Gray Matter (21 page)

“I want to catch this bastard. I want to hang him up by his thumbs and cut his balls off. That clear enough for you? Yes, damn it, we’re working together.”

She slammed her fist down on the table. Her voice was low and hot, like a tomcat answering a challenge.

“Then let’s catch the bastard, before he kills again.”

Schultz stopped in the men’s room on his way back to his desk. He splashed some cold water on his face and dried with paper towels. There was a rage in him today, and it came from his lack of progress in the investigation. He knew he had tossed some of that rage in PJ’s direction, but what the hell. She was a big girl. She could handle it.

He could almost hear the seconds ticking away, knowing that another murder would come soon. How exactly he knew that, he couldn’t say. The golden thread that bound him to the killer, that would eventually connect them heart to heart and mind to mind, was growing stronger, taking shape and extending out into the darkness. But not fast enough.

At his desk he tried once again to find that place inside where thoughts came and went and left behind shadows of truth. The “Star-Spangled Banner” that the killer was humming in the video tape from Vanitzky’s place kept popping into his head, and along with it something that PJ had mentioned: the man following Sheila Armor was wearing a baseball cap.

He was reluctant to admit it, but that slim prospect was about the only thing he had going at the moment. Although still skeptical, he decided that surveillance wouldn’t do any harm. Schultz debated calling Anita or Dave, remembered that Dave had a birthday party for his daughter tonight, and that Anita was deep into a summer flu but was trying not to show it. He decided to take tonight himself and approach the lieutenant about personnel tomorrow. He would get over to Armor’s apartment about seven pm, when it was still daylight. The first murder had occurred around nine pm, the second about one am. Obviously, the killer did his nasty work in the dark.

At about five-thirty, Schultz was clearing his desk to leave when his phone rang.

“Schultz.”

“Yo, Schultz. This is Cortman, Narcotics.”

“Yeah?”

“Thought you might appreciate knowing about a bust we made this afternoon. Thought you should hear it from a friend, you know?”

“What is it?” Schultz was tense. He thought he already knew what the man was going to say.

“Your son, Rick. He was picked up for selling marijuana outside a junior high.”

“Christ. No shit?”

“No shit. He was observed making a couple of sales before he was collared. You could maybe talk to the arresting officer. That’s Ricardo, Jesus Ricardo. Know him?”

“Yeah. Tall dude, lots of gold rings, knife scar on his left cheek.”

“That’s the guy. Since this is a first drug-related arrest…well, you could talk to Ricardo, see if you and he and the DA’s office can work something out.”

“Yeah. Maybe I will. Thanks for letting me know.”

Schultz hung up the phone and sat, staring at his desk calendar which was still showing April. His thoughts were disjointed. The boy’s birth, Julia crying out, Schultz whisked into the waiting room, pacing and sweating. Three candles on a birthday cake. Rick’s first bicycle ride. A young teenager, going around with bandages on his face to make others think he had nicked himself shaving. His driver’s license, first night out on his own in the family car. Then the troubling times: suspended for vandalism at school, brought home drunk a few times by understanding fellow cops. Mood changes, shoplifting once, quarrels over staying out late. Rick giving them the news that he was dropping out of college, couldn’t hack it. Moving back in, sleeping late, jobless. Moving in with a friend after a big argument with Schultz.

Lazy. Insolent.

He and Julia were at opposite poles on how to deal with Rick, had been for many years. But Schultz deferred to her, left the decisions to her because he was out of the house so much, by necessity in the early years, by choice later on.

Now his son, a cop’s son, had chosen to embarrass good old Dad by selling drugs to twelve-year-olds.

He wasn’t in any hurry to spring Rick from the grasp of the Department. He knew he could, if he wanted to. He could collect some favors. But first, he was going to go home and talk to Julia about it. Really talk, for a change. He wasn’t going to let her defend the boy and then clam up, refusing to discuss it.

He was going to shove this in her face, by God.

Angry and deeply ashamed, Schultz left to confront his wife at home and later, he figured, his son in jail. He was going to get a late start on his surveillance at the Armor place, but his blood was up, and it was such a long shot anyway.

P
AULEY MAC WEARILY LUGGED
the case into his kitchen. Before opening it, he tended to other problems. His arms and face were scratched, and bruises were beginning to show there and elsewhere. He washed and dried carefully, and applied some antibiotic cream. He decided against bandages, figuring that would look a bit melodramatic.

The case contained the head of Sheila Armor, an artist, and she had fought ferociously. He had gotten into her apartment by imitating the special knock that her female lover used. He knew that the lover sometimes came by around seven pm, so that’s when he timed his visit. Pauley Mac had found out that the lover, an executive at a marketing firm, wouldn’t be over this evening. She was cheating on Sheila with a secretary from the firm. He had seen the two of them, dressed for excitement and heading out for the evening, and was certain, from prior observation, that they would come back to the executive’s townhouse to spend the night.

Pauley Mac didn’t have a disguise this time. He was counting on surprise to get him inside the door, and he was clutching the pewter toad he used to knock his guests unconscious. When she answered the door, it was obvious that she had been working. She was wearing only a man’s T-shirt which must have been a tall size, because it skimmed her thighs, and she was a tall woman. The T-shirt had originally been white, but it was covered with streaks of paint, some of them still wet. She carried a brush in her right hand, loaded with bright blue paint.

She must have had some self-defense training. She was quick and strong, and several inches taller than Pauley Mac. He got inside the door, but when he swung the pewter toad, she blocked his arm. The toad and the paint brush went flying across the room, and both were left empty-handed. There was a scuffle. He slipped on the polished wood floor of her living room, and he thought that she was going to get the better of him. He scrambled to his feet. It was pure luck that Pauley Mac landed a punch to her jaw, forcing her to tumble backward and hit her head against a steam radiator.

The pain of his first knife stroke on her back brought her abruptly back to consciousness, but by then she was securely tied.

When he was packed up and ready to leave her apartment, he looked around for the special item to leave for the police. He hadn’t brought any props with him this time, like the roses or the chocolate-covered strawberries. He wandered around the apartment, trying to get an idea. He ended up in the large room that served as her studio. On an easel was an unfinished painting of a woman and her daughter enjoying a picnic in a park. The young girl’s arm was outstretched and her face was lit with delight as she pointed out the beautiful sunset to her mother. The sun, clouds, and sky were incomplete, with only a few brush strokes to suggest the shapes. Pauley Mac smiled. With his gloved hand, he picked up one of the brushes which were lying in disarray on a nearby table, and went back into the living room. He dipped the brush in the woman’s blood on the floor, where it was seeping in between the wooden planks, and returned to the canvas. He drew in a childish-looking half-circle sun on the horizon, with straight lines sticking out of it to represent the rays of sunshine. He wondered how long it would take the police to notice that the sunset on her latest—and last—painting was not done by Armor but rather of her.

At home, he debated not using her brain because he felt that she would be one of the hostile guests, the destructive voices in his mind that urged him to make mistakes. But it would be such a waste. He really did want to learn to paint, and he liked this artist’s style. He had read about her show in the Riverfront Times. He had showered and shaved carefully, put on some nice clothes—his only really nice outfit—and gone to the gallery in Clayton. Her work appealed to him. She did mostly landscapes, in a vibrant style that practically leapt off the canvas.

This was one of his riskiest adventures, because the woman actually saw him the day before when he was following her home. Pauley Mac was scared when he was seen, but Dog had the perfect solution, one that came naturally, pissing on that fire hydrant so that she would think he was just a drunk. Typical of Dog, anyway.

By the time he cleaned up the kitchen, stomach comfortably full, it was nearly midnight. He studied the instant photos he had taken in Armor’s apartment, and was pleased with his work. Digging the photo album out from the bottom of his underwear drawer, he slid the photos into plastic sleeves. He couldn’t resist paging through the rest of the album, regretting for the hundredth or thousandth time that he hadn’t had an instant camera during the earlier part of his self-improvement program. Looking at the photos gave him an erection, but he had things left to do, so he let it subside.

Pauley Mac opened the freezer door atop his refrigerator and studied the contents critically. With the two other heads already inside, there simply wasn’t room for a third unless he threw out some ice cream. His favorite flavor, too: chocolate chip cookie dough. Dog would have thrown it out, but Pauley Mac wouldn’t stand for it.

When he was younger, he used to preserve the heads, having studied the method of the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador. After a while it got to be awkward lugging the lot of them around in a suitcase. Even shrunken heads take up room when they accumulate. To make things even more unpleasant, some of the guests reproached him in his mind whenever they caught a glimpse of their own heads.

Besides, Dog liked to travel light.

One afternoon, when he lived in Illinois, he rented a boat from a marina and dumped them all in Lake Michigan. He thought of it as a spring cleaning effort.

He decided to save the two that were already frozen and get rid of the fresh one from tonight, primarily because of the long hair attached to it, which meant it would take up more than its fair share of room in the freezer. He might have to look into buying a stand-alone freezer. When he started his next cycle, Childhood Innocence, he would need more storage room.
Although,
he mused,
using children could be a space-saver.

He bundled the woman’s head in burlap and drove to Busch Wildlife Area, a reserve in St. Charles County with a lot of fishing ponds. He selected one of the gravel turnoffs that led to a numbered pond. It was overcast that night, so there was no moonlight to help him out. He had to use a flashlight when he shut off the headlights and got out of the truck. Pauley Mac weighted the bundle with rocks and tossed it into the pond. He had done this before, in other parks in other states. He imagined that fish or snapping turtles pulled the burlap open and ate the flesh. The previous skulls were never recovered; perhaps they settled into the muck at the bottom of the pond.

An image came to him of an aquarium that had been in his fifth grade classroom. It had one of those plastic miniature human skulls on the bottom with an air hose tucked inside so that air bubbled out of the eye sockets. One memory triggered another, and he sat in his pickup for a time, with the window rolled down, remembering, listening to the night sounds and the voices in his head.

He thought he heard a whisper from Sheila Armor. It wasn’t pleasant:
I’ll get you, you cocksucker.

Perhaps he had made a mistake with her after all.

“WHAT’S THE MATTER,” SAID
Millie, “fries not greasy enough for you?” She looked with uncharacteristic concern at Schultz’s plate. He had taken a couple of bites of his burger and left the fries untouched after dousing them with ketchup.

Schultz pulled himself back to the present. “Nah, they’re OK. I just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

“Anything I can do?” she said. Schultz was surprised to hear that from Millie. He raised his troubled eyes to hers.

“I mean,” she said, “you being a paying customer and all. Not that you’re a decent tipper.”

A smile began to work at the corners of his mouth, then gave up.

“Yes, there is something you can do,” he said as she looked at him expectantly. “I need change to use the phone.” He shoved a dollar bill at her.

Wordlessly she broke the bill at the cash register and handed him an assortment of dimes and quarters. He left his customary quarter tip and went to the pay phone near the bathrooms. He dialed Sheila Armor’s number to introduce himself and let her know that he’d be outside watching the rest of the night. It was almost ten pm.

Her answering machine picked up on the fourth ring.

Hello. I’m home now, but I’m working, so I won’t come to the phone. Don’t bother leaving a message, just call me later. Chris, if it’s you, we’re on for tennis tomorrow at seven, usual court. Don’t be late this time. Bye.

He left a message anyway.

He drove to her address, which was on Northwood off Skinker, and parked the car across the street, a couple of doors down. Then he walked around the building to check for rear exits. Armor lived in a three story apartment building. Around the back there were two fire escapes, one on each end of the building, which led to an alley. The alley ended at Armor’s building. It served the apartment building next door, and dead-ended there, too. There was a narrow passage to the street. The whole arrangement was designed for trash pickup, so that a truck could pull between the buildings and empty the dumpsters around back. From where Schultz was sitting, he could see the front door and the alley exit onto the street. It wasn’t ideal—there should be somebody around back to be doubly sure—but it would have to do for tonight.