Ruiz’ warehouse studio was ten minutes away, a shabby brick cube with industrial-style windows that looked like dirty checkerboards. The only elevator was designed for freight and was driven by another teenager, this one with a complexion as vacant as his eyes and a boombox the size of a coffee table. Lucas rode the elevator up five stories, found Ruiz’ door, and rapped on it. Carla Ruiz looked out at him over the door chain and he showed her the gold shield.
“Where’s the rose?” she asked. Lucas had the shield in one hand and a briefcase in the other.
“Hey, I forgot. Supposed to be in my teeth, right?” Lucas grinned at her. She smiled back a small smile and unhooked the chain.
“I’m a mess,” she said as she opened the door. She had an oval face and brilliant white teeth to go with her dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair. She was wearing a loose peasant blouse over a bright Mexican skirt. The gun-sight gash on her forehead was still healing, an angry red weal around the ragged black line of the cut. Bruises around her eyes and on one side of her face had faded from black-and-blue to a greenish yellow.
Lucas stepped inside and pocketed the shield. As she closed the door he looked closely at her face, reaching out with an index finger to turn her chin up.
“They’re okay,” he said. “Once they turn yellow, they’re on the way out. Another week and they’ll be gone.”
“The cut won’t be.”
“Look at this,” Lucas said, tracing the scar line down his forehead and across his eye socket. “When it happened, this wire fishing leader was buried right in my face. Now all that’s left is the line. Yours will be thinner. With some bangs, nobody’ll ever see it.”
Suddenly aware of how close they were standing, Ruiz stepped back and then walked around him into the studio.
“I’ve been interviewed about six times,” she said, touching the cut on her forehead. “I think I’m talked out.”
“That’s okay,” said Lucas. “I don’t work quite like the other guys. My questions will be a little different.”
“I read about you in the paper,” she said. “The story said you’ve killed five people.”
Lucas shrugged. “It’s not that I wanted to.”
“It seems like a lot. My ex-husband’s father was a policeman. He never shot his gun at anybody in his whole career.”
“What can I tell you?” Lucas said. “I’ve been working in areas where it happens. If you work mostly in burglary or homicide, you can go a whole career without ever firing your gun. If you work in dope or vice, it’s different.”
“Okay.”
She pulled a dinette chair out from a table and gestured at it, and sat on the other side. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you feel safe?” he asked as he put his briefcase on the table and opened it.
“I don’t know. They say he got in by slipping the locks, so the landlord put on all new locks. The policeman who was here said they’re good. And they gave me a phone and I have a special alarm code for 911. I just say ‘Carla’ and the cops are supposed to come running. The station is just across the street. Everybody in the building knows what happened and everybody’s looking for strangers. But you know . . . I don’t feel all that safe.”
“I don’t think he’ll come back,” Lucas said.
“That’s what the other cops, uh, the other policemen said,” she said.
“You can call us cops,” Lucas said.
“Okay.” She smiled again and he marveled at her even white teeth. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was extraordinarily attractive. “It’s just that I’m the only witness. That scares me. I hardly go out anymore.”
“We think he’s a real freak,” said Lucas. “A freak-freak, different from other freaks. He seems to be smart. He’s careful. He doesn’t seem to be running out of control. We don’t think he’ll come back because that would put him at risk.”
“He seemed crazy to me,” Ruiz said.
“So talk about it. What did he do when he first came after you?” Lucas asked. He thumbed through his copy of her interviews with St. Paul and Minneapolis homicide detectives. “How did it work? What did he say?”
For forty-five minutes he carefully led her through each moment of the attack, back and forth until every split second was covered. He watched her face as she relived it. Finally she stopped him.
“I can’t do this much more,” she said. “I was having nightmares. I don’t want them to come back.”
“I don’t want them to either, but I wanted to get you back there, living through it. Now I want you to do one more thing. Come here.”
He closed his briefcase and handed it to her. “These are your groceries. Start at the door and walk past the pillar.”
“I don’t—”
“Do it,” Lucas barked.
She walked slowly back to the door and then turned, her arms wrapped around the briefcase. Lucas stepped behind the pillar.
“Now walk past. Don’t look at me,” he said.
She walked past and Lucas jumped from behind the pillar and wrapped an arm around her throat.
“Uhhh . . .”
“Do I smell like him? Do I?”
He eased up on his arm. “No.”
“What? What’d he smell like?”
She turned into him, his arm still over her shoulder. “I don’t . . . he had cologne of some kind.”
“Did he smell like sweat? Perspiration? Were his clothes clean or did they stink?”
“No. Like after-shave, maybe.”
“Was he as big as I am? Was he strong?” He pulled her tight against his chest and she dropped the briefcase and turned into him, beginning to struggle. He let her struggle for a moment and then she suddenly relaxed. Lucas tightened his grip further.
“Shit,” she said and she fought and he let her go, and she turned into him, her eyes wide and angry. “Don’t do that. Stay away.” She was on the edge of fear.
“Was he stronger?”
“No. He was softer. His hands were soft. And when I relaxed, he relaxed. That’s when I stamped on his instep.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“From my ex-husband’s father. He taught me some self-defense things.”
“Come here.”
“No.”
“Come here, goddammit.”
She reluctantly stepped forward, afraid, her face pale. Lucas turned her again and put his arm around her neck without tightening it.
“Now, when he had you, he said something about not screaming or he’d kill you. Did he sound like this?” And Lucas tightened his grip and pulled her high, almost off her feet, and said hoarsely, “Scream and I’ll kill you.”
Ruiz struggled again and Lucas said, “Think,” and let her go, pushing her away. He walked away until he was near the door. Ruiz had her hands at her throat, her eyes wide.
“New Mexico,” she said.
“What?” Lucas felt a spark.
“I think he might be from New Mexico. It never occurred to me until now, but he didn’t sound quite like people up here. It wasn’t the words. It’s not an accent. It’s almost, like, a feeling. I don’t think you’d even notice it, if you weren’t thinking about it. But it was like back home.”
“You’re from New Mexico?”
“Yes. Originally. I’ve been up here six years.”
“Okay. And you said he smelled like cologne. Good cologne?”
“I don’t know, just cologne. I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Could it have been hair oil?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think it was cologne. It was light.”
“But he didn’t stink? Like he was unwashed?”
“No.”
“He was wearing a T-shirt. You said he was white. How white?”
“Really white. Whiter than you. I mean, I’m kind of brown, you’re tan-white, he was real white.”
“No tan?”
“No. I don’t think so. That’s not my impression. He was wearing those gloves and I remember that his skin was almost as white as the gloves were.”
“You said when you were talking to the St. Paul police that he was wearing athletic shoes. Do you know what kind?”