Later, there had been fishing trips, long walks, dinners at Brookings’ house where Paul’s wife, Chloris, served homemade, multicourse meals and soft music played.
Brookings had nursed Shepherd through the hardest part of his life. Of course he was the right person, the only person, for Shepherd to turn to now.
“Okay,” Shepherd said. “Here it is. I talked to Chuck Wheelihan over in Graham County a few hours ago. He told me some things that got me thinking. I don’t know why, really. It’s nothing specific. But I can’t seem to let it go.”
“Not sure I follow you. The woman’s under arrest. As I understand it, no one’s ever disputed the fact that she killed her husband.”
“No.”
“And she accused her psychiatrist of being the White Mountains Killer. So she’s clearly delusional. Right?”
Shepherd hesitated, and Brookings pursed his lips.
“Oh,” the lieutenant said. “You think maybe she’s not delusional.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Shepherd felt himself backing away from his suspicions, which seemed so obscure, so insubstantial, now that they were on the verge of being stated aloud. “I don’t know what to think,” he added lamely.
Brookings was quiet for a moment. He played with a stapler on his desk. On the street below, a car’s horn squalled briefly.
“This isn’t like you, Roy,” Brookings said finally. “When a case is cleared, you let it go. What’s different now?”
“It just feels incomplete. But hell, you’re right. I’m probably just getting carried away.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Forget it, okay? Forget I was even here.”
He took a step toward the door. Brookings stopped him with a command. “Hold on.”
Shepherd turned to look at him. The lieutenant clicked the stapler again, then raised his head to meet Shepherd’s gaze.
“It’s Ginnie,” Brookings said softly, “isn’t it?”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“A lot, I think. Maybe everything. You can’t bring her back, Roy.”
Shepherd stiffened. “I’m fairly certain I already knew that.”
“Too late to save her. You wish you could. So you try to save the next one. You try to get all the crazies off the street.”
“I don’t really see where this is going.”
“Sure you do. It’s why you went after the McMillan woman so hard. Above and beyond the call of duty. You needed to put her away, because she was another Tim Fries. Another lighted fuse.”
“All right. So what?”
“Now you’re having second thoughts. But you don’t want to admit it. You don’t want to help her in any way. Helping her feels like a betrayal. Like you’re letting Ginnie die all over again.”
Shepherd didn’t answer.
“It’s not a betrayal, Roy.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it is.”
“No. Take a look at this woman, Kaylie McMillan. Who is she, really? She’s been on the run for years. Got no money, no home. Scared all the time. Looking for help. Maybe she’s a psycho. Probably she is. Or maybe not. Either way, there’s one thing about her we can say for sure.”
“What?”
“She’s exactly the kind of person your wife would have wanted to help.”
Shepherd nodded slowly. He thought of Ginnie in her study, working on her Internet project to aid the homeless. He thought of her in the health clinic, welcoming the people of the street.
“That’s true,” he said, his voice low.
“It’s only a betrayal if you don’t help her. So go. Do whatever you have to do.”
“I need to talk to Kaylie’s father-in-law. He seems to think she shouldn’t be locked up.”
“Sounds like a conversation worth having. Just don’t break any speed limits to get there.”
“I won’t.” Shepherd felt lighter suddenly. “Thanks, Paul. Thanks.”
“Just doing my job.”
“I don’t know if this kind of thing is part of the job description. Maybe you should’ve been a shrink.”
“And give up a civil service salary? I don’t think so. Now get going. Traffic’s already getting bad out there.”
Shepherd was at the door when Brookings added in a quieter voice, “And, Roy?”
He turned.
The lieutenant studied him, calm wisdom on his face.
“Caring about this woman,” he said, “this Kaylie — that’s not a betrayal, either.”
There was nothing Shepherd could say to this. He left without a word.
49
The director’s residence at the Hawk Ridge Institute predated the rest of the complex. It had been a farmhouse once, surrounded by fields of barley. The orchard beside the house had provided oranges and lemons, which the farmer’s wife had put up as preserves in a small, tidy fruit cellar.
It was in this cellar that Cray now kept his trophies.
The stone walls were crowded with faces, all of them female, all beautiful in their various ways, and all embedded in rectangles of solid plastic, protected from decomposition.
Cray had developed the method of preservation himself, inspired by the phenomenon of insects in amber. He purchased thermosetting polyester resin — liquid plastic — from a biological supply outfit on the East Coast. When blended with a peroxide catalyst, the resin would gel into a hard, transparent mass.
He kept each victim’s face preserved in a jar of formalin, like any wet specimen, until he was ready to make a permanent mount. A ceramic mold, lightly lubricated with kerosene, was used to contain the plastic. Cray put down a bottom layer of liquid resin and let it harden, then cleaned the face under running water, dried it, and centered it carefully in the mold. Then he filled the mold with plastic, pouring it on like syrup until the face was entirely covered.
Over a week’s time, the plastic would polymerize at room temperature, sealing the face inside. Decay could not touch it. Its beauty was saved forever.
Finally the mold was removed — an easy task owing to the lubricant he’d applied and the slight, natural shrinkage of the resin as it set — and his prize was ready for display.
A woman’s face, afloat in a crystalline block of plastic, a thing of eerie loveliness.
Cray had become an expert in this technique over the years, as his collection grew. There were fourteen faces now. Every one of them, even those harvested a decade earlier, remained as fresh and vibrant as young life.
Cray stood admiring them now, in the sharp light of a ceiling bulb. He was still in his business suit, having descended to the cellar immediately upon arriving home from the office. There would be time to change clothes soon enough. First he needed a few moments with his trove of lovelies.
“Sweet,” Cray whispered, scanning the eyeless faces, the smooth skin and parted lips. “Sweet.”
He had known each victim’s name when he acquired her, but such details were quick to fade from his memory. Now only Sharon Andrews remained real to him as a distinct person, and even her identity was gradually losing its sharp outlines in his mind. Soon he would know her only as the latest one, the blonde. He would recall nothing of her name or place of business. Already he had all but forgotten the news accounts that told of a young son she’d left behind.
But the hunt itself he would remember. His liberation from the ordinary, his mad steeplechase under the moon.
Those memories would not fade. Not ever. The first hunt, twelve years ago, remained as vivid in his thoughts as the most recent.