You and I, Me and You (14 page)

We didn't mind the tantrum because it was a welcome break from reading quietly. We'd been buried in paper all morning; maybe we needed a new way of looking at things.

“These people are linked!” George was still yelling, as if the conference room were the size of a ballpark instead of a conference room and if he didn't shout, we wouldn't hear him. “Just because we don't get it yet doesn't mean they aren't.”

“Okay,” Emma Jan said.

“They are absolutely linked. Our guy was drawn to them;
this was not random.
Don't get caught in the trap of looks or sex or race: there are all kinds of triggers for all kinds of serial killers.”

“Right,” I said. We both pretended we didn't already know what he was yelling. “That's not a trap I want to get caught in. Good call.”

“If your vics are male and female, rich and poor, white and black, et cetera, they have something that called to their killer. They all have that exact something. Find it.”

“Oh, sure.” I whipped out my cell phone and began tapping away. “Adding it to the list. One, Pick up dry cleaning. Two, Find link to serial killer's vics. Three, Buy toilet paper.” I looked up, thumbs still wiggling. “Good thing you paced and yelled. ‘Find it.' Awesome. That's the one thing we wouldn't have thought of. Can't thank you enough, Black George.”

He slumped into his chair. “I hate it when you're like this.”

“I know I'm the new kid on the block, Cadence, but when have you ever been like this?”

“Moving Day,” George and I said in unison. I went on: “I think we're going at this backwards. We're looking at what Sussudio's done … let's look at what he might do. We've got three vics: he cut one—”

“Wayne Seben,” Emma Jan said.

“Yes, and we've got one he hanged in her kitchen—”

“Rita McNamm.”

“And one he drowned in her tub.”

“Carrie Cyrus.”

“Yeah.” George was flipping through reports. “All killed in their own homes in ways they could have used to kill themselves.”

“All right. So. Methods of suicide. Obviously—”

“But you're still gonna say it,” Emma Jan teased.

“—we've seen hanging, drowning, bleeding. What else is there?”

“Asphyxiation,” Emma Jan suggested. “But not by hanging. Suicide bag.”

“Yes. OD'ing, carbon monoxide poisoning. And jumping. Shooting yourself. And suicide by cop.”

“Some cops get all the luck.” George sighed. “Can you imagine? Fatally shooting some idiot and there are
no
consequences?”

“Except moral ones,” Emma Jan pointed out (she was so cute).

“Right! So, none.”

“Let's stick with methods people can use in their own homes. So…” I thought for a minute. “Poisoning themselves. Drinking drain cleaner or something.”

“Immolation,” Emma Jan said.

“Right right,” Paul said from the doorway. “Those are all blue. The scenes, though, the pictures—” He pointed to the stacks and stacks of files. “They're blue. That's it, that's the problem, it's
been
the problem, he's trying for orange and he's getting blue.”

How wildly unhelpful
I thought but did not say. “Paul, we need a bit more from you than that.”

“Suicide is one color, murder is another.”

We all sort of sat there as that thunderously simple concept sort of rocketed through our minds. My mind, for sure—and from the look on George's and Emma Jan's faces, probably all our minds.

“Oh…”

Fuck me,
I guessed.

“… fuck me,” George groaned. “Is that what it is? Is it that fucking simple?”

“He's not just making murders look like suicides.” Emma Jan had a look on her face I knew well—it was on my own now and again. She was thinking hard, feeling her way along a new idea, and talking out loud as she did it. “He's going there … to help them? Is that what he thinks he's doing?”

“Shit, yes! He's the good guy, right?
They're
letting
him
down. They're … he's seeing them before he kills them. Like with Wayne Seben—he's maybe trolling Dr. Gallo's group, maybe other groups, too. He sees them, feels for them—thinks he does, anyway, the deluded shit.” It was hilarious to hear one sociopath disparage another one. “And then he … he…”

“It's like what we already knew,” I said. The idea was too big for my body to stay in one spot; I pulled a George and got up out of my seat. Instead of pacing like a caged hedgehog or prowling like a confused leopard, I sort of wandered around the table, touching the chairs while I thought out loud. “What our vics had in common. It wasn't about race or sex or body type; it was their mind-set, how they viewed the world. They viewed the world as people who want
out
of the world. Our guy does, too, or thinks he does … or wants to. Kindred spirits, right? That's what he thinks. That's why he's drawn.

“So our guy, he meets them. He either makes up his mind about them right away or he hangs around getting to know them—if it's the latter, that's how we'll get him.

“So he decides about them, and goes to their homes to help them. Like George said, he thinks he's the good guy in the scenario. He's the hero. He's there to help, and then the person he's going out of his way to help backs out of the deal.” I shook my head. “I can't even imagine how that must enrage him.”

“Ohhhh boy,” Emma Jan said, and George nodded and followed my train of “logic,” if it could ever be called that. “He's going to their homes to help them do this wonderful noble thing. Then they pussy out. Then he loses his shit. They broke their promise, right? This solemn sacred thing he was gonna help them do, and it's turned to shit. So he kills them the way he was going to help them suicide, except he's mega-ticked. That's the rage we keep seeing.”

“It's also why neighbors aren't seeing anything or hearing anything. The vics are letting their killer in! And once he's inside, it's easy enough to muffle sound.”

“The victim thinks up to a point that they truly want to kill themselves.” Emma Jan picked up the narrative. “They know there'll be consequences for anyone who helps them die—Dr. Kevorkian did prison time for helping patients kill themselves, terminal patients who were going to die anyway. They threw his ass in jail for it. So these guys, they're motivated to help the killer. They're sneaking him inside and making sure he can get away safely. They're thinking they don't want the poor guy to get caught. So when it goes bad…”

“… they've already set up their killer's escape route.” The thought. The thought of what must have gone through their minds when they realized they were going to be murdered, and that their killer would get away. I shuddered all over and looked down … the hair on my arms was trying to fluff up.

George was rubbing his forehead. “I think that's what Shiro meant.”

“What?”

George looked at me. No. Through me. “Come on out,” he told me (?). “You know you want to.”

 

chapter thirty-three

“That is why
their homes are so tidy!” I moved as if to leap to my feet, only to find I was already standing. Ah. Cadence and her wandering-while-randomly-touching-things affectation.

“Heeeeere's Shiro!”

I ignored him. “Remember, they fully expect to die that day, so they know the police will be called. They know strangers will be walking through their homes; they know family will have to go through their things. They are obsessively tidying their homes with that in mind.”

“That's amazing. You're gonna be dead; who cares if somebody sees your dirty underwear?”

“Some people have things called feelings, George, and those feelings make us care about what other people think, even those we do not know.”

This time, it was George's turn to shudder and get goose bumps. Heh.

“We wondered how he or she or they was cleaning their homes, or how he or she or they was getting their victims to do it under duress … they were not doing it under duress! They were doing it of their own volition.” I grinned down at George. “You were quite right. I
did
want out. That has been bothering me and bothering me.”

“What a fuckin' genius, this guy! This is the perfect MO if you wanna kill people but hate all the prep and the mess.” George was unable to keep the admiration from his tone. “This guy. Man.”

“Perhaps you shall have cocktails after we catch him or her or them,” I suggested.

“Don't tease,” he begged. “Listen, should we even be looking for him at this point?”

“Even for you,” Emma Jan said quietly, “that's too much.”

“Hear me out! He's going to suicide clubs, maybe finding his victims online or whatever, but he knows they're people who want to kill themselves. They'd do it themselves if they had the balls, right? They don't, so he wants to help.”

“I give up on you.”

“I get what you're saying,” Emma Jan said, “but it's still against the law. He's still murdering them.”

“Does this mean the groups he frequents— When this gets out, that if you joined their group you could've been murdered, will they get more members or less?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing the headache away. Unfortunately, George—honestly puzzled, which somehow made the whole thing worse—continued with, “Shouldn't we be more interested in a killer who kills people who
don't
want to die?”

“Well…”

“Do not get caught in the trap of his so-called logic,” I warned. “I admit it happens sometimes. But you will never forgive yourself later.” I turned to the bewildered sociopath. “She is correct. It is against the law. We will catch him and stop him. The end.”

“Okay, but for the record: I don't get it.”

“For the record, we do, so fear not.” I looked at Paul. “You brilliant man. However do you do it?”

“I
told
you. He comes to them because he believes he believes he thinks they want to be orange. Then they won't, they
won't
be orange. He tries to
make
them be, but he can only make them be blue.” Paul shook his head. “I can feel how mad he is when they won't be orange.”

We digested that in silence. Even having him explain it was of no help; the man was not of our world(s). Then, from George: “At least now we know what to look for.”

In fact, I did not. The idea of his or her or their thought process was still so new to me. Funny, too, how we had no proof of any of it, had yet to catch him or her or them. And yet we all knew we were right. We could feel it. And so I raised my eyebrows at George, hoping to be still more enlightened.

“The ones who didn't pussy out. The ones he—”

“He or she or they,” I corrected.

“Yeah, thanks, please die screaming, Shiro. We look for the ones
he
was able to be the savior for. Because I'll bet there were some who didn't chicken out. Those will be the assisted-suicide crime scenes without all the rage. Cross-check enough names, and I bet our
guy
will pop up.
He's
gonna fry for the ones
he
made help themselves, but
he'll
be caught by the ones who stuck to the deal.” George glanced around the table. “Doncha love it?” he asked, delighted.

Yes indeed. Was that our failing or our strength?

 

chapter thirty-four

Of course, with
our new understanding of Sussudio's motives, the first place to start was Dr. Gallo. Paul went back to his programming, Emma Jan went back to researching other suicide help groups, and I, well aware of George's predatory interest in what may or may not have transpired between Dr. Gallo and me last night, could show no hesitation: “I shall contact Dr. Gallo at once.”

“I'll bet,” he leered.

“Stop that.” I would not rise to his childish antics. “Of course you must come with me.”

“Perv!”

“To interview him again.” I turned and gave him a look, and he clutched both ears and backed away.

“Just calling it the way I see it, ma'am, and keep your fingernails to yourself, you horrible bitch. You're not fooling anybody.”

“No?”

He snorted, an unlovely sound. “You want him so bad you're practically vibrating.”

True. Yet irrelevant.
“And regardless of what people think they see, George Pinkman, I
am
a petite Asian-American woman. I am the part of a tall blond midwesterner who thinks she is Asian-American and not gangly.”

“You spend waaaay too much time listening in on my and Cadence's private conversations.”

I snorted, another unlovely sound, but some absurdities can only be met with a snort. Even those who know better, as George did, as I did, often forgot that whatever our thoughts to the contrary, Adrienne and Cadence and I were the same person. We were personality quirks, not people, and no more a separate individual than Paul's synesthesia was a separate person from him.

(It has taken years of therapy for me to admit this, for Cadence to admit this. Adrienne admits nothing, though she did set our doctor's desk on fire. Now he sees us with no fewer than three extinguishers in the office, one within hand's reach at all times.)

All this ruminating about something it had taken me years to acknowledge to avoid a simple truth: George and I had to go through all that nonsense to hide how delighted and uneasy I was at the opportunity to see Dr. Gallo less than sixteen hours after I nearly raped him in his own backseat.

(Pathetic.)

Yes.

On our way to the doctor's place of business, we stopped in to see Michaela, who was, for a wonder, not slicing phallic-shaped vegetable matter but working quietly at her laptop in her office. She was bent forward and typing so intently her silver hair had swung into her face. Her hair was normally kept under stern control with clips, headbands, and/or the force of her will.