Eye of the Beholder

The angle. The crime-scene technician, thinking he was out of McDermott’s earshot. Thinking that McDermott, devastated, clutching his three-year-old daughter, wasn’t listening intently to every word from the next room.

The angle’s unusual for self-infliction.

“Mike.”

She would’ve had to hold the gun a couple feet away from her and aim it back.

“Mike.”

Then that’s how it happened, said Ricki Stoletti, his partner of four months at the time. That’s how it happened.

Stoletti touches his arm. She avoids looking into the bathroom, but the situation is not lost on her. They’ve never discussed it, not even at the time. Back then, after that conversation with the technician, Stoletti had avoided eye contact with McDermott.

It’s closed, was all she’d said to him. Suicide.

“Hey, Mike.”

Thank you, he did not say out loud to her. Not then, not ever.

“The governor’s here,” she says. “Put on your game face.”

I GET TO MY FEET as Governor Trotter walks into Shelly’s apartment, in a suit and olive raincoat, his wife Abigail and a cadre of security detail close behind. He rushes up to me and grabs my hands, his own hands trembling, his eyes red but stoic. He is not crying. He’s already done that.

“How-?” His eyes search mine for answers that I don’t have.

“It’s because of me,” I say. “He killed her because of me.”

He shakes his head, like he doesn’t get it. Nothing about it makes sense. It won’t make sense, maybe ever. Behind him, his wife is trying to get past McDermott to see Shelly.

“Abby, don’t go in there,” I say. “That’s not Shelly any-anymore.”

“How could this happen?” She turns to face me, looking years older than I’ve ever seen her. “What did you do, Paul?”

There’s nothing I can say. McDermott comes over, takes the governor by the arm, and walks him and his wife into the kitchen to talk to them. The governor breaks free and looks into the bathroom, a deep, soulful wail soon following.

McDERMOTT, distracted by the presence of the commander and the governor’s staff, finally breaks away from them as they head to the station. It’s approaching nine o‘clock now. Second night in a row that he didn’t put Grace to sleep. Could be the second night in a row that he won’t sleep at all. He becomes aware of it, for the first time in hours, as his adrenaline finally decelerates. His brain is exhausted. His legs move painfully.

Susan Dobbs, the assistant medical examiner, is one of the few people left in the apartment now. The color has returned to her now; she seemed awed by the crime scene upon her arrival, hours ago, and that’s saying something, working corpses in this city. “The governor needs to sign a DNA authorization,” she says. “To verify identification.”

“Nothing left of her.” McDermott sighs.

She zips up her medical bag. “Just the one left foot.”

“Oh, I forgot.” McDermott snaps his fingers. “God, in all this flurry I-”

“Yes,” she says, “it was there. A postmortem incision at the base of her fourth and fifth toes. He cut everything into pieces but the left foot. He wanted to make sure you saw it.”

“Thanks, Sue.”

She appraises him with sympathetic eyes. “When’s he gonna be done, Mike? You said this was from those lyrics?”

McDermott nods, making a peace sign with his fingers.

“Two more kills,” he says. “Unless I catch him.”

DRIVE THE CAR BACK on the interstate, north toward the city, pass the downtown, a motel would be best, one where he can hide the rental car in the back. No one’s going to be looking for the Camry, but he’ll be careful, be careful, he finds a place off the highway, uses his last fake identification, wears glasses and fake facial hair and a baseball cap, pays in cash, waits around the lobby but nobody’s following, all clear, everything coming together now.

The governor’s daughter is dead, all over the news, he sits on the bed and watches it, then turns it off and goes into the bathroom, empties the bag from the drugstore on the vanity-

He tapes Cassie’s photograph on the bathroom mirror, traces the outline of her face with his fingers, pretty, so beautiful-

He uses the electric razor, shaves the front and top of his skull, no bald head, too obvious, not bald, just a bald spot, a patch of skin shaped like a horseshoe-

You look funny.

I know. But they won’t notice me this way. They might expect me to shave my head, but not to shave a bald spot.

You still look funny.

Hair coloring will change from deep black to dirty blond, different color, different style, he looks at himself in the mirror, sees a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness, light brown hair on the sides, glasses-

I’m scared.

I know you are, but the plan is working. Riley will help us now.

He drops on the bed, puts his head against the pillow, momentarily satiated but never expecting sleep.

ELEVEN O‘CLOCK. The detectives’ squad room is like a train station, the commander taking up residence in the lew’s office, where e he and Governor Trotter confer. The governor’s son, Edgar Trotter, who is the chief of the state police, is in there, too, barking out orders and bringing in his top lieutenants in what appears to be a coup d’etat. The younger Trotter stopped short of kicking McDermott off the case but made a point of saying the task force needed more effective leadership and suggesting that, if the slow-footed local cops had been quicker on the chase, maybe “this” wouldn’t have happened.

Stick around, he told McDermott. We might need you for details.

Media relations is all over this, coordinating things with the governor’s people, preparing statements, twisting and refining words so that they say just enough to give the appearance of sufficiency. The national press has arrived, too, lending a heightened sense of attention, if not panic, to the press people.

Panic, as he thinks about it, is not a bad way to describe the current state of affairs. There is unquestionably a defensiveness about the brass, a reaction, justified or not, to the feeling that the police are to blame for Shelly Trotter’s murder. If that is ultimately the way this shapes up, there’s no doubt who will take the bullet. It’s unfair-Leo Koslenko got a tremendous head start on them, and they identified him within a handful of days of the onset of his murder spree-but fairness has never been an ingredient in the stew of local politics.

They all but tied an anchor to his foot. He’s just a consultant on the case