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….”
“Yes, Higgins, we have his ‘seed,’ as you so lovingly call it.”
“What are the chances of me getting my hands on that?”
I had to ask. The scent the wolf would get from that little Baggie of play-pudding would get the job done.
“No chance,” Van Buren responded. “It’s all been sent out to different labs, you sick, sick man.”
“Do you have addresses for these labs?”
“What do I look like to you, a goddamn directory?”
“What about the Polaroid thing? No prints?”
“No prints,” he said.
“No hair? None of that?”
“No.”
“Do those Polaroid boxes have serial numbers? Would you be able to figure out where it came from?”
“Yeah, the feds did that the day we found it.”
“Where was it from? Around here?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry about it, Higgins, it didn’t pan out.”
“Don’t fuck with me, man, just tell me.”
“A fucking bumwater town, Higgins. No murders happened there, so whatever. People weren’t on the lookout, so no one down there knows a damn thing.”
“Just …
“This fucking shantytown in New Mexico. Marshall something or other.”
I swallowed hard. A heavy meal I couldn’t recall eating plunged its way into the lowest areas of my belly.
“Marshall Falls,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s it. You know it?”
“Vaguely,” I replied.
“I’d never heard of it.”
That sonofabitch prettyboy was mine. “Well, knock me the fuck down,” I said.
With that, Van Buren rushed me. This time with a football tackle that sent me back into the dirt. He jumped on top of me and gave me three right jabs to the face. Four. Before I knew it, he was going crazy on my face with short punches. I got a thumb in his mouth, hoping to pull his head down, but he bit it.
I grabbed his ear after that, and twisted it back. I could feel blood on my fingertips. He screamed. With that, I brought a leg up over his head and kicked him off of me. He went flying onto his back. We both got up, he more slowly than me.
“You sonofabitch,” I hissed.
“Your ass is mine, Higgins,” he said calmly. “You think you can get away with this shit? Blackmail me, threaten my family? You’re not making it out of these woods.”
