Distemper (42 page)

“Where is he, anyway?”

“He wanted to come by, but he figured you had enough to handle with the admiring hordes. He sends his regards. Wants to buy
you a Guinness when you’re up to drinking it.”

“Sounds damn good. I’ve just about had it with ice water and Jell-O.”

“So what do you think?”

“About Vandebrandt and Gravink? Good question. I never asked the kid straight out, but my gut tells me he knew, even if he
didn’t
know
he knew.”

“It takes one to know one?”

“Exactly. Maybe that’s why he had such a compulsion to stalk you, even though his parents thought he was cured. He’d actually
met the guy in the flesh, so he felt like he owned a part of it. Or maybe I’m just full of it.”

I stood up and went to the window. The hospital has a great view of Gabriel, with the lake snaking up to the city’s edge and
Benson looming above. I know it was all in my head, but even from this distance the city seemed different from the Gabriel
of a week before—the one that was starting to feel more in tune with the dead than the living.

“Cody,” I said, still looking out at the landscape, “why do you think he did it?”

“I don’t know. But from the way you just asked, I have a feeling maybe you do.”

“I’m not sure. I only spent a couple of hours with him, and definitely not of my own free will. But maybe I got a better look
inside his head than anyone who’s still alive—except Justice, and she’s way too traumatized to think about it. But while I
was out there, it all seemed to make sense. At least from his point of view.”

“What did?”

“Look, I have no idea how he got the way he got—whether some priest diddled him when he was six or what. I don’t know if Jack
the Ripper was pissed because some hooker gave him the clap, and in the long run it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
It seems pretty
clear that all that S and M shit in his parents’ house was really his, so he obviously had some sick ideas about women. But
I do think I know why he picked his victims.”

“We already know how he found them. They were all in the Benson vet clinic database.”

“But there’s more to it than that. The women he killed had something else in common. As far as he was concerned, they didn’t
deserve their dogs.”

“
What
?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but just listen. Patricia Marx had taken Cocoa in to have its ears cropped, which a lot of people
think is inhumane. C.A. hadn’t had her dog neutered even though he was suffering from this prostate disease, just because
her family wanted to breed him. Lynn Smith’s dog was blind, and she didn’t scrape together the money to fix it. And Justice
shucked off modern medicine completely and treated her dog herself.”

“And you think he was hunting the women down to punish them?”

“That too. Once he got going, he obviously messed with them in ways that related to what was wrong with their dogs. Look what
he did to C.A., and to Lynn Smith’s eyes. But mostly I think it was to liberate the dogs.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe. But it doesn’t seem a whole lot more ridiculous than strangling women who were stupid enough to let you in the front
door. Or shooting couples in parked cars. Or picking up some guy in a gay bar and eating his…”

“Point taken.”

“All I’m saying is, in his criminally insane little universe, he thought he had the moral high ground.”

“But what about killing his parents? And his sister?”

“His parents had the family dog put down against his wishes. Maybe as far as he was concerned, it was a capital offense. And
as for his sister, he said something about being furious that she hadn’t stopped them from doing it. But the bottom line is
probably that after what went down at the Houston SPCA, she couldn’t ignore her suspicions about what really happened with
their parents. We know for a fact it was around that time that she started applying to schools far away from Texas. But beyond
that, who knows?”

“Are you telling me some nut job with a high school education performed surgery on these dogs? And he didn’t kill them?”

“I guess. I mean, it was his obsession since he was a kid, but he knew he’d never have the grades to get into vet school.
I don’t know, maybe the frustration helped drive him nuts. Anyway, that house you found me in was chock-full of vet textbooks.
What if he was self-taught, spent hours and hours studying his stuff on his own…”

“Alex, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Stop talking about Gravink. Then come over here and kiss me.”

We were in mid-grapple when he heard someone clear his throat, and looked up to find a mildly amused Chief Wilfred Hill. Cody
blushed, but in his condition it only made him look slightly less undead.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” the chief said. “But there was something I wanted you to know before it gets around. David Loew’s
dead.”

A few days ago I’d been planning what I’d wear to his
lethal injection, but for some reason the news still didn’t make me want to jump up and down. “What happened?”

“We’d been hunting for him ever since you told us what he did, but he managed to keep a low profile. Then we got a report
of a gorge jumper a couple hours ago, and guess who it was? Did it in front of plenty of witnesses, so don’t go thinking conspiracy
theories. Anyway, there was a letter addressed to you in a Ziploc bag in his back pocket. I don’t have a copy for you yet,
but I can tell you what it said. You want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Said he couldn’t live with the guilt.”

“What guilt?”

“What he said was that when you asked him to ID Gravink at the paper, he lied. He really did recognize him as this guy named
Anderson from his bunch of animal freaks. Then he went to the guy and warned him the mean old cops were about to frame him
and he better blow town. Said he never even imagined Gravink might actually have
done
it. As far as Loew was concerned, Anderson was one of their own. And when he told him, I guess Gravink convinced him all
he needed was a chance to talk to you and prove he was innocent. So he asked his buddy Loew to get you out there on a sham
interview and… well, you know the rest.”

“But why would he kill himself? I mean, if he didn’t know what Gravink was really up to…”

“Look, as far as I can tell Loew was as high-strung as they come. What he said in his note was that he’d spent all this time
trying to save lives and here he was aiding and abetting a killer. Said if you and Justice had gotten dead it would have been
his fault.”

“But we didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, seems like that was a minor detail. Guy was a fruitcake.” He turned to Cody. “And by the way, Detective, you’re
on disability for a month. If I so much as smell you back at the house before then, you’re out on your ass. Get well soon.”
Then he kissed me on the cheek and left.

“You heard him,” I said. “You’re on the shelf for a while. What are you going to do with yourself?”

“Good question. Any ideas?”

“You want to get the hell out of here for a couple days? Go lie in the sun someplace?”

“I burn.”

“How about the Adirondacks? Hiking and stuff?”

“Sounds pretty damn good.”

“I gotta warn you, Cody. Homegirl doesn’t do tents. I want four walls and a bathroom.”

“Deal. On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“The dogs are coming too.”

“Great fun….Alex Bernier is a terrific character.”

—JAMES PATTERSON, on
Reliable Sources

After a career-making murder case that proved personal bad news, sharp-witted journalist Alex Bernier swears she’s going to
report stories, not make them. Then a serial killer declares hunting season in her eccentric upstate New York university town—and
is only too happy to keep Alex, the reporter covering the case, personally in his twisted loop. To stop him, Alex must face
off against an attractive police detective, a ruthless
New York Times
reporter, and a tech-happy student voyeur. But as she races through a maze of bewildering leads, she doesn’t know her rabidly
clever subject is out to kill her story—permanently…

“In RELIABLE SOURCES, Beth Saulnier gives Gen X women

a voice they can finally count on, in a whip-smart reporter

named Alex
Bernier, who’s tough and tender, and who

will—when you’re not looking—turn your heart around.

She’s bright air. She’s that
fresh and good.”

—PAUL CODY, author of
So Far Gone