Me, Myself and Why? (15 page)

“And it’s hard,” Tracy added.

Jeepers, what was it? And was it even important? It must be or it wouldn’t be bugging me so much. Something I knew. Something I hadn’t known last night that I knew now, if I could just—

I whirled and glared at a passing nurse. “Will you please change out her IV bag before the fu—I mean, the freaking thing reverses itself?”

Startled, the nurse paused in midstep. Tracy’s eyes were big. “Pardon?”

“Da . . . darn it all!”

“Pardon?”

“Uh—just remembering I forgot to pick up my dry cleaning.” There was no hope for it. I’d have to ask Shiro. Good Lord, I was letting anybody drive my body these days.

God knew when she’d let me come back.

Too bad. Shiro would know. She would come straight out and say

Chapter Forty-one

“You suffer from Asperger’s syndrome.”

The live victim blinked at me. Her knuckles were still white, but she had lowered the bedclothes to her waist, revealing a clean dark blue scrubs top. She smelled like clean cotton and tape—tape everywhere. Holding the IV needle in place; closing the small cut over her left eyelid; tape at the crook of her elbow where they had drawn for labs. The smell of anger. The smell of fear.

“What?”

“Asperger’s. It is difficult for you to go to the gym because of all the faces.”

“Oh yes!” Tracy Carr didn’t nod, but her eyes crinkled in acknowledgment of a sort. “The faces.”

“And you cannot read expressions.”

“No.”

“You never know if someone is mad or sad or just having a bad day.” I studied Tracy Carr. Her expression during what would be—for most people—an odd, distressing, anxiety-inducing, uncomfortable conversation had not flickered in the slightest. Cadence would have gotten it eventually. She was simply too invested in putting the victim at ease. Which occasionally had its place during an interrogation.

I had other concerns.

After another long pause, I said, “It is like a language, right? A code most people know but you don’t. It is . . . maddening. Right?”

Tracy nodded so hard I was afraid she would strike her head on the table-on-wheels which held her supper and the button. “Yes, that’s right. It’s as if I skipped a workshop that everyone else in the world attended at least twice.”

“I have had that impression myself,” I muttered, and to my surprise, Tracy smiled. I never made anyone smile. Not on purpose.

What Cadence had assumed was shock the night before was really the typical affect of Asperger’s. Occasionally people assumed it was a disability I suffered from myself. Which just goes to show how stupid some people were. Also, there was this damned obsessive need to categorize everything. Are you white, are you a smoker, what is your median income? Do you like classical music, are you allergic to dairy, are you a De-mocrat?

I could hardly get up on a high horse of morals about such behavior, though. Had I not been in a rush to figure out what was wrong with Tracy Carr, so I could file her neatly away in my brain and go into hiding until the twit wearing my body needed me again?

Tracy Carr certainly had several of the classic signs. She had tripped against Cadence last night as she walked with her to the ambulance. She said things inappropriate to the situation because she was trying to figure out how she was
supposed
to feel, and then imitating that.

And she had that peculiar affect so indicative of Asperger’s; she had no natural ability to read facial expressions. She would have to have been taught that
this
is a smile and it means you are happy;
this
is a frown and it means you are not.

“Did you get diagnosed in Turkey?”

She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “No, it was years later. In the States. My parents . . . well.” She shrugged.

“Do you indulge in obsessive rituals? I realize that is private, but we would ask anything to catch the ThreeFer.”

She smiled at me again as if we had a great and wonderful secret. “I count toothpicks. Even if it’s a new box and it
says
how many on the box and I
know
fourteen have been used and I know I counted them yesterday, I always have to count them again. And again. I count napkins, too.” She paused. “And paper clips. Oh, and binder clips. And forks. And—”

I cut her off with an impatient gesture. Yes, yes, this was sounding right. Although it was closely related to autism, those with Asperger’s did not completely withdraw from society. And they tended to be brilliant. But they would be awkward at a party, a wedding, a bar. They took more comfort in books than in socialization.

Hmm. Perhaps I
did
have Asperger’s.

Well. An issue for another time.

Chapter Forty-two

“Asperger’s!” I cried, starting to stand—and then I realized I already was. I hate when she just wanders around in my body like that. You would not
believe
the places I’ve found myself.

Don’t ask, though. I’ll never, never tell.

Tracy Carr blinked at me with wide, watery eyes.
Easy, Cadence. Let’s not startle her into a coma, or a head cold.
“Yes, we established that.”

“Right, right.” I knew Shiro would figure it out. But the ThreeFer, still lurking out there, wouldn’t wait for my poor drowning brain to figure these things out. Also, it just kept
bugging
me. “I was just, um, testing you. Okay, you ready to leave?”

She was, yanking so hard she pulled me off of my feet. I stumbled and nearly knocked over the IV stand. Cadence Jones, ladies ’n’ gents, making another graceful exit. Oooh, yergh, watch out for the bedpans.

The admitting doc, a harassed-looking woman in her early thirties with the
weirdest
-colored eyebrows I had ever seen (blue!), made Tracy sign paperwork, made her pee (what was it with the medical profession’s obsession with the function of removal?), and then insisted on wheeling her to the front door, where I’d parked. Just a few more steps and we’d be in my reasonably priced Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Now, don’t jump to any conclusions. I wasn’t stealing a parking spot from the handicapped; it’s just that as a federal agent I had certain privileges. If a blind person drove up, of course I would have given her the parking space. Jeepers, I wasn’t a
monster
.

Never mind! I had sprung Tracy from the hospital, like the Rita Hayworth poster had sprung Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Prison, and now work awaited us. Well, me. Onward!

I took a deep breath and sighed. It was one of those Minnesota autumn days when the wind was gentle and the trees were towering red and yellow and orange giants. When the sky was dotted with little clouds that looked like popcorn, and the sun was warm on my back. When I was hot on the trail of a repeat offender, and Starbucks served pumpkin-flavored coffee.

Ah! Fall. I loved fall. It was—

Chapter Forty-three

“I hate fall.”

Tracy Carr glanced at me while she fumbled for a cigarette, dropping her purse on the pavement and looking as though she might burst into tears at any second. Good Lord, I hoped she would not cry. The very sound set my teeth on edge.

I picked up her purse and watched as she dug out a lighter. I looked at this insanity with irritation. “There must be a cancer pill you can just take and get it over with, correct?”

“What? I—what?”

“There are much, much quicker ways—efficient ways, cost-effective ways—to commit suicide.” Hypocritical? No.
I
only had a pack a year. Few smokers possessed my self-control.

“Suicide? I would never—suicide?”

Chapter Forty-four

“—Love fall!” I had to yank on the wheel to avoid plowing into a speed-limit sign—Shiro had left me in middrive, which I supposed was better than how Adrienne had left me the night before. “It’s not too hot, but also it’s too cold for the bugs, and all the kids are running around with their new backpacks. And the gorgeous leaves—what the heck is that?”

Tracy twisted so far away from me she was practically hanging on to the wipers. “What? The geese? They’re just migrating.”

“Oh. Sure. I wasn’t—”

(Daddy look out look out look out!)

“—scared or anything. No.” I swallowed. “I wasn’t scared at all. I was startled for a second. That’s all. Listen.” I shifted and merged onto 35W. “We can’t force you to stay in a safe house—I have to say, Tracy, that shows bad judgment, and I’m sorry to have to tell you such a mean thing. But since you’ve (foolishly) refused, we’ll have at least two agents on you at all times.”

“He won’t come after me again.” Tracy sounded tired, but sure of herself. “I’m old news to him. I don’t exist anymore to him. He thinks it’s art. He thinks I’m art.”

“What?”

“ART,” she said, so loudly I flinched away. Yep, time for a visit to my friendly neighborhood ear, nose, and throat guy. “I said he thinks he’s making art. There’s nothing for me to be afraid of anymore. It’s like a painter worrying the canvas will come after him; hardly worth thinking about, much less fretting. He
made
me, he made the other two gentlemen. I’m just a thing to him now. It isn’t in his head that we’re real people with emotions and needs. Who cares what a sculpture thinks, anyway?”

“Very profound.” I pondered that, merging smoothly—hardly any traffic this late in the morning. Tracy was just right. Exactly right. Odd that a civilian could pick up on that so quickly—and express it so well. Poor thing.

We were at the hotel in no time, and I walked Tracy inside, clearing the room, making sure there wasn’t a bogeyman hiding under the bed, and confiscating her complimentary sewing kit. She likely couldn’t hurt herself with a needle, a black button, and a thimble (unless she swallowed it, maybe), but I was taking no chances.

The place was neat and clean, and decorated in modern inoffensive. A coffee table, a small couch, a stuffed chair with a teeny stuffed pillow. Dining area just off the living room—a simple blond oak table with three chairs. A double bed sporting a truly hideous jack-o’-lantern–orange fringed(!) bedspread.

No pictures, just a print of a girl in toe shoes up
en pointe
, looking graceful as all get-out. I love that. It’s—

Chapter Forty-five

“That is the tackiest thing I have ever seen. Toe shoes? Pink toe shoes? Show us the blisters, you nameless foot model. Show us the calluses.”

Chapter Forty-six

“—It’s just so classy and delicate—ow!” I barked my knee on the coffee table—how’d I get all the way over here?

“Hey! Tracy Carr! Little help?”

Tracy Carr, however, just stood in the middle of the room and clearly had no idea what to do with her hands.

“Well, this is—um—homely. Homey! I meant homey.” Like any one of a dozen in the neighborhood, it was basically a beehive for people. The walls were neutral cream; the carpet was a dark gray that hid dirt. There was a tiny kitchen with an even tinier stove; the plant on the counter was a fake.

It was the kind of place where middle management stayed while they were waiting for a new office, or traveling salesmen. Heck, we were an airline hub—the whole street was practically flight attendant alley. At least they hadn’t started charging by the hour.

It was best not to talk about the wallpaper. You’ll thank me later. Believe me.

“Thank you for bringing me back. I’ll come to the government building tomorrow to do more paperwork.”

“That’d be swell.” I pointed at the only photograph in the room, a four-by-six of three teenagers standing around a big white house that badly needed a paint job, shingles, and a screen door. “Is that your family when you were all little?” There was something about the house. It didn’t just stand around them, it
loomed
over them. And all three faces were pale and pinched, like they had a vitamin deficiency.

Tracy nodded.

“Well, that looks—” I tried to think of something nice to say. In reality, I felt as far away from Tracy Carr as whatever sibling was in Arizona, or Nevada, or wherever in the Southwest. Maybe they felt that way about her, too, no matter where they lived. Maybe in this very picture, they were already splitting apart from the weird sister with the “funny syndrome.” It probably made them more popular with their peers to distance themselves, and children can be cruel.

Well, in any case, how on earth was I going to help all of that now? I’d helped debrief her, overseen her hospital release, and made small talk. Also, I had offered to swing by McDonald’s for some Filets-O-Fish, which she’d declined. So now I could get a move on. And not a moment too soon. There were probably reams of paperwork for me to thrash through back at the office.

A live victim, hooray, at last, praise Jesus; I knew this was a big step in getting close to ThreeFer. More work, yep. And that was just fine.

Chapter Forty-seven

Sure enough, there was, scattered menacingly over my mouse pad, covering my chair, and burying my Little Mermaid desk blotter. Plenty of data, but not much analysis. That would come; it always did—I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late. You know what they say about hindsight and twenty-twenty vision and a step in time saves nine and birds and bushes and such.

And the thing of it was, we probably already had the killer’s name. Somewhere in all those piles of police reports, federal paperwork, witness write-ups (although there’d been precious little of those this time around), lab services, background checks, CODIS (ha! not much biological evidence this time, either), FOIPA file dumps (or, as George put it, “Hippie Law 101”—he was virulently and unreasonably opposed to the Freedom of Information Act), even DVDs of the crime scenes and files with a thousand little facts . . . somewhere in all that junk was one little thing that would tie all these victims together. Some one dumb thing that would seem so obvious to us after the fact.

Only after the fact.

The process was mind-boggling and seemed insurmountable, like the
People
magazine crossword puzzle after you’d been on a desert island long enough to miss a season of
American Idol,
but that was no reason to take shortcuts. And I couldn’t go back on the street in good conscience until I’d taken a crack at it.