He picked up another piece of sushi, went to dip it in the soy sauce, noticed that the round dish was full of rice and put the piece back on his plate.
“Haven’t you found out anything you can take to them to get them to stop putting all their effort into me as a suspect and instead into whoever really has taken her? Why would I take her, anyway? We were together. She’s in love with me. Why haven’t they connected her disappearance with those Magdalene murders? Every time I ask, the detective acts as if I am just trying to throw him off track. ‘We need something to go on, Mr. Beecher, just one lead, and we’ll jump on it. But in the meantime there is no connection.’” He was mimicking Detective Jordain’s New Orleans accent. I was about to ask him not to, but why did I care if Elias made fun of Noah’s way of speaking?
“If I thought it would get them moving in the right direction, I’d tell him that I did it,” Elias continued, his voice taking on a desperate intensity. “That I killed those three women. I’d tell them that I am responsible for all of those women being murdered and that Cleo is absolutely part of the plan. Maybe that would get them off their asses and onto the case. They’d have to find her. And then they would give her back to me and you would finish helping her and she’d get better. She’d be fine then. Whole. Finally, holy.”
He pushed away the soy sauce dish filled with the uneaten sushi. He had not eaten a single morsel of his food.
I noticed that he’d used the word holy, instead of whole. An obvious mistake because he was talking about the Magdalene murders. He was still talking, almost ranting now, the words tumbling out faster and faster and running together in pools of ideas.
“If you’d had more time with her, if you’d had another two or three weeks, what would you have done to help her? What would you have said to her? Could you have fixed this problem she was having? Could you have made her better? How would you have done it? What would you have done?”
“I don’t fix problems.”
“Yes, you do. That’s why she went to you,” he argued.
“I help people to work things out.”
“Well, what would you have said to her to help her work things out?”
“I can’t talk about that with you,” I said as gently as I could.
“You can. I love her. You know how I love her. You can talk to me easier than you can talk to anyone else. Do you think you really could help her? Really?”
I nodded.
“How?”
“Just by getting her to talk about what had happened to her-” I stopped. He had almost lulled me into talking about my patient, and that was something I could not do. Would not do. Even with him.
36
Going to the police station where Noah Jordain worked wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my afternoon, but I’d made a commitment to meet him and look over what he and his team had collected.
I found Detective Jordain in a big room with a large cork wall covered with a collage of photographs of the victims and evidence. The table that dominated the center of the room held piles of papers, videotape cassettes and more photographs.
Noah was standing, rifling through a stack of computer printouts when I got there. Hearing my footsteps, he turned, and then made no effort to hide his smile.
“Well, it’s certainly nicer to see you than another detective with more bad news.”
“I could have bad news.”
“It wouldn’t be as bad coming from you.” He pulled out two chairs. “Sit down. Do you want some coffee? It’s fresh. Made it myself. Have to. Boy, do most cops make bad coffee.”
“Sure, I’d love some.”
He poured me a cup. I asked him about his investigation, and as I listened to him describe the small progress made so far, I sipped the strong, bitter but surprisingly delicious coffee.
He was wearing a blue-and-black-striped shirt that made his blue eyes even more striking. But there were deeper shadows under them than there had been on Sunday night.
None of us were sleeping well anymore. Not Gil, not Noah, not me.
That was something to remember. The man involved in these crimes was probably not sleeping well anymore, either. He would be on a high from his rampage. Peaceful rest probably eluded him. I told Noah that and he made a note of it.
“But I don’t think that he’s getting a thrill from the murders,” I said. “These are not glory killings. If they were, he’d be doing more to alert the press. He’d be playing some games, making sure the bodies were discovered sooner so he’d get the attention from the crimes. That’s not what is going on here. He’s got some real need to kill these women.”
“Can you elaborate on that? What could his need be about?”
“He’s taking prostitutes and dressing them as nuns. Killing women and turning them into saintly figures. There has to be some personal scenario he’s acting out.”
“You still don’t think he’s a priest?”
“No. But I think he’s religious.”
“We agree there,” Noah said. “He has all the right accoutrements and accessories. The communion wafers, the unguent, the wine. He not only knows about the sacraments, he knows how to deliver them and he knows where to get them. One thing that has checked out is that everything he uses is authentic.”
“You mean he’s not using Necco wafers?”
Noah shook his head and got up to get more coffee. “You want more?”
“No, I’m fine.”
He sat down and jostled a pile of papers, looking for something. A photograph slipped out. A morgue shot of a woman-a hundred tiny pinpricks all over her body. I was sorry I’d seen it. I knew it would haunt me.
“Do you think the women are being offered up as sacrifices?” he asked, seeing me looking, staring, at the picture.
“Do you mean is he killing the women as some kind of offering to God?”
He nodded.
“No. I don’t think so. Do you?”
“Well, there’s nothing in the Catholic doctrine that would fit that.”
“What he’s doing is more transformative. It’s as if he’s trying to turn them into holy women.”
“Some misguided effort to save them?” Noah asked.
I shrugged. “That almost sounds right. Have you found any evidence that he has had sex with them?”
“No. Not before he’s killed them or after.”
I nodded. “The case is getting to you, isn’t it?”
“They all do. But this one is one of the worst.”
“You’d have to be made of steel for it not to.”
“I thought I was. I thought I could handle it.”
I leaned closer. He looked up. Away from the photographs. For a second neither of us said anything. His eyes were on mine and I held them. In the middle of the sad, sick pictures and proof of a man gone wild was this other man, one who was sane and caring.
“You’re a good man,” I said softly.
“Is that going to help me here?”
It was another one of those ambiguous comments. I couldn’t be sure whether he was referring to the case or to the attraction that seemed to be growing between us. But until I was sure he was feeling it, too, I wouldn’t acknowledge it. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to. What would I say? Making the first move was my style professionally, but not when it came to a man. It had been more than fourteen years since I’d had any dating experience. It wasn’t even that I was out of practice; I was unknowing.
I broke the gaze, picked up my coffee and sipped. “You know you shouldn’t drink too much of this. It’s very strong. No wonder you are not sleeping.”
“How do you know I’m not sleeping? Is that part of your psychiatric training? What did I say that gave me away?”
“Nothing. And no, it’s not my training, either. It’s the circles under your eyes.”
“I lie down, but I’m bombarded with all the unanswered questions.”