... Vance Latham at Trask Family Mortuary... Fran Devine for Willowbrook Memorial Park... Mark Goldberg at Woodbridge Mortuary...
Claycamp came by to tell him they were down to twenty-two panel vans registered to Orange County males. Gilliam came by with the now moot blowups picturing Matamoros Colesceau as he watched TV, courtesy of concerned citizen Rick Hjorth. Hess looked at them anyway. They were less definite than the originals, as he knew they would be. He shook his head and slipped them into his side coat pocket. Maybe see them later, in a different light.
Ray Dunbar, Jerry Kirby’s partner, stopped to thank Hess for being there the night before, for doing what he’d done, for trying what he’d tried to do.
Brighton came over for a casual debriefing on the Jerry Kirby aftermath. The sheriff set a hand on Hess’s shoulder, thanked him, then walked away. Hess had always hated hands on his shoulders — condescension, pride of ownership, false assurance. Brighton’s hand made his skin start burning again. And his heart sank a little when he finally realized that word of his new head had leaked out, and his friendly visitors were coming to see it for themselves.
“Nice head,” said Merci, passing him for the first time at work, acting her part. She had a thick stack of papers in one hand. Hess saw Phil Kemp look over at her, then away. “When did you shave it?”
“Last night.”
He was aware of the other homicide detectives, all men, watching him.
She appeared to study his new hairstyle for the first time. “I like it,” she said with a smile. “It shows off your face.”
She had said the same thing the night before, as Hess dried himself after the shower. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a shower with a woman just because he wanted to be close to her some more. Or the last time he had held for a long while and really looked at his lover after they were done. It had been decades since he’d been with someone Merci’s age and this made him feel as if he were somehow not himself. Like he’d gone back in time.
Merci looked down at him. There was a brightness in her eyes. She was wearing a different scent than usual. She took hold of the still lengthening fax transmission. “Bart?”
Hess nodded.
“Anything good?” she asked.
“There’s an Elsinore buyer. William Wayne of the Rose Garden Home.”
“William as in Bill? LaLonde’s customer? It’s worth the call. After that, we drench the three malls one more time with these.”
She held up the papers — color copies of Kamala Petersen’s Purse Snatcher. Hess was disappointed because he thought that TV and newspapers were a better way to broadcast a suspect sketch than walking malls, giving them away hand to hand. Deputies had already done it. This felt like they were going backward.
But, as if she had read his mind, Merci continued, “Look, I called that Lauren Diamond and said I’d talk to her about the Purse Snatcher case. I even kind of apologized a little. Anyway, she’s down here at the Corrections building anyway for that Colesceau thing, so she’s squeezing us in. She’s just doing a bullet on our progress, she said, not a news feature.”
“Good work.”
She looked down at him with a gently bemused expression, but said nothing.
A moment later he pivoted in his chair to see her before she was out of the pen, acting like he was checking the wall clock.
Claycamp came through just then, almost bumping into her. He said something to Merci, then at Hess he flashed his right-hand fingers, three times.
Down to fifteen, thought Hess: the panel vans with mismatched tires are going to be a bust.
He sold it.
He stole it.
He got new tires.
His girlfriend, wife, sister, mother, company, church holds the paper on it. Run the women.
It cost Jerry Kirby his life to find that out.
He dialed the Rose Garden Home in Lake Elsinore and got a recording that said it was open during regular business hours, but failed to say what those were. The voice was a man’s, a clear baritone that spoke of sympathy and efficiency. Hess entered the address, the purchase order information and William Wayne’s name to his blue notepad.
His fax machine came alive again. He read the transmission upside down: a list of male buyers of blond, human hair wigs from Lifestylers of Irvine:
Burt Coombs
Lance Jahrner
Roger Rampling
There were three other buyers, the fax stated, who paid with cash.
He ran them past the other lists and came up with nothing.
Bald Hess, trudging the storefronts in his fedora, offered the color sketch of the Purse Snatcher to hundreds of shoppers at all three target malls.
Most were indifferent, hadn’t heard that much about the Purse Snatcher. Some were frightened of Hess and his pale, sharp, old face. The kids on summer break were wiseasses as usual. And although Hess and Merci had tried four days ago to make sure that every employee of every store in all three of the malls had a copy of the drawing, it was made difficult by unresponsive personnel departments and sluggish mall security companies. So he went to all the first floor stores again. Merci took the ones on the second story. They divided up the big department stores that took up both.
In an electronics showroom he watched one of ten big screens with stereo that were tuned to CNB. He saw the recorded news bulletin featuring Merci, recorded outside the Sheriff’s Department. She looked larger but quite beautiful on the TV and Hess felt an irrational pride. She told Lauren Diamond that the Purse Snatcher investigation was “progressing well on several fronts,” but she wasn’t free to discuss details at this time. She couldn’t predict an arrest. She couldn’t say when they expected an arrest. She did say they expected an arrest. Yes, Veronica Stevens was considered a victim. And the two missing women whose purses had been found along I-5 were considered victims, too, with a possible sixth unconfirmed at this time. Merci emphasized the word sixth. Hess could tell she was getting angry — Merci could go from zero to pissed off in about three seconds. She called the Purse Snatcher “an animal and a coward” for the way he chose only unarmed, defenseless, unsuspecting women. Hess shook his head when she said “creeps like this aren’t usually too bright,” because it was just the kind of statement that could motivate the Purse Snatcher. Which was what Merci intended. Lauren Diamond nodded along intently, like she was getting directions.
A moment later Lauren was live outside the Corrections building, at a demonstration outside the Parole Department. Colesceau’s last injection, thought Hess. The crowd was big and the stereo broadcast was faithful to its volume and emotion. It was like the protesters were all around you, Hess thought. Like you were Colesceau. He watched the strange, round little man make his way toward the crowd with a resolve that Hess found admirable. He could tell by looking at him that Colesceau was anxious, perhaps afraid. Hess recognized the parole agent, Holtz, when he came through the door with an angry expression on his face and tried to usher his charge through the crowd.
Lauren Diamond got a mike into Colesceau’s face but Holtz pushed it away. The front door of the building shut with a flash of reflected sunlight and Colesceau was gone.
Hess watched for a while, listened to the protesters, then went back out and gave away another fifty sketches.