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  “‘We want only your happiness, ladies, and thus would like you to keep in mind that the trite clichés about the racial demographics of serial killers are not always cold truth.’”

  “Stop it!” he screamed. Huge pet peeve of his. He went to too many conferences and lectures where the only instructing was the teacher reading aloud the handouts he’d just given anyone. That sort of thing left George in a foul mood for days. “Will you stop reading that?”

  “‘If you don’t believe us, then look at the three of us! Oh. Excuse us. The two of us.’”

  “Don’t read the rest,” I begged. Like I needed to hear it out loud in addition to it being burned into my brain. “What’s your point?”

  Emma Jan looked up. “‘Trite clichés.’ What’s that mean? And it’s in the same sentence as ‘racial demographics.’ Y’know, in addition to me being a proud Black gal with the stereotypical awesome ass, I’m also under psychiatric care, which counts as a disability. I’m a two-fer for the FBI. It’s why I’m even in this room right now.”

  “Your point?” Michaela was steadily whittling her way through all the celery.

  “My point is, racial demographics are all over the place. Including figuring out who serial killers are. Trite clichés…”

  “Aren’t they all by definition trite?” George had finally tired of banana munching, and had his elbows on the counter, with his chin propped in his hands.

  “Well. The trite clichés about serial killers are … I’m sure we can all rattle them off. First off, by definition a serial killer is defined by having killed three or more people.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Down to the basics, then. Uh … they usually kill for psychological gratification—”

  “Not all the time,” George interrupted.

  “Yeah, I know. Thus the word ‘usually.’” But he was right, that was a slippery one and didn’t know if it would count as a trite cliché. Plenty of serial killers did away with strangers and loved ones for money. Plenty of serial killers killed to protect themselves, or a secret they didn’t want to get out. “You’re thinking John List?”

  List was a so-charming fellow who murdered his wife, his mom, and all three of his kids. The rock-solid reason? He didn’t want them to find out he’d lost his job. In his mind, there were two choices: come clean, or kill everyone.

  Even after years of seeing this and finding this and hearing about this and reading about this and talking about this and thinking about this, I was always, always mystified by it. I literally couldn’t hurt a fly (it’s no more trouble to shoo them out a window than swat them). But these guys … they weren’t human. They just looked human.

  “I was thinking of Diane Downs. Remember? Shot all three of her kids because her boyfriend, who was married, didn’t want to be a dad. Slut! Anyway, the middle kid died, the youngest and oldest survived.”

  “Bushy-haired stranger,” Emma Jan offered.

  “Yeah, she claimed a bushy-haired stranger did it.” George rolled his eyes. “I guess she thought the one-armed man theory was played.”

  “But she only killed one person, not three. How about the Philadelphia Poison Ring?”

  Michaela nodded. “Excellent example. One hundred fourteen poison-murders. All for profit.” Back she went to the fridge. Out came English cucumbers, the really long skinny ones.

  “Okay, so, back to trite clichés. Serial killers tend to have trouble holding jobs.”

  We nodded. Michaela chopped.

  “The MacDonald triad,” I suggested. “That’s pretty classic. Maybe even trite?” Sociopaths were commonly believed to have indulged in three particular behaviors as kids: they liked to torture animals, they liked to set fires, and they wet their beds for years, long past the age of five (I had no idea if they liked it or not).

  Suddenly, the three of us were very careful not to make eye contract with George.

  “I can read all of your minds, you worthless jerks,” he sighed. “Hey, the dog attacked me, okay?”

  “All the dogs?” Michaela asked slyly. Which was great, because she was the only person (except maybe for Shiro) who could have gotten away with that. I knew George really, really wanted to say or do something to her. I also knew he didn’t dare.

  “Background of abuse as children,” Emma Jan said. “And that sure seemed to be the case for the ThreeFer Killers.”

  “How many times did you read that fucking—never mind, I don’t care. And I think you’re right. Big clue number one being, there isn’t a single family member still alive who could give us any good background stuff on those three freaks.” George was clearly relieved to be away from the bed-wetting chat. “Remember that picture you talked about?”

  Unfortunately, yes. It was when we thought Tracy was a victim instead of one of the killers. She’d shown me a picture of herself with her two brothers, a simple four-by-six-inch snapshot, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing especially special, good, fine, terrific.

  That picture still gave me the creeps, and I’d never been able to put my finger on why. I think … I think it was the house. It wasn’t behind the triplets as background so much as it lurked behind them. The triplets had all looked too pale and too thin; I’d wondered at the time if it had been some sort of hereditary vitamin deficiency. Knowing what (little) we know now, I had revised my thinking.

  I think they had a vitamin deficiency, sure. Because among other abuses, their family didn’t feed them.

  “Bullied as children. That’s a good one.” George looked down at the counter. “Believe me. That’s a really good one.”

  Darn it to heck! It was so annoying when George showed the abused, scrawny, lonesome little boy he’d once been, as opposed to the well-muscled, black-belted psycho he was now.

  “With Opus as an id—as someone with savantism, and another brother who stuttered, and the sister with Asperger’s … oh, yeah. They were bullied all right. Count on it.”

  “None of this is helping us with JBK,” Michaela pointed out. She had finished the cukes, gone to the bread drawer, and hauled out three French baguettes, each one over two feet long. “Though I won’t deny it has been one of the more interesting chats I’ve had this week.”

  “They tend to be men. White men.”

  “Hey!” George said to Emma Jan in a tone of pure outrage. “We can’t help it if we like running the world.”

  “Except you don’t anymore,” I said. “I’m guessing you didn’t vote for Obama?”

  “Let’s not get into that again,” Michaela said firmly, sawing at the first loaf with a big shiny bread knife (the other one was now in the sink, where she would later wash it lovingly by hand). Ah! It was her newest toy, her pride and joy, the Shun classic nine-inch bread knife.

  “They tend to kill in their own racial group: white guys kill white guys or white women. Ted Bundy, Dahmer, Robert Hansen … white guys killing white guys and gals. And Anthony Sowell, Lonnie Franklin—”

  “The Grim Sleeper!” George chortled. “Don’cha love it?”

  “Yeah, it’s swell.” After giving George an odd look (no worries; he was used to it) Emma Jan continued. “And Wayne Williams … black guys who killed black.”

  “So?”

  “So, we’re assuming JBK is a white guy, based on racial demographics and trite clichés. What if JBK isn’t a white guy? Maybe that’s what two of the ThreeFer was trying to tell us?”

  Michaela’s eyebrows arched, disappearing beneath her silver bangs. “Hmmmm.” She sawed more bread. “Hmmm.”

  George had straightened up. “Now that’s interesting. JBK’s killing white teenage boys. Maybe we should be looking into black guys. Or gals, as New Girl puts it.”

  If it was true, our investigation would have to go in an all-new direction. Since we didn’t have bubkes going on the old direction, I was all for it.

  I wasn’t sure what I thought about Tracy and Jeremy helping us, though. How embarrassing!

  Then I remembered BOFFO’s motto: Set a thief to catch a t
hief, set a psycho to catch a psycho. Who’d know more about a psycho than two other psychos?

  Sometimes I hated my job.

  chapter forty-one

  So back to the drawing board we went. Yippee. But this time we spread the net a little wider than white males.

  In fact, we followed TwoFer’s advice and looked only at African Americans, male and female. This was not racial profiling! And even if it was, I’m going to take more classes!

  Ahem. Anyway. The new software system, HOAP—Homicide Apprehension and Prevention—started munching through the data, and I wasn’t the only one in the office giving in to the urge to cross their fingers.

  HOAP was brand-new—in fact, it was brand brand-new. BOFFO was testing it; I didn’t even know if Michaela’s bosses knew about it yet.

  HOAP was designed by Paul Torn, one of BOFFO’s own. Nobody knew how he did it. Nobody knew why he did it. Nobody knew why it worked—or, at this early stage, if it reliably worked. In Paul’s case, we let him have his head and stayed out of his way as much as possible.

  Michaela had had a few big-time numbers-and-software geniuses look over his … algorithms? Is that what they were? Math and science were not my thing at all. Now, if you wanted something cross-stitched onto a hand towel, I was your girl.

  Anyway, she showed the geniuses whatever they were, and let me tell you, those big-brained boys and girls would have had better luck trying to translate Klingon. Every one of them left the building with massive tension headaches. (Hmm. Maybe the fluorescent lighting was shooting rays into our brains to control us.)

  “Oh, boy,” George said. He, Emma Jan, and I were back in our corner of the office, our desks and chairs clustered together, the better to solve crime with, my dear. “Here comes Rainman.”

  “Stop that!” I hissed. Like most of his insults, “Rainman” was cruel and accurate.

  “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.” Paul Torn, BOFFO’s resident mad scientist, was pacing back and forth. We could only see him when he paced back out of the kitchen. Back, forth, back, forth. “I don’t know I don’t know the numbers are the wrong color is anyone else tasting blue right now?”

  “Paul?”

  “Oh, how are you, Cadence?” Paul brightened and hurried over. He was snapping his fingers in a complex and always-changing rhythm. His nail-bitten fingers were a blur. “Are you tasting blue?”

  “No, Paul. I’m not a synesthete like you.” Nobody was like Paul.

  “Excuse me? Synesthete?” Emma Jan asked.

  “What’s this, Emma Jan?” George asked. “A BOFFO file you haven’t memorized?”

  “Shush!” I turned to Emma Jan. “People with synesthesia see numbers as colors.”

  “Not just colors not just colors not not not,” Paul said.

  “We’d have Paul here explain it to you,” George said, “but it would take him about a week a week a week and a half and several tranquilizers.”

  My foot shot out, quite on its own, and nailed George on one of his tender shins. I had no idea I was going to do it until it was done. I was wearing flats. Flats with wonderfully pointy toes. Oh, Payless Shoes, you never, ever let me down.

  “Aaaggghhh.” Eyes rolling in agony, he bent and clutched his no-doubt-throbbing shin. “Oh, you hateful cow! They’re gonna find pieces of you all along the bottom of the Mississippi.”

  I ignored his threat du jour. “They also feel numbers. To Paul, numbers have shapes and textures. He can do math at a level most people can’t, because he perceives numbers in an entirely new—”

  “And weird,” George groaned, still rubbing his shin.

  “—way,” I finished. I looked up at him. And up. Paul could have easily played basketball. He was tall and skinny, with a wiry musculature that had taken more than one thug by surprise. With his dark skin, dark eyes, and old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like a nerd out of the 1950s, one who wasn’t allowed to use the bathrooms for white people.

  Because of how he looked, a certain, um, element, just couldn’t resist trying to push him around. Because of what he was, he was used to it, and could handle himself with very little trouble. Paul had greatly enjoyed his self-defense lessons, claiming defensive strikes smelled like red.

  Then he’d help himself to the now-unconscious thug’s wallet and be enchanted by his driver’s license ID number. Or, I guess, all the colors of the driver’s license ID number that only he could see.

  “Anyway, Paul invented HOAP. The software is pulling anything resembling anything for the JBJ killings, and we’re having it only run African American suspects. The advantage is, the system will know which departments to query, even if it’s looking for data from before their system went electronic. It’s better at spotting patterns than a human could be, so it sees holes and knows where to look for the glue. Before, we’d get hung up if the info we needed predated the use of computers, but HOAP was designed specifically to get around that. We hope.”

  “Like VI-CAP?” Emma Jan asked.

  “Better, I think. VI-CAP only knows what you tell it. HOAP can actually draw conclusions and think up probabilities.”

  “Great.” George was deep in sulk mode by now. “Didn’t we have this scene in all four Terminator movies? Pretty soon Paul’s personal SKYNET is gonna wake up and nuke us all.”

  “Not without the codes and I wouldn’t I wouldn’t I wouldn’t give HOAP those codes.”

  I froze. George froze. Emma Jan just looked amazed. “Uh, I was kind of kidding about the SKYNET thing,” he said after a shocked moment, “but are you telling me it’s an actual possibility?”

  I was shaking my head and rummaging through my purse for gum, or Oreos, when I felt a paper cut and yanked my hand away with a startled hiss. I reached back in, carefully, and took out a Post-it note I had never seen before.

  C-

  I will need to discuss his nephew’s murder with Dr. Gallo.

  -S

  Hmmm. Well, we were in a bit of a holding pattern just now, waiting for data. I suppose there was no time

  chapter forty-two

  like the present.

  I zipped Cadence’s purse shut and stood. Lounging around like iguanas sunning themselves on rocks was not productive. Speaking with Dr. Gallo, however, could be quite productive. I wondered how he would look at this time of the day. If he shaved daily or endured stubble. He was so darkly striking, he could pull off either look if he—

  Darkly striking?

  I need a nap. Possibly several.

  Or perhaps, I merely need to have sex. Hmm. It had been a while. Unfortunately, this was no time to address the problem, so I resolved to put up with the inappropriate hormonal surges. Surges, I realized with no small relief, that had nothing to do with Max Gallo and everything to do with the fact that I hadn’t had sex in … what year was it?

  I left, ignoring George’s and Agent Thyme’s questions. Although George shrieking, “You don’t fool me! That stick-in-the-ass stride is pure Shiro! You aren’t Cadence!” almost made me smile.

  * * *

  I marched into the torture chamber staffed by Red Cross employees, looking for Dr. Gallo. A male nurse I did not know accosted me at the entrance.

  “Adrienne, you bad girl, you know you can’t donate again for a few more days. So, what? Slumming?”

  I eyed the hirsute nurse, wondering if all that body hair kept him warm in winter. “I am not.” No, I was not Adrienne, though I knew why I could not say so. And no. I was not … slumming. Still, it was galling to be called by the name of another. And no, I was not here for another depletion of my precious bodily fluids. How difficult could it be to synthesize blood? We could synthesize almost everything else. “Away from me, fiend. But first, tell me where Dr. Gallo is.”

  “You again.” I turned and saw my desired prey. He had just popped out of his office and was shrugging into a beat-up motorcycle jacket and carrying an equally beat-up black motorcycle helmet in one hand. The jacket looked as though Gallo had worn i
t to a war. Possibly more than one. “Back to product-test the latest batch of oatmeal cookies?”

  I shuddered. “Not even if you stuck a gun in my ear.” I did not say that lightly. I had actually had a gun stuck in my ear. Ah, sweet Pampered Chef party memories … “If you attempt to foist a cookie on me I cannot guarantee your safety.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. He had a wonderful laugh, deep and contagious. I had to struggle not to giggle along with him like a ninny.

  “I am here on official business, if I may have some of your time.”

  He studied me for a few seconds. “About my nephew.”

  I noticed it had not been a question. In fact, Dr. Gallo had not yet bothered me with a single unnecessary query. It was a rare and wonderful trait in a human being. I could see why Cadence liked him. Though that ninny was already convincing herself that finding someone besides Patrick attractive was the same as cheating. I have never known anyone to be so crippled by their conscience. She punished herself when she didn’t commit any wrongdoing.

  It must be exhausting.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Your nephew. May I speak with you?” Protocol required “please,” “thank you,” “sir,” “ma’am.” But once I had exhausted protocol, I was fine with gutter language and menacing him with a … er … I looked around. I suppose I could smother him in all those blankets.

  “Sure.”

  Eh? Oh. He had answered me. Why was I so distracted? And how could Cadence live like this?

  “C’mon, let’s take a walk. I was bugging out to grab lunch anyway. Back in a while, gang,” he said and tossed a wave in their general direction. They called farewells and waved, too, which I felt was a bit disrespectful given that he was their superior. Gallo did not appear to mind, which I felt was a bad precedent. However, it was not my place to say so, and thus, I did not.

  He jerked his head toward the closest exit, and we fell into step together as he headed for what I assumed was the parking lot. His tattered leather went perfectly with his soon-to-be-tattered scrubs. And he needed a haircut; his dark bangs kept flopping into his eyes and he kept them at bay by jerking his head to the side. Patrick would never let his hair become so unmanageable, I thought, and then experienced some Cadence-esque panic. Why was I drawing comparisons? And why was I so pleased to be here, alone, with Dr. Gallo? I would not lie to myself and pretend it was for the JBJ case.