Yours, Mine, and Ours (27 page)

Emma Jan leaned forward, cupping her elbows in her hands. She wriggled on the bar stool—some people had trouble getting comfortable on them, especially in work situations. “We were talking about that earlier.”

“Right.”

“Don’t call me Rainman.” Ah! The man himself. Paul stumbled into the kitchen, looking at the reams and reams of data in his hands instead of where he was going. His shirt was untucked; his shoes were untied. I jumped off my stool and went to help him. “That stopped being funny being funny a good ten years ago does anybody smell blue?”

“Here. Ack! Be careful, Paul,” I scolded as he stumbled. “Your glasses are filthy! How can you see anything? And it would help if you actually looked where you were—be
careful
, I said! You’re not much good to us with a shattered skull.”

“Don’t tease,” George sighed.

Thwack! Thwack!
The sharp sound of four hundred-dollar German steel hitting a heavy cutting board brought Paul’s head out of his data in a hurry. “You must smell blue if you’re doing all that,” he told Michaela.

“Just bring everyone up to speed,” she ordered, thwacking so hard she had bits of celery in her eyebrows.

“The pattern the pattern was wrong, but HOAP.1 was able to find it. HOAP.1 can smell blue now. It couldn’t before. Then I saw the body. So now it can.”

We all stared at him. He looked back, calmly enough. He’d been stared at since birth, I figured … he
remembered
toilet training. Can you imagine?

He was usually carefully dressed, but he was a mess this morning. His shirt was dirty and both sleeves were unbuttoned. He’d obviously meant to roll them up to his elbows, but either it didn’t take or he got distracted between unbuttoning the cuffs and rolling up the sleeves. So his sleeves were flapping and grimy. His shirt was untucked. His glasses were smeared with what looked like … axle grease? But that was impossible. Where would Paul get axle grease? And why was my mind obsessing over the least important details in this meeting?

Because I didn’t want to hear what Paul was going to tell us. If HOAP.1 could smell blue, that meant there were more bodies out there than we knew. I didn’t want to know that.

I didn’t want to smell blue.

Even George seemed moved by Paul’s state, because he helped me help Paul to the empty bar stool, and stacked the papers on the counter in front of us.

I gently took his glasses off his face, breathed on them, then vigorously rubbed with a nearby Kleenex—
not
the lotion kind. Ah! Much better. Now they were actually clear. Ish. Clear-ish?

“From what my man was telling me before you got here, Cadence, he said these killings have been going on much, much longer than seven years.”

I sighed. “I was afraid of that. So how long? Ten years? Twelve?”

“Try fifty-six.”

Silence, broken by
thwack! Thwack!
I felt like doing a little thwacking myself.

“That’s impossible,” Emma Jan said, her eyes enormous in her dark face. She looked frightened and exhilarated, a look—and feeling—I knew well. She felt bad about the deaths. And wanted to get the bad guy really, really bad. Sometimes I hated my job. Hated that to feel completion and joy in my work, a bunch of people had to die first.

“The JBJ killer has been active for over fifty years?” Emma Jan shook her head. “But that’s wrong. How can that be?”

I was rubbing my eyes. “I’ll tell you how. But we’ve gotta get rid of the stereotypes in our head first.”

“‘Our’ head?” Michaela asked, arching a brow as she dumped decimated celery into a large green bowl.

“We’ve been looking for a … a boogeyman, I guess, for want of a better name. Our heads haven’t really been in the game.”

“That’s because you can’t smell blue,” Paul said, not looking up. He was stacking and restacking the paperwork George had tried to put in order for him. “It’s not not not your fault.”

It was, though. Not only could I not smell blue, I was breaking in a new partner who liked
one
of me but not
all
of me. Something had happened to my boyfriend, and I couldn’t get Max Gallo out of my head. Except I was wondering if that was
why
I couldn’t get him out of my head. The more personal crap I had to wade through, the less time I had to feel guilty I couldn’t smell blue.

“We’ve been looking at this all wrong.” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say … I wasn’t sure why I’d even opened my mouth. But what I was saying … it felt right. So I sort of explored it while I was thinking about it, and then talking about it. “White kids in the summer. For over fifty years. It might as well have been the boogeyman, because we weren’t going to be able to see the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” George asked, and Emma Jan nodded in agreement. They were both staring at me like I’d grown a fourth personality. Ack! I shouldn’t even joke about that …

“Serial killers don’t often come across as drooling psychopaths. Well. Except for the psychopath part. We all
know
that. Intellectually, we know it. But what about Ted Bundy, Mr. Clean Cut? Yikes, what about Dorothea Puente? A little old lady serial killer! She looks like everybody’s grandma. If I had ever met my grandma, either of them—”

“Now
there’s
a horrifying thought,” George said, eyes wide. He knew some of my family history, and was right to be afraid.

“—I’m sure they would have looked a lot like Dorothea Puente. The jury couldn’t believe it! Jeepers creepers peepers, I’ve read the file a zillion times and
I
couldn’t believe it. But that sweet little old lady killed at least nine people and buried them in her garden. For
money
.”

“Don’t get her started on money,” George whispered to Emma Jan. “Oh, wait. That’s Shiro. Just play it safe and don’t get either of ’em started on money.”

“George:
shut up.
” His astonished stare was a wonderful reward. I hated to be rude, but some days … I’d never told George to shut up in my life, and now, what? Seven times in twenty minutes? It was shaping up to be an interesting day so far.

I took a deep breath. Michaela and Emma Jan were giving me their full attention, at least. “You guys can’t look at these unattractive suspects who have priors—like Behrman—and think, even unconsciously—maybe especially unconsciously—‘It’s gotta be this guy, he sure looks like a serial killer.’”

“I don’t think anybody’s—”

“No, trust me, we have. We’ve all done it with this guy, and I’m guilty of it, too. Half the reason I wanted to check out Behrman was because he
looks
like a thug. He looks like the type of butt-face jerk who’d get off on killing teenagers on the way to his KKK fund-raiser.”

Emma Jan smiled at me, and nodded. “Yup. That’s exactly what he looks like.”

“This guy, this JBK, is slick. He or she has done a bunch of them and we’re no closer to catching him than we were in … what? They started in…”

“1954,” Paul said, his nose almost touching one of his printouts. Michaela slowly shook her head and started cleaning carrots.

“Yes, thank you, 1954, bodies all over the place, all over the country, and we still don’t have a handle on this guy, who’s probably in his, what? Seventies? Who is going to be on the lookout for a nursing home resident who’s also a serial killer? Not anybody
I
know. That’s where we’ve been screwing up. It has to be somebody young, it has to be somebody who looks like a bad guy—it
can’t
be someone old enough to be our grandfathers! Except it
is.

“You think … do you guys think, if he looked like what he is, he could have done this so many times? You think, if he looked like what he is, those kids would have let him anywhere
near
them? When he got started? In the fifties? There was child abuse back then and sexual abuse and serial killers, but your average teenager from 1956 wouldn’t know any of that. Back then, it was probably a lot easier for him to pick out prey. But these days? With every kid in the country knowing about pictures on milk cartons and watching
Law and Order: SVU
, and a zillion Internet sites devoted to serial killers? It’d be much, much harder for JBK to do his work … but he’s managing, isn’t he?
Because he doesn’t look like what he is.
Those poor boys were completely fooled until it was too late.”

They were all staring at me.

“What?”

They kept staring. Even Paul.

“Don’t do that,” I said sharply. “I don’t like that.”

“Then for Christ’s sake,” George whispered hoarsely, “don’t stare at her, you three. Cadence, nobody wants you to freak out or feel threatened or even get mildly sweaty. Just because Adrienne didn’t show up when you planned doesn’t mean we want her popping out in this meeting like a redheaded psycho jack-in-the-box. We’re not staring! We’re … uh … thinking. While we look at you intently. In fact, I’m going to think—” He cut himself off, and suddenly had the most peculiar look on his face.

“Awwww, shit.” George slapped himself on the forehead, hard enough to leave a white mark that quickly turned pink. “We’re fuckin’ idiots.”

“Elaborate,” Michaela ordered, whittling an enormous carrot into a stack of orange coins.

“Of course it’s not some elderly desperado, some senior citizen. You guys … it’s a team.”

“Well … as he got older, sure…” Emma Jan said, brow furrowed as she concentrated on what he’d said.

“Not as he got older. All along. Like the Hillside Stranglers, Bianchi and Buono. Especially like those shitheads Bianchi and Buono. Because what’s the first team we’re ever a part of? No matter who we are or where we live?”

I had no idea. At all. Luckily, Emma Jan did: “Our family.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, pointing at her. “That’s the first team we’re all on. And you’re either on the team for life or you get traded fast or something in the middle but yeah, gang. It’s family,
first
. I’m betting it’s family with these guys, too. Don’t you get it? The murders have been going on too long for it to be anything
but
a family affair.”

“So … a family of serial killers. Like in
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Oh, ugh, I can’t believe I just referred to a cult horror film in the middle of an FBI investigation.”

“This once, we’ll let it go,” Michaela said, starting on a new carrot.

“Think of all the dysfunction it takes to produce
one
serial killer in a family.” Emma Jan was shaking her head so hard, her bangs wiggled. I must find out what kind of gel she used. “Never mind two. What, like … Larry and Danny Ranes?”

“Gross,” I commented.

“But accurate,” Michaela added. “Don’t forget about Micajah and Wiley Harpe.”

“They called each other brothers, but they were cousins,” I said. And, also, gross. They’d killed at least forty men, women, and children over two hundred years ago, until a posse caught up with them and cut off the elder Harpe’s head—they liked to make statements with severed heads, did these Old West posses. When they caught up with Harpe the younger, he was tried, then hung. “But it’s rare. Thank God.”

“Not just a family of serial killers,” George said. “Generations of serial killers. You bringing up the Harpes was good shit, Cadence, because they still have descendants around today. But back then, nobody wanted the neighbors to know if you were a Harpe. They changed their names. And like I said, there are Harpes still around today. A rose by any other name is still a fucking loser-ass serial killing jerk-off, or whatever Shakespeare said.”

“But … why? Generations of serial killers? Why?”

“If we knew why, we’d know who.”

“So what next, then?”

“Ah,” Michaela said. “Next, you run along and find Mr. Loun and have another chat.”
Thwack!

“And we’re doing that, why?” I asked. Loun? What did Behrman’s fellow bigot have to do with any of this?

“The parking garage ticket in the Mickelson boy’s pocket.” George was grinning; clearly, he’d saved the best for last. “It’s from a parking ramp in Minneapolis. Guess whose license plate came back? Yup. Philip Loun.”

“What was Philip Loun doing parking in the Cities, and who was he doing it with that his parking stub showed up in a murder victim’s pocket later that day?” I asked, thoroughly stunned by the new development.

“Don’t you wanna go ask him?” George asked, grinning his fuck-it-let’s-get-dirty grin.

“Oh, heck yeah.”

“Ooooh. I love it when you try, and fail, to talk dirty. C’mon, Emma Jan. Let’s see if your mortal enemy is living in my side-view mirror.”

chapter sixty-one

After a few
phone calls, and reading more of Paul’s research (which he told me smelled red), we went back to the grim trailer the three of us agreed we’d seen way too much of. Loun and his buddy Behrman had been discharged from Regions Hospital just that morning.