Gray Matter (29 page)

“What if he’s not an officer? Case in point—you. You’re a civilian employee. Did you take any tests to get on board?”

“No, but I filled out an application and submitted a résumé.”

“Résumé services will do that for you. All our creep needed was fifty bucks. There’s a lot of jobs where all you need is a clean police record. It’s not like there’s that many applicants for a job cleaning toilets.”

“If he was cleaning toilets, how did he get access to information about the investigation?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he divines it from sheets of toilet paper, like reading tea leaves. All I know is there’s a leak someplace.” Schultz stopped for a minute and fumbled in his pocket. He started to remove a pill bottle, then slipped it back and asked PJ if he could use the bathroom.

She was getting a little tired of his coyness. “If you need to take something for your arthritis,” she said, “go right ahead. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She could see emotions play over his face, and then he seemed to reach a decision. He took out the bottle and dumped three pills in his palm. They seemed lost in his large hand. He tossed them back with a swallow of coffee.

“Today’s been one of the bad days,” he said. “Left knee feels like it’s about to freeze up altogether. Then every now and again a sharp pain goes through it, like somebody stuck a torch on it.”

“What are you taking?”

“Ibuprofen. Sometimes aspirin.”

“There are better medications than that. You haven’t seen a doctor?”

“Nope. I have to pass a physical to stay on active duty, and if I went to the Department physician with this, he’d have me back at a desk. Or retired. This way, as long as he doesn’t take X-rays, he won’t ground me. And he won’t take X-rays unless somebody snitches on me.” He glared at PJ.

“What about a private doctor? As long as you paid for the visit yourself, you could even use a phony name. They don’t take your fingerprints, you know.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Schultz looked uncomfortable. “I just don’t like going to the doctor, haven’t since I was a child.”

“Haven’t liked it or haven’t gone?”

“Both. Except for the mandatory Department physicals. And then I keep my mouth shut.”

“The big, brave detective is scared to go to the doctor?”

“So you know one of my secrets. It certainly isn’t the worst one.”

“You’re not being logical. If you went to a private doctor and got some effective medication, you could do a better job of concealing your arthritis on the job.”

Schultz looked doubtful. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Well, now you have, and I’m going to nag you mercilessly until you go. I’m a champion nagger, too.”

“That’s a fact. Suppose I did. What doctor could I go to?”

“How should I know?” PJ said. “I’m new in town. Call a referral service, or let your fingers do the walking.”

Thomas came bounding down the steps, with Megabite tucked under one arm, carrying a red cylindrical duffel bag stuffed so tightly it looked obscene. Both PJ and Schultz laughed when they saw it. Ordinarily Thomas would have picked up on it, but he was too focused on his adventure.

“What?” Thomas said. “What’s funny? My hair messed up or something?”

“It’s nothing,” PJ said. “Let’s get out to the car.”

Schultz levered himself to his feet, feeling his left knee pop but ignoring it.

“You will think about our discussion, won’t you, Detective?” PJ asked.

“Yeah, sure. By the way, what are the other things?”

“Other things?”

“The other things that make me lovable,” Schultz said as he sauntered out.

PJ managed to keep herself in good spirits while visiting Bill Lakeland and dropping off Thomas. But when she returned home, she went through an emotional crash. No longer needing to hide her feelings from Thomas, she let herself fall apart, sobbing at the kitchen table. She was frightened, more frightened than she wanted to admit to Schultz or Thomas.

The killer had been to her home again.

She had dealt with sociopaths before, but they had been confined to hospitals or prisons. This one had freedom of movement, and had demonstrated that he had cunning and strength as well. He knew where she lived and that she was pursuing him. He lacked the inhibitions that society and his own conscience should normally impose. Where others might get some emotional relief by imagining killing a rotten boss, a rude salesclerk, or an infuriating teenager, this man might act. Nothing held him back except the demands of his own sociopathic behavior, which set the pattern for his killing.

As far as she knew, the only thing protecting her from a gruesome death was the fact that she had no artistic talent. She sent silent thanks to her mother, who had not insisted that she continue with her piano lessons when she was nine years old.

She remembered her speculation that this killer could break out of the pattern of his past murders, and that made her feel even worse.

For a time she was lost to fear, unable to break its grip on her mind and body. Then she could feel it receding, almost like watching a train disappear into the distance.

She wondered why she was pursuing him. It was like running toward a tornado; surely he was as dispassionate in his destruction as a funnel cloud. Why didn’t she run away, run at right angles to the tornado and get the hell out?

The answer hit her like a fist in her belly, strong enough to shake not only her body but her deepest conceptions about herself. She wanted to stop him, to put a stop to the evil that walked around disguised as a person, to personally see to it that he didn’t kill again. She didn’t have much opportunity to get to know Sheila Armor, but she had talked with the woman, laughed with her, admired her, and seen a flash of the same kind of vulnerability that she herself possessed. Now that life, and all the promise that it held, was ended. His other victims she knew only through photos and bloodstains, but she felt their deaths too, as dark blows to her soul. She wondered how many blows Schultz’s soul had taken, and whether hers would be as resilient.

Two years ago she would never have believed that she would become deeply involved in police work. Now it seemed like there was nothing else that would be worthwhile for her. She had found a purpose, and her career before St. Louis seemed shallow to her now. Consumer studies? How could she have spent her time like that?

She splashed her face with water to wash away the salty tracks. It was nearly ten pm, and she didn’t feel like doing any work at home. She opened a box that hadn’t been unpacked yet, pulled out the first video tape on top of the stack inside, and popped it into the TV/VCR combo she had bought in the relatively flush days before she was paying for college courses for two boys. She watched three hours of Star Trek episodes before climbing the stairs and falling into bed in her shorts and T-shirt.

W
HEN PJ WOKE UP
Saturday morning, she stayed in bed for a long time, reviewing the three murders and wondering how they would come up with the killer’s identity. Schultz still seemed confident, almost serene. Ever since his trip to Tennessee, he felt that he was on the trail of a specific person, Paul Macmillan, and all he had to do was locate him. Where did his certainty come from? Did he have anything he wasn’t telling her? At least he was finally willing to admit that the break-in and the outside destruction at her home were associated with the murders.

She showered and dressed in clean clothes. It was so time-consuming to go to a coin-operated laundry that she was starting to think of a clean outfit as a luxury. She was going to have to get a washer and dryer soon, but for now PJ put thoughts of money firmly from her head. There was a place and time to worry about that, and it wasn’t here and now.

It was sunny outside, already at least eighty degrees at eight in the morning, and humid. As she ate her breakfast of crumb coffee cake and grapefruit, she felt the emptiness of the house settle on her like a bank of fog. She couldn’t hear Thomas thumping around upstairs or Megabite crunching her dry cat food over in the corner of the kitchen, and she missed those reminders of life.

When the phone rang, she was brushing the grapefruit juice splatters off her T-shirt with a damp dishcloth.

“Penny? It’s Mike.” For some reason, Mike wanted to call her Penny rather than PJ, but she didn’t mind. She wondered what was on his mind at eight on a Saturday morning, but she was willing to let him take his time getting around to it. They chatted for nearly ten minutes about the weather and the input routines for the data gloves. Then he paused. She thought he was about to break off the conversation, so she beat him to it.

“Well, I’m sure you have a busy day planned, so I’ll let you get to it,” she said.

“Wait, I…”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to…that is…”

“Spit it out, Mike. It couldn’t be all that bad.”

“Have dinner with me. Here. Tonight.”

Her heart jumped. She had been hoping he would make some move like this. She had been planning to call him when the case was completed, if he hadn’t taken the plunge first. She had been thinking about him all week. She wanted…What? A lover? A friend? A husband? A father for Thomas?

“I’d love to,” she said warmly. “I could use some company that doesn’t have a keyboard.”

“I’m actually a pretty good cook,” he said eagerly. “Is there anything I should avoid? Allergies or something?”

It was an unusual question. PJ wondered if he or his ex-wife had an allergy problem. She suddenly realized that she didn’t know if he had any kids. If he did, were they living with him?

“No, I guess I’ve got a strong stomach. Comes from all those Hostess Cup Cakes I eat. It’s a well-kept medical secret—that creamy stuff inside boosts immunity.”

He laughed. “I guess that was kind of an odd question. My daughter is allergic to peanuts. Not just mildly allergic, either. She could die from eating a handful of peanuts or even a peanut butter cookie. I’ve gotten in the habit of asking people before I cook for them.”

So he did have children. “I can understand that. How old is she?”

“Patty’s eleven, going on sixteen. My other daughter, Carolyn, is eighteen. She’ll be starting college this fall.”

“Do you see them often?” PJ couldn’t think of a diplomatic way of asking if they lived with him.

“The girls are here every other weekend and all summer. Patty’s got a sleepover tonight, and Carolyn’s going out on a date. Most Saturday nights I’m on my own. But that’s OK. I like to see them out having fun. Say, if you want to bring Thomas tonight, feel free.”

“He’s staying with a friend tonight,” she said. She didn’t feel like explaining that Thomas had moved out entirely. They settled on six pm, and she got his address. She was surprised to find that he didn’t live in the city, but in a west county suburb, Chesterfield.

Looking out the window at the ruined flower bed, PJ’s plans for the day fell into place. First she phoned Thomas at Winston’s home to let him know she’d be gone that evening. He pressed her on where she was going, and she had to admit that she was having dinner at a friend’s house, and that the friend was male. This led to hoots and laughter on the other end as Thomas shared some apparently crude joke with Winston.

PJ went out into the sunshine, got in her car, and drove to a hardware store. It was a small one, the full-service kind where you admit that you didn’t have the slightest idea what you needed to repair the thingamajig. She left with a whole trunk full of supplies: topsoil, peat moss, a tray of annual flowers, a shovel and trowel, gardening gloves, a can of some chemical stuff called Graffiti Out, six gallons of white exterior paint, and a hefty paint brush, the kind that really means business.

She worked on the flower bed first, because the flowers she had bought looked as though they couldn’t wait to get into the ground and under the sun. She dug in the topsoil and peat moss and set the flowers in the carefully prepared bed. When it was time to water them, she discovered that she had forgotten a watering can or hose, so she filled a kitchen pot over and over at the outdoor faucet and poured the water through a colander. It wasn’t exactly a gentle sprinkling effect, but at least she didn’t swamp the little plants.

She applied the Graffiti Out with an old bath towel. It was supposed to be left on for an hour, so she went inside, drank a soda, and worked on her PowerBook for awhile. When the time was up, she went outside and scrubbed the area with wet towels. It felt wonderful to be physically active, to be taking control, to be eradicating the stain the killer had left on her home. More and more she was thinking of the rental house as her home. She wondered if she could scrape up the down payment to buy it, maybe in a few months.

Painting was a perfect activity to free her mind. As she hoisted the heavy brush and spread the bright white paint, she pulled her thoughts together about the case. She felt that somewhere in all the scattered bits of information she had, there was something crucial she just wasn’t seeing. It was as though everything was there, but she just couldn’t get it in focus. It reminded her of those computer-generated flat images which, when you stared at them in just the right way, suddenly popped into a 3D view. You had to look beyond the image, not directly at it. She felt that if she could just see beyond the surface of the facts she had, a solution would spring out at her.

After PJ had finished painting over the large area where the letters had been, she stepped back to admire her work. She noticed that the newly-painted portion made the older section look drab. She might as well do the entire back side of the house. There were over four gallons of paint left. She wondered why she had bought so much paint. Apparently she had been subconsciously planning to do the whole side. During the rest of the summer, she could work her way around the whole house. The windows, though, would have to be scraped and done with trim paint. That would have to wait. She could borrow a ladder from Mrs. Brodsky next door after lunch.

Lunch. Her stomach rumbled. She had been working hard and had not had anything but a soda since breakfast. She decided to treat herself to lunch at Millie’s. She hopped in her VW, thinking of an old-fashioned chocolate milkshake in a tall V-shaped glass with a spoon for the thick parts and a straw to suck up the melted ice cream at the bottom—just the way Millie served one.