Gray Matter (18 page)

“I don’t think it’s unrelated.”

“Because of the cat?”

“Because of the cat.” PJ folded her arms across her chest. She was sticking to her hunch.

“As far as I’m concerned the jury’s still out. I’ve seen too much random weirdness to dismiss the punk explanation out of hand.” Schultz met her eyes and held them. “How’s Thomas? And how are you doing?”

The whole episode had taken an emotional toll on PJ. She hugged her own arms tightly and shivered.

“Thomas seems to be taking this in stride. As for me, I don’t know what to think. I’m scared. I feel violated, and I’m mad, too—that somebody could come in here and do this and get away with it.”

“That’s normal. That’s what the creep who did this wanted you to feel, whether it was the killer or a neighborhood jerk with too much time on his hands. I do have a couple of suggestions, though,” Schultz said.

“Yes?”

“Get the boy out of the house. School will be out for the summer soon, and then he’ll be home all day by himself. Send him to live at a relative’s house. Send him to camp. At the very least get somebody to stay with him. Then get yourself a car phone, one of those little portable cellular phones. The Department will pick up the tab. Call it safety equipment, or you can bury the expense someplace.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He stood, bracing his right hand on the table and levering himself to his feet. She stood also, and for a moment it seemed like he was going to approach her, perhaps put an arm around her shoulder.

The moment passed.

“You got any rags handy?” he said. “I can get this wall cleaned up in no time.”

PJ rummaged under the sink, coming up with a handful of dish towels and some spray cleaner. She was comforted by Schultz’s solid presence as he swiped at the wall. In a few minutes, the letters were gone, although there were a few stained areas which PJ was already planning to paint over.

“You and your son get some rest,” Schultz said. “I’m going back to HQ to do the paperwork on this break-in. I’ll see you tomorrow. Breakfast OK?”

“Sure,” PJ said. “The diner, I suppose?”

He headed for the door and looked back over his shoulder.

“Take care, Doc.”

When the door closed behind him, she went to fasten the lock. “Why, Detective,” she said softly to herself, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Upstairs, PJ found Thomas still in the same position: sitting on the edge of the bed with the cat wrapped in a towel on his lap. He stood up when she came into the room, carrying the feline bundle in the crook of his arm.

“Let’s take her to the kitchen sink,” he said. “I’ve had about enough of this smell.”

Thomas didn’t say anything about the absence of the ketchup letters, although she caught him stealing glances at the wall. They worked smoothly together, and Megabite, indignant but clean, soon left the kitchen to methodically lick herself dry. PJ fixed grilled cheese sandwiches, and they sat at the table to eat dinner. Thomas pointedly did not put ketchup on his sandwich as he normally would have. Megabite, with face, paws, and tail mostly dry, back and belly still damp, came back in long enough to graciously accept a few bites of bread and cheese.

Thomas seemed too calm, too put together. PJ knew she certainly didn’t feel that way.

“Thomas, I’ve been thinking about what happened. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to go away for awhile, until this investigation is over.”

“You think it was connected to your work? Are you in any danger?”

She smiled. “It’s sweet of you to ask. No, I’m not,” she said firmly. “Detective Schultz has things well in hand at work. But he thinks that you shouldn’t be home by yourself once school lets out. And I agree with him.”

“Where would I go?”

“To your dad’s house, of course.”

“No,” Thomas said. “No way. I don’t want to go back there. I’m just getting settled here. Don’t ask me to do that, Mom.” His voice was plaintive.

“It would just be for a little while. I’d feel better knowing you were safe.”

“I’m OK here. I just got a new friend. I really like Winston. The worst thing is I couldn’t take Megabite with me. You know how Dad is about cats.”

In spite of the circumstances, it was gratifying to hear Thomas talking about Steven that way. Until just a short time ago, it seemed that Thomas and her ex-husband were on one side together, she on the other.

“All right. We’ll drop it for now,” she said. “But I want to talk about this again when school lets out next week. And I want you to stay in the after-school program every day until I get there to pick you up.”

“Sure thing.”

Thomas helped clean up the computer mess, putting everything in bags for the trash. Nothing was salvageable. They went upstairs to read for awhile before bedtime. The grilled cheese smell lingered in the house, and PJ could still smell it when she brushed her teeth.

Thomas held it all in until he was actually in bed, forehead kissed and blankets snugged around his neck. Then he broke down, letting all the fear and hurt and frustration spill out, not only about the break-in, but about everything that had happened since before the divorce. PJ listened to the jumbled outpouring, held him and rocked him, murmured that everything was going to be all right, her own cheeks wet with tears. They were beginning to heal, and to help each other to do so.

O
VER COFFEE, TOAST, AND
dry scrambled eggs, a toothpick flag pinning her wheat toast to the plate, Schultz told PJ that he was beginning to think that the killings might be sexually motivated, a gay sex triangle gone wildly astray and torn apart by jealousy. She discounted his theory on the basis that neither of the victim’s genitals were mutilated, a hallmark of sex murders.

“There was mutilation, just not at the right spot. Maybe the freak had bad aim.” She glared at him, but he continued, unperturbed. “Or poor eyesight.”

“There’s also the fact,” she said around a mouthful of toast, “that Burton and Vanitzky didn’t seem to know each other and didn’t seem to have any friends in common.”

“That’s not a fact. That’s a supposition based on what we know now. There could be a third person.”

“Vanitzky’s female lover says no way he was bisexual.”

“Come on, Doc. You should know better than that. After all, you can’t tell by looking, can you?” He gave her an exaggerated wink, and was rewarded with raised eyebrows.

“Besides,” he continued, “there’s that video tape. Vanitzky’s bed warmer said he’d done that before, taped them together. Was the guy just an egotist? Was he maybe selling those tapes, or sharing them with somebody else?”

“You’re missing the obvious,” PJ said. “He would tape one lovemaking session, then watch it the next time. Like foreplay.”

“Oh, is that what your ex-husband would do?”

Evidently her momentary embarrassment when she saw the video camera hadn’t gone unnoticed. PJ sat for a moment, pushing egg around with her fork, hearing the metal-on-metal clatter from the kitchen, and noticing that the stainless steel fork had a deeply-carved rose pattern on the end.

“Detective, keep your bloodhound nose out of my personal life,” she said in an even voice, “and I’ll keep my psychology training out of yours.”

“Touchy, touchy. He wouldn’t still have any of those tapes, would he?”

Schultz was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. PJ figured that silence was the best response; no use getting drawn in further. She ate some more of her eggs, took a leisurely drink from her coffee cup. Letting her gaze wander around the room, she noticed the cook putting a couple of plates on the section of countertop that served as a pass-through from the kitchen. Their eyes met briefly. His were brown like the mudpies she made as a child, and with about the same amount of emotion. It was as though he was looking inward, unfocused. She found herself hoping he hadn’t overheard her conversation with Schultz. She was embarrassed enough already without additional people getting in on it.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, changing the subject. “Have you researched other cases similar to this? For example, doesn’t the FBI”—she saw Schultz wince when she said FBI—“keep records on violent crimes?”

“I checked that out early, maybe a day or two into this assignment. There’s nothing that matches the skin carvings of dogs, but there are a number of unsolved cases in which the body was found decapitated. The only thing in the St. Louis area dates from the 1950’s, so it’s probably not our lad.”

“Were any of the decapitated corpses mutilated?”

“Yes, some of them. You really don’t want to hear the details over breakfast, do you?”

“No, I guess not. But are there patterns?”

Schultz sat back heavily. “Hard to say. Other than the obvious lack of a head, there’s no long-term consistency. There might be a pattern, a particular mutilation or way of killing, that connects two or three. Then there might be a gap of months or even years, then another two or three that are similar. But the first set seems unrelated to the second set. There’s nothing to link them positively to the same person. But I can’t help thinking about how well prepared the murderer was. That carrying case has in it everything he needed, from carving tools to plastic bags. That requires either a great deal of foresight or…”

“Or a lot of practice. Are you thinking that our man is not new to the killing game?”

“Yes. Perhaps he worked the bugs out of his technique on less challenging victims: animals, kids, maybe people close to him, relatives or friends. Now he’s graduated to less vulnerable targets.”

They were both silent for a moment, thinking about Burton and Vanitzky.

“There’s been an FBI agent sniffing around,” Schultz said, “a guy named Ted Walmacher. I’ll ask for his help on that. It should be right up his alley, since he loves correlating things. You can tell by the coordinated outfits he wears.”

“I thought all FBI agents wore dark suits and trench coats.”

“You haven’t met Ted.”

“Hmmm…”

“Is that a professional ‘hmmm,’ Doctor Gray?”

“Pretty good, isn’t it? There’s a whole course in saying ‘hmmm’ that we psychologists have to take, and I got an A,” she said. “Serial killers usually maintain the same method of killing, as a kind of ritual. The method is based on something important to them, something that they are fixated on but might be hard for an outsider to fathom. I’ve never heard of a serial killer changing the method substantially.”

“What if the method is more connected to the decapitation?” Schultz asked. “The rest is secondary, just window-dressing. Then there would be a consistent pattern.”

“That’s true. Or we could be dealing with a killer who is capable of breaking out of a ritual and creating a new one. That would be a new wrinkle in serial killing.”

“There’s nothing new under the sun, Doc. No matter how crazy a guy is, no matter how clever he thinks he is in coming up with exotic ways to kill somebody, you can bet it’s been done before. The human race has had thousands of years of practice.”

PJ’s morning at her desk was uneventful. Schultz didn’t want to talk about the break-in at her home the previous day. He said he was letting it ferment, whatever that meant. He and his assistants went off to have a conference in the lunchroom, a dismal place with no windows and a bank of vending machines along one wall. When the phone rang, she welcomed the interruption.

“Doctor Gray? Doctor Michael Wolf here. I believe we have a mutual friend. Goes by the name of Merlin.”

“Merlin. Yes.” PJ chided herself for her uninspired response.

“I’m working with a group at Washington University School of Engineering. My specialty is biomedical engineering.”

PJ was wondering what this had to do with her, and why Merlin had put this man in touch with her. Doctor Wolf’s voice was confident, deep, and warm. Maybe after their last online chat, Merlin thought she needed calming down.

“I’ve been trying to develop VR simulations of surgeries as a training aide for medical students. You know, let them wave their scalpels at a VR abdomen before they try it out on the real thing. Better than cadavers, who don’t bleed realistically or suddenly stop breathing. Could also be used with one surgeon who’s an expert at some new procedure teaching another surgeon halfway across the country, networked together, and working in the same VR surgical suite.”

Now she understood why this man was talking to her.

Thank you, Merlin!

“It sounds fascinating, Doctor Wolf. Um, did Merlin happen to mention…”

“Call me Mike. Whenever I hear Doctor Wolf, I think somebody’s talking to my father. Yes, he did mention that you were doing some research in criminology, and that you’d like to get your hands on an HMD.”

Research in criminology?

“Well, yes, I would. I’ve got the rest of the hardware, and some software I’ve developed over the past five years or so. But I’m on a limited budget”—she wondered if she should have said grant—“here, so I was hoping to borrow a headset. Temporarily, of course.”

“It so happens I’ve got two. I won’t need the other one until the second half of my project, which is probably four or five months away. At least. Could be a year. That’s when I’ll be ready to have a shared VR with a surgeon on either end of the line. And get this—I’ve got the gloves, too, so that surgeons or med students can pick things up and use them in the VR.”

PJ knew that he was referring to a specialized input device, a pair of gloves that the user wore which had sensors imbedded in the fabric. The sensors fed information to the computer about how the wearer was moving his hands. It was like wearing a joystick. You could curl your virtual fingers around a virtual scalpel, pick it up, and use it on a virtual patient. It was more than she had hoped for. “Doctor…Mike. When could we get together on this?”

She heard a chuckle. “Merlin said you were a fast mover. How about today? Lunch?”

“Sounds terrific.”

“There’s a great pizza place right across Millbrook Boulevard from the campus. It’s called Giorgio’s. I can walk there from my office. Can you make it, say, at twelve-thirty?”

PJ got directions and hung up. She was elated, and caught herself wondering what Mike looked like. His voice had been very pleasant, and, she had to admit to herself, downright sexy. It amazed her that she noticed. Since she and Steven separated, her sex life had not just been on the back burner, but off the stove entirely. When Steven dumped her for a woman whose body would look at home on a centerfold photo, PJ’s self-esteem took a major blow. That she was able to notice and respond to the undercurrent in Mike’s voice was, she figured, a good sign. She was suddenly conscious of a feeling of warmth low in her abdomen. Her vaginal muscles contracted, squeezing a phantom penis, and the warmth traveled quickly up to her navel and down to her knees, as though a hot white light had flashed across her midsection.