Authors: T. Jefferson Parker

The Blue Hour (13 page)

"He'll go
again."

"Absolutely. He's
abducted and murdered twice. And we understand that this is a sex killing, of
course. So, there won't be any more half measures for the Purse Snatcher. No
more of the things that he practiced, the scenarios he created to get him to
this point. He's graduated. He's big time. He might move halfway across the
country, he might win the lottery, but he won't stop."

"Any chance at
all that he's keeping them alive?"

"None
whatsoever."

"Why?"

"For one, it's
totally impractical. But more importantly, he prefers them dead, Tim."

"How do you know
that?"

Dr. Page smiled, a little
ashamedly, thought Hess. "Tim, he's
taking them with him.
His fantasy doesn't climax in a rape-kill
scenario. It
begins
with one.
What is interesting to this man—what is essential about him—happens after he's
killed and raped them. Note the order there—not rape and kill."

Hess thought about
this.

"How old is
he?" "Twenty-five to thirty. That's enough time to see his vision and
learn his methods. But not enough to leave twenty or thirty women dead behind
him—because that's how many you'll have ten years from now if you don't catch
him. Actually, I'd guess he'd leave the area before he got that many. Any hits
through VICAP?"

"Nothing hot. I
talked to Lyle Hazlitt back in Washington early this morning. He says there's a
Michigan case open, two women kept in a cabin after they were killed. Wife and
mother-in-law, though. They're chasing the husband down in south Horida
now."

"No," said
Dr. Page.

"There's a guy
breaking into funeral homes in New Orleans, taking the corpses. They don't know
where or why."

"No. But that's an
interesting case. That kind of protracted necrophilia is extremely rare.
There's very little even written on it."

"Maybe he's holding
the corpses for ransom, waiting for the furor to die down before he calls their
families."

Page smiled.
"You're such a Pollyanna sometimes."

They laughed at this.

"I'd love to
interview this guy, Tim."

"I'd like to
stop him."

Page nodded and
looked through the photographs again.

"He
thinks he's repellent to women, so he blitzes them. But if he was truly
physically hideous someone would remember him hanging around the malls. No, he
sees himself as unworthy of engaging a
live woman. Takes the whole woman. A corpse is reusable, Tim. Look for a
freezer or a large cooler, possibly in a storage unit somewhere close to where
he lives. It's possible he's cut them into refrigerator-sized parts, but I
don't think so. No evidence of flesh rent or bones sawed, no easy way to use
power tools out in those woods... no. I think they're whole. The formalin near
the bleeding ground makes me think of embalming or preserving, too. I see from
your notes here that you thought of that, already. The question is why would he
lug embalming fluid and the requisite needles and tubes around with him if he
could just do that all at his place a little later? He takes tremendous risk
out there in the Ortega."

"Efficiency.
Blood out, fluid in. Done."

"I guess. Nothing to
hose off. Interesting how neat he is, isn't it? Hang and bleed them like deer.
Now, that's a direction you can go if you want to."

"I want
to."

"It's too obvious to
ignore. A hunter. Someone with experience dressing animals in the field. An
outdoorsman. Likewise a butcher or slaughterhouse employee. Certainly someone
with the rudiments of human biology and a knack for the mechanical. I mean,
he's getting into those cars without tripping the alarms—that isn't easy. So,
throw some electronics know-how into the profile. He's also got to be pretty
strong, to hoist them up like that with the rope. White male, of course. I
don't have to say that. How do you think he's subduing them, Tim?"

"I have no
idea."

"He may strangle them
right there in their cars. Dark parking lots. It could be over pretty quick if
he's strong."

"True. But wouldn't
he want to damage them as little as possible?"

"Correct. Just
like plums in the market."

"And if he can get
them to the woods under their own power, it saves a lot of hard work,"
said Hess. Lately, he had become acutely aware of what it was to be tired and
to save energy. It was hard for him to imagine carrying a human body even the
hundred feet or so from the dirt road to the oak trees. Not to mention hoisting
them up with a rope. Check the hunting and camping stores, he thought: see what
new gadgets they've got for hanging a carcass.

"Of course,"
said Dr. Page, "he has to drive a vehicle large enough to carry a body in.
Trunk, most likely. Maybe a van or a pickup truck with a camper on it."

"Physically,
what can we look for?"

"Compact and
muscular. He wouldn't even think about waiting in the backseat of a car if he
was large. Note, however, that he's picked out fairly spacious cars."

"What else can I use
for parameters? That partial print is all we've really got. I want to send it
through CAL-ID with all the blessings we can give it."

Page
nodded curtly, folded his fingers under his chin and shut his eyes. The
sunshine came through the lattice in little rectangles and landed on his face.
Hess saw the Mandevilla blossoms nodding in the breeze like they were talking
to each other. Between the doctor's elbows were photographs of ground soaked in
at least two quarts of human female blood and the words of a young man
currently employed in the shoe department of a major department store:
anyway, when someone that beautiful smiles at
you, you remember. At least I remember. .

"Tim, a man who has
reached this level of specialization has had a long
and ...
thorough journey to this point. Look for a juvenile
record of academic failure, truancy, exposure, peeping, breaking and entering
to take underwear or other fetish items, or perhaps a masturbator, urinator,
defecator. Fire setting, of course. If he's got the sheet I think he does, look
at the sex crimes. No matter how far off the mark they might seem, remember
that he's grown, changed. Anything but pedophilia, that's its own world. I
honestly believe you will have run across him before. You, meaning law
enforcement. His need for risk will be his undoing, if you get him He'll have
to give you more and more. And forget your stooges and snitches and jailhouse
songbirds—the Purse Snatcher will have told exactly nobody on earth about his
deeds. That's why he has to tell
you
about them. That's why he left the purses."

Dr. Page set his hands on
the table top. His fingers looked seventy and his face looked fifty. He was
staring down at the pictures still lying between his arms.

"No one's had a look
at this guy? Not one single eyewitness at the malls? Someone lurking,
following, checking out the cars, anything out of the ordinary?"

Hess considered.
"Rumor has it we've got some kind of witness. I guess I'm not supposed to
know. Rayborn hypnotized her for the sketch artist, but I haven't seen the
results."

"Then a witness
is what you don't have. In court."

"Right. Dalton, do
you see the Purse Snatcher trying to get himself close to the
investigation?"

"I doubt it. He's not
that naive. He would be more likely to send you a body part, UPS."

"Something from
the inside, though."

"Correct. Something
from the inside. He doesn't want to spoil her appearance."

CHAPTER
TWELVE

It angered her to pose for a rapist but she knew Hess
was right: if Izma got interested he might talk to impress her.

Hess talked to the manager while Merci stood in the
lobby and read the
la paloma hotel
rules
sign:

1.
No checks

2.
No overnight guests

3.
No loud music after 10
p.m.

4.
No hot plates

5.
No solicitors

6.
No
kidding!

"Three-o-seven," said Hess.

"How come I haven't
seen this creep's name on the SONAR lists?"

"He's not
considered high risk."

"A low-risk
rape-kidnapper."

"That's what
they say."

They took the stairs to
the third floor and walked down the hall. Merci touched the gun that was
snugged against her ribs the way a Catholic might touch a medallion of St.
Christopher. It was for luck and for something more than luck: it was for
peace. Her last qualifier was her best in ten years, putting her fifteenth
overall in a big department that had a lot of good shots.

Mercy had drawn down only
once in her life and didn't have to fire, but she was steady on target in a
Weaver stance and would have hit him clean if she'd pulled. She liked what
she'd said to the creep, something unrehearsed, something that just came out
and worked real well, at least on this guy:
Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole?

That had done it.
Luck. Peace. The nine.

Before they got to the
door Hess said, "Let me lead it. I know a little about him."

"Just stand there and
look my best?"

Hess stopped outside 307
and turned to her. "It would be better if you sat. He liked them small and
helpless."

"I'm
five-eleven."

"He's
six-ten."

When Ed Izma opened the
door Merci's heart gave a startled flutter, then settled uncomfortably. Part
of the reason was the size of the man, his head coming almost to the top of the
seven-foot door frame. She leaned back reflexively to look up at him. She could
feel the willingness of her right hand to move up under her coat, so she made a
point to keep it at her side.

He was not an ugly man at
all, in fact his face had an economy of line that was interesting, and his eyes
were a placid and unthreatening gray. He was smiling and his teeth were large
and even. Merci thought his head looked small.

"Sorry to upset
you," he said. "But nice to meet you. I'm Ed."

He offered his hand. Merci
took it and understood instantly that he had her now, could easily force her
any direction he wanted, or snap her into the room and right out the
third-story window if he wanted. It seemed an awful long way to his eyes or
balls, and she doubted she had the speed and strength to damage them.

"Sergeant
Rayborn, OCSD."

He smiled down on her and
let her hand go. His eyes had light in them. "You know, I haven't
committed one serious crime in the last thirty-five years, Hess. In fact, I've
only committed one serious crime in my entire life."

"It was kind of
a whopper."

Merci, in the center of
the room now, turning to her left, saw Ed Izma's gaze bearing down on her. Hess
had told her Izma raped his victim a dozen times in the two days he had her.
The cold of the freezer had actually helped keep her alive; that and Izma
constantly putting her in and yanking her right back out for various reasons.
She'd had the luck to be put in an old freezer with bad wiring, a poorly
fitting top and a shot gasket. She'd needed a blood transfusion when they got
her to the hospital.

"By today's
standards? I don't think so. I never took another life.'

"One that we
know about, anyway," said Hess.

Merci was suddenly aware
of multiple facts: hot room, thick air, useless air freshener, a fen
oscillating to her right; Hess and Izma to her left, five hundred plus pounds
of antagonistic male bulk. There was a large bed that took up most of the
room. It was made. She felt like she was looking at things through a hot fog.
Dizzying. Another room behind: bath and bedroom but too small for the bed? She
was aware of being stared at. Didn't the room smell like air freshener and
semen? Where was the real air in here, anyway?

"Something to
drink, Merci?"

"Water. Ice if
you have it."

"I'm sorry, I
don't have either."

"What do you
have?"

"Nothing,
actually."

"Thanks anyway,
shitbird."

"I really
dislike foul language from a woman."

"She doesn't care
what you like, Ed. She doesn't want to date you."

Merci, breathing deeply
and letting the anger clear her head, caught the flash of meanness and pride in
Ed Izma's gray eyes.

"Something like that,
though—right, Hess? A little temptation?"

"She's my
partner."

"You're a lucky man,
then. Sit. Please. I wiped these chairs off just for you."