inside of the windshield. “I never had nothing. My father died when I was seven, died in a fuckin’ steel mill when an ingot fell on him off of lift-clip. After that I got hocked into the fuckin’ foster care system. So I don’t want to hear no shit about poor people from poor environments. I got out of that hellhole, graduated high school, got my degree, and now I’m running the fuckin’ homicide squad in one of the biggest cities on the west coast.”
But I was still remembering what his wife had said. “What, uh, what about your mother?” I asked.
Jameson lead-footed it through another red light. “My mother? Fuck her.” Beer fumes filled the car. “My mother beat feet the same day she dropped me. That dirty bitch wasn’t nothing but a junkie whore. She was street-shit. She was walking garbage just like that whore just tried to smudge up my windshield. Far as I’m concerned—I never had a mother…”
««—»»
It got to the point where almost anything Jameson did or said would support some facet of Dr. Desmond’s profile. A prostitute for a mother, who abandoned him at birth. No nurturing touches as an infant, no mother figure in the formative years. An ability to control his symbolic delusion to the extent that he can function in society and maintain steady employment. A man who is probably married but probably doesn’t have children. A man with a mounting inability to perform sexually.
I also found it interesting that Jameson’s favorite places to drink were bars in the derelict districts, bars in which any of the sixteen previous victims might easily have hung out. I wondered what Dr. Desmond would think about that?
Oh yeah, I knew he was the one. But what was I going to do about it?
The next couple of hours were pretty paralyzing. Jameson dragged me around to three more dive bars, getting drunker in each one, his hatred boiling. Loud, obnoxious, belligerent. At one point I thought one of the barkeeps was going to throw him out, but I prayed that wouldn’t happen. Knowing Jameson—and as drunk as he was—he’d probably yank out his gun, might shoot someone. But before that could happen, I got him out of there.
Then the end came pretty fast after that.
««—»»
“I’m a crime reporter for the
One of the doctors, a balding guy with long hair, squinted over at me from a scrub sink. “You know that guy?” The doctor’s nametag read Parker.
“That’s right. I was drinking with him in some area bars,” I admitted. “When his name was logged in as an in-patient, the night-editor at my paper contacted me.”
“Fuck, the guy was drinking,” another doctor said. This one was big, with a trimmed beard; his nametag read MOLER. He was taking instruments out of an autoclave. “No wonder his blood was so thin. He damn near bled to death right in front of us. He took three pints before we could stabilize him. What happened?”
“I was dragging him out of a bar about two hours ago,” I told them. “He was pretty drunk. I was about to put him in the car when he bolted. The guy just ran off across Jackson and disappeared under the overpass. I couldn’t find him. The biggest reason for my concern is Captain Jameson said some things to me tonight that lead me to believe he may be—”
“This psycho who’s been killing girls and cutting off their hands,” Parker finished.
I stared at them, slack-jawed. “How—how did you know?”
Dr. Moler snickered. “When the EMTs brought him in, he had a severed hand in his pants.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “What happened to him?”
“Looks like after he ran off from you,” Parker explained, “he must’ve picked up a hooker, then he made his move, but she shot him. He was lying in the middle of Jackson when the EMTs found him. But it must’ve been his second girl of the night ’cos he already had one hand on him.”
“Shit,” I said. “I called the cops the minute he bolted, told them my suspicions, but they didn’t take me serious.”
“We’ll show ’em the hand we found in his pants,” Moler said. “
“So you said his condition is stable?” I asked.
“We stabilized the blood loss and ligged an artery. But the x-rays showed a cranial fracture—hematoma. He’s prepped for more surgery but I wouldn’t give him more than one chance in ten of making it.”
“Where is he now?” I asked. “I really need to talk to him.”
Parker pointed across the ER. “He’s in the ICU prep cove. Second floor’ll be down to take him up in a few minutes. You want to go see him, go ahead. But don’t hold your breath on him regaining consciousness.”
“Thanks,” I said, and at the same moment several paramedics burst through the ER doors with what looked like a burn victim on a gurney. “Great!” Parker yelled. “My relief’s two hours late, and now I got a spatula special!”
I rushed to the prep cove and there he was: Jameson. Tubes down his throat, tubes up his nose, strapped to a railed bed. An IV line ran from a bag of saline to his arm. He looked dead.
“Hey, hey,” I said. I patted his face. “I guess you’re in a coma, huh, Captain? Well you know what? They got you for the whole thing now. I knew you were the one.”
His slack, lined face just lay there like a bad wax mask. “Once Dr. Desmond finds out the details, he’ll realize that his profile fits you to a tee. He’s a smart man. He’ll back up my allegation one-hundred percent.”
I patted his face a few more times. No response.
Then I took the needle-cover off the hypodermic I’d brought along. “Yeah, I knew you were the one. I knew you were the perfect dupe to take the fall.” The hypo was full of potassium dichlorate. It’d kill him in minutes and wouldn’t show up on a tox screen. I injected the whole thing into his IV connector.
Then Jameson’s eyes slitted open.
“You’re a pretty damn good cop, Captain,” I gave him. “You got any idea how hard I worked burying those bodies over the last three years? And there are twenty-one, by the way, not sixteen. You did a great job of keeping ’em out of the papers…until those last three. Just dumb luck for me, huh?”
He began to quiver on the bed, veins throbbing at his temples.
I leaned down close to his ear, whispered. “But that really screwed up my game when the victims started making the press. I thought I was gonna have to lay low now, get the junkie bitches from out of town. But you solved all that for me.”
I grinned down at him. His eyes opened a little more, to stare at me.
“Yeah, I knew you were the one, all right. The minute Desmond explained those profiles to me, and when I saw that picture of you with your father. No mother, just a father who died the same year. And, Christ, man! You were Desmond’s patient! The press’ll eat that up! Homicide cop seeing a shrink—homicide cop turns out to be the killer. It’s great, isn’t it? It’s perfect!”
See, after I dragged him out of that last bum bar, I shoved him in the passenger seat of his car. The drunk bastard had already passed out. I drove down Jackson when there was no traffic, cracked him hard in the head with the butt of my own piece, then shot him in the groin. I was aiming for the femoral artery, and I guess I did a damn good job of hitting it. He bled all over the place; I knew the fucker was going to kick.
Then I stuck the hand in his pants and shoved him out of the car.
The whole thing worked pretty well, I’d say.
“Don’t die on me yet, asshole,” I whispered, pinching his cheeks. “See, Desmond had it right with his profiles. Only it turns out the real killer was the least likely of the bunch—just a sociopath with a hand fetish.”
It was hard not to laugh right in his face.
Jameson’s hand raised an inch, then dropped. He was tipping out but I gotta give the old fucker credit. He managed to croak out a few words.
“They’ll never believe it,” he said.
“Oh, they’ll believe it,” I assured him. “What? You’re gonna tell them what
“Lib motherfucker,” he croaked. “Pinko piece’a shit…”
“That’s the spirit!” I whispered. “Go out kicking! But—”
His eyelids started drooping again. This was it.
