I'd kept my word and stayed close. I didn't need to go far; fifty steps and I had found myself alone, more alone than I'd ever been. I'd stopped to take this in, not so much afraid as interested. I'd arrived in a small clearing, surrounded by a number of tall trees with dying leaves that hadn't given up the ghost just yet. I'd spread my arms and tilted my head all the way back and closed my eyes and listened to the stillness and the silence.
Years later I'd find the body of a young woman in the woods of Angeles Crest and remember that stillness and silence and wonder what it was like to be killed in the middle of nowhere, to have that solitude as a cathedral for your screams.
I was ten years old on that trip to New York, and it was the last trip we took before my mom got sick. When I think of my parents, I always think of them then, at that age, just thirty and thirty-one, younger than I am now. When I think of being young, I remember those trips we took, I-spy and pididdle and are-we-there-yet and my mother's complaints. I remember my father's wonder, my mother's love for him, and I remember the leaves and the trees and the time when stillness held beauty instead of the memories of death. LISA'S CONDO IS NEW CONSTRUCTION, located near the center of Alexandria. The buildings are nice, but don't really fit their surrounds.
'Kind of like California in Virginia,' Alan observes, putting voice to my thoughts.
The condo is brown wood and stucco on the outside, with its own small driveway. No one has entered yet; there's no yellow crime scene tape on the door. We pull in, exit, and walk up to the front door. Alan will clear the condo with me before leaving to go chase up on witnesses. We'd swung by the morgue so I could grab Lisa's keys. I am fiddling with them in the bad light from the streetlamps to find the one we need.
'Probably that one,' Alan notes, indicating a gold-colored key. I fit the key into the deadbolt lock and it turns with a click. I put the key ring into my jacket pocket and we both pull our weapons.
'Ladies first,' Alan says.
THE CONDO HAS TWO BEDROOMS, one of which doubles as a home office. We clear these as well as the guest half-bath and the master bathroom before holstering our guns.
'Nice place,' Alan observes.
'Yeah.'
It's decorated in earth tones, muted without being bland. Catches of color appear throughout, from maroon throw pillows on the couch to white cotton curtains with blue flower trim along the edges. It's clean and odorless, no smell of pets or dirty clothes or food left out. She didn't smoke. The wooden coffee table facing the couch is covered in a happy disarray of magazines and books. Lisa was tidy but not fastidious.
'Okay if I go?' he asks.
I glance at my watch. It's now 5:00 A.M.
'Sure. Before you get on to chasing down witnesses or following the money, get a search going for murders with a similar signature.'
'The cross, you mean?'
'The cross, or just the symbols he left on the cross. I don't think we're going to find any really old crimes, but we might find some new ones.'
He frowns. 'You think he's been operating for a while and only just decided to come out into the open?'
'I do.'
'Bad idea on his part.'
'Let's hope so.'
ALONE NOW. I LEAVE THE lights off. The dawn has arrived and I want to see the living room as Lisa would have seen it. I sit down on the couch, brown microfiber, a couch like a thousand others, except that this one had been hers. She'd sat here, time after time. I'm able to pick out her favored spot, a cushion that's just a little bit more worn than the others.
A medium-sized flat-screen TV faces the couch, placed a comfortable distance away. I imagine her sitting here, lights out, shadows dancing on her face. I see a bottle of nail polish on the coffee table and smile. Watching TV while painting her nails. I find a book on a side table, a silly romance novel. Guilty pleasures, maybe reading while her toenails dried.
This place was a sanctum, a refuge, and I'm going to root through it with impunity. I reflect that in this way, I'm very like the killers I hunt. I will move through this home and open her drawers, read her e-mail, peer into her medicine cabinet. Cross all boundaries of privacy until there's nothing left to find.
Once upon a time, Lisa could turn the lock and keep the world outside from finding out her secrets, but not anymore. The killers I hunt are empowered by this concept.
My motives are purer, obviously, but I learned a long time ago that I won't survive doing what I do if I am dishonest with myself, and the truth is, I feel just a little hint of that power when I go through a victim's home, the slightest thrill of the voyeur. I can look where I want, touch what I want, open any door I want. It's heady and I can understand, just a little, why it has such a draw for psychopaths. I get up and move into the kitchen. It's small but functional and very clean. Brown granite countertops. Stainless steel refrigerator with matching over-the-counter microwave, stove, and dishwasher. I open a few cabinets and peer inside. White china, neatly stacked. The refrigerator is nearly bare. I see a note/shopping list posted on the refrigerator door. It says,
The kitchen drawers reveal nothing. Silverware, a phone book, some pens and Post-its. I'm not really surprised. Lisa was someone used to having to hide in public. She wouldn't keep her secrets out here where a guest could find them by accident.
I move to the bedroom. It's medium-sized, with a lush beige carpet. The bed dominates the room, a California king. The earth tones continue here. Lisa had found her own sweet spot in terms of decor; feminine without being girly.
I move to the common repository of secrets for women: the nightstand. I open the top drawer and am not disappointed. There's a plastic bag of marijuana with some rolling papers. I also see some baby oil and a magazine filled with photographs of well-muscled naked men. I glance around, note the CD player.
I can imagine Lisa, putting on a CD, lighting up a joint and inhaling while she flipped through the pages of the magazine to find the right visual spark. Finding it, lying back, grabbing the baby oil . . . And that's where we part ways, Lisa.
My fingers, when they travel down there, arrive at a different tactile experience. I've never had a penis, never wanted one, but I've held them in my hands. I know what they feel like, smell like, taste like, but I don't know what it's like to hold one and feel it being touched at the same time.
Did that bother you? You were attracted to men, you longed to be a woman. When your hand found a penis, was it alien? Did you transform it in your fantasies to something else?
I strain to arrive there, to feel it as she would have felt it, but the experience eludes me.
I close the drawer and open the one below it, find only some paperbacks.
I move to her dresser and rummage through the drawers. I could be looking through my own. There are no male items here at all. Bras, panties, some T-shirts and jeans. The closet reveals the same, a mix of dresses, slacks, and a ton of shoes. She had good taste, just to the left of classy, a muted flair. Hinting at mischief without giving away the store.
I leave the room and enter the bathroom next to it. Again, I'm struck by the fact: this is a woman's place. Makeup, loofah, lavenderscented soap. Bath beads, pink razors, a hand cream dispenser. Even the toilet seat is down. Did she sit to pee, or stand?
The medicine cabinet belongs to a healthy person. I see aspirin, bandages, the basics. No antidepressants or prescription painkillers. In fact, no medication of any kind, which puzzles me until I work it out. She would have taken her medication with her on her trip to Texas.
The area under the sink provides another contrast. No tampons there in that easy-to-reach-while-sitting-on- the-toilet position. Just a hand cloth and some tile cleaner.
There's a digital scale on the floor, and I step onto it out of habit, still trying to be Lisa. I ignore its lies, as I imagine she would have. A last pause and look around and I leave the bathroom to go check out her home office.
The office is decorated in the same earth tones as the rest of the condo. There's a desk placed under the window. She'd have been able to look outside when she felt like it, but her flat-screen computer monitor would have been protected from the sun's glare. The desk itself is made of dark wood, neither substantial nor rickety,
