“Fuck you, too, Boyle!”
Guess he read my mind.
“Go home to Fran, Gus.” Helen, the dispatcher has come out of her cubicle to join the audience.
“Fuck you, Helen!” Now Gus sees the crowd of cops staring at him. Knows he's made a fool of himself. “Fuck you all,” he mutters. “Every blue bastard one of you!”
His hands tremble into his pockets and his shoulders sag.
No one says a word. Heads drop all around the room. Nobody wants to watch the show anymore. This thing stopped being funny a while ago.
Gus turns, the crowd parts, and he makes his way out the door.
“I only spent one night with the girl.”
All of a sudden, Dr. Teddy Winston doesn't want to wait for his lawyer. He wants to talk. It's almost seven-thirty P.M. I figure he must have another hot date lined up for later tonight.
“You were there,” he says, fluttering his fingers in my general direction. “Remember? You were at The Sand Bar and told me where I might procure a six-pack to go.”
I sink down in my chair an inch or two.
We're in the interrogation room. Like most such spaces, it's got one of those one-way-mirror window deals. Chief Baines is currently on the other side watching us, and now the suspect is describing how I aided and abetted his bedding of the underage girl we've all been hunting for by pointing him toward Fritzie's Package Store.
I figure I could crawl under the table but that might make me look even worse.
“She's the one you ought to arrest,” says Winston. “The girl.”
“Why's that?” asks Ceepak.
“For prostitution.”
“Did you pay her?”
“No. She robbed me.”
“When?”
“You know. After. She took one hundred dollars. Cash.”
“Did she take the key to your room at Chesterfield's as well?”
“No. I simply lost it.”
“When?”
“Which time are you talking about? I've lost it a few times this week.”
“Tell me about them all.”
“Heavens-I don't know. I don't really pay much attention to such things. Fine. I confess to being absentminded, but the folks at the front desk don't seem to care. In fact, they have been quite accommodating. Surely it's no crime to lose one's room key. And this ridiculous littering charge….”
Ceepak flashes open the wallet we retrieved from the B amp;B.
“Is this your driver's license?”
“Yes.”
“Is 08540 your current ZIP code?”
“Yes.”
Ceepak's watching his eyeballs. Now he knows which way Teddy's eyes will swing when he flings us a fib.
“Do you come to Sea Haven often?”
“Not recently. Not in ten, maybe fifteen years.”
“What about in the past-specifically the 1980s?”
“Yes. When I was in college. I came down here quite a bit. So did a lot of people. The beaches, as I recall, were always quite crowded.”
I think he's trying to be sarcastic.
Ceepak keeps going. “During these visits, did you ever attend religious services at Life Under the Son?”
“Church services?” The doctor is indignant. “Do you seriously imagine attending worship services was ever my idea of a fun weekend?”
Ceepak arches an eyebrow. I think Teddy just looked the wrong way.
“Are you certain?”
Teddy leans back in his chair. Ruminates.
“Life Under the Son?” He's acting up a storm. Scrunching up his face. Thinking. He'll probably rub his chin pretty soon. Yup, there he goes. “Is that down by the boardwalk?”
Ceepak nods.
“They used to put on some sort of show out in the surf. Baptisms, I believe.”
Ceepak gives him another nod.
“Okay. Yes. Now that you mention it … once or twice I may have stopped by. This was decades ago….”
“I know.”
“I remember the girls involved were always quite attractive. College girls. Sexy. All lined up along the shore in their bathing suits. Several of the young ladies weren't quite ready for heaven, as I recall. They were still eager to raise a little hell.”
“Did you spend time with any of these girls?”
“Perhaps.”
“It's a simple question. I'm looking for just a yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“One or two. Maybe more. After all, they'd already displayed their willingness to … uh … sin.”
“Did you hurt any of them?”
“The girls?”
“The girls you picked up at the church.”
Teddy smiles. “Not that I recall. However, I am rather, how shall I put this, rather well endowed.”
Left. That's the liar side. That's where he just looked.
“Did you kill any of them?”
“Excuse me?”
“How many of these girls did you kill?”
“What?”
“It's a simple question, sir.”
“I … I….”
The eyeballs are staring straight ahead now.
“Did you cut off their heads?”
Ceepak flops one of the After shots down on the table. Teddy looks down and his face loses all its tan.
There's a knock at the door. The chief swings it open.
“Ceepak?”
“Sir?”
“Need you out front. You too, Boyle.”
“What is it?” Ceepak asks the chief when the three of us are in his office.
The chief holds up a plastic bag.
Inside I can see a THANK YOU note-the kind my mother used to make me send to all my aunts and uncles before I could spend any of my Christmas money. The front flap is decorated with a sketch of a watering can stuffed with flowers. Ceepak and I screw up our eyes, trying to decipher the snatch of verse printed in blue ink against the blue sky.
Chief Baines reads it to us: “‘Just at the right time, the Lord will send showers of blessings. Ezekiel 34:26.’”
Ezekiel.
Now he holds up another baggie. Inside, there's a hot-pink envelope.
“I think it's addressed to you, John.”
There are two initials typed on the front flap: J. C.
“Your serial killer is sending you fan mail.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Helen found it when she stepped outside for a smoke.”
The chief sets the two bags down on his desk.
“Where was it?” asks Ceepak.
“Stuck in the gravel. Poking up near the curb.”
The grounds around police headquarters are landscaped with pea pebbles instead of grass. Crushed rock requires little in the way of maintenance, irrigation, or a green thumb.
“Did she see who placed it there?” asks Ceepak.
“No,” says the chief.
“Were any vehicles in the vicinity?”
“I don't think so.”
“Pedestrians?”
“No. She just saw the envelope.”
“Was it Gus?” I ask. “You think he put it there before he came in?”
“It's a possibility,” says Ceepak.
Our old pal just worked his way back onto the suspect list. Ceepak finds another sterile pair of gloves in his cargo pants.
“This message,” he says, “as well as the initials J. C. typed on the front of the envelope, was done on an IBM Selectric typewriter.”
The chief nods. “Just like the cards we found buried in all the holes. We should check the office supply stores in town. Office Depot over on the mainland. Staples. See who's been buying ribbons for antique typewriters.”
Ceepak stops his study of the card long enough to shoot me the slightest little look, because the chief just said exactly what he had said earlier. Back then, our boy Baines told us there wasn't enough time for such niceties.
Ceepak goes back to work. Guess we'll gloat or scream later. It seems our serial killer has climbed out of his mole hole and, after years of silence, wants to communicate with the police.
“‘Thank you for arresting the doctor,’” Ceepak reads. “‘He is an odious fornicator.’”
“See?” says the chief. “He's been following us! Knows what we've been doing, knows we brought in Dr. Winston.”