Gray Matter (14 page)

“I need to leave for a while.”

“I figured that.” His voice sounded contrite, but there was still a touch of defiance in it that no one but herself would have been able to pick up. Last night—no, just a few hours ago—he had sullenly apologized for his outburst and lay down with his back to her, cutting off any further discussion. Now she had to leave him with his anger and hurt, knowing that she would have to deal with his feelings, and her own, soon.

“You’ll have to go over to the house by yourself,” she said. Today was Saturday, the big moving day when they were supposed to get settled in the rental house she had found. “I’ll make arrangements with the hotel desk on my way out. They’ll have a taxi waiting for you about eight. The furniture’s coming at nine. I’ll leave the house keys and some cash on the dresser. Get room service for breakfast. You might as well try to get some more sleep now.”

Thomas stood up.

“I’m sorry about this,” PJ said. “I know I should be there. It’s a big thing, moving into our first house with just the two of us.”

“Three. There’s Megabite.”

“I thought you didn’t like cats.”

“She’s OK.”

“Can you handle this?”

“Yeah, Mom, I can handle it,” he said. He started to walk away, then turned back and came up to her as she was sitting on the bed. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “See you later.”

She wanted to throw her arms around him and pull him close, tousle his hair, and breathe in his little boy smell that hadn’t caught up with the changing, angular body that was launching itself into puberty.

Instead, she blew him a kiss as he snuggled back under the covers. He didn’t even see it, let alone reach up and catch it the way he used to when he was little.

Schultz met her outside the room.

“Can you handle this?” he asked bluntly.

She had questioned her son with the same words, but in a gentle fashion. She could see that Schultz was not in a gentle mood.

“Yes, I can handle it,” she said testily. “I don’t know what you think of me, Detective, but I’m not some fragile peach blossom who faints at the sight of blood.”

Schultz shrugged and opened the door. PJ was aware of a blur of activity as several people moved around the room. She paused for a moment, and Schultz grabbed her arm and pushed. The smell was there, iron-rich and fresh, but she was expecting it. She took a deep breath and willed herself to show no reaction. She looked around with interest. What had at first seemed a blur now seemed a little more of a complicated dance.

“Here. I’ll hold your clipboard while you put these on,” Schultz said, holding out a pair of latex gloves.

While she was obediently putting on the gloves, a couple of technicians who had been standing in the center of the room with their backs toward her moved apart and went to opposite sides of the room. She was left with a clear view of Vanitzky’s body.

It was much worse than the photographs of the previous murder scene. The body sagged in the chair, bloody and violated. She found herself staring at the stump left behind where his head was lopped off, unable to force her eyes away from the unnatural, incomplete shape. An image of biting a round Tootsie Roll Pop, pulling it off the stick, and crunching it to get to the chewy stuff inside, the way she used to do when she was a child, surfaced in her mind. She pushed it aside before it could sicken her. Instead, she thought of the woman who discovered the body, Katrina something, and what she must have felt when she opened the door. Only a short time before, Katrina had received this man’s tenderness or simply his lust. In either case there was a bond between them, now severed as sharply as Vanitzky’s neck.

PJ became aware of a pain in her chest and discovered that she hadn’t taken a breath in a while. Struggling to keep her emotions and her stomach under control, she made a wide circle around the chair and its sad burden. She ended up in the suite’s bedroom. The first thing she noticed was a camcorder on a tripod, aimed at the bed. The implication was clear. She heard Schultz’s voice, low and intimate, as if he were whispering in her ear.

“Check it out, Doc. The guy liked to get it on camera when he was getting it on. Probably thought he was God’s gift to women, too. He had a great body—from the neck down, at least.”

In the middle of mayhem, PJ blushed. She had remembered that her ex-husband, Steven, once recorded the two of them in bed by putting a camcorder on the dresser. To cover her embarrassment, she cleared her throat and spoke up.

“Have you considered what might be on that tape? What if the killer was the lover?”

“You mean Vanitzky was bisexual? Involved with both Katrina and some man?”

“Well, yes, if we’re still on the assumption that the murderer is male.”

“Could be, but I think all we’ll see on that tape is lovely Katrina and the dear departed going at it.”

“Nevertheless, I’d like to view that tape as soon as possible.”

“So would I, Doc, but we’ve probably got different reasons. I could use a cheap carnal thrill about now.”

PJ’s mouth curled down in a frown. Was nothing sacred to this man? “I’ll sketch the bedroom. You can work on the other room.”

“Suits me. The view’s better, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“From the window in this room all you can see are air conditioners. The other room has a view of Forest Park. I always liked the park at sunrise.”

It was nearly eight in the morning by the time PJ got to her office at HQ. Schultz was off somewhere arranging to view the videotape. PJ put some coffee on to brew and slumped into her chair. She called her hotel to make sure that the taxi would be waiting for Thomas, and found out that he had left early, a half-hour ago. There was no phone service at the house yet, so she was out of touch with him. She sipped her coffee, thinking that she had been out of touch with him for some time. Wrapped in her own blanket of anger and misery, she had not had the emotional stamina to help anyone else. As she thought about it now, she felt that she was improving, regaining her sense of purpose.

How about that?
she thought.
Murder cures the post-divorce blues. As long as it’s someone else’s murder. Geez, now I’m thinking like Schultz.

Schultz came in and helped himself to a cup of coffee. “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to go watch lover-boy in action.”

She followed him to a room filled with audio and video equipment. Lieutenant Howard Wall was inside, sitting with his chair tipped back and his feet propped up on a worn green table which looked like it had served in World War II.

This is Louie,” Schultz said, nodding at a man in a wheelchair. “He does all our audio/video work.”

“Hello, Louie. You too, Howard,” PJ said.

“Let’s see what we got. Crank it up, Louie,” said Howard.

Louie waited until PJ and Schultz found seats, then he started the playback on a large monitor that rested precariously on the other end of the green table, opposite Howard’s feet.

It was a good video production. The lighting was just right, the camera was positioned to capture the most action. Apparently Vanitzky had some practice at this. PJ was embarrassed at first, sitting with three men watching such an intimate encounter. But there were no vulgar remarks, in spite of the way Schultz had behaved back in the hotel suite.

Vanitzky was a considerate lover, tender and gentle.

When it was over, Katrina sat on the edge of the bed pulling on her clothes. They conversed playfully and set up a date for the next evening. PJ could see the insulin kit, in a small blue zippered bag, lying on the night stand as Katrina kissed her lover good-bye. Shortly after she left the room, the sound of a running shower came from beyond the camera’s range. The camera remained focused on the bed; no one had thought to turn it off.

There was the sound of knocking on the door. Howard pulled his feet off the table, dropping his chair with a thump. They all leaned forward. There was a mumbled conversation.

“I can boost that later,” Louie said.

There was silence. Ten minutes went by as the camera showed nothing but the bed, tangled sheets, and pillow still bearing the outline of Katrina’s head as she pressed herself against it when she came. There were other noises off-camera, a door closing, other ones that couldn’t be identified immediately. More silence. The minutes crept by. Then there was a scream.

The killer had started his carving.

Everyone in the room could feel the knife high up between their shoulder blades, slicing a hot streak of pain. PJ rose from her chair in agitation, then sat back down. After a couple of minutes, Howard spoke.

“God Almighty, couldn’t anyone hear that?”

“Nope,” Schultz answered. “The hotel prides itself on quiet rooms. There’s a lot of sound-deadening stuff in the walls, ceilings, and floors. Now if you happened to be walking in the hall outside, you might hear something through the door.”

Soon after the screaming subsided. A little bit of the tension left the room. At least for the moment, Vanitzky was beyond pain.

“Come on,” Schultz urged. “Walk into the bedroom. Go take a piss or something.” They were all hoping that the murderer would come within camera range.

A strange sound, almost like buzzing or static, came on. Howard gestured to Louie to raise the volume, and they strained to hear.

“Shit,” said Schultz. “Shit. I know what that is.” Three faces turned in his direction.

“The bastard’s humming. The fucker’s slicing the life out of somebody and he’s humming the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

P
J AND SCHULTZ WENT
to Millie’s for breakfast. PJ was eager to leave. She wanted to drive over to her new home and check on Thomas and the furniture. She also wanted to distance herself from what she had just seen and heard. Images floated through her mind, Vanitzky and Katrina embracing, the bloodstains on the carpet underneath the chair, the arc of the cleaver in her simulation. She needed rest, and she needed to be with her son. But Schultz’s request to join him for breakfast seemed compelling.

There weren’t many customers. PJ surmised that the diner crowd ate early, and it was almost nine o’clock. It surprised her that Millie was not behind the counter, but then she felt silly for being surprised. The diner was open from five in the morning until midnight seven days a week; it was too much to expect that Millie would be there during all of the open hours. She ordered hot tea and a bagel with peanut butter. Schultz, who did not banter back and forth with the waitress named Kelly, ordered a full breakfast of coffee, juice, sausage, eggs over easy, hash browns, and extra toast. For a moment PJ amused herself picturing the cholesterol mounting an assault on Schultz’s arteries. When she glanced at him, she saw that he was tossing back what looked like a small handful of pills, which he swallowed with orange juice.

She had noticed that he moved slowly, almost grudgingly, in the morning, moving his arms, legs, and fingers in small arcs and conservative motions. He favored his left leg when he got up to use the bathroom. She put the facts together—gulping pills, probably Ibuprofen, morning stiffness—and decided that he had arthritis. PJ’s father suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, the kind that twisted his hands and made them nearly useless by the time he was forty. He was the editor of the Newton Daily News, published since 1902 in the small southeastern Iowa town of Newton, where PJ grew up. She remembered wrapping her father’s hands in steamy towels every morning, a small comfort offered by a loving daughter and accepted graciously, even when it made him late for work. When he couldn’t use a typewriter anymore, PJ typed his articles for him, and patiently handled the big red marker for him, awaiting his directions when he edited copy, which he did at the kitchen table every evening. Dad had died when PJ was away at college, but Mom still lived in a big, white two-story with a wrap-around porch on the edge of town, which is to say about two minutes from downtown Newton.

“How’s your arthritis this morning?” she asked.

Schultz stared at her, his face unreadable. “What makes you think I have arthritis, Doc?”

PJ was not so tired that she couldn’t recognize a defensive reaction. It was time to tread softly.

“My dad had pain in his hands, later in his knees. He used to climb stairs one step at a time, kind of dragging one leg behind him, not bending it.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

Getting nowhere, PJ decided to drop it. It really wasn’t her business, anyway. She had simply been concerned.

“Not a thing, Detective. Not a thing.” She pressed her teabag against the side of the cup with her spoon. She picked up the sugar dispenser. First the little flap stuck, then it suddenly let loose a torrent of sugar into her tea. She sighed.

The smell of Schultz’s breakfast was heavy in her nostrils. She had been amazed when she studied the physiology of smell to discover that what the sense organs were responding to was airborne molecules of the substance being smelled. When she smelled sausage, it was because actual sausage molecules had floated into her nose, dissolved in her nasal mucous, and been detected by olfactory receptors. Then her brain interpreted, from experience, that those particular molecules made up the smell of sausage. That led her to thoughts of what was in her nose when she smelled unpleasant things: a rotting animal, feces, blood. Blood on a carpet.

“Did you notice,” she said as Schultz filled his mouth with a huge forkful of eggs backed by half a sausage link, “that there were no indentations in the carpet?”

“I was wondering if you’d catch that,” he said. “Kelly, who’s in the kitchen this morning? These are the best damned eggs I’ve ever gotten here, and you can tell that to Millie when she hauls her ass in here.”

Kelly came over and leaned on her elbows in front of Schultz. Her uniform, unlike Millie’s, was unbuttoned at the top. PJ could tell that Schultz got a good view, and that he was enjoying it. The waitress patted his hand lightly and then straightened up; evidently even a steady customer was entitled to only a few seconds of titillation.

“Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “We don’t get many here. People treat us like we was invisible and got no feelings. The cook’s a new guy, quiet type, don’t even know his name yet, Petey, somethin’ like that. But he’s good. Handles them orders when things are really hoppin’ in here and don’t bat an eye. Works right through his break, too. But I’ll tell you one thing,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “the guy hums all the fuckin’ time he’s workin’. ’Bout to drive me crazy.” She made a small circle with her towel on the counter, as if considering how far to take the confidence. “There’s another thing too, and I’ll tell you ’cause you’re regular and all. But don’t you go tellin’ Millie. I don’t want no trouble.”