shield to defeat the light of day. The interior was cramped and made smaller by dark paneling. A pool table was covered with garish red felt.
Custom street signs adorned the header over the bar. One said BULLSHIT PLACE the other spelled out ASSHOLE ALLEY.
In the corner a video game had a large green
Danny ordered a Sharps nonalcoholic beer and sat at one of the small tables next to the pool table. He checked his watch. Early, 1:45; 3:45 in St. Paul. He eyed the pay phone on the wall. The urge was palpable, treading in the dark.
Like the creature in the corner, silently swimming to and fro.
He tried to imagine Kemper filling the space of this room.
A really big man, six nine. Kemper, according to the literat-ure, hated his mother and finally killed her. Danny did not hate his mother. He was glad she was gone because she was a bother. He’d always dreaded the long haul across the rickety ministrations of some nursing home. But he never hated her. Sometimes he wished she had been someone else.
Someone with better genes. Better looks. More goddamn money.
Danny eyed the phone again. Imagined hearing Ida’s unsuspecting voice and jacking off.
He had to get rid of her, of course. Not effortlessly, like Caren. This time it had to be done with authority. Some fear and pain to mark the arrival of Danny Storey. Trauma. Not unlike birth.
The sunlight oscillated on the other side of the partition, and a square medium-size man in his late fifties shouldered into the gloom. Danny squinted and held up his loose leaf binder. He rose and extended his hand.
“Harold?”
The man nodded curtly. Came forward. His handshake was forceful, casual retro macho. Danny winced a little and did not try to compete.
“Dan Storey?” he asked.
“That’s right,” said Danny. They walked to the bar. Wicks ordered a Scotch and water and asked for an extra glass of water. Danny dropped a five to cover it. When Wicks had his drink, they went back to the table.
“So Arnie says you’re interested in old Santa Cruz, back during the serial killer epidemic,” said Harold.
“I was curious if you had a theory why it happened here.”
Harold shrugged his shoulders. “Why not here? Those guys were like bad weather. You know it exists, but you don’t think it’ll come ashore where you’re having your picnic. But there it is.” He was philosophical. A Big Thing, but at the same time, in the long view, no big thing.
He took a sip of his drink and studied Danny. “It’s not like there are rules that govern these things.”
Danny cleared his throat. “Well, the FBI studies them, the killers.”
“Common sense,” said Harold.
“How’s that?” asked Danny, polite.
Harold gestured offhand. “Most of Kemper’s victims were coeds. He picked them up hitchhiking. Who keeps hitchhiking in Santa Cruz when somebody’s killing female hitch-hikers?”
“I hear you,” agreed Danny. He probed his cheek with his tongue. “The thing that got to me was, he used to sit in here with you guys.”
Harold nodded. “I remember one night he was at the bar with a bunch of deputies.” Shook his head, grinned. “They were trying to
Danny leaned forward and studied the lines in Harold’s face. “What I mean is, you were sitting this close to him and you didn’t know.”
“Hell,” chuckled Harold. “I was just a copper, a patrol grunt.” He shifted forward, and his face creased with a rueful smile and his blue eyes twinkled with elfin mischief. “You know about what he did to his grandparents?”
Danny nodded.
“Naturally, the state of California in its infinite wisdom let him out of the nuthouse. He had to go in for regular sessions with a shrink. You know, a college-educated liberal fruit the state of California employs to look after its wayward children.
Well, Kemper goes in for his therapy and convinces the shrink that he’s a well-adjusted example of rehabilitation.
And you know what?”
Danny cocked forward. An eager audience.
Harold continued. “During this interview, Kemper’s got a victim’s severed head in the trunk of his car out in the parking lot.”
“Why?” asked Danny. Fascinated.
Harold shrugged. “He was taunting us. Part of the thrill, I guess.”
Danny laughed in Harold Wicks’s face.
They studied each other philosophically. Finally Harold pronounced, “You never fuckin’ know.”
“Ah,” Danny glanced at his wristwatch. “Could you excuse me, I gotta make a quick call.” He rose and picked up his empty beer bottle and eyed Harold’s almost dry glass. “You want another one?”
“If you are,” said Harold.
Danny took Harold’s glass and his bottle to the bar, ordered another round and got change. Then he walked to the side of the room, picked up the pay phone receiver and dropped in quarters, got long distance and asked for Ida’s number in Minnesota.
He watched smoke shift through the rays of balmy light splayed to the side of the partition while the phone rang on Sergeant Street in St. Paul.
“Hello?”
He gripped the receiver and experienced a pleasurable squirm of muscles low in his abdomen.
“Hello?” her voice was husky, busy, practical. Not concerned. Just inconvenienced.
Danny waited another beat and then hung the phone up. He went back to the bar, paid for the round of drinks and returned to the table.
“Do you think he wanted to be caught?” asked Danny.
Harold sipped his drink. “Guess so. Called up the city cops and confessed. At first the dispatcher didn’t take it seriously.
Their old drinking buddy Ed.”
“So he had a shred of conscience?”
Wicks shook his head dubiously. “Him? Nah, I think he was expecting to be famous or something.”
Danny felt no such urge. He just wanted to be left alone.
Right under their noses. He was cruising right under their fucking noses and they couldn’t see. Smooth as that shark off the beach.
Old Harold Wicks was on the job, just inches away, and he didn’t see anything. None of them did. Except Broker.
Still hanging on. Some hick resort owner playing cop.
Danny tore the wrapper from a Power Bar and wolfed it down. It started to rain again. He slowed down, hit his indicator and turned off on the Freedom Road exit. Waited at the light. Turned and picked up speed.
He had not planned on going back for a while. He tossed the wrapper out the window in an explosion of nerves, steadied, passed a slow station wagon in the right-hand lane.
There was the question of how to get it back here. He couldn’t just fly in a commercial jet with a big suitcase.
Money would show up as a suspicious blob on the X rays.
The kind they were trained to look for. Transporting the money was a problem. If he took a jet back to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International, he could rent a car. Drop in on Ida, zip up north, pick up the money and drive the rental back to San Jose and pick up his truck in the airport lot. Have to show ID to rent a car. Not good.
Be nice to visit Broker. Just up the road from where the 348 / CHUCK LOGAN
stuff was buried, but that would be too many coincidences.
