Dreams in the Key of Blue (10 page)

Markham covered more miles than most truckers. He cruised through Springfield, Amherst, and Northampton in western Massachusetts, zipped up the highway to Brattleboro, Vermont, then over state roads to Keene, New Hampshire. He prowled neighborhoods where girls raked lawns and rode bicycles and young women jogged.

Markham also traveled in his head. “If she’s on the next block and she’s wearing red,” he told himself, “she’s waiting for me.”

Perhaps he would see a flash of red and feel an instant erection. The woman would be too old or too fat or too tall or with somebody else, but the moment’s excitation, the proximity of a “possible,” kept him wet with sweat, his jeans tight through the crotch.

It was magical thinking. “She” was not waiting, so he continued driving east from Keene through Peterborough and Nashua, and by late afternoon he prowled the outskirts of Portsmouth. He did not see the saltwater marshes and mudflats as he guided his van through a long, slow curve and changed the color in his mind.

“If she’s wearing white…”

“You always knew what you were going to do,” I told Markham.

“There were some things I didn’t know. I always knew that I’d recognize her. I never saw any of them before in my life, but I recognized every one of them.”

“You remember each one.”

“Not as people. Everyone who comes here needs me to say I feel bad, that I’m sorry for what I did to them. Taking them away from their families. Taking away their lives. I could say the words they want to hear, but I won’t. They
wouldn’t be true. I felt great after each one. Really pumped. I’d get flowers or candy for Dorothy, something for the kid. I felt like a million bucks. It never lasted. Couple of weeks, a month, then it started all over again. When Dorothy moved out, I went on the road more often. I didn’t wait for the girls to come out and play. I went in after them. There are only two things that I regret, Dr. Frank. I wanted each one to last longer, and I don’t want to live the rest of my life in prison.”

Markham stabbed most of his victims, although bludgeoning and strangulation were occasional methods of choice for him. He never shot a victim, never owned a gun. Guns were too noisy, he said, too messy, too easy to trace. Besides, he loved the intimacy—the scent, the soft feel, the taste, the heat—of a close kill.

Now Stanley Markham was free, trying to find his way home. Had he somehow found his way to Ragged Harbor instead? I didn’t think so. But what if I was wrong?

I HAD WORKED OTHER CASES IN WHICH THE MIND-SET
was slow to come. I learned early to leave them alone, to allow my attention to go elsewhere. This time I headed for my worn copy of Wes “Scoop” Nisker’s
Crazy Wisdom.
Over the years, my cat Max had chewed numerous page corners, as if marking them for my attention. He never bothered with other books, probably because they were not as readily available, but I enjoyed believing that Max and I shared a love of the nonlinear. I always opened to one of Max’s selections.

I pulled the book from my duffel bag and switched on the radio to find some decent music. The host of a local show read the weather, the tides, and a fishing forecast, then launched into a report on the murders, followed by an editorial.

“Herb Jaworski has served this town during four decades of growth, increased tourism, and rising crime rates,” he said. “He has kept up with most law enforcement advances. His achievements are many. However, all of us reach the time in our careers when we need to hand over the reins to the younger folks coming along. That time has come for the chief.”

What blither. I snapped off the radio and wandered into the small study at the back of the house. “Aging is bad enough,” I muttered. “We don’t need a fucking Greek chorus.”

I settled into the chair, found what looked like Max’s most recent chomp, and flipped open to Chapter Four, “Crazy Western Wisdom.”

“Appropriate,” I muttered, thinking again how we had been trained to value thought, intellect, and reasoning, to the nearly total exclusion of an empty and receptive mind.

As I considered whether I could read by the light from the window, I sensed movement to my right.

I continued to read, but struggled with the words because I was distracted by motion where there should be none. Finally I turned my head, and immediately wished that I’d found somewhere else to sit.

I stared into the broad face of a four-foot timber rattlesnake coiled on the shelf at eye level. Its tail segments were silent as it slowly raised up. The snake sensed the presence of warm-blooded prey. I watched its tongue flick in and out as the rattler completed its coil, then arched backward, prepared to strike.

Sweat poured down my neck. My fingers trembled as I allowed the book to fold into my lap, then moved my hands to the ends of the chair’s arms. When I had a decent grip, I propelled myself from the chair onto the floor in the middle of the room.

The snake lurched at my vacated space and landed on the leather chair.

Now the rattler buzzed its alarm and looked mighty pissed.

I pushed myself to my feet, silently cursing my stupidity for not bringing a weapon with me from Lake Albert. I thought I would be teaching school, not defending myself against vipers.

I ran to the living room, grabbed the fireplace poker, and returned to the study. The rattler remained on the chair, its head tucked low in its coil, its tail vibrating. I glanced at the poker in my hand and decided that a full retreat was in order.

I jogged to the front of the house, grabbed the phone without a second’s hesitation, and called Jaworski.

MINUTES LATER, I WATCHED AS THE CHIEF STOOD IN
the study doorway, aimed a .22 caliber rifle, and fired. The gun’s crack echoed through the small house.

Jaworski’s shot shattered the snake’s head. A spattering of skin and blood decorated the chair.

“That’s a timber rattler,” he said. “We don’t get them around here. Way up north you hear about a few, maybe near Rangeley or on Mount Katahdin. They like heat and big, flat rocks. You got a first for Ragged Harbor.”

Herb sounded like a little boy at the ballpark for the first time.

“I could do without the distinction,” I said, wondering how a snake that was not indigenous to the area had made its way into my study. “Is there any possible way that thing just wandered in here?”

Jaworski reached behind the chair, then turned. He held a burlap sack.

“One bite won’t kill you, but it will take you out of
commission for a while. Doubt he’d bring his own burlap bag. Like I said, there aren’t any rattlers within fifty miles of here.”

Jaworski used his rifle to nudge the dead snake into the sack.

I glanced at my still-trembling hands and felt my heart thudding like a poorly tuned engine.

“You must have been hard at work to piss off someone in the four or five days you’ve been here.”

“The only obvious hostility I’ve noticed was in your office a few hours ago, from the lovely Detective Jasper, and from the clerk at Downtown Grocery every time I go in there.”

Jaworski nodded. “I don’t understand Karen. She’s a damn fine detective, but she sure doesn’t have much use for you. She’ll have to live with it. I made that clear to her. Angie Duvall down at the store is like most folks in town. They don’t like anyone who’s connected to the college. This time of year, the only strangers in town are on the hill.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s the college and its fat endowment from Martin International. The kids raise hell, piss away more money on beer and pizza in one night than some folks earn in a week. Then there’s MI. If you believe the rumors, they wash and move money.”

“Have you had any specific complaints about MI?”

Jaworski thought for a moment. “One or two. Mostly it’s rumors. I tried talking to Gilman about it, just to let him know he had a public relations problem. He showed me the door. Attitude like that irritates the local folks. This isn’t the richest town in the world, and Martin’s flak catcher drives around in a silver Jaguar. Two years ago, when their visitor washed up on the beach, Angie Duvall for one was convinced that somebody murdered him. I
pulled the file on that case after you asked me about it. He was Hispanic. So were the two Gilman was with Friday night. When I tried to do a little background on the dead guy, I got shut out. The feds handled it.”

Jaworski walked to the door. “What about this?” he asked, holding up the burlap sack.

After I called Jaworski, I had examined the doors and windows and found no signs of forced entry. Somebody besides Karen Jasper did not think kind thoughts about me. My gut told me that whoever it was had a key to my house.

“I’ll be more careful,” I said, walking the chief to the door.

“You have a weapon?”

“Didn’t think I’d need one to teach school.”

Jaworski stopped on the porch. “Might be a good idea if you got one.”

The chief gazed at the sky, then looked at me with a flicker of a smile. “Lot of violence these days,” he said. “More than when we were kids.”

I GLARED AT THE PHONE. WHEN I HAD USED IT TO
report my intruder, I had been under duress. The next call was elective, so I had time to think about it.

I don’t have a phone in my home in Michigan. My concession to electronic communication is the fax machine. My daughter Lane insists that my refusal to “reach out and touch someone” is symptomatic of my technophobia. I tell her that when she quits Homicide and enrolls in medical school, I will pay more attention to her diagnostic efforts.

After a moment of loathing, I overcame my aversion to using the damn thing and called my oldest friend, Ray Bolton, a detective with the Boston Police Department.

I knew exactly where to find him. He quit work at three, napped, and ate an early dinner. Then, each evening for the twenty-five years that he had worked in Homicide, he rode the subway back to his office. As the city watched sitcoms, Bolton studied murder and listened to classical music. He was a methodical investigator who refused to retire until he cleared all his unsolved cases. Last I knew, he had three remaining.

He answered on the first ring and chided me for not keeping in touch.

I mumbled my customary apology: “Guess I lost track of time.”

“Your little town of Ragged Harbor made the national news this morning,” he said. “How did they get you to work this thing?”

“The local police chief knew that I was teaching at the college.”

“Lucas, when you closed your office and left Boston, you couldn’t get out of here fast enough. What changed your mind?”

“I think I might have been premature in declaring myself retired.”

Bolton’s long pause communicated his disapproval. “We’ll have to talk about that when we get together,” he said. “Have the local police run a ballistics comparison?”

“They’ve run a VICAP check. They’ll probably do ballistics through one of the national databases, FBI or ATF. Chief Jaworski seems like a knowledgeable guy.”

“We received a fax about Stanley Markham stealing a white Chevy pickup in Pennsylvania three days before your murders. We’re getting updates twice a day. Sounds to me like he’s headed home. Maybe our boy Stanley made a wrong turn and ended up on the Maine Turnpike.”

I told him about the orange. Bolton and I had worked the Markham case.

“Ray, it doesn’t feel right. This crime scene has as many elements of reactivity as it does of well-planned choreography. Markham operated from a strict script in his head, magical cues, a repeating tape loop.”

“Are you dealing with a traveler or a local?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him.

“You used to give me that much in the first five minutes.”

“I think the killer wants us to interpret the murders as sexually motivated. I’m having trouble wading through the misdirection.”

“A certain forensic psychiatrist once told me that when the obvious doesn’t work, dump it and make room, because something’s coming out of left field for a landing in your lap.”

“Must be the rattlesnake,” I said.

Bolton waited, then finally said, “Lucas, what rattlesnake?”

I explained.

“I want to get a handle on this now, Ray, before any more guests come calling.”

“You know, I don’t run to the hot ones anymore. I let the young officers do that, and I catch up later. You and I aren’t young.”

“I’m tired of hearing that.”

Again he paused. “What about home intrusions in the area? Not burglaries necessarily, but the creepy stuff that usually doesn’t make it into the computers. Rearranged panties and half-eaten pork chops.”

Checking break-ins that included confrontation or stank of strangeness was routine procedure. I felt certain that Jaworski had sent out inquiries.

“This isn’t your killer’s first time out,” Bolton said.

“Not by a long shot,” I agreed, “but I don’t think his
priors include rummaging through the indigenous underwear. Check the databases and find out what you can about a management-consulting outfit, Martin International. I’d like to know how they make their millions. They’re heavily invested in Harbor College. I want to know why. A guy named Stuart Gilman calls himself MI’s liaison to the school. Who is he, and what does he do for the company? The founder and CEO is Melanie Martin. Might as well check her while you’re at it.”

Bolton whispered to himself as he took notes.

“When things settle down, I’ll visit for a weekend,” I promised.

“What does this Martin outfit have to do with the murders?”

Maybe nothing, I thought. They owned the house that the three students rented. Whoever killed them used a key and walked through the front door. Jaycie had been an intern at the company. Martin also owned my house, and I was convinced that my visitor used a key. I have always rejected coincidence as a convenient conceptual excuse for those who were unwilling to see the interconnectedness of all things.

“Humor me, Ray,” I said.

I gave him my number and hung up.

Local or traveler, Bolton wanted to know. “Local,” I said now, thinking that I’d slipped from five-minute analyses for Bolton because I was sliding down the goose-shit-greased slope to senility.