Blossom

'Now a good time to come and see you?'

'A very good time.'

'Okay. I'll pull up outside the station in about fifteen minutes. We'll go for a ride and talk, okay? I'm driving a…'

'I know your car. I'll be out front.'

He hadn't seemed surprised I didn't want to sit around a police station— I guess he had talked to McGowan.

62

SHERWOOD CLIMBED in the front seat, adjusting his bulk comfortably. 'You show them a credit card, they'll rent you anything these days, huh?' Letting me know.

'Anyplace special you want me to drive?'

'You want to see where it happened? That last one?'

'Yeah.'

'Take the left at the corner.'

I followed the cop's directions until we came to a sign that said Naval Reserve Center. A couple of more blocks to the beach. A black man came over to my window, wearing a guayabera shirt, metal change-maker at his waist. 'Two bucks for nonresidents,' he said.

'Rest it, Rufus,' Sherwood rumbled.

The change-maker looked across me to Sherwood, turned away without a word.

I pulled into the parking lot. Lake Michigan spread out before us. Only a few people on the beach, half a dozen cars in the lot.

I killed the engine, flicked the power window switch, lit a smoke. Waited.

'This is it' he said. 'Victims were parked just about there'— pointing at the corner of the lot closest to the dunes. 'We figure he took a position somewhere up around there'— pointing again. 'No use trying that trajectory stuff— too many bullets.'

'Kids still park here at night?'

'Yeah, they do. But over on the other side. Where there's no cover.'

'Wouldn't need much at nighttime.'

'No,' he agreed, sadly.

I scanned the scene. A thousand places to shoot from, stationary, unsuspecting targets who couldn't shoot back, the cover of night. Surprise. A human-hunter's paradise.

'McGowan, that's your friend?' Sherwood asked.

'My friend. Not my brother, not my partner, okay? We've done some things together over the years.'

'Want to know what he said about you?'

'Up to you.'

'He said you got felony arrests for everything from hijacking to attempted murder.'

'Not everything.'

'Okay, he was clear about that. No rapes, no sex cases.'

'No narcotics, no kids.'

'Right.'

'So now you know.'

'He said you may have been a firearms dealer at one time. There's an FBI file on you for that. You took a federal fall for interstate transport, but it was only a couple of handguns. That's where you met your man Virgil, right?'

I nodded. That was back when the state joints were using the federales as a dumping ground, transferring cons all over the country. Bus therapy, they called it. They moved the Prof for preaching— race war is more to prison authorities' taste than brotherhood. I never did find out why Virgil came down as well.

'And a CIA file too— still open. Suspected mercenary.'

'I was in Biafra,' I said, watching him closely, 'not Rhodesia.'

'He told me. Said you cleaned up a real mess for them a while back.'

I dragged on my smoke.

'He said you make a living working the edge of the line. Finding missing kids, stinging kiddie-porn dealers, roughing off pimps.'

'Any of those on your protected list?'

'No.'

'So?'

'So you're a criminal. Not just an ex-con like your pal Virgil. A working criminal.'

'McGowan tell you I know anything about freaks?'

'He said you know more than anyone he's ever met.'

'You think Lloyd did the snipings?'

'Do you?'

'I know he didn't.'

'Which means…?'

'Which means someone else did.'

'Maybe.'

'You got 'Exceptional Clearance' in this state?' I asked, challenging him. Sometimes the cops arrest a guy who didn't do the crime and mark it closed. Sometimes they know who did it but they can't make an arrest. Then they call it 'Exceptional Clearance.' The same tag they use when a baby-raper turns out to hold some political markers.

I flashed back on standing next to an old black woman in a cemetery. Watched as they put the little casket in the ground. Her grandson. Tortured to death. Scanning the crowd. Hoping the freak would want one last look at his work. The kid's mother was in jail. Crack. The old woman was bent over slightly at the waist from a hundred years of cleaning other people's houses. Her eyes were clear and hard. She'd offered me the money she'd put aside for the boy's college fund to find the killer. 'The money was for Alexander, and the Lord knows he doesn't need it now.'

Dirt rattled on the coffin. Her hand tightened on mine, holding herself rigid. 'If God was going to make life so filthy, seems like he didn't have to make us dirty when we die.'

My file was open.

Sherwood met my eyes. 'Not for homicides. Not on my beat. I asked around, got the word about you. Do the same before you make your charges.'

'I got it. I figured you hadn't closed the books on this one…that you're still looking. That's true, I want you to know I'm looking too. I don't want to step on your trail, give you the wrong idea.'

'McGowan told me, some of the people you look for, they might not get found.'

I tossed my cigarette out the window.

'Not around here,' he said. Making it clear.

I nodded. 'Will you show me what you got?' I asked him.

'The forensics?'

'Everything.'

'Why not? It's not much.'

'You got a profile?'

'Profile? One of those FBI things? Tell me the killer probably had an unhappy childhood or something? No, thanks.'

'I got one.'

'Where?'

'In here.' I tapped the side of my head. 'You've got this guy pegged as a loner, right?'

He nodded.