“Cross-breed. He were an Oreo. Dat’s the only think I really noticed about him.”
“Biracial?”
“Dat’s what you folks say. More po-litically correct dat way.”
Taylor’s mind was whirling. II Macellaio was attacking both white and black girls. Was it because he was both white and black?
“When you say a Pious car, what do you mean?”
“Ah, you know. One of dem stupid gas savers. Pious. Toyota.”
“A Prius?”
Tyrone laughed at her. “Dat’s what you white folks call dem.”
Great. Sarcasm always helped.
“Okay, so he was a light-skinned black man driving a Prius. What color was it?”
“White. And I wouldn’t be callin’ him a black man. He had too much honky in him for dat. Gotta have some pride in your roots, ya know?” He thumped his closed fist, knuckles in, against his heart three times.
Pride. Pride drove this man to be a pimp and drug dealer, to base desire and abuse. And he called an attempt to save gas pious. The irony was not lost on her.
“Anything else you can remember? Any bumper stickers, or maybe you wrote down the license plate so you could keep track of the girls?”
“Naw. No reason to keep track of them before now. They didn’t have anywhere to run off to. I give them everything they need.”
Except for safety. He’d given them everything they needed to be preyed upon by a serial killer. Given them to the killer himself. She didn’t feel the need to point that out to him.
“Okay, Tyrone, that’s a help. I appreciate your cooperation. Gerald, I’m done with him. Thanks for all your help.”
She shook Gerald’s hand, left him to deal with his informant’s weapons issue.
She turned to McKenzie. “Time for you to split. Go talk to Bangor. I’ll wrap things up here. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”
“Sure you don’t need me?”
“I’m sure.”
“See you then. Don’t stay too late. We’re on the right track. We’ll find him.”
Taylor watched him go, hoping sending him like a lamb to the slaughter was the right thing to do, then went back to the homicide offices. Elm was standing in the door to his office, staring at her.
“Evelyn?” he said.
Taylor was thrust back in time, to a vision of her grandfather looking blankly at her mother, Kitty, calling her by her grandmother’s name. All of the pieces slammed into place.
She went to Elm. “No, sir, I’m Taylor Jackson.”
He shook his head for a moment as if to clear the cobwebs, then said, “Of course you are. No need to reintroduce yourself every time we see each other. Don’t forget to leave me a summary of your day. That is all.”
He went in the office and closed the door. Taylor sighed heavily. She went to her desk and called her union rep, a fantastically nice guy named Percy Jennings. She left him a message to call her on the cell. This needed to be dealt with, and fast.
Percy called her back almost immediately.
“What’s up, Goddess? Your case is going great, we should have you reinstated in no time. Just need to get the Oompa out of there.”
“Cool. That’s good news. We have a different problem. Hold on a sec while I get somewhere more private.”
She stepped out into the hall, past the conference room to the Ladies’ bathroom. She opened the door, and the motion sensor lights flickered on, illuminating the tiled darkness. Good, no one here. She locked it behind her just in case.
“Okay, Percy, sorry about that. We have a situation with Lieutenant Elm.”
“Tell me about it. He’s a nitpicker, you have no idea the complaints we’re getting about him. Totally inconsistent, forgetting people’s names. The guy’s completely erratic.”
“I think I know why. He just called me Evelyn, then snapped back to reality. Half an hour ago he charged into an interrogation insisting we were talking to a murderer from New Orleans. I’ve seen this behavior before. My grandfather had Alzheimer’s, an absolutely wicked, nasty case. I think Elm’s got it, too. It explains why he’s so bad in the evenings, too. A lot of Alzheimer’s patients get worse as the day goes on. Elm’s much easier to deal with in the morning. Nearly pleasant, comparatively. That’s how my granddaddy was, lucid in the morning, growing more and more confused in the late afternoon and evening.”
“Jeez, that sucks. He still alive?”
“No, he passed a while ago. Elm isn’t young, but he’s got some good years left in him. His mind will go, but his body will take a much slower trip.”
“Okay. I’ll go talk to the people in charge, let them know.”
“Keep it quiet, Percy. It’s a humiliating disease. He may think something’s wrong, but I doubt he’s been diagnosed yet. It’s going to be a touchy situation, at best.”
“All right, Taylor, will do. Thanks for letting me know. Go catch some bad guys.”
They clicked off. She went to the mirror, splashed some cold water on her face. Remembering her grandfather was always hard. He’d suffered, and there was nothing anyone could do to ease his mind. She’d never known him well; Kitty hadn’t been close to her parents. Strange, she never realized that she and her mother had that in common.
She forced thoughts of family from her mind. She couldn’t afford to be sidetracked, not now.
When she went back into the offices, Elm’s door was open and his light off. He’d gone for the day. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. Now that she suspected the truth, she wouldn’t be able to look at him without pity, and a man like that would sense her emotions, even if he didn’t understand them. Better that he was gone.
On her desk was a piece of paper with Rowena’s spidery handwriting. “Fax is in your top drawer,” it said.
She’d nearly forgotten. The information she’d been waiting for all day.
She opened her desk drawer greedily. It was a two-page fax-a cover sheet from Taschen Books Manhattan, then a copyright page. Editor, Designer, Production Manager, Library of Congress information. Okay. One of the three names had to be what she was looking for.
She wrote them all down, then called Baldwin.
“We have some names,” she said. “The puzzle is starting to come together.”
“Excellent. Would you like to meet Memphis and me for a drink before we leave? We’re at Ruth’s Chris.”
“Sure, why not. I’ll be there shortly.”
She shut down her computer, then drove up West End to the restaurant. A valet greeted her and took her keys. She fluffed her hair in the reflective glass entrance, then entered the steak house.
Baldwin spotted her first and hailed her with a wave. She joined the men at the table, asked for a glass of Seghesio Zinfandel, one of her and Baldwin’s newest discoveries.
Memphis was drinking scotch, she could smell the peaty, musty scent. She’d always hated whiskies of all sorts; they tasted like wood chips. Baldwin was drinking a draft Sam Adams.
“We’ve got a plane at ten. I decided to go back to Quantico tonight, get moving on this new information right away. I want to get everything plugged into the profile so I can get it to you tomorrow,” Baldwin said. “As a matter of fact, I need to call and confirm our reservation. Did you eat?”
“I did. We ordered in Thai.”
“Okay then. By the way, Memphis made the astute observation earlier that he thinks we’re dealing with someone who’s biracial.”
She smiled at him, then checked herself. “Damn. Here you are, beating me to the punch. I interviewed a pimp tonight who said both of my current victims got in a white Prius, together, mind you, with what he termed an Oreo.”
“That’s a rather derogatory term for it.”
