CHAPTER 30
“I am actually very proud of you, Rowan,” Helen Storm told me as we stood at the railing of the outdoor smoking lounge in her office building.
She was working on a cigarette, but for a change I was not. I hadn’t had a craving for one since Christmas, go figure. I did, however, have a Maduro Cruz Real #2 hooked under my index finger, and it was slowly growing a grey-white ash at its tip.
I took a puff, consciously placing the cigar in the left corner of my mouth to avoid the pair of stitches that were holding my lip together on the right. The bruises had worked their way into the reddish-purple and yellow haloed stages, so I still looked pretty frightening. My injuries had come from crashing the van into the building for the most part. Mainly just the bruises and split lip, although the jolt had fractured my left wrist, and it was securely taped. My shoulder was sore, and my entire body had ached for several days, but even that was now subsiding.
“What for?” I asked. “Waiting until you were out of the van before running it into the building?”
This was the first chance I’d had to talk with Helen since Christmas Eve; not that it had been all that long ago. New Year’s Eve was tomorrow, so less than one week had passed. Still, it seemed like forever.
“For not killing Harold McCree,” she answered. “You retained your strength. That is very important.”
“I think it was more along the lines of luck,” I offered as I stared out across the dull sky. “Because I can guarantee you that it wasn’t for a lack of desire.”
“The fact still remains that you did not kill him.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know… Given another chance, with different circumstances, the outcome could be different.”
She ignored my comment, and we stood in silence for a moment. I had grown accustomed to her periods of quiet thoughtfulness interspersed throughout our conversations and realized they were as much a signal as an action. They were, in part, her way of triggering my own introspection.
“How is Felicity doing?” she finally asked.
“Good,” I nodded. “As well as one can expect. The Rohypnol was a bit of a blessing in a sense because she doesn’t really remember much of what occurred after Harold dropped by to deliver those photos.
“She’s having a little trouble coming to terms with the fact that nine women were raped and two are dead, all because he was playing out a fantasy that revolved around her.”
“She should come visit me,” Helen offered. “She needs to understand that what transpired is in no way her fault.”
“She knows that, I think. But emotionally…” I allowed my voice to trail off.
“Yes?” she looked at me with a smile.
“Okay, so I forgot who I was talking to for a minute.” I smiled back. “Like I’ve said before, you don’t come off as your average shrink.”
She laughed musically. “How are you both handling the change of scenery?”
We were now living in an apartment in a secure building for the time being. It had been a clandestine move, made in the middle of the night the day after Christmas. It had happened without fanfare, and very little warning, even to us. All in all, it was comfortable enough, but it definitely wasn’t home. Until Eldon Porter was in custody, however, it was something we were getting used to dealing with-for a while, anyway.
“It’s okay,” I shrugged. “Not the same. And we miss having the animals around.”
“Are you boarding them?”
“We thought about it but couldn’t do it to them.” I shook my head. “Some friends took them in. That way they’ll get some attention from people they’re familiar with.”
“Well,” she announced with a sigh after glancing at her watch. “Unfortunately, I am afraid our time is up for today, and I do have another appointment this time.”
“It flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?” I grinned.
“Funny,” she replied. “Of course, you are the only patient I see who is willing to stand out here and watch me smoke. So in a way it is a big plus for me.”
“Therapists need love too,” I joked.
She smiled at me. “I see that your sense of humor is returning. That is a very good sign, Rowan.”
I gave an abbreviated chuckle as I knocked the ash from the end of my cigar then carefully sealed it into a spring-loaded tube designed to tamp out the coal and keep the remainder somewhat fresh. “Maybe,” I half agreed with a shrug. “But I get the feeling I’m not out of the woods yet.”
“But the terrain is different, Rowan. You can now see the trail, and that is important. As long as you can keep it in sight, you will not lose your way.”
“Next week?” I asked.
“I will be here,” she returned.
“If it was up ta’ me, you wouldn’t even be seein’ this shit,” Ben said as he massaged his neck. “But Helen seems ta’ think it’ll offer some closure. I dunno. I think it’s just friggin’ monkeyshit crazy myself.”
We were standing in a conference room at City police headquarters, staring at a table full of tagged evidence that was still being sorted and cataloged. Some of it had already appeared on the evening news when the story broke, though my friend had done his best to play down my connection.
Worn boxes of everything from five-by-seven to sixteen-by-twenty photographic paper sat in ordered stacks. An entire rack of women’s clothing-evening gowns to business suits to lingerie-occupied one corner of the room; of immediate prominence to me was the wedding gown Felicity had been wearing. Even though it was crammed together with the other apparel, it stood out to me like a beacon in total darkness.
Rectangular boxes were stacked next to the rack in a mound with several pairs of stiletto-heeled shoes on display. At the far end of the long table sat three head-shaped Styrofoam stands, all supporting long, spiral-curled, red wigs; each of which was carefully pinned into a different stylish coif. The man had a small fortune invested in his lurid obsession.
I rested my hand against a pile of photographs and slowly shuffled through them. They were a mix of black and white and color eight-by-tens. Each one contained a woman who on first glance looked much like my wife but upon closer inspection obviously was not. The poses and modes of dress ranged from sophisticated fashion to tasteful nude. Others began somewhere around cheesecake then degenerated into downright pornographic.
Two things they all shared in common were the vacant stares and highly contrasted makeup jobs. In grey tones they looked ghostly. In color they looked plastic and even clown-like.
“He shot enough close ups of all of ‘em ta’ be able ta’ positively identify each of the women, even with the hair and makeup,” Ben was telling me. “Includin’ Debbie Schaeffer.”
“What happened there, do you think?” I spoke the question softly as I continued to peruse the visual diary of infatuated insanity.
“Nut job says she just quit breathin’,” my friend harrumphed in a disgusted tone. “Doc over at the morgue says that could be consistent with a Rohypnol OD, so that’s what we’re figurin’.”
“So he admitted that he took her?”
“Hell, Row, he admitted to all of ‘em,” Ben returned. “His mouthpiece couldn’t get ‘im ta’ shut up. We just sat back and listened.”
“Did he say why he dumped her out on Three Sixty-Seven?”
“Yeah, actually,” he spat. “Get this-it was convenient for ‘im because he was headin’ in that direction.”
“What about Paige Lawson?”
“Just like we figured. When he saw the blood he just left. Asshole actually had the gall ta’ look me in the eye and say that it was unfortunate ‘cause both of ‘em were ‘almost perfect.’”
“What did you expect?” I shrugged.
“I dunno. Maybe a little remorse.”
“So even without the confession you have enough evidence to charge him with murder, right?”
