cocoons. Mary Elizabeth stared at the wall and wouldn’t respond when they spoke to her. Blood was running from both vagina and anus. Sue Simmons didn’t respond either. She was dead.
We got on to Richards the usual way, through an informer. This informer lived in the neighborhood, often wound up in some of the same diners, poolrooms and bars as Richards, and almost certainly carried some grudge against him. Once we had this, still with nothing but hearsay and suspicion to take to market, we bird-dogged Richards in solid shifts, staking out his apartment from unmarked cars. For two days nothing happened. We learned a lot: that he kept unpredictable hours, had no visitors, and thrived exclusively on carry-out hamburgers. On the third day, he disappeared.
We went in with a judge’s order on the fourth day and everything was just as it had been the times we’d gone in without, clothes scattered about, toiletries in place, bottle or two of prescription drugs in the bathroom, piles of mustard, salt and pepper packets on the kitchenette counter by a pool of loose change. He was gone, purely gone. Evaporated. Vanished. No one ever heard from or of him again.
That was the first one.
“A vigilante,” someone said at roll call.
“The position of this department,” the Captain said, “is that it’s an isolated incident. That is also your position.”
I’d have to pull records to check, and of course I can’t, but it seems maybe two, three months went by before the next one.
These shitheads were hitting mom-and-pop stores all over the city, pistol-whipping whoever was behind the counter, mom, pop or one of numerous kids, when they objected or proved too slow at scooping up money. The perps were easy to mark. There were always three. One never spoke. He lurked on the fringes, carried a steel baseball bat over his shoulder, and moved in only when the others had got the goods and left. Then he’d swing his bat, smashing hips, knees, wrists and ankles.
Again and as usual, confidential information came up the line from one of the city’s bottom feeders. Three guys who’d always had trouble putting together the price of a draft beer of late had been seen with hands wrapped around the dewy necks of imports. One of them, the informant said, was truly spooky. Never spoke, smiled a lot, sat perfectly still. Always wore a baseball cap, Yankees one day. Dodgers the next, Orioles, Rangers. Must have one hell of a collection.
Like a lot of their breed, these guys started out doing occasional hits, then, when they got away with it repeatedly, and got used to the benefits as well, started making it a regular thing. That, along with informants, is what broke most of these cases for us. Soon these guys were surfacing every Friday night.
We knew where they were staying, in a swayback, half-abandoned apartment complex out in south Memphis, near Crump and Mississippi, kind of place where plywood’s been nailed up to make small rooms out of large and where to sit on the toilet you have to draw up your knees to fit them jigsaw like into the space between sink and door. But we still had to catch these guys with pants down. Every squad car went out with a list of mom-and-pop convenience stores in central Memphis that hadn’t been hit. We circled them like sharks.
One Friday, then another, went by without these guys showing at the crib. Hadn’t been around the bars either, our informant said when his contact tracked him down. No one had seen them. No one ever saw them again.
“Comes from inside the department,” scuttlebutt had it in locker rooms and lounges, “who else would know.”
Couple more, at least.
Someone who was offing cabdrivers. He’d hit late at night when drivers were inclined to take just about any fare they could get, he’d direct them to the city’s fringes and leave them there with their heads bashed in. The department pulled hundreds of pages of copies of log sheets and dispatcher’s records. We’d just begun heavy cruising of areas from which calls had come in the past when, abruptly, the killings stopped.
Next, a series of suspected arsons in upscale housing developments under construction. Two of those developments, then three, went up in flame. At the third, an elderly couple had moved in prematurely, before construction was completed. They went up in flame, too. Then it all stopped.
What the hell, the Captain said, sentiments echoed by many others, by the press, for instance, repetitively and at great length, is going on here?
We never really knew. But almost a year later, on an anonymous tip, in the woods just across the Mississippi line we found six shallow graves side by side, each topped by a wooden plaque into which had been burned a smiling skull and crossbones.
Chapter Seven
“Get you something? Coffee? Pie?”
“No thanks, Sheriff.”
Introducing herself, spelling the last name, Valerie Bjorn had settled in beside Don Lee.
“You new up at State?”
“Over a year now.”
“Can’t help noticing you’re out of uniform.”
“Out of-oh. I’m not a trooper, Sheriff. I’m attorney for the barracks. Commander Bailey asked if I’d mind picking up the evidence kit.”
“State’s paying top dollar for messengers these days, then.”
She smiled. “I live here, Sheriff. Well, not here exactly. Not far out of town, though.”
“The old Ames place.”
“I moved in two months ago.”
“Heard someone bought it. That house’s been empty a long time. Few rungs down from fixer-up would be my guess.”
“I’m doing most of the work myself. My grandfather was a builder, the kind that back in his day handled everything himself, plumbing, electric, carpentry. He raised me. I started crawling under houses when I was eight or nine.”
“And haven’t quit yet,” I said.
“I thought I had. But we’re so often wrong about such things, aren’t we? Not that I get much chance to crawl and so on, between my own work and what I do for the barracks. Hope you don’t mind my tracking you down, Sheriff. I saw your Jeep outside.”
“Not at all, Miss Bjorn.”
“Val. Please.”
Suddenly Thelma was at the booth saying, “Here, let me clear some room,” scooping up plates and laying them along her left arm. “Get you anything else, boys? Ma’am?” Their eyes met briefly. “Some more coffee? Just made a fresh pot.”
“Gettin’ too late for this old man,” Bates said. “Prob’ly be up through Tuesday or so, as it is.”
Don Lee and I also declined.
“I’m fine,” Val said. “But thank you.”
“We have the check?” Bates said. Thelma turned back and shook her head. He shook his.
“How long we been doing this, Thelma? Four, five years now?”
“Sonny says I don’t give you a bill. You know that.”
“And you know-”
“He’s my boss, Lonnie. I got to do what he tells me. That’s how most of us live. What, this job isn’t hard enough already?”
“Okay, okay. Anyway, your shift’s almost over now.”
“Life’s just chockful of almosts, ain’t it.”
Waiting till she was gone, Bates pulled out his wallet, extracted a twenty and a five, and tucked them under the sugar bowl. Easily twice what the bill came to.
“She’s dying to know who you are,” he told Val.
