THE BLUE HOUR Read online

  McNally looked at her, then away. "What do you think about those other women filing suit? Kemp's got it coming from four directions now."

  "Four?"

  "Well, Stratmeyer in records was talking to some reporters this morning. What I heard was, she's accused Kemp of raping her. At his house."

  "Oh, Christ, I hadn't heard that."

  "Ugly stuff. I never had Kemp measured as that big an asshole."

  Merci kept up her brisk pace beside McNally. She shook her head and felt that tightness in her chest. She willed away the tightness, willed away thoughts of Kemp and Stratmeyer.

  Mike seemed to know what she was doing, because he changed the topic completely.

  "So, he's bled at least two women out here. Then what? How come there's nothing else left of them?"

  "We think the animals have ... cleaned up."

  "Maybe they're still alive."

  "If Gilliam ever finishes the saturation test, we'll have a better idea if that's even possible."

  "Well, they're not around here anywhere, except for those three points and the lines in between. What about the lagoon?"

  "The dive team is finishing up. We won't find them in the lagoon."

  They continued down the dusty road. She could hear the others catching up.

  "We should talk about things sometime, Merci."

  "Can't we just not?"

  "Fine. Hey, why knock my head against your wall?"

  "Please stop. It doesn't help either of us."

  "Okay. Sure. I'll just see you around."

  He sped up. Merci stepped to the side of the dirt road and let the handlers and their panting bloodhounds shuffle past.

  CHAPTER TEN

  "First off, the canning jar lid didn't hold any prints. We've got smudges consistent with fingers inside rubber or latex gloves, but no prints."

  It was early Thursday morning, two days after Hess had found the Slim Jim marks on the car windows. He stood in the crime lab and felt the tips of his fingers burning. Next to him was Merci Rayborn, with her hair back in a ponytail and a tight set of lines at each side of her mouth.

  James Gilliam, the director of Forensic Services, looked at her, then at Hess. To Hess he looked uncustomarily perplexed.

  "Now, based on the stain size and the perc rates I can tell you that at least two liters of blood went onto that ground. I can't tell you how much ran off. An adult human female contains just over four liters. So the chances are excellent that whoever lost this blood is dead. Given the circumstances, the chances are overwhelmingly good. I don't think our victim was in the presence of a lifesaver, a do-gooder or an ER nurse."

  They were looking down at a bench on which sat a collection of plastic pet litter boxes and plastic food containers filled with earth. Gilliam had aerated the boxes with a narrow-bit drill to replicate natural porosity before adding the soil. The food containers had the original dump site earth, collected by the CSIs. He had gotten plenty of older, soon-to-be-discarded blood units from the UCI Medical Center to see what the blood would do in the dirt.

  “You answered what we needed answered," said Merci.

  Hess watched Gilliam peer toward her over the top of his reading glasses. The lab director was a soft-spoken, deliberate man who took his time and never forgot the difference between a scientist and a cop. You couldn't hook him into seeing what wasn't there. He was almost a head shorter than Merci Rayborn. "I found something else," he said. "Kind of interesting, really."

  Hess's pulse rose a blip—he knew from experience that "kind of interesting, really," was James Gilliam's way of saying hold onto your hat. Merci knew it, too.

  Gilliam said, "Those soil samples you brought me in the buckets, Tim—good thing. That was the only way to replicate the conditions in Ortega closely. But you brought me more than just soil samples. I'll bet you didn't know that."

  Hess shook his head.

  "I set a little from each bucket aside, just as a precaution. When the perc tests worked out I thought I'd run the extra through the mass spec, just have a look. I tried the Kane soil first and got unusually high amounts of some unusual things—trioxane, formic acid, methanol, and CH O. When I ran the Jillson dirt I got nothing like that."

  Gilliam stopped here, as Hess knew he would. The man was a scientist and saw no reason to explain his own punch lines.

  "Well, Jim, what is it?" Hess prompted.

  "Oh, sorry. Formaldehyde—simplest of the aldehydes, highly reactive. In the soil samples, it was dehydrating to form the trioxane, oxidizing to make the formic acid and reducing to simple methanol. But it started as formaldehyde—there was enough of the unreacted CH O left to determine that. Actually it was probably formalin, which is formaldehyde in a 37 percent aqueous solution. Pure formaldehyde is just a gas."

  "How did it get there?" asked Merci.

  He looked at Hess but he answered Rayborn: "Someone put it there. Or, more likely maybe—spilled it."

  "Just the Kane site?"

  "Just the Kane site. But remember, six months of weather and rain would have washed out the Jillson ground."

  Hess had already pulled down Remington's Practice of Pharmacy from one of the crime lab shelves. It was a large book and punishingly heavy—he'd never noticed how heavy until today. It was the same 1961 edition, priced then at $22.95. Hess had used it a hundred times over the decades to look up answers that Gilliam had in his head. There was something of the educator in James Gilliam and Hess had never minded it.

  He glanced at Merci and saw the quick look of irritation she gave the lab director. Gilliam missed it, lost as he was to the mass spectrometer. He hovered over the machine, bent at the waist with his hands behind his back like a helpful valet.

  "Uh, James?" she asked. "Maybe you could spare us some heavy lifting here and tell us what formalin is used for. I mean, all I know is that's what the frogs were pickled in for biology class."

  Gilliam was still bent over his machine. "Usage: a preservative. A solvent. A tanning agent for leather. Mix it with ammonia and you get a urinary tract antiseptic. It's a big part of two different and powerful explosives—cyclonite and PETN. It combines eagerly, so it's used to make everything from resins and disinfectants to embalming agents, plastics to polyvinyls. It's also used as a soil sterilant. Which is interesting, since that's exactly where Tim found it."

  "A preservative," said Merci. "And the lid of a pickling jar. Do the jar and the formalin go together?"

  Gilliam straightened and rubbed his chin. He sighed. His pale eyes were turned up to Merci but looked to Hess like they were focused somewhere past her head. A little odd, Hess thought: Gilliam distracted, Gilliam nervous, Gilliam not looking the woman in the face. It took Hess another moment to get it: she's attractive to him and he doesn't know how to act.

  "They don't have to go together, though I see what you're getting at," Gilliam said quietly. "Formalin will evaporate quickly, but you can transport it in any jar, really. And, maybe he didn't bring the jar. We only found the lid. I guess the larger question is—"

  "—Yeah—what the hell is he dumping formalin into the ground for in the first placer

  "Yes, of course."

  "While a body hangs from a tree, eviscerated and bleeding," she said.

  A moment of silence while three imaginations tugged at their respective tethers.

  Until Gilliam cleared his throat. "1 had a case where a rape-killer would wash off his victim with isopropyl alcohol before he ... coupled with her. Something about germs and religion gone pathological, is what the prosecution said. He had to have her pure, clean, clinically... worthy."

  Rayborn was nodding. "I had one where the prick washed her out with bleach after he raped her. He wanted his seminal fluid destroyed."

  "Maybe he's preserving parts of her," said the director.

  "As keepsakes," said Merci. "Eyes. Hearts. Whatever in God's name turns him on."

  "And when the meat hits the jar, the formalin spills out."

  Quiet again. />
  Another meditative pause.

  Merci next: "If formalin is used in tanning leather, you could use it to tan human skin, right?"

  "I guess you could. But if all he wants is their skin, where's the rest of them? Even the coyotes and vultures can't completely consume a fiill human skeleton in one week."

  Hess reentered the room after a brief mental departure. He was still looking down at The Practice of Pharmacy.

  "Maybe he's preserving the bodies," he said. He set the Remington's back on the shelf. "Taking the whole woman."

  Merci and Gilliam both looked at him—two mouths slightly open, four eyes intent.

  Hess continued, "It would account for us finding nothing but lots of blood, scraps of innards, and the primary ingredient embalming fluid. He's taking everything but fluids and viscera with him."

  "Okay," said Merci. "Then what about the canning jar?"

  "Maybe he was just using it for the obvious."

  "And what's that, Tim?" asked Gilliam.

  "To carry something to eat. All that work must make him hungry."

  "He ought to apply for a job here with the ME," said Merci, with a small smile for Gilliam. "If he can eat while he carves."

  Gilliam smiled too but looked away from her. Then he was moving toward the door. "I found some other things from the cars. Kind of interesting, really."

  Merci held open the door for the director and looked over his head at Hess.

  "I love this part of the job," she said.

  • • •

  The comparison scopes were ready. Gilliam's voice carried through the hush of the Hair &. Fiber room as Hess and Rayborn looked at two different hairs magnified one thousand times by the phase contrast microscope. Then they traded places.

  "We were able to get the Jillson hair because her husband knew something was very wrong," said the director. "So when he got Lael's car out of impound he kept it exactly like it was. It sat under a cover in his garage for a month before we saw it. Never washed, never vacuumed. Sharp guy, Mr. Jillson. He was stubborn enough to leave the car untouched again after we examined it, in case we wanted a second look. We did. And I'm glad we did.

  "The hair on the left is likely from a Caucasian. It's blond, long, with some wave to it. We found it in the Jillson car yesterday. It was caught on the lap belt buckle—the plastic housing that the tongue goes into. I don't know why they didn't find it the first time. I don't care, so long as it isn't Ike's or one of his workers'—which it's not. And it's not a likely match with the victim or anyone in her family. We've eliminated them as donors, too, based on their scale counts and pigmentation. They all used the same hair conditioner as the victim. This hair wasn't washed or conditioned with the same product. We found completely different pharmacological traces on it. Nothing we can identify yet, by the way. But the scale count is higher than any of the Jillson clan we tested. I'm going to say it's possible, very possible, that this hair came from your man."

  "Which seat?" asked Merci.

  "The one behind the driver."

  "I think he waits there."

  "That's very interesting. Now, on the right-hand scope is a hair that very likely came from the same person as the hair I just showed you. We pulled it from the Kane car yesterday morning. It was caught up in a mesh netting attached to the back of the driver's seat. You know, one of those things to secure personal items in a car—maps, tissue, maybe a flashlight or magazines for a long trip. This certainly suggests that the hair's owner was behind the front seat himself. Maybe even crouching down at some point, resting his head against the back of the seat and the mesh. Waiting for her? Who knows? You both do know that match is a bad word in hair analysis—we can't say it in court—but what we have here is as close to a match as two hairs are likely to come."

  "I smell the creep," said Merci.

  "There's more," said Gilliam.

  He led them around the microscope stations to a counter that ran along the wall. Hess followed. Sunlight came through the narrow vertical slots of the windows. The slots had always made him think of hidden archers. The heavy book had left a scalding outline on his thighs.

  Gilliam brought a small plastic box from one drawer of an old steel tool chest that sat on the counter. He opened it, snugged the lid onto the bottom and handed it to Hess.

  The old man looked down, then reached in with a thick fingertip and poked the item in question. It was a standard 20-amp automotive fuse, the kind you'd find by the dozen under any dashboard. The color of the glass was good and Hess could see no break in the filament inside.

  "I already checked, and it's good," said Gilliam. "More to the point, there's no fuse like it used anywhere in Janet Kane's BMW. The car is only seven months old, so all the German-made factory fuses are still in it. They're a different design. This one must have come from somewhere else, been intended for use somewhere else. Some other car. Some other piece of equipment. I don't know. But I'd like to know what it was doing in Janet Kane's car."

  Rayborn asked him exactly where they'd found it and Hess asked if they'd printed it, at the same time.

  Gilliam looked from one to the other.

  "Behind the driver's seat. Sitting right in the middle of the floor. And yes, Tim, there was a print on the glass of it. Just a partial but we've got some ridge endings and bifurcations to work with. I eliminated Janet Kane myself. I've made up an AHS card for CAL-ID and WIN, but the specifying parameters will be up to you two. If he's got a thumb on file, we've got a shot at him."

  "Write up the parameters, Tim," said Merci.

  "I want to talk to Dalton Page first. And to an old rapist I busted. They know what we're looking for."

  Merci ignored him, looking instead at Gilliam with what Hess was beginning to think of as her customary suspicion. "Anything else, Mr. Gilliam?"

  "That's the bulk of it."

  "Good work." Then she turned her dark, adamant eyes on Hess. "Tim, go see your profiler and your rapist now. Because I want those parameters ready by the end of the workday and I want those prints on their way."

  "You'll have them. I can talk to Dalton alone. But I think you should see the creep with me."

  "I'll consider it."

  Hess turned and started across the room. He heard the conversation without seeing it and wondered if that's how it was when you were dead, hearing things without seeing them, aware of a world going on without you. He looked back at them with something like longing.

  "What about my oak branches, Mr. Gilliam?" asked Merci. "I sawed hard to get them. Outside cut first."

  She looked over at him with a humored expression and Hess realized she'd cut the branch the hard way.

  "Oh, standard nylon rope, Sergeant. Safety orange in color—something you might find in a camping or hunting or surplus store. Judging from the depth of the notches and the strands that wore through and stayed for us to see, it was bearing some weight. The same rope—or very similar—used on each tree."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dr. Dalton Page asked Hess to meet him at his home. They had talked there, on his patio, several times over the years. The house was up on Harbor Ridge in Newport, an older tract in the city, where rambling ranch-style homes sat on terraces in the hills with views of the ocean. If you stood on the beach at sunset and looked up at them, a hillside of orange reflections looked back at you.

  Driving out Hess recalled that Page had bought the place twenty years ago, anticipating retirement from the faculty of Johns Hopkins medical school. Hess had asked his help the first summer Page came to vacation in California, and they had kept in touch after that. Friends at the FBI had recommended Page as one of the best forensic psychiatrists in the country. He lectured at the Bureau regularly and had testified often as an expert witness.

  Hess had helped organize a little party—mostly law enforcement and DA officers—to welcome Dalton and Wynn Page to Orange County. That was a decade ago, when the doctor retired and they moved here year round. Wynn had grown up in Newport and Hess
remembered her seeming happy to be back home. Page himself had been wry about living in la-la land, but he had quite a suntan. After that the

  Pages had made little effort to include Hess in their social world, but he knew from department talk that they kept an extremely busy, bicoastal lecture and appearance schedule. Page had written a bestseller about criminal personality types.

  The back patio was bathed in sunshine and looked out over the bright blue Pacific. Dr. Page sat at a glass table in the perforated shade of a lattice awning. Mandevilla vines snaked their way through the lattice and the pink blooms hung in the air.

  He was wearing tennis whites and a white vest, which set off the darkness of his skin. His face was taut from surgery. There was a box of small weights and a jump rope sitting off under a Norfolk Island pine. Hess shook his hand and his grip was strong and dry.

  Wynn brought them iced tea and set her hand on Hess's shoulder as she poured his.

  'Carry on, crimebusters," she said, then headed back into the darkness of the house.

  Not for the first time in his life Hess wished he was still married to his first wife, Barbara. It was a hypothetical longing based on what he thought he saw in some long marriages: trust, comfort, mutual respect. Two hearts seemed to beat slower than one. Couples like the Pages made him feel it. He guessed if he was still married to Barbara he'd have a lot less to worry about. He wouldn't be broke, for one thing. Children would have given him a firmer grip on the future. A grip, he just now realized, that would have been easier to relinquish when it was time.

  Beat this tumor and you've got ten more years, he thought, possibly fifteen. You can turn around a lot of things with that much time. "The Ortega sites, Tim?"

  "I brought the files. We don't have a lot to go on, but we've got a partial print. If you and I can get the parameters right we might get lucky with it. If not, we'll wait until he does it again and hope he gets careless."