I made my voice grating — all hard baritone edges. “Suppose I walk out of here, get my van and just go?”
“Suppose you do? You’re free to. You won’t get far, though. That is a killer storm out there.”
“Do I get my—”
Anderson shook the paper bag. “No, you don’t. Don’t ask me again.”
The game’s outlines cleared a little more. It was coming down to a holding action. “What are you going to do with the things in that bag?”
“Keep them.”
“Why?”
“Because I like your style.”
“And when the storm cl—”
Anderson turned, his voice grating. “Clears, you’re free to go.”
I fingered the key in my pocket. Anderson said, “The hotel’s directly across the street and two doors down, and the Wisconsin State Police is picking up the tab because we inconvenienced an innocent man.”
I walked out of the cell and through the station and into the snow. It enveloped me, arid crossing to the hotel I saw my van parked at the curb, gone from silver to powdery white. I thought of heading into the storm, the Deathmobile as a vehicle of suicide; I thought of driving flat out, but cautious, moving. Panic was coming on, naked and ugly and picayune — and then I remembered how Anderson’s hand felt on my shoulder, and I knew that if I ran, he would never know that I was just as dangerous as he was.
Staying was the only way out.
I ran to the hotel, and got to the dilapidated coffee shop just as it was about to close. Ravenous, I ordered roast beef, hot rolls and potatoes, and wolfed them down. Then I went into the lobby and sat in a big chair by the fireplace to get up some guts.
My hours of waiting passed quickly this time; my fear was not steeped in malaise — it was edgy, masculine — like what bullfighters must feel before entering the ring. At 10:00 I took out my key, saw 311 embossed on it, walked up to the room and unlocked the door.
An overhead light had been left on, and it illuminated a dreary 20’s-vintage room — threadbare carpet, big spongy bed, battered desk and dresser. The plainness forced me backward, not in, and I knew that what I had been expecting was a naked man. The wish image vanished after a second, and I stepped into the four-walled time warp and shut and bolted the door.
Wind rattled the ice-rimmed windows, and a nauseating blast of heat came in through the vents. There were no chairs, so I moved to the bed. I was about to position myself on it when I saw that the coverlet was already occupied.
Polaroid prints were spread on the white chenille, three rows of four color snapshots laid out evenly sc that they covered the whole bed. I bent to look at them, and saw vivisection progressions: four nude teenage girls — all brunette and pretty — intact in the top photographs, gradually dismembered as the pictures worked toward the footrail.
The vents shook with another heat blast, and I flailed with my eyes for a sink. Seeing one next to a connecting side door, I ran to it and vomited my meal. I was splashing cold water on my face when I heard a click and saw Anderson walk through the door.
Grabbing a towel from the rack beside the sink, I wiped my face. Anderson leaned into the wall sideways, accomplishing the pose with the grace of a gifted male model. It struck me then that every small moment of the man’s life was infused with eloquence. “Don’t tell me you didn’t already know,” he said.
I held down an urge to rip the pose to pieces with my hands. “I knew. Why?”
Anderson smoothed his mustache and gave me a grin that made him look a guileless seventeen. “Why? Because I knew. There’s a two-lane that parallels the throughway south to the Illinois line, and back near Beloit it’s elevated. I saw you check out the Cadillac, and I saw you cruise for the driver, and sweetie, I knew you didn’t have good deeds on your mind. I gave you a lead, then I tracked you by radar. When you stopped, I waited five minutes, then idled up to about six hundred yards in back of you and parked. I had my binoculars on your van, and I saw you put the magnum back in its hidey-hole. That’s when I knew I really liked your style.”
Nineteen sixty-nine took over 1979, and I thought, “Lock, load and fire.” I centered in on Anderson’s neck, and I almost had up the guts to do it when he smiled and said, “Bad idea, Martin.” Knowing it was full lips and a crinkling mustache that stopped me — not the warning — I made a full-body eye circuit, and something external forced me to say, “Dye your hair blond.”
Anderson snorted and pointed to the bed. “Blonds are for sissies. Brunettes are my meat.”
I saw a gilt-framed picture of my father and a nude woman, both of them wearing powder-white wigs. Shocked that I could still recall the man’s features, and fearful of where the picture frame was taking me, I shut down the image by thinking of my snow-haired victim seventy miles south. Anderson’s perfect stylishness was fixed directly in front of me, forcing me to keep my eyes open and constraining my brain work, and I finally got up the courage to fire, roundhousing a right hand at his perfect nose.
He slipped the punch perfectly, grabbing my wrist, twisting it behind my hack and holding me still with a firm arm around the chest. Enveloped by perfect strongness, a perfect voice eased my fear: “Whoa, sweetie, whoa. You’re bigger and stronger than me, but I’m trained. I don’t blame you for being mad, but you’ve got nothing to worry about. Here, I’ll prove it.”
Anderson’s grip loosened, and he turned me around so that I was facing him. The absence of pressure left me feeling hollow, and I concentrated on the trooper’s regrouping movements to cut the edge off the vacuum. His hands went to his front and back pockets and came out with wads of cash, and he said, “See? Your money. When I searched your van I saw that the glove compartment had been pried open. There was no money in your hidey-holes, and I knew a bright boy like you wouldn’t travel without a nice roll, so I figured one of Wisconsin State’s finest ripped you off. Since I know my fellow officers, I knew exactly who to look for. I let him off with a reprimand — more than you’re getting, and for a whole lot fucking less.”
I took the money and stuffed it into my pockets. “Why?”
Anderson smiled. “Because I like your style.”
“Then what do you want?”
“The Python and the suppressor, you know, mementos. Some conversation, the answers to a few questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as ‘How many people have you killed?’ ”
I looked around the room, knowing there had to be a catch, that, the cracked vase on the dresser had to be a listening device, or the curtain-covered window a sighting point for snipers with x-ray scopes on their rifles — hick-town killers who would fire on me at my first admission of murder. After a moment I knew I was thinking Shroud Shifter childishly, and I turned my gaze back to Anderson, roaming the tight contours of his uniform for concealed recorders. The trooper laughed at this, and said, “I get the distinct impression that you’re looking for more than a body wire, but anyway, let me cool out your paranoia, okay? For starters, I’ll state that I am Sergeant Ross Anderson of the Wisconsin State Police, and also the killer referred to n the Milwaukee papers as the ‘Wisconsin Whipsaw.’ There. That make you feel better?”
It did, for despite his stylishness and aura of danger, I knew that he was not in my league in what mattered most to both of us. Getting a bold sense of having achieved parity with perfection, I said, “About forty. You?”
Anderson’s jaw dropped; I had eclipsed his perfection. “Jesus Christ. Five. You want to tell me about it?”