“For our guys, or the list as a whole?”
“Both.”
“I’d say that, countrywide, we’re looking at two or three different groups of killers: one here, one centered somewhere between Georgia and South Carolina, and one farther up the East Coast. The New York bunch are into quick, clean, distance kills with a handgun. Unadorned executions. The Southerners may be more hands-on, maybe use a taser like ours, or a gun to force their target into a car before driving him into the woods to dump him. It’s hard to know exactly how long the groups have been working, since people vanish every day, but if I had to guess I’d say it started about when the Web site hit list came online in January.”
None of this was new, and the FBI was probably miles ahead of them, but their investigations worked best when they reviewed and explored, over and over again, watching for unnoticed bumps and oddities in the terrain. Most of the ideas they tossed around were not original, but sometimes the patterns the ideas formed when they landed were.
“And our own ladies, or womyn-with-a-y. What about them?”
“Up close and personal, wouldn’t you say?” she asked.
“Can’t get much more intimate than strangulation, that’s for sure. The very definition of hands-on.”
“But they leave the bodies to be found, so there’s no reason for the notes, other than the statement.”
“The others are more, what would you call it—strictly functional? Do ‘em and leave ’em like the garbage they are, whereas ours are a little bit angrier about their victims, and want the world to know. Yes?”
“I agree. But what’s the candy got to do with it?”
“Don’t take it from strangers? Maybe one of the women was raped and her attacker called her ‘sweet’ or ‘sugar’? I’d say it’s a pathological twist that we won’t know about until we find the perp. Or perps.”
“Something obvious to her, or them, but personal?”
“Of course, if we find someone whose sister named Candy got killed by a rapist, we might take a look,” Kate suggested facetiously.
“Or whose abusive husband owned a candy shop.”
“I can see the search base getting dangerously cumbersome. And you’re the one in charge of computer searches,” Al said, beginning to sound a little happier about things.
“Actually, this sounds to me ideal for one of your million-scraps-of-paper-tacked-to-the-wall approaches, Al. Much more intuitive.”
They were on the freeway now, the easiest way to get from the hospital to the industrial area where Traynor had been attacked, driving past shopping malls and residential sprawl through the increasing traffic of a city before dawn. Near the airport, with an approaching jet screaming overhead, the phone sounded in Al’s pocket. Al’s end of the conversation consisted of a few grunts, a yes, “San Jose airport” to identify their location, and then he was reaching for his pen and notebook and scribbling an address.
“What was that?” she asked when he’d tucked the phone away again.
“The lab ID’d a fingerprint on the candy they found on the stairway. Belongs to a woman with a conviction for drunk and disorderly, lives in East Palo Alto. Hillman’s looking into it, thought we might like to tag along. Get off here and circle back to 101 north,” he suggested, but she was already moving into the exit lane.
The woman’s name was Miriam Mkele, changed from Maryanne Martin when she had gotten out of jail three years before, and if she was either surprised or frightened when she opened the door to five plainclothes detectives and two uniformed patrol, she did not show it. She just stood in her doorway, six feet of proud African-American woman, and raised her eyebrow at them. The local detective did the identification, and after he had run through his own name and rank and those of the two San Jose cops (Hillman and his partner, Gonsalves) and the two San Francisco detectives (Kate and Al), he was running out of steam and Mkele was looking, if anything, amused.
“And these two good boys, who they be?” she asked, raising her chin briefly at the two uniformed officers. The East Palo Alto man dutifully extended his introduction to include the uniforms, who were acting as bodyguards more than anything in this rough area just across the freeway from the intellectual elite of Stanford University. East Palo Alto had one of the highest murder rates in the United States; Miriam Mkele looked as if she had known many of the victims, and held the hands of a fair number of the survivors.
“Do you people want to come in?” she asked.
“We’d appreciate it, ma’am,” Al spoke up. “It’s not getting any warmer out here.”
Mkele looked him over, and looked up at the sky as if to judge the attractive possibility of it beginning to rain on their heads, but the clouds were light and high and the breeze cold enough to suck the heat from her house, so she stepped back and the five detectives filed in, leaving the two patrolmen to retreat to their car.
The small house was warm, in temperature and in emotional impact, and scrubbed spotless beneath the signs of wear and tear. African wood-carvings clustered along one wall, tribal masks hung on another, the curtains were brightly colored block prints and the sofa scattered with kente cloth pillows. Mkele closed the door, walked between them to take up a position on the other side of the room, and, still standing, crossed her arms.
“What you want?” she asked.
“These people have some questions about an attempted murder that took place last night in San Jose, Ms. Mkele,” the local man explained.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
Hawkin pushed forward. “You’re welcome to have one if you’d feel more comfortable of course, but at this point we’re just trying to clear up a couple of questions. You are under no suspicion of a crime.” No more than any physically powerful female would have been, Kate added silently.
Mkele nodded, a sign that he should continue.
“Your fingerprint was found on an object left at the scene, possibly by the attackers. Just for the record, can you tell us where you were last night?”
“What time?”
“Between nine P.M. and midnight.”
“Worked until nine, came home and cooked a late dinner for some friends, and went to bed ‘bout eleven- thirty.”
Like a cop on the stand, Mkele did not volunteer any information beyond the bare question.
“Where do you work?”
“The Safeway on El Camino, just off the freeway.”
“What do you do there?”
“I work the registers. Cashier. Smile and say thank you,” she said. Kate could not picture Mkele with a smile on her face.
“Responsible job,” Hillman commented.
“For an ex-con, you mean, dee-tective? I finished with the life that drove me to alcohol. I worked three years cleanin‘ the floors and stockin’ the shelves to prove I was dependable, and they trust me with money now, yes.”
“Do you know—” Hillman was starting to say, but Kate had been struck by a sudden thought and spoke over his voice.
“Ms. Mkele, do you still stock the shelves sometimes?”
The dark eyes studied her pensively, as
Ah well, thought Kate, it was an idea, but Mkele spoke again.
“I do not gen’rally stock shelves at my own store. There’s a, what you call, hierarchy, you understand? And I’m gonna be a manager one day, so it’s not good for my image to stock shelves. But sometimes I help out at other stores, and then I do what is needed. In South San Francisco I even cleaned the toilets once. Haven’t done that since I got out.”
“In the last few months,” Kate asked, her voice taut despite her effort to control it, “have you ever stocked one of those self-service candy bins?”
Mkele put her head to one side, not so much searching her memory as considering.
“Was it on one of those pieces of candy that you found my fingerprint?” she asked after a minute. Kate did not have to answer; her silence gave her away. Shockingly, then, Mkele threw back her head and laughed, long and richly, at the discomfiture on the faces before her. “Oh, you poor people,” she said at last. “If I tell you yes, I may be lying so’s to explain that fingerprint, but if I tell you no, you are left with one great puzzle. Well, I’m gonna tell
