“Reminds me I’m not one of them. And another thing, there’s a pattern.”
“What pattern?” I said.
“Two girls were killed the same way, and that’s a pattern, and it means it may have been done before. So there could be an even bigger pattern. There could be some kind of records somewhere of this kind of shit. It might show a connection to the killer, or killers.”
“That’s smart, Booger. It really is.”
“It is, isn’t it? Another thing, there were those flyers about the preacher, Judence. He’s talking at ten in the morning on the campus. Why would they put the flyers in there? Call me a high yellow?”
“Because it means something to them,” I said.
“They are telling you all the facts without stating them. They want to do it all like an onion skin, peeling a layer at a time. It’s a game within a game, and there may be a game within that. Tabitha and…what was his name?”
“Ernie,” I said.
“They got in the middle of a plan, and so they became part of the plan and didn’t know it. Caroline has to be alive and in on all of this, otherwise none of it fits. Those two dumb kids messed up the Geek and Caroline’s plans for the DVDs, and they got snapped.”
“The blackmail scheme?”
“It’s too complicated to be just about money,” Booger said, scratching at his ass.
“Everything is about money or sex,” I said.
“Even money and sex are part of something else, my man. Power. I know their kind better than you. I am their kind.”
“I hope not.”
Booger grinned at me. “Thing you got going is I like you. Them I don’t like. And the fucker called me a high yellow because he wanted to insult me, so I don’t like him.”
I looked at Booger. His eyes were as cold-looking as the ice machine in my refrigerator.
“Wasn’t for me,” I said, “would you try to stop something like this, whatever it is?”
“I don’t know, bro. Maybe just to be in the game myself. Actually, I kind of admire this whole wonderful mess they’ve created. Thing you got going is I’ll help because this girl means something to you.”
“I appreciate that, Booger. As for Caroline, I’ve suspected she was alive for a while. Just never could wrap my head around the idea completely. Not until you pointed out that’s not her in that photograph.”
“That’s the difference in me and you,” Booger said, and he got up and went to the refrigerator and pulled a beer out, still talking. “I listen to what I’m really thinking, not what I should be thinking. Want a beer?”
“No thanks.”
Booger came back, screwing the cap off the beer as he sat. “Way I see it, they want to cause trouble with this Judence guy. One thing I got from your notes was that Caroline was involved with a preacher who had some, shall we say, negative views about the brothers. I don’t think these folks really give a shit one way or another about race. There’s a thrill in manipulation. Women do it all the time. They know how to use that good thing. Using it, they can get a man to do almost anything they want, including murder. There are some guys, the ones got the bullshit talk, the promises, that’s their form of pussy, and they can talk so smooth everyone wants a piece of their ideas and their glory, even if they make less sense than a motorcycle jacket on a poodle. And religion, man, it’s got heaven. There’s people want to believe that so bad they can already taste the air there. Politicians, they promise a chicken in every pot, and they promise the poor a pot to put it in.”
“You’re losing me.”
“I’m saying they like to see everyone else look silly so they look smart. And they like to kill because it is soothing and powerful and controlling.” Booger took a swig of his beer. “I’m a goddamn sociopath, so I should know.”
Beat the Clock
38
I let that settle in for a while. I sat back in my chair and thought. Booger drank his beer and let me think. I feared they would call at any moment, giving me instructions, and I feared they wouldn’t. I thought about Belinda. I thought about the bodies, the leather maidens. I thought about all the notes and the flyers and I thought about Booger, who was like them, sitting in my rented duplex, drinking beer on my couch, thinking more clearly about my notes than I had.
I looked at my watch. It had grown very late.
I told Booger I was going to the paper, taking my phone with me in case of calls. I asked him and Mr. Lucky to hold down the fort. He said, “Now, if someone I don’t know comes through that door, I may just terminate them. You understand that?”
“Don’t let anyone hurt you,” I said, “but don’t kill anyone just for the hell of it. I want to find Belinda.”
“I’ll blow their kneecap off and stand on their leg until they tell me where she is.”
“That I can live with,” I said.
“Sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“Not this time. I need you here in case they decide to contact by arriving in person.”
“You’re just saying that because you know it makes me excited to think I might get to shoot someone.”
“I am a tease.”
I drove over to the paper and used my key to go inside. I went to the little basement where Mercury worked. The light was on and Mercury was there.
He said, “My God, Cason, it’s past midnight, what are you doing here?”
“You said you worked late, so I took a chance.”
“It’s not all that chancy,” he said. “I’m here a lot. Still putting old files into computers. I’m thinking, I get it finished I’ll be able to sleep again. I was just about to leave and wash the paper dust out of my throat with about a gallon of malt liquor, then I got to download some pornography for my home computer. It damn sure won’t get done if I leave it to the dog. Want to join me in a drink?”
“A nice offer, my friend, but I’m going to pass. I’m riding the wagon a little. Before you go, can you do a kind of cross-check for me? I’m doing some research on a series of murders, and I need an expert.”
“You’re flattering me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Would this still be about the Caroline Allison disappearance?”
“In a way,” I said. “I want to do some across-the-board comparisons in different towns, for a variety of things, and I need someone who has the skill and the programs to do it.”
Mercury grinned at me. “You have come to the warehouse, my friend. It’ll be a nice break from what I’m doing.”
I smiled, like it was all just work-related. I told him I wanted to check on murders where women were skinned, careful not to let him know I had seen just such a thing in our town this very night.
I could tell he was curious about what that might have to do with Caroline, but he didn’t ask. He surfed from one place to another on the Internet, cackled to himself a few times, stretched several times, cracking his back and neck when he did, and then he began to print out bits and pieces here and there from the computer.
“Wow,” he said. “I don’t know where you came up with this business, but there have been a number of these skinning things. All women. They run all the way from Wisconsin to Texas.”
“Can you check for any kind of similarity in those towns where the skinnings took place? Anything that appears in one town that appears in the others.”
