look, I don’t give a damn who you’re banging. But would you please not make my life a living hell?”

He kept looking over my head at her—this wasn’t hard, since he’s thirteen inches taller—and raised his wineglass toward her
in a come-hither toast. “Me? Never.”

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t turn my living room into a singles bar.”

“Me? N…”

“Oh, shut up, Mad. You know the drill. To wit: you drill her, she gets all grabby, you flee, I pick up the scraps.”

“What if I have serious intentions?”

“You? Never. Now would you hand me the linguine?”
I threw four pounds of pasta into my big Calphalon pot with the built-in strainer. It’s worth more than my car.

“Yo, who’s got the vino?” O’Shaunessey said as he sauntered into the kitchen. “And how about some food action? Children are
starving someplace.”

I’ve been feeding most of the
Monitor
newsroom every Thursday night for the past couple of years. At this point, it’s kind of gone beyond tradition into obsession.
I start getting menu requests on Monday, and when there’s some big story that keeps us at the paper until deadline, the thing
has been known to start at midnight and go until four A.M. I warned my housemates about it when I moved in, and they said
it was fine with them as long as they got to eat free. Journalists are creatures of habit, though, and my old roommate Dirk
and his partner still have to put a sign on the door every Thursday that says
BERNIER FOOD ORGY AT NEW LOCATION
.

That night I was trying a new recipe for diavolo sauce, which, as the name implies, is hot as hell. I’m physically incapable
of cooking for less than twenty people, so I’d quadrupled the recipe. This meant four full heads of garlic and eight teaspoons
of dried pepper flakes. I tested the pasta to make sure it was done and had Mad pull the strainer out and shake off the excess
water, since my left wrist was still out of commission. He mixed it up with the sauce, put it on the counter with a stack
of bowls and silverware, and grabbed the six loaves of garlic bread out of the oven with his bare hands, as oven mitts are
for wimps.

“Thanks for helping.”

“Emma says chicks think cooking is sexy.”

“I see.” I went over to the far side of the living room and yelled that the food was ready. This kitchen is way
smaller than my last one, and I learned the hard way that once the hordes start coming in, there’s no getting out until they’re
done. Everybody made for the food so fast the house practically tilted. Along with all three of my female housemates, there
was Melissa, a
Monitor
photographer who likes to shoot things from weird tilty angles, which makes them art; the Dixie-born business writer, Marshall,
and his wife, Charlotte, who is presently out-to-here pregnant; the two guys who make up O’Shaunessey’s entire sports staff;
Wendell, the photo editor, who spends most of his time at the local Buddhist temple but occasionally eats with us if we promise
to cook vegan; Maggie, who just got promoted to anchor for the local TV news but would give a major organ for a slave job
at CNN; a couple of radio reporters; and various interns, spouses, and significant others.

Okay, it was a mob scene. But it was
my
mob scene.

Everybody eventually settled throughout the living room, and those who got stuck on the floor had to eat with one hand and
fend off dogs with the other. Shortly thereafter most of them were begging for Kleenex and gulping down their wine. I was
wondering if maybe I’d put just an eensy bit too much pepper in when the doorbell rang and Marci got up to get it. The dogs
glanced back and forth between the door and the food and decided to stick with a sure thing.

“Hey, where’s Junior?” I asked. “Anybody seen him? Don’t tell me he’s bailed already.”

“Man, he better not,” O’Shaunessey said. “He lasts six more days, I’m up three hundred bucks.”

“Right, but if he lasts two weeks,
I’m
up three hundred
bucks,” said Melissa, who’s way less sweet than she looks. “And since I started the pool, it seems only fair.”

“Flag on the play,” O’Shaunessey said, and threw his napkin at her. “The fix is in. Clearly.”

“Nah,” Mad said. “He’s still back at the joint. Bill’s got him working on some goddamn timeline, history of homicides in Walden
County or some crap. Probably never run it. He’s just trying to torture the kid. Says it’s for his own good.”

Melissa snorted. “Right. Twelve hours down in the morgue. That’s bound to teach him something. If the rats don’t get him,
the asbestos will.”

“Who was that at the door?” I asked Marci when she got back.

She shrugged. “Some old man. He had the wrong house. I think he may have been looking for whoever lived here before us.”

“You mean the biker fraternity?”

“Well, no, probably the people before them. He said he hadn’t been back in a while. I offered to let him use the phone but
he said he didn’t want to disturb us.”

“So screw ‘em,” O’Shaunessey said cheerfully. “Who’s for seconds?”

All our Thursday night dinners have one thing in common: you know they’re over when we run out of booze. It’s a good thing
Friday is recycling day, or we’d spend the rest of the week tripping over empties. That night, the party broke up around eleven,
which is on the early side. Mad usually sticks around until I evict him, but that night he and Emma repaired to his lair at
ten, presumably to act out his Princess Di fantasies.

The guests always do the cleaning—I’m hospitable,
but I’m not crazy—and I was putting away dry dishes when the doorbell rang again. I opened the door, and there under the porch
light was just about the last person I would have expected.

“First rule of home security,” said Detective Brian Cody. “Keep the front door locked.” Two of the dogs started barking and
lunging at him and I told them to heel. This did no good whatsoever, so I grabbed their collars (my left wrist didn’t thank
me for it) and yelled at him to come in. He was wearing jeans, ratty sneakers, and a black leather jacket over a navy Red
Sox sweatshirt. It looked a lot better on him than the suits had. Then I noticed he had the
Monitor
folded under his arm. Uh-oh.

“What are you doing here?”

“I promised you a security check.”

“I thought you were sending someone.”

“I wanted to talk to your friend Marci, get some basic information just to be safe, so I decided to come over myself.”

“At eleven?”

“Is it too late?”

“Nope. I’m a night owl.”

“Good guard dogs you’ve got there. Yours?”

I shook my head. “That lump on the couch is mine. Her name is Shakespeare. She’s part German shepherd, part beagle. She’d
play fetch with a rapist. The big black poodle is Tipsy. He belongs to my roommate Emma. The shepherd is C.A.’s. He’s a purebred,
real champion stock. Her mom’s family’s really into the dog-show thing. Name’s Nanki-Poo.”

“That’s humiliating.”

“I know. C.A. hates it. She got him from her grandmother when the dog was already three, so there was no changing it. Believe
me, she tried. I guess her grandma’s all freaky for Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“So she named it after the fellow from
The Mikado
?”

“How’d you know that?”

“My mom’s all freaky for Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“Oh.” We stared at each other for a while. I could see the outline of his gun under his sweatshirt and hoped there was nothing
particularly incriminating in the living room; good thing I wasn’t wearing Adam’s
HEMP IS HEAVEN
T-shirt. “Are you going to come in, or would you rather just loiter here in the doorway?”

“Loitering is underrated.”

“Want a beer? Or are you, I don’t know, on duty or something?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I might as well get this over with and let you get back to whatever you’re doing. Can you go get
Marci? It will only take a couple minutes.”

“It’ll take less than that. She’s not here.”

Insert more uncomfortable silence. “I guess I should have called first. But I was on my way home from the station and I saw
your lights on, so I figured I’d stop.”

“Decent of you.”

“No trouble. I can come back some other time.” He turned and started down the front steps.

“You sure you don’t want a beer? We’ve got Guinness.” That stopped him.

“I probably shouldn’t.”

“Why not? What is it, sleeping with the enemy or something?”

He turned around, and his cheeks were tinged the same
shade of pink I’d seen in the hospital room when he took me for a tenth-grader. I wondered again how a guy this easily embarrassed
had managed to get through basic training. “Ex…” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”