“Sounds like a confused man this Towne. Still, young Reynolds may have a case, but how can you be sure? About the first crime scene. Just how bungled was it?”
“Hard to tell from here. But like I said, the kid's made some compelling arguments.”
“Fill me in.”
She rattled off the similarities in the three cases and added, “The only thing that distinguishes them as not being the work of the same killer is-”
“-the disparity of time between each.”
“Exactly, yes.” She nodded, her image reaching him but breaking up. “From all we know of serial killers, they strike within days, weeks, months at best, not years apart.”
The horse tugged off Richard's hat in a bid for attention. Richard laughed his full rich laugh. “And given our predilection for accurate bureau statistics, such an aberration frightens the hell out of us, doesn't it?”
“You're going to make those horses sick if you feed them any more apples. Put an end to it, for goodness' sake,” she suggested.
After a moment's thought, Richard said, “Speaks highly of this fellow Reynolds, I'd say, his catching these killings spaced so far apart both in time and geography.”
“He's awfully good and awfully young for an Area Special Agent in charge. I mean to be in charge in a field office as large as Milwaukee. I suspect he has a sterling record.”
“Else he knows how to suck up!”
“Don't think he needs to. He's enormous. Even on his knees, he'd find kissing up impossible. More likely has something to do with placing more blacks in high-level decision-making positions, not that he isn't talented from what I have seen of him.”
“Quotas, really? In the FBI?” Richard's mock grimace sold his sarcasm. “Does sound as if he's made an impression.”
“He does make an impression, yes.”
“Good bloke, heh?”
Jessica loved Richard's English accent and idioms. “Wish you were here,” she said.
He replied, “In Milwaukee?” But his imagination was sparked now, his rapt attention had left her for the burgeoning details of her case. Over the videophone, she recognized that his mind burned with curiosity.
“So then, we only have days if we're to save this chap in Oregon from the barbarous electric chair.”
“Three after today, and it's not quite so barbarous. They use lethal injection in a pristine sterile environment.”
“Like putting down a dog, huh?”
“And what do you mean by we? 'We only have days'?”
“If the man is innocent then I want to help.”
“How, Richard? How will you help?”
“I'll get on a plane for Millbrook, go over their tracks.”
“I'm not even convinced that Reynolds is right.”
“But you are convinced of his sincerity. I can tell that much.”
“True. I believe he believes.”
“And we don't have the luxury of debating it. This lapse in time between the murders could simply mean the killer himself has, at times, been incarcerated either in prison or an asylum.”
“Else he has the patience of evil,” she suggested.
“It may be what is meant by vengeance being best served up cold.”
“Well this is damned cold. If he knew any of these victims, they didn't know him. There's nothing in their backgrounds to warrant any of them should have ended life as mutilated victims.” “I'm just suggesting he likes his bone soup served as a consomme.”
“I tell you, Richard, you have a cookbook inside you wanting to get out.”
“You must know the Buddy Holly title, 'Love Waits,' right?”
“Of course, but-”
“Hate waits longer.”
“Still, can't help the doubts. A sociopathic monomaniac capable of this… I hardly think him capable of timing his killings to coincide with mid-November, spacing each by a year of interim quiet. A fantasy life for these guys is t wen ty-four-seven.”
“There's always the exception. But speaking of fantasy life…”
“I miss you, too, darling.”
“Another reason to join you on the case. So suppose that this Millbrook, Minnesota, place was in fact his first time, and it frightened hell out of him, learning what he was capable of?”
“So he lives with it for a long time, and then something else in his life intensifies, and with a sudden volley of stress placed on him, say the death of his mum, the loss of his income, a bout with depression all at once…”
“And so in Oregon later,” mused Richard, “he has a new and overpowering urge to do it all over again, to again kill?”
“And the same thing happens in Milwaukee,” she added. “But it's not like he's a loose-cannon, spur-of-the- moment type who leaves a trail of clues. Rather he goes at this thing in calculated fashion, hence the drawings. This is highly organized, premeditated stalking and butchering.”
“Certainly doesn't appear anything random about it, save perhaps how he selects his victims, and even then there may be some hidden agenda. All of them being matronly in age and appearance.”
“This creep apparently wants the bones still wet with the victim's bodily fluids and blood, because his damnable brain is telling him that something special resides therein, the victim's soul perhaps, her anima perhaps.”
“Imbued with the essence of the known victim,” suggested Richard. “Look here, I've finished up with that North Korea affair in China. To great ends, I might add.”
“Congratulations again.”
“I tell you the mucky-mucks running the country are so like the Russians of the fifties, that they could still screw it up. I could push them from the bloody balcony in a heart's beat. It's like stepping back in time going to Beijing, and not only did they destroy a lovely name for a city- Peking-but the pollution is horrendous as well. And what's frightening is that they are meat eaters in a country where not so much as a single swine, sheep, goat, bovine, antelope, deer, dog, cat or chicken may be found, only birds and rats.”
“Can it be that bad? Really?”
“Really, yes! All livestock lost to extremely poor planning to say the least at the last emperor's feast I suppose, where he kept a continuous feast going for fifty years, every day of the year, every hour of the day and night for his thousands of honored guests like there was no tomorrow. It's no wonder-”
“Black market thrives,” she finished for him.
“No wonder they love to go to the zoos and stare at the animals in the cages, and why they hunt down and eat wild animals like those cats, celts are they called, suspected of carrying SARS?”
“It's sad really.”
“Now, except for what you can get on the black market, everyone is served some sort of mystery meat at every meal-a true mystery, my analytical sweetheart. One you could certainly sink your teeth into.”
“What do they tell you when you ask about the food?”
“Chicken… everything is chicken or fish. Even the meat with the four-inch bony tail, chicken. Sometimes they get cute and tell you it's the fish that walks on land.”
They laughed over this and said tender good-byes, blowing one another kisses via the video link.
“I'll call you from Millbrook when I can!” he shouted and hung up.
Just like Richard to drop everything to help out, she thought. She knew no other man who'd be so willing to get involved in such a nebulous cause.
Jessica put away her PCS Vision phone and dropped back on the bed, exhausted and hungry. Still no call from Darwin. She wondered what had become of him when there came a knock at her door. She remained in her terry- cloth robe, her hair still stringy from being wet.
She went to the door and peeked through the one-way telescopic peephole and found Darwin on the other side with a large room-service cart filled with food.
