“Yeah,” he grumbled. “You’re the goddamn devil, Higgins.”
“Only if one of those bombs happened to be planted in the school where your little boy learns his letters, Van Buren.”
“Monster.”
“You have no idea,” I said, “but at least my first name ain’t Clancy. You must have gotten beat up a lot as a kid.”
“Shut up.”
“You may not want to help me. You may want this to be personal. But if you feel like you can still be a hero in this, just think of the hundreds of innocent people in this town that will die by fire if my bombs go off. Now, I need to know everything there is to know about that Polaroid box they found up at the Crowley property. Everything. And I need to know if a church break-in occurred on the same night as all the murders.”
“A church break-in?”
“Yeah. It happened this time, with Betsy Ratner, and with Josie Jones and Gloria Shaw. The same thing also happened over in Edenburgh. You fuckers have the resources to go through the archives of all these cities to see if this correlation goes all the way back.”
“Shit … you’re right. It did happen last time, didn’t it? Let’s say I get this information for you. Then what?”
“That’s it. I take care of business, and whatever happens after that happens. This evil prick might kill me, or I might kill him. If it’s the latter, I’ll get out of Evelyn before his body goes cold, you have my word on that, but this thing I’m doing, I’m doing it for Danny. When this is over, no matter how it plays out, I sure as hell won’t be a problem for you. I guarantee you that much. We can pretend this little meeting of the minds never happened.”
“You take care of business? What about the case?”
“Fuck the case. You see, that’s why Pearce was a good man. He put his job aside for this business on the side. What I do … what we did … it wasn’t for any case, it wasn’t for his job, it was for the greater good. One less disease in the world. You understand that?” It was close enough to the truth that I didn’t need a poker face.
“When do you need this by?” he asked.
“What? Pal, we’re going back to the precinct right now.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” I said, leveling the gun at his privates, “and don’t give me that shit about your wife missing you….”
“No, Higgins. I can’t go back now. I punched out and I’ve been fucking shot at. I can’t go snooping through the fucking computers without one of the feds seeing me, asking me what the fuck I’m doing back so soon. I’ll do what you’re asking, but I’m not going to lie to the feds for you.”
I thought for a second. There were less than forty-eight hours until that full moon started to shine. Shit was coming to a head.
“Fine. Tomorrow. I’ll call for you, we’ll meet somewhere. No funny business.”
“Fine,” he said.
I popped the clip out of his gun and ejected the cartridge in the chamber, threw it all into the dirt.
“Be good,” I said, and I walked back down the road.
TWENTY-THREE
I watched from the shadows as Van Buren got in his car and took off. I didn’t trust him, but he felt like my only hope. With any luck, he’d take my insane blackmailing scam seriously, and do what he was told to do.
After he was gone, I walked across Old Sherman and went a few blocks east to where I had my own truck stashed. On the passenger seat, under a blanket, was my rifle. The extra shells were in the glove, as was Van Buren’s pair of handcuffs.
For the rest of that night, I drove all through Evelyn, hoping just like the cops that I’d catch the bastard in the act. The business with the church break-ins and the Polaroid box was good information—the only lifelines for a drowning man—but the chances of any of it panning out and leading me to the Rose Killer were slim at best. All I could do was hope and pray that all the girls in the world were behind locked doors that night.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if my plan didn’t work. In my mind, I was attacking on two fronts. First, this fucking guy was still my target. The wolf very well could get him, but because of this invisibility he seemed to possess, the only way to get him would be for me to know exactly who it was. I needed a name, a face. My only hope of that was if Van Buren came up with something. An arrest for one of the church break-ins, maybe. It was my job as a doomed man to take this Rose Killer down with me, because if the beast truly had gone haywire, I was going to have to kill myself, and God knows I didn’t want to do
that.
I called the precinct at two in the afternoon and asked for Van Buren. He clicked on a minute later. “Van Buren,” he said.
“You get my presents for me?”
“Yeah, but I’m in the middle of something right now. I can’t get away.”
“You’re going to have to. Maybe you don’t realize there’s a man out there on the verge of killing someone’s daughter, huh? And me to boot, gunning for you. Meet me where I took you last night. Half hour. No excuses. Or fireballs will fill the sky. I do not give a shit, cop. Just do it.”
I hung up, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff. I lit a cigarette, got my gear, and went out to the truck.
I drove my truck all the way down that little dirt path and parked it off to the side. In the daylight, being lost in the trees was enchanting, pretty, even comforting. At night, I noted, you couldn’t help but want to run as fast as you could toward the nearest metropolis. Being in the woods at night always made me think of Vietnam.
I left my weaponry and whatnot on the seat, but I wanted it near just in case I needed to put the fear of God into Van Buren, or if he brought the cavalry, we could shoot it out. Maybe they’d put me down once and for all….
He came down the path in his hatchback about ten minutes later. Even in daylight, it was impossible to see us from Old Sherman. I was thankful for that. I was leaning against a tree, a cigarette in one hand and the other slung over my belt. He got out and closed the door behind him. One of his hands immediately went under his jacket, as if to go for the piece he kept there.
“Chill out, cop,” I said.
“Just stay back,” he said sternly.
“Give me what I asked you for. What did you come up with?”
“I didn’t have the time to check all the way back, but a church break-in occurred on the same night or the night before every murder outside the state of California.”
“Knock me down,” I said.
“Good work, asshole.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Was anything ever stolen?”
“No. Petty vandalism at the most.”
“Like what?”
“Spit. Broken candles and so on.”
“You should have the spit examined, see if it matches the fluids taken off the girls.”
“Spit isn’t saved from petty property crimes, Higgins. Try again.”
“Anyone ever brought in?”
“No.”
“Suspected?”
“No. Try again.”
“Any witnesses to any of these break-ins?”
“Nope.”
“No surveillance footage or anything like that?”
“Nope.”
There was nothing there to help me just then, but at least I was right. That would get me far in life. “The Betsy Ratner murder seemed much sloppier than the others. Was any evidence left behind? Fingerprints, a puddle of pee, anything like that?”
“No. The guy is good.”
“But he … he’s fucking these girls, yeah? You guys have his seed….”