“I’m giving you motives, the psychological side of what fire may mean to him: religion, revenge, purification. They’re all relevant here.”
“Some guy tapping brunettes because he’s screwed up about his mother?”
“Or a girlfriend, or a teacher, or a baby-sitter, or a neighbor. He tries to have sex with a woman and he can’t perform; she laughs at him, teases him. I’m telling you, Lou-and I know you don’t want to hear this-sex and rejection probably play a part in this. His mother catches him playing with himself and takes an iron to him-”
“Enough.”
“We see that kind of thing,” she pressed.
“I don’t need this.”
“You do if you’re going to catch him,” she cautioned. “You have a premeditated killer burning down structures in a way that is confounding the specialists. He’s confident enough to send poems and drawings in advance of the kills. He has a specific look to his victims. He’s getting into their homes somehow and rigging their houses to blow so that they don’t have time to get out. You better know what makes him tick, or you’re operating on blind luck. The only way you’ll catch him is to run him down in a supermarket parking lot.”
“We isolate his fuel and we trace it back to a supplier. That’s how it’s done with arson,” he informed her.
“That’s fine for some guy torching warehouses for the insurance, but that’s not what we’ve got.”
“In part it is.”
“In part, yes. But the other part is your turf; he has victims. Listen to the victims, Lou. It’s what you’re so good at.”
“There’s nothing left here,” he gasped. “As sick as this sounds, I deal in bodies, in crime scenes. These fires steal both. It takes me out of my game plan.”
“Forget the fire,” she advised.
“What?”
“Leave the fire to Bahan and Fidler, to the Marshal Fives. You take the victims and whatever evidence you can dig up. Divide and conquer.”
“Is this what you called me for?” he asked angrily. “You want to tell me how to conduct the investigation? Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit arrogant?”
She felt herself blush. They fought like this, but only on rare occasions. She said, clinically and pointedly, “I wanted to forewarn you that I intend to speak with Shoswitz. I wanted to tell you that I made an appointment with Emily Richland, and to check if you had any direct question you wanted asked of her.”
“Emily Richland,” Boldt muttered.
“I spoke to her by phone. She mentioned a man with a burned hand.” That caught his attention. “Possible military service with a badly deformed hand. A blue pickup truck.” She could feel his resistance. She snapped sarcastically, “Why don’t you like it? Because she actually helped us solve a case once?”
Emily Richland, who ran a ten-dollar-a-throw tarot card operation on the other side of Pill Hill, had helped lead police to the location of a kidnap suspect. At her request, the police had withheld her involvement from the press, which impressed Daphne because she figured such a stunt-if it could be called that-was done in part for the notoriety, publicity, and legitimacy it afforded her. At the time, Daphne had been recovering from injuries sustained in another case involving an illicit organ donor ring and had missed the kidnapping. She had never had personal contact with Emily Richland.
“You’re saying that because it’s Richland we should listen?” he asked.
“Is that so wrong? Test the source? What if she’s a part of it? I’m not saying she’s psychic, I’m saying we listen. A burned hand? Come on!”
“What of the other calls, the other self-proclaimed psychics? You going to interview them as well?”
“I might. Emily Richland proved valuable once before; that’s all I’m saying.” She caught herself huffing from anger. “Your call, Sergeant.”
Boldt conceded. “We investigate every lead.” He sat back. “You’re absolutely right. Maybe she has something.”
“Try to think of her as a snitch, not a psychic,” she suggested.
“She has visions?”
“Don’t look at it that way. Define it in terms that are acceptable to you.”
“A snitch,” he said, testing it.
“Leave it to me,” she recommended.
Lou Boldt nodded. “Good idea,” he said.
Emily Richland did not answer her phone, but the recorded message said she was open for readings. Daphne tried again the following day, at ten in the morning. Again the machine answered. That second time, she wrote down the address given in the recording. She rode the elevator down to Homicide and marched up to Boldt’s cubicle, aware of the mountain she was attempting to climb.
She said, “How much did we pay Richland last time?”
Boldt’s khakis were clean, she noted. His shirt was fresh and his shoes polished.
“Two, two-fifty I think it was.”
“I need authorization to offer her that same amount.”
Boldt appeared paralyzed. “You’re going out there,” he stated.
“Yes, I am. And if I have to pay her, I will.”
“Shoswitz will blow a gasket.”
“I’m not asking Shoswitz, I’m asking you.”
“You know what they say around the bull pen?” he inquired rhetorically, not allowing her to answer, even had she had a comeback, which she did not. “That I can’t refuse you anything.”
“Oh, but you
“List her as a snitch in the requisition,” he instructed. It was a small compromise, easy for her to live with. It was as good as an approval. She had the finances necessary to pay Emily Richland. She felt ecstatic.
“And don’t look so smug,” he added.
“Is that an order?” she asked, directly reminding Boldt that she outranked him.
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” Boldt quipped.
“Oh, I am. I definitely am.”
18
Daphne knocked loudly on the door to the purple house. Hearing just how loudly and impatiently she knocked, she questioned whether or not she had the open mind necessary for the ruse she intended. A majority of psychics were nothing more than clever con artists. Dial a 900 number, and through the miracle of caller ID and on-line computerized credit information, the so-called psychic on the other end knew more about you-income, marital status, spending habits, the car you drove, the house you owned, the catalogs you shopped-than could possibly be used in a single session. Though she was loath to admit it to Boldt, she didn’t trust any of them, not even Emily Richland. There was no telling what connection Emily might have to the arsons. She lived in a low-rent neighborhood and made her living telling lies. She would have to prove herself one hell of a mind reader to convince Daphne otherwise.
Daphne’s mission was multilayered: to reverse roles, tell lies of her own, and subtly interview Emily Richland in an effort to test the woman’s authenticity; to attempt to trap the woman into admitting some connection- professional or personal-with the arsons or the arsonist; to offer to pay the woman for information, but only as a last resort.
The door opened.
The woman’s long dark hair was pulled back, stretching the skin of a freckled face that took ten or more years off her forty. Her eyes were a haunting blue under too much mascara. She wore a thrift-store black velvet gown that emphasized her breasts even though the rest of the dress appeared a size too large, and was cinched
