Hess looked down at the map of the complex that Ledbetter had given him. Colesceau’s was an end unit apparently no different than any other two-bedroom end unit.
“What about his immediate neighbor, to the left?”
“Nice young lady, works nights.”
“What about the unit behind his?”
“Old lady, never see her. One of the ghost people.”
“Ever seen a silver panel van at Colesceau’s?”
Ledbetter frowned. “Silver panel van. Well, yeah, a few months back I did see a silver van pulling out of the complex. One of those fancy conversion things with the running boards and the riser on top. But who knows what unit it came from. Driver could have been lost for all I know.”
Hess made his notes, gave Ledbetter a card and thanked him. “Would you mind giving me your home number, just in case?”
“Not a problem.”
Hess did a brief door-to-door after that, but six of the neighbors he called on were gone, and the other three had nothing of note to say about Matamoros Colesceau except that he should get the hell out of their city.
He got the Lifestyler’s address from the phone book — the closest wig shop to Colesceau. It was in a little shopping center by the freeway, between a community newspaper office and a walk-in clinic.
A young Chinese woman stepped up to greet him while an elderly woman who looked like her mother regarded him placidly from behind the counter. The walls were high, with long shelves full of white heads wearing all styles and colors of wigs.
Hess felt like a thousand faceless women were staring at him. He also felt the walls waver in and out just a little, like they were leaning in for a closer look.
He identified himself and gathered what he could about human hair wigs: they were available, typically 10 to 20 percent more expensive than synthetics, the upside was they looked good, the downside was that you had to shampoo, condition and set them just like you would your own hair — often.
He asked if they’d ever sold a long, blond, human hair wig to a man. The two women consulted in their native tongue, and the young one told Hess yes, several over the years. Sometimes, she said, men will buy for their wives. Sometimes for themselves. She exchanged glances with her mother and smiled very demurely at Hess.
The old woman stood and took up a long wooden pole with a metal V at the end. She shuffled along the wall behind the counter, stopped, reached and hooked a head off its platform. The hair was blond and wavy.
“Human hair,” the old woman said. “Eighty-nine. You try.”
“It’s not for me.”
“Okay. Sit. You try.”
The younger held open a little swinging door and Hess stepped behind the counter. He sat in the styling chair, facing a mirror surrounded by lights. The older woman displayed the wig for his inspection, then lifted it and snapped it over his head. Hess was surprised how tight it was. She snugged it into place, brought up a wide-toothed plastic brush and started picking the hairline locks down over Hess’s forehead. Thirty seconds later he looked like a signer of the Declaration.
He looked at the women behind him in the mirror in front of him.
“Good,” said the older. “Human hair. Eighty-nine.”
Somewhat amazingly to Hess, it was good. It looked like it could be his hair. If he just squinted a little and glanced at himself — as he did just now — he could believe this image in front of him was a man with long, wavy blond hair. Absurd, yes, but still... unified, credible.
He sat there for a moment in the wig, offering a deal with the younger: eighty-nine for the wig, copies of all receipts for blond human hair wigs sold to men for as far back as they had them, and a home phone number for each woman.
The old woman listened, then nodded and smiled cagily at Hess, who smiled and blushed.
“This isn’t for me,” he said.
Both women were smiling and nodding.
Old one: “Deal. Receipts come later.”
He used a pay phone to call Brighton’s direct number. The sheriff picked up himself.
“She wants an apology and she wants Kemp to stop,” said Hess. “She’s sorry she brought the suit.”
Brighton was silent for a moment. “Why couldn’t she tell me that herself?”
“She didn’t want to rat out a friend of yours. You’re her boss, Bright. She wanted to be a stand-up deputy.”
More silence. Then, “Thanks.”
Hess and Merci caught the one-fifty flight from Orange County to Sacramento. They rented a car at the airport and Hess drove them toward the city. The afternoon was bright and ferociously hot, with the rice fields wavering in the sunlight.
Hess felt light-headed and he watched the shimmering mirage of interstate before him with particular attention. A bird hit the windshield and he flinched. All it left was a clear patch of something wet and a ring of small gray feathers. Hess looked through it but didn’t look at it: part of him was still in Matamoros Colesceau’s apartment.
He used Merci’s cell phone to call Bart Young, the president of the Southern California Embalming Supply Company, again, hoping to pry loose the list of recent buyers. The pleasant sounding president was hesitant at first, then firm again in his decision not to give Hess the list. Hess could tell he felt bad.
He thanked him and hung up. “He’s close. Maybe if you called him back and said something about the victims, he’d cave in. He’s a decent sort, but he doesn’t want to betray his customers. Why don’t you try him? Get him to feel bad about the women? Men have a harder time saying no to women sometimes.”
Five minutes later Merci was castigating the man for his noncooperation and gutless mercantile behavior. Apparently he hung up because Merci pushed a button, cursed and slapped the mouthpiece back over the keypad.
“I’ve never once been able to sweet-talk anybody in my life,” she said. When Hess looked over she was actually scowling. Her hair was pulled back and her ears were red. “I’m the wrong one to get guilt or sympathy out of anybody. I made Mike cry once. And the way I look at it is, if he won’t cough up the names, then this embalming machine pusher’ll get a hotter place in hell for himself. It’s out of my hands. I wash ’em.”
Hess used the phone to run a records check on Rick Hjorth of Fullerton. He was intrigued that Hjorth was so eager to help. It was a fact of life that a high percentage of thrill killers liked to get close to the investigation of their crimes and Hess had detected something of morbid interest in the photographer’s attitude.
Hjorth came back clean.
Hess called Undersheriff Claycamp for an update on the panel vans: seventy-five done, nothing yet, another team ready for 5 P.M.
The Morticians’ Licensing Board was housed in a stately building near the capitol grounds. They were given an unused office, two chairs, a table and a pot of coffee. Two maintenance men wheeled in the file cabinets on dollies. Hess worked for a straight hour, then went to the men’s room and vomited. It was the twelfth time in the last three days, and Hess had no idea why he was counting. He brushed his teeth with a travel brush that had a small tube of toothpaste in the handle, purchased after his first round of chemo, just in case. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he saw shadows under his skin.
Three hours later they sat on the return flight, leafing again through the fifty-seven mugs they’d printed.
Bernal, Butkis, Carnahan... no Colesceau...
“The more I think about what he does, the more I think he’s off the grid,” said Hess. “He’s not a professional. Undertakers don’t even remove the things he’s removing.”
“Then why is he?”
“So they’ll last longer, is my guess.”