Blood Marks, page 9
"You got that right," Warley said, rolling himself on top of her.
As usual Romain had trouble getting to sleep.
He was thinking about the murders, wondering if Howland could possibly come up with anything on the killer. It didn't seem likely. The hypnotism had gone very well, but the woman hadn't revealed anything of value. There was no way Howland could use any of it.
Romain wondered if it might not be time for him to get out of police work. He was nowhere near retirement age, but the job was beginning to get to him. He knew that he really didn't like the work; otherwise he wouldn't be so unwilling to deal with his co-workers and he wouldn't be ashamed to tell the people he associated with after work what he really did for a living.
It probably wasn't too late to go into private practice, or maybe set himself up as a consultant. The trouble with the latter idea was that he didn't want to consult with anyone on his specialty.
He was tired of serial killers. He knew that was the reason he couldn't get to sleep. He was beginning to think too much like the people whom he was supposed to be helping Howland and the others bring to justice. They dominated his waking hours, and now they were beginning to dominate his nights, too.
He was beginning to understand them too well.
That was never a good sign.
Rob Hensley worked on an article he was doing about dog racing. The sport had only recently been introduced into the state, and so far only one track was scheduled to open. It was located about halfway between Houston and Galveston, and he had made a couple of trips there, interviewing the people who lived in the town, getting their views, listening to some of their stories. It was going to be a good article, he thought, and he hoped to sell it to one of the better markets. If Texas Monthly turned it down, and they probably would, probably had their own writers working on something similar, he thought he might be able to sell it to one of the airline in-flight magazines.
The writing went well, and by the time he went to bed he had most of the article roughed out.
He didn't dream at all, or if he did, he didn't remember.
Howland stayed up trying to find some new angle in the cases, but there was nothing.
He was dealing with a killer so careful that he didn't leave fingerprints and who left no tire tracks when he hauled bodies to fields to dump them. A killer so careful that he used a heavy-caliber pistol so that the bullets went through the victim and were then retrieved. So careful that if he killed by strangulation, he used items from the victim's own apartment to do the strangling.
Howland wished that Alma Remington could have come up with something more during the session with Romain, but at least he had a make of car now, and a color. He supposed that was better than nothing.
But not much better.
If only she could have seen something more, like the license plate number. That might have made a big difference. Howland went to bed late.
He dreamed of blue Fords. Mustangs, Tauruses, Escorts, Thunderbirds, LTDs. None of them had license plates.
Chapter 18
I should tell a little about the others. That's what everyone will want to know.
Like I said, I learned a lot from the first one. I learned to be careful. I learned to plan. I made a promise to myself that I would never again simply go in cold, no matter how the noise in my head built up, no matter how urgent it seemed.
The second one was named Susan Martin.
I found that out later, from the newspapers, but I got to know a lot about her before that. I knew everything I needed to know.
I didn't need to know her name. I was going to kill her, after all, not marry her.
She worked at a convenience store where I stopped to buy gas one night. She took my twenty-dollar bill and gave me three dollars in change, looking me right in the eye as if she didn't know I could see them on her.
The blood marks.
They were on her arms, this time. She was wearing some kind of short-sleeved uniform jacket, and the marks were plainly visible on the part of her arms that showed between the elbow and the beginning of the sleeve.
She was about twenty-five and somewhat overweight. Her upper arms were doughy and white, except for the blood marks. They twisted around her arms like snakes crawling up into her sleeves as if they were trying to hide themselves from me.
They couldn't hide, however, not from me.
There were two or three other people in the store, a man buying beer, a teenage boy renting an R-rated video tape, some man picking up a half gallon of milk. I did nothing to draw attention to myself, did nothing to show how the blood marks repulsed me. I paid for my gas and left.
I parked down the block and waited for the woman to get off work. It wasn't late, about ten o'clock, but I was sure she probably worked the four-to-midnight shift. I was going to follow her home.
A man picked her up at about five after twelve. I couldn't tell anything about him except that he was driving an old Chevy with rust spots on the trunk lid. She came out and got in the car, and they drove away.
It was easy to follow them. They didn't suspect anything. Why should they?
They didn't go far, just a mile or so to an apartment house that had probably been filled with happy middle-class families about thirty-five years ago but which was now filled with people who couldn't afford to go anywhere else. Immigrants, legal and illegal, people on welfare, people earning minimum wage. People who couldn't afford anything better.
Some of the apartments were vacant, their windows smashed out. Though it was now getting late, there was still a good deal of activity on the street. Dope deals going down, whores peddling their wares. About what you'd expect.
The car pulled into the lot and parked. I drove slowly by and watched the man and woman get out and go into the apartment house. Then I went home.
It didn't take long to find out that they weren't married, just living together. The man worked days, leaving every morning about seven. The woman took the bus to work every day about three-thirty. That left her alone in the apartment for more than eight hours.
It was going to be easy.
I was going to have to kill her in the apartment, so obviously I couldn't use a gun. I decided on a knife. You can buy a good knife anywhere. I bought one at a Wal-Mart and spent a few days sharpening it. When I was through, I could shave the hairs off my arm with it.
You can buy cheap plastic gloves in any hardware store. I bought a box of those, and I got a cheap raincoat made of clear plastic at another store in another part of town.
I learned as much as I could about the routine in the apartment. The man always left around seven, but the woman never came to the door to see him off. I decided that she liked to sleep late. That was fine with me.
The only problem I could see was getting into the apartment. There were a lot of people there who didn't work at all, and they would be at home most of the day, hanging out in doorways, sitting around their entrances in dilapidated lawn chairs, visiting and gossiping.
Most of those people wouldn't be up at seven o'clock, however. That was when I was going in.
I did it like this: I walked right in. It was easy. I bought some pants at one store and a shirt at another, making an outfit that looked a little like a uniform. Then I bought some patches and sewed them on the sleeves and over the shirt pocket.
It didn't matter what kind of uniform it was supposed to be; that was the point. It wasn't supposed to be any particular kind at all. The patches didn't matter, either. I didn't think anyone who saw me in the uniform would be too curious, and they probably wouldn't be able to read the patches anyway.
I went one morning about a month after I first spotted her. I waited until the man had left. Then I parked a couple of blocks away from the apartment and walked right to it. I didn't look shifty or guilty. I just marched through the parking lot like I belonged there, and in a way, of course, I did. I was carrying a clipboard and a small briefcase, and it was obvious to anyone that I had a job to do.
No one took any notice of me. I don't think anyone really saw me. The people in the parking lot, and there were only one or two of them, were getting in their cars, getting ready to go off to work. They didn't care about me.
I went right up to the apartment door and rang the bell. I had to ring several times before the woman came.
She opened the door a slight crack. There was one of those chains that anyone could break, but I didn't break it.
"What do you want?" she said sleepily. I could tell I'd waked her up.
"City health inspection," I said. "There's been a report that this building has roaches in it. I've been sent around to check."
"Well, there's plenty of 'em here, that's for sure," ' she said, and she pushed the door up, took off the chain, and let me in.
Just like that. I could hardly believe it. Any women reading this could learn a good lesson right there, but I wouldn't want any of them to read it until I won't be using this method anymore.
You see, I knew all along she'd let me in eventually. I had created a lengthy spiel, and on the clipboard there was a pretty genuine-looking checklist that I'd created on my computer. I'd even dummied up a letter from the Health Inspector's office, with a fake seal on it in case she demanded to see some identification.
But people are really pretty trusting. She had no reason to believe that I was going to do anything to her. She was tousled and sleepy and, let's face it, not very attractive at all. She probably couldn't imagine, not in her wildest dreams, that anyone would want to rape her, which of course I didn't, and she probably didn't have any enemies who'd want to kill her.
Except for me, of course. And she didn't know about me. Not yet, she didn't.
I can see that I'm getting off the subject, as usual. I'm sure no one wants to read about my theories of why she opened the door, so let's get back to it.
She was wearing a chenille robe that was worn smooth in spots. It was probably ten years old. She had on a pair of house shoes that flopped up and down in back, and her hair looked like a rat's nest. She didn't have on any makeup, and she was a bit older than I had thought at first, but not too much. There were red indentations on one cheek where the pillow had been wrinkled and pressed into her face while she slept. Her skin was a sort of pasty white. I guess she didn't get out in the sun much.
She didn't give a damn how she looked, though. I was just some man who'd come in to look for roaches. What did she care?
The robe had long sleeves, so I couldn't see the blood marks. I'd have to get the robe off. I had to see the marks before I killed her.
The sound in my head was there, getting louder and louder, but I ignored it.
She followed me into the kitchen.
"You'll see traces of the little bastards all around. This is the roach capital of the world."
"Actually it's not," I said. "Miami is. Houston is the flea capital."
"We got fleas, too. Don't even have a goddamn dog, but we got fleas." She sighed. "Open up one o' the cabinets, though, you'll see roaches. What're you gonna do about 'em?"
"We'll see," I said. I didn't really care about the damn roaches. I reached inside the waistband of my pants and pulled out the knife, then wheeled around to face her, the knife in my hand.
"Don't make a sound," I said.
Her eyes were wide. I have to admit that the knife was an impressive sight. Nearly a foot long.
"I ain't got no money," she said.
"Turn around," I said.
"I ain't got no money. I don't know what you want, but I—"
I stepped right up to her and clubbed her in the temple with the pommel of the knife. She hit the floor like a bag of dirty clothes, which in a way is all she really was.
When she came to, she was already trussed up. I had used the belt from her robe to tie her hands, and I had torn the robe into strips to tie her ankles. She was wearing an old sleeveless polyester gown, and I could see the blood marks plainly.
I had taken off my uniform and put on the raincoat and gloves, which I'd been carrying in the briefcase. I suppose that she knew what was going to happen to her, or at least she had a pretty good idea. I certainly must have looked bizarre, and, of course, I was holding the knife.
I had stuffed part of the robe into her mouth so that she wouldn't yell when she came to. She simply lay there on the floor and looked at me. There wasn't much else she could do.
The floor wasn't very well cared for. It was green linoleum of some sort, cracked and broken. There was dirt in the cracks. Clearly she wasn't much of a housekeeper. Neatness is important in a home, I've always thought, but she hadn't been taught about that. Or if she'd been taught, she'd long since forgotten.
The whole apartment was a mess, to tell the truth. There were dirty clothes in the broken-down chairs, empty potato chip sacks on the couch in front of the TV, old newspapers lying on the stained rug, dirty dishes stacked in the sink. I've never understood how people can live like that, but there are apparently a lot of them who don't seem to mind.
But none of that matters. I'm wandering off the subject.
She was looking at me, her eyes almost begging for me not to do what she knew I was going to do. Her eyes had no effect on me, however. I hardly noticed them. What I noticed was the blood marks on her bare arms.
They were getting redder and redder as I looked, bulging like a tangle of thick worms. I knew I had to do something about them soon, so I didn't even bother to take the gag out of her mouth.
Sometimes I've regretted that. I would have liked to hear her beg. I would have liked to make her say "please."
But I knew I couldn't do that. If I did, the blood marks might get away, might crawl right off her arms and onto the floor and slither across that worn-out rug and hide under the furniture where I’d never find them.
They were feeding off her fear. Her fear was making them strong.
I had to do something about that.
I plunged the knife into her throat and pulled it hard to the side. It was very sharp, as I'm sure I've said.
Her eyes bulged out and she sucked in on the piece of robe in her mouth. It was almost comical. If the knife hadn't killed her, she might have strangled.
Blood spurted out and spattered like raindrops on my arm and chest, but it didn't matter. I had on the raincoat.
It was very exciting, but I didn't lose control. I almost did, but I didn't.
I had told myself to be strong. I had hit the first one a lot of times, not even counting, not even watching the blood marks die.
I wasn't going to do that again.
So I stood and watched her for a second or two. I have to admit that my breath was coming fast, and, of course, there was that sound in my head, like music that wasn't really music.
The blood marks had already started to fade, but they were still too strong.
I stuck the knife in her stomach.
Twice.
The second time I ripped straight up to her breastbone.
There really wasn't much blood this time. I think she must have been dead by then. Her heart had probably already stopped.
Just to be sure, I stabbed her twice more, in the general area of the heart. I'm not a student of biology, so I didn't know the exact location, but I did my best.
It must have been good enough, because the marks faded almost as white as her pasty arms.
That didn't satisfy me, naturally. As long as there was any sign of the marks, I wouldn't be satisfied.
And that's why I cut her arms off.
Chapter 19
The call got through to Howland as soon as he walked into his office the next morning.
"Says her name's Remington," the switchboard operator said. "Says you know her."
"I know her," Howland said. "Put her on."
Alma was thrilled to be put through so quickly, and she explained to Howland about her dream.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Now I'm having to listen to dreams. He fleetingly remembered his own dream about the blue Fords, but it passed through his mind and out as if it had never occurred. Howland had never put much stock in dreams.
When Alma got to the part about the license plate, however, he perked up.
"I think it might be important," she said. "I think it might have been caused by the hypnosis. I didn't remember then, but my whaddyacallit, my subconscious mind, remembered and brought it to me in the dream."
It was just crazy enough to be possible. "All right," Howland said. "Give me the numbers."
"The letters were first," she said.
That meant the plate had been issued in the last few years. "All right," Howland said. "Give me the letters."
'There were a C and a V," Alma said hesitantly. "Or maybe they were an O and a U."
Trouble already, Howland thought.
"Or an O and a V," Alma said. "Or maybe even a C and a U."
Howland could see that this was going to be more fun than he had thought at first. "What about the numbers?"
"I saw those better," ' Alma said. "I'm positive that there were a five and a three."
"In that order?"
"Well . . . " Alma said. Then there was silence. Howland waited patiently.
Finally she said, "I'm just not sure. I think the five came first, but there might have been another number between it and the three." There was another pause. "Or there might not have."
"If there wasn't, do you have any idea what the last number might have been?"
"Well . . ." Alma said. "I guess I don't."
And it was all just a dream any way. "Thanks, Ms. Remington," Howland said. "You've been a big help."
"Do you really mean that? Do you think this will help catch the man who killed Ellen?"
"I'm sure it will," Howland said. What else could he say? "Do you need to talk to me again?" Alma said. "Try the hypnosis again? I might remember more this time."
"I'll let you know,” Howland said, hanging up the phone.
" 'Don't call us, we'll call you,' " Alma said into the dead phone in her hand. "Damn." She hung up.
