Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
Her dry, unloving voice
again: "Did your imagination continue to work when you felt that
way?"
"Regarding
what?"
"Regarding
things you'd like to do. Things you could do before and couldn't do then? Could
you picture things you'd like to do?”
Colesceau sighed
deeply. He looked down at his own expression and thought it deserved some kind
of award. He could be no more convincing than this. "For me, no. I lost my
dreams along with my desire."
"I'll bet."
"You would then
win the bet. You cannot imagine what the death of that feeling is. The instinct
to love and mate and extend the human race. Without it, you are nothing but a
shell. Empty, like one of these eggs my mother decorates."
"No sexual desire at all?"
"None."
"Then how come
you used your silver van to pin Ronnie Stevens's car three nights back at the
Main Place Mall?"
He was intrigued by
this information. He felt his lips part and his face go slack. But from the
outside, this had a positive effect: he looked bewildered and hapless. He
looked innocent. And just a little bit insulted.
The neighbors started
up their chanting again. He wished he could machine-gun every last one of them.
"I do not know
Ronnie Stevens. I have never met him. I drive a red Datsun pickup truck from
1970.1 haven't been to the Main Place Mall in several months. Sergeant,
remember one thing about me. About my behavior. This is it—never once did I
deny my disease or my crimes of the past. I fully confessed to my acts. I am
many things, Sergeant Rayborn, not all of them good. But one of the things I
am, that I have never been able to change, is that I am honest. To a fault,
perhaps."
He watched her study him
with her cold brown Doberman eyes. She looked dispassionate but unimpressed. It
was the cop's fundamental expression, he thought, and this Merci Rayborn looked
like she was born with it on her face. He was sure now that she wore the
holster strap unsnapped so she could get her gun quick and shoot fast.
"Okay, honest
shitbird. Tell me where you were on Saturday night."
"I was right here, as I explained earlier. I was
even on TV, I believe. I'm sure the stations must keep video records."
• • •
Hess went back down the
stairs, through the kitchen and into the garage. It was nice to be able to get
into the garage from inside the house, and Hess wished his apartment at 15th
had the same feature. He turned on a light and looked at the decrepit little
pickup truck. It was so old they were called Datsuns back then. Seventy, maybe,
seventy-two? The doors were unlocked and the windows down. The registration and
insurance were current. The odometer said 00000. The tires were in good shape
and matched. Hess looked at the bed: lightly rusted and dented, no chemical or
solvent stains. The glove box had the usual: tire pressure gauge, maps,
pencils, cassette tapes. Hess pulled out three and read the titles:
Eternal Health Through Yoga,
by Sri
Ram-Hara;
TravelAudio
#35—
Destination Romania; Deadwood,
a novel
by Pete Dexter.
Hess looked at the
picture on the novel cassette: a longhaired, mustachioed gunslinger he
recognized as Wild Bill Hickok.
...
or
that guy Paul Newman played tn
Buffalo Bill and the Indians.
Wrong Bill, right
hair, thought Hess. He sat down in the passenger's side and put back the tapes.
He examined the headrest of the driver's seat for hair. Same with the floorboards
and the transmission hump. Nothing.
Outside the crowd
started up again:
MAKE
our NEIGHborhood
SAFE for the CHlbdrenl
Hess was sure there
were no crimes against children in Colesceau's jacket, but told himself to
check again. He was a little surprised by the volume of the chant, the way the
combined voices reverberated through the thin plywood of the garage door. The
voice of fear, he thought. The papers said the vigil had been twenty-four hours
a day for four days now, and that the neighbors had vowed to continue it until
Colesceau got into his miserable little Datsun and left forever. The mob had
set its own noise curfew at 9
P.M.
so
as not to interfere with work, school and sleep. Hess also read the people were
driving in from other cities of the county to join the protest and that CNB had
cameras set up round the clock, going to them live when Colesceau was visible
or during slow periods during the news day.
He got out of the
truck and looked around the garage. It was small, with two cabinets against the
wall, which contained nothing of interest to him. No Deer Sleigh'R, no
gambrels or ropes, no big game cleaning implements, no Porti-Boy embalming
machines or fluids. No blond wigs made of genuine human hair. No canning jars
with missing lids. No chloroform. Clean, Hess thought. If he does it, he
doesn't do it here.
• • •
Merci joined Hess in
the small downstairs bathroom. She leaned against the sink, and could see
Colesceau still sitting in his living room. She couldn't tell by Hess's look
whether he'd scored big, small or not at all. His eyes sparkled in the bright
bathroom lights and she wondered what he was thinking.
"No silver van with mismatched
tires, I take it."
"Not one."
"Well?"
"He'd take them somewhere
else."
"He says the
crowd outside saw him here at least twice on Saturday night, when Ronnie got
it. Says he was at the movies on the Kane date, and may have a ticket stub to
corroborate. The Jillson night, he was having dinner here, with his—get
this—his mom."
"He's got a
Tuesday night ticket stub upstairs. One of several."
"It doesn't mean much."
"I know that."
"Did he say anything about the
second bedroom?"
"It's for his
beloved mother, of course. She comes to dinner often and stays over."
Hess nodded and the
vertical lines between his eyes deepened.
"I vote no,
Hess. Much as I'd like to pinch his vicious little head right this instant.
He's supposed to be chemically castrated—until Wednesday, anyway. He's weird.
He raped helpless old women, not strong young ones. He's got a spare bedroom
for his mommy. Everything physical about him is wrong except for those eyes
that Kamala dingbat Petersen fell in love with. She saw his face on TV, for
Chrissakes. Or was it a dream? Nobody's said anything about our golden-haired
boy talking with an accent—not LaLonde, not the Arnie's guy, nobody. This place
is clean. He sure as hell didn't walk in and out of here Saturday night without
the lynch mob seeing him—that's for sure. I'd love to pop him for something—anything—but
I think we ought to keep turning over rocks for our main man. Let's put a loose
surveillance on this nutcase and forget about him. Give him line. If he swims
anywhere pertinent we'll yank him aboard and see what he's been
nibbling."
"All
right."
She looked into Hess's
eyes in the hard light. The fact that she couldn't determine his thoughts
irritated her because he was the only person whose thoughts she wanted to determine.
"Do you agree
T'
she asked.
"You're the
boss."
"Damnit, that's
not what I asked."
"I agree. But I
get a bad feeling here."
Merci tried to think it
through. What she kept seeing was an elaborate waste of precious time. One
thing about Hess was sometimes he acted like they had all the time in the
world. When, theoretically, he had less than most people.
She said, "My fear
is, he speeds up, now that he's got the hang of it. And while we're firing down
on this nutless, teary-eyed little creep, the real guy's out there looking for number
four. I think we'd be better off with ten lady cops, dressed to kill, hair up,
planted at ten malls."
"That's a real
possibility, Merci."
She looked out at the back
of Colesceau's head. He sat motionless where she had left him. She could see
the shine of his scalp below the thinning black hair.
"Hess, I mean, look
at that guy. Look at the back of his
head.
He's crawling with progesterone and he's got the muscle tone of a bean bag.
He's beyond pathetic and disgusting. He's like a bug that's already been
stepped on."
"There is that
about him."
"I think we're after
someone with a higher octane rating."
"There's
something about him I don't get."
"Maybe you should be
thankful for that. Look, if he so much as shows his face, those people start
blowing gaskets. It's about time we got some help from the spoiled middle-class
fatheads we serve and protect."
"Well said."
Outside, several of the
protesting neighbors said they saw Colesceau not once but twice on Saturday
night, Ronnie Stevens's last. They concurred that Colesceau had come out once
around six and once later—around nine or nine-thirty. The rest of the time he
watched TV. They described what he said to them and what he was wearing, and
Hess took notes. He discovered that before Colesceau's cover was blown, none of
these neighbors paid him much attention at all. They'd see the little faded
truck come and go, and that was about it.
One of the organizers was
a woman named Trudy Powers, whom Hess remembered from a newspaper article. She
said that she received from the "damaged man" a hollow decorated
egg—a promise of his good behavior until finding a more suitable place to live.
She said she believed he was looking for a new apartment because he had
promised her he would. Trudy Powers implied an understanding and relationship
with Colesceau that she seemed proud—or somehow obligated—to not explain. Hess
wondered about her. She had enough qualities in common with Lael Jillson and
Janet Kane to make him genuinely uneasy. But how could he tell her that? What he
did do was look her straight in the eye and tell her to be careful. She seemed
to pity him, but Hess couldn't tell if it was because of what he said or how he
looked.
A young man with a
camera case hanging from his shoulder said he saw Colesceau not twice but
several times Saturday night because he crept up close and looked through a
crack in the blinds. He did this around seven-fifteen, eight-thirty, and again
around ten-thirty, before he left for home. Colesceau was watching TV. The
neighbor said it was the news, then a police drama, then a movie.
Hess asked if Colesceau saw him peering
in.
"No. The TV in
there feces the street, so all I saw was the back of his head."
"How come you kept checking in on
him?"
The young man
shrugged and looked away. "I took some pictures. But the film's still in
the camera."
"I want that film," Hess said.
"I thought you
might. Three left." He unslung the case, took out the camera and shot one
picture of Hess and one of Merci and one of them together. He rewound the film
and smiled with an odd expression of pride as he handed it over to Hess.
"I'm glad to help. Can I have them
back when you're done?”
Hess got his name,
address and phone number.
Rick Hjorth of
Fullerton, ten miles north.
The County News Bureau
reporter assigned to "Rape Watch, Irvine," was a tense blonde who
fell into step with them and introduced herself as Lauren Diamond. Her video
shooter trailed behind with a heavy-looking rig over his shoulder. She proffered
a microphone to Hess, who kept walking. Hess remembered Merci's early orders
to leave all public relations to her. Merci didn't break stride either.
"Why were you inside
with convicted rapist Matamoros Colesceau
?"
Lauren asked Hess.
"No
comment," said Merci.
Still to Hess:
"You're heading up the Purse Snatcher investigation. Any connection to the
Purse Snatcher?"
"I'm heading up the
Purse Snatcher investigation, lady, and it's still no comment."
Hess shook his head,
mostly to himself. He saw the shooter getting all this down, wondered if Merci
was even aware of him.
"Then what
is
it in connection with?"
Hess could feel the heat
emanating from right beside him. It was like walking next to a solar panel. She
was about to speak but he beat her to it.
"Routine parole
stuff, Lauren," said Hess. "That's all."
"Is Colesceau a
suspect
?"
Hess fixed a look on her,
hooked his thumb back toward the crowd. "Pretty good alibi."
"Miss Rayborn, can
you tell us something about your sexual harassment suit?"
"Absolutely
not."
"Lieutenant Kemp
has denied all the charges."
"Wouldn't your
"Five other female
deputies have come forward since you did. Phil Kemp is a twenty-five-year
employee of the department with a clean record. Why all of this, so
suddenly?"