Hush (29 page)

"Brought in a couple of kids who were caught
selling it on the street. I guess it's a new kind of high, but they
hadn't sold any to anybody who fit our profile."

"What about the last crime scene?"

"Nothing."

"Your apartment? Anything happening
there?"

"I think he must know the building is under
surveillance. Maybe we should make a big show of moving the cops
out."

Max shook his head, checked the rearview
mirror, then over his right shoulder before executing a lane
change. "If he figures out who you are, you'll be the next
target."

"Which would make me the perfect bait."

"Not a good idea. What about responses to the
letter from the infant? Documents or Forensics come up with
anything yet?"

"No, but Linguistics came up with a character
analysis that closely matches our profiles."

"Good for us. Any leads from the envelopes,
paper, or ink?"

"Not yet. Every public-document office in
Chicago is trying to come up with a possible match, but that could
take weeks. We're going to run another letter soon."

"That's not a good idea."

"Why not? We're hoping to keep up an ongoing
conversation. The responses have stopped, and the longer we can
keep him talking, the better chance we have of catching him."

"You don't even know if any of the responses
are actually from him. You might be putting energy into a strategy
that will simply be a waste of our time, time that could be better
spent elsewhere."

"Is that your only concern?" she asked,
trying to imply that it was a damn lame one.

"I'm afraid it might backfire. I'm afraid the
killer might overreact. That it could actually accelerate the
murders."

"What are you basing that on? We already know
he feels guilty about killing the babies. Why not use that to our
advantage?" She was dismayed to find them arguing again, but she
wasn't going to back down in order to avoid a confrontation.

"I don't know what I'm basing it on. There is
nothing to base it on. There's been no other case like this in the
history of serial killings. That's what I'm basing it on. This guy
doesn't fit the pattern, and he might not react the way we want him
to."

"So we don't run the new letter?"

"This isn't a dictatorship. I'm not going to
tell you not to run it, I'm just saying it's against my better
judgement."

"Really? There wasn't one other person who
thought it was a bad idea, that's including three experts on serial
killers."

Unable to finish her bagel, Ivy wrapped the
remaining half and tossed it back in the brown bag, rolling the top
down with a loud, angry rustle of paper. They continued in silence
through two lights. "Why did you okay the first letter then?"

"I thought it was worth a try. We've done it,
but we don't want to push it."

"I think you're being too cautious."

"You don't know what you're doing."

"Oh, so we're back to that."

"I don't want to fight."

"Neither do I."

They pulled into the parking lot. Max found a
spot in the shade under the overhead ramp. They got out and walked
toward Headquarters in silent hostility.

He was having trouble staying focused. Random
thoughts would jump into his brain, then jump out before he could
fully explore them.

Something eating away at him. Eating, eating,
knocking on his head, trying to get in, trying to get out.

Go away.

Babies, babies, babies. Little baby boys
smelling like powder and cream. Take their breath away, take their
breath away. . . . Hush, hush, sweet little boy, Momma's here.
Momma's right here.

"Last call," someone said.

He looked up, his hand gripping an empty
drink glass, the short kind that was used for whiskey on the rocks.
His brain crash-landed, putting him back in the here and now, a
crappy neighborhood bar a half-mile from his home. His mother had
sent him out—he looked up at the clock—hours ago to get her a
six-pack of beer. Instead, he'd bought drinks for himself. And when
her money ran out, he started using his own.

The bartender, a thin, world-weary man with
deep creases in his cheeks, was still waiting. "Somebody should put
you out of your misery," he told the bartender.

"What?"

It was always fun to throw things like that
at people. They never knew how to react. How easy it was to disturb
someone with just a few words, words that didn't fit the protocol.
Humans came with a manual, a set of rules, a code that saturated
every waking moment of their pitiful lives. But if you stepped
outside that code, it threw people off because there was nothing in
the manual about seriously fucking with somebody's head.

"I said, Somebody should put you out of your
misery. Wouldn't you like that? Think about it."

He usually didn't drink. His mother drank,
and he didn't want to do anything she did. And drinking made things
he could normally suppress rise to the surface. But there was such
a feeling of release to it, such a sense of freedom.

"No more bartending," he said. "No more
moving between crummy sets. Your home. The bar. Home. Bar. See what
I mean?"

"Get the hell out of here."

"I want another drink."

"You ain't gettin' another drink, now get the
hell out before I call the cops."

He wagged a finger at him. "You don't know
who you're talking to." He leaned closer. "I have power."

The bartender laughed in his face. "Get out
of here, psycho. You don't scare me. You're just another loser." He
picked up a cordless phone and began dialing.

The murderer of infants, the murderer of
mothers, got to his feet knowing he possessed the power of God in
his hands. "I'm leaving."

He lurched from the building, then dropped
into his car, which was parked a block away. He sat there in the
dark, watching the last of the customers leave the bar. Engine
idling, he watched as the lights went out, one by one. Finally, the
bartender emerged from the building, locked the door, then began
walking down the sidewalk in his direction.

He tromped down on the accelerator. The
engine roared, the car flying forward. With a heavy thud, the left
front fender struck the bartender, tossing him over the hood where
he landed in a crumpled heap in the street near the curb.

What had he done?

What was happening?

Out of control. Out of control.

Now what? The man would talk. He would turn
him in.

He executed a U-turn and came back for the
pathetic, worthless life-form that was trying to crawl away. He ran
over him again, bones crunching. Then again, and again, finally
leaving the scene.

He looked in his rearview mirror. It was
late; the streets were deserted.

He got on the interstate and drove a full
fifteen miles north of where he lived and pulled into a self-
service car wash, closing the door behind him. Quickly, he fed
money into the meter, turning the dial to hot/soapy. With the wand,
he directed the high- power washer toward the car, knocking off
chunks of flesh, the water running pink around his feet. After that
he drove home, silently entering the house through the side door
that led directly to the basement. He kicked off his bloody shoes,
then crawled into bed, rocking himself to sleep, sucking his thumb,
his mind chanting, Out of control. Out of control.

Pounding on the floor above woke him. He
looked at the clock: 11:45 A.M. He jumped out of bed, his heart
racing while the pounding kept on and on. He lost his balance and
fell to the floor, to the cement, holding his thick head. Confused.
He was so confused. Can't remember. Can't remember.

Last night. He remembered being sent out for
beer. Instead of coming back, he'd spent her money. He'd gotten
drunk. No wonder his head hurt so much, no wonder he couldn't
think. No wonder he couldn't remember anything else.

And now she was awake and furious. Unsedated,
yet confined to bed, she'd want to know what he'd done with her
money. She would yell at him, scream at him.

Dirty boy, dirty, dirty boy.

Regina Hastings loved Chicago—she'd lived
there all her life, but the heat was smothering. They should let
cops wear shorts the way they did in Florida.

She'd grown up south of Chinatown in what was
referred to as one of Chicago's bungalow belts. The houses were
small, the lots were small, and most people didn't have air
conditioners. But when you're little, you don't notice things like
that.

She rechecked the address in her notebook,
slowing her Corolla in order to spot the house numbers. She was on
the south side of the Twenty-fifth District, an area of town she
wasn't that familiar with. Her beat had always been north of Grand.
She spotted Hanks, the tavern where a brutal murder had taken place
a few days earlier.

She was sick of the Madonna Murderer case.
When she was initially "chosen" to be a part of the investigation,
she'd found it flattering. And she thought it would be fun,
interesting, a break from rapid-response patrol, not to mention
more hours and more money. But damn. She was always assigned the
boring jobs. If she'd wanted to do this kind of door-to-door shit,
she'd have become an Avon lady. And if she'd wanted to work on a
project that required long-term commitment with possibly no chance
of fulfillment or success, she'd have become a cancer
researcher.

And she had to admit to herself that she
missed being able to torment Ronny all day.

The fucking house numbers. Wasn't it a law
that residents of Chicago had to have visible numbers on all the
houses? If it wasn't, it should be.

Counting back from the corner, she finally
hit pay dirt.

The place she was looking for was in a
run-down area that the revitalization project hadn't yet found— or
had purposefully overlooked. It was rust-stained stucco, with pale
green shutters and matching trim. Weeds grew in the chain-link
fence that surrounded an adequate yard. She could hear downshifting
semis from one of the nearby interstates.

This was about the twentieth stop she'd made
today. A month earlier, they'd investigated everyone they could
find in the Chicago area who'd been released from a mental hospital
within the last five years. Now they'd decided to go back ten
years, which gave them a head count of literally hundreds of
ex-patients to wade through. This time they were looking for
patients who had a connection to math. And guess who had to do the
footwork? Give it to Regina. Regina will do it.

The task had seemed insurmountable, but thank
God they'd pulled officers from other sections who were now having
as much fun as she was. What really burned her butt was that
Ramirez was lounging around at Headquarters, soaking up air
conditioning, faxing handwriting samples to offices, schools,
public agencies, basically any place that kept documents on file.
Maybe she should give him a break. He'd actually been going out of
his way to be nice, but she was scared shitless of becoming just
another notch in his belt. Instead of driving him off as it did
most guys, her rape revelation seemed to have increased his
interest. Almost every day he invited her over to his place for
dinner, but she always declined, mostly because she knew that a
little wine, a little candlelight, could send her over the edge and
pretty soon he'd know the what and where of her tattoo.

She stepped from the little green Toyota
she'd recently purchased. She'd never had a new car before, and she
couldn't help but admire it on a daily basis, looking it over for
door dings every time she got out. Two days ago, someone in the
parking lot at Headquarters had put a tiny dent in it. She'd
flipped out when she'd seen it.

Dressed in her blue uniform, her badge in
place, clipboard in hand, Regina approached the fenced yard looking
for signs of a dog. There were none. The gate wasn't locked, so she
lifted the metal latch.

At the front door, she knocked, then stepped
back to wait, grateful that the porch was at least shaded. To her
right, a window air conditioner hummed. The shades were pulled down
tight to keep out the hot sun. She knocked a second time. Finally a
middle-aged man answered, drying his hands on the red-and-white-
checked apron that was tied casually around his waist.

"I was canning spaghetti sauce," the man said
with a friendly, almost bashful smile. He was of average height,
dark hair, dark eyes.

A man who cooked. For Regina, it was almost
love at first sight.

"Just wondered if I could ask you a few
questions," she said. "It'll only take a minute."

"Sure." He opened the screen door wider. "Why
don't you come in? It's too hot to stand outside."

Regina didn't hesitate. "Thanks," she said,
stepping inside the cool darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she noted
that the living room was neat and tidy even though the furniture
was old. From the back of the house, a television blared
loudly.

He closed the door to keep the cool air from
escaping, then took a seat on the couch while she sat in a chair
nearest the door.

"That smells good," she said, her stomach
growling in a Pavlovian reflex.

"It's an old family recipe," he said, bobbing
his head. "Lots of garlic and oregano."

She got back on track and established that
his name matched the one on her list. She asked her first question
on the standardized form Detective Irving had drawn up to simplify
her job. "Were you a patient at the Elgin Mental Hospital?"

"That's right." His affirmative got the ball
rolling.

That was followed by several more seemingly
harmless questions. "What do you do for a living?" she asked.
"Chef, maybe?" Good to joke around, lighten the mood a little.
Everybody was intimidated by the uniform.