Distemper Read online

  “How does a regular, decent girl fall off the radar?”

  We thought about it for a while. It was getting on nine o’clock, and the lull following the after-work crowd was ending as Bessler students straggled in the door in twos and threes. Several of the girls sized up Mad with looks so brazen they seemed to come from another, sexier planet than the one I live on. These days, the only things I can summon up that much lust for come topped with melted cheese.

  “I got it,” Mad said. “How about this: what if she wasn’t the only victim? What if her family was offed too? There’d be nobody to report her missing.”

  “And also nobody to report that a whole family had gone missing?”

  “Oh. Right. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Minor detail.”

  “This is no fun. Why don’t we do this on company time? Why are we wasting valuable booze-and-babe time?” He leered at a gaggle of flat-chested blondes drinking screwdrivers at one corner of the bar. One of them caught his eye and gave him a look that I’d swear said lose the chunky brunette and come on over.

  “Okay, I’m no match for your sloth. Have a lovely evening. But would you do me a favor and at least make sure her fake ID looks convincing? Maybe the judge will be more sympathetic if you card her before you bang her.”

  “Don’t worry about me, sister. It only takes two to tango, and I’ll make sure she has nothing to complain about afterward. No witnesses, no case.”

  I got up to leave and was halfway down the window seat steps when I stopped cold. “Wait a second.”

  “Get lost, Bernier. You’re cramping my style.”

  “No, listen. What if that’s it?”

  The blonde was looking at him. He was looking back. “Huh?”

  “What if there were no witnesses? What if the person who would have reported her missing was the one who killed her?”

  That got him. “Jesus. You think?”

  I sat back down. “It’s one way that might explain things.”

  “A damn nasty way.”

  “Yeah, but not a particularly surprising one. Crazy killers make good copy, but statistically a woman is a lot more likely to be killed by her husband than by some stranger.”

  “Could it really happen, though? Wouldn’t someone else miss her? Her family and friends?”

  “You’d think. It would depend on the circumstances—who’s still alive, how close people are. Take, I don’t know… Melissa. Her parents are both dead. She hates her brother’s guts. Let’s say I want to off her. I tell everybody, ‘Oh, Melissa had a meltdown and went to stay with her relatives in Greece for a while.’ Would they buy it?”

  “About Melissa? You bet. From you? Sure.”

  “From someone close to her, right?”

  “Right. But what about the, you know, corpus delicti?”

  “You make sure there’s no easy way to identify her. As far as I know Melissa has never been fingerprinted, so you probably couldn’t ID her that way. You dump her someplace she might never be found, or at least not for a while. You do it far away from home, so it’s unlikely that even if she is found and the media runs a sketch like we did, there’s no one around who would recognize her.”

  “Which would mean that both the killer and the first victim don’t come from upstate New York, or even anywhere in the Northeast.”

  “If my little theory is right.” I caught Mad peering over my shoulder toward the bar. “She still there?”

  He shook his head. “I guess she wasn’t interested in a three-way.”

  “Poor dear.”

  “Hold on a minute, Bernier. Oh, fuck, I can’t believe you got me interested in this. But I think you’re blowing off a major point—like the, you know, physical evidence. I mean, don’t forget what this guy did to her. He strangled her with a dog collar, for Chrissake. He probably made her walk on a goddamn leash. He left her naked with all her clothes folded next to her. Those are not the actions of some guy who wants to smoke his wife so he can shack up with his secretary.”

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t a crazy person, Mad. I’m just saying maybe it was a crazy person she knew.”

  “Man, and I thought I was a sick bastard.”

  “Because you’re a skirt-chasing alcoholic? Come on, Mad. Your neuroses are relatively benign. This guy puts nuts like us way on the sunny side of normal.”

  “Nice of him.”

  “You know, I wonder if we’re onto something with all this.”

  “Think you should share it with your buddy Cody?”

  “I’m sure it’s already occurred to him.”

  “Do I detect a note of admiration?”

  “He’s a decent cop.”

  “But is he any good in the sack?”

  “Do you have any idea how old that joke is getting?”

  “Sorry. I’m not at the top of my form.”

  “Riddle me something else. Are we saying that this guy killed someone he could cover up and then, like, branched out? Came here to dump the body and started murdering strangers? Just for the fun of it? And wrote letters to the paper just to scare people even more?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Jesus, Mad. If we’re anywhere near right, he started off as an amateur, and he’s turning into a pro.”

  We stayed there in the window seat for a while, mulling the nasty possibilities over and over again. None of it put me in the mood to take any stupid chances, so when it came time to leave I used the bar phone to make sure someone was home, just like the cops had told me to. The machine answered. You have reached Steve, Emma, Marci, C.A., Alex, Tipsy, Nanki-Poo, Shakespeare… I hung up. The message was in Steve’s voice, calculated to fend off mashers, but it actually made us sound like his harem. I gritted my teeth, put a finger in my other ear so I could hear over Roger Daltry singing “Pinball Wizard” at top volume, and dialed the police station for an escort. It felt like I was thirteen years old again, asking Dad to pick me up at the Cinema Four.

  I sat back down next to Mad, who was in no shape to drive anybody anywhere. Five minutes later there was a rap on the window, and I turned to find Cody on the Green, motioning at me to come out. He didn’t look happy. “I think my ride’s here,” I said, and pecked Mad on the cheek. He waved me off and went back to his pitcher. When I got outside, I saw that Cody was wearing his jeans and leather jacket ensemble, so he wasn’t still on duty. “What are you doing here?”

  “You know, every time we run into each other, that’s the first thing you say.”

  “I meant, are you supposed to be my escort? And how did you get here so fast?”

  “I was on my way out of the station house when you called. Alex, we need to talk.”

  He sounded more serious than I’d ever heard him, which was quite an accomplishment considering his flair for gravitas. “What’s going on?”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Behind the Monitor. But I know better than to drive after three drinks.”

  “I’ll take you home then.”

  “I tried there already. Nobody’s home. That’s why I called for a baby-sitter. So maybe we should call a uniformed…”

  “Your roommates are on their way there. Some of them, anyway.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “How do you know? What is it? Come on, Cody, tell me.”

  “Have you been home lately?”

  Another odd question. “This week, not much. Just to sleep and shower. The animal-testing story has had me running all over the place. Why?”

  “I’d left word with the desk sergeant that I was to be informed if anyone filed a missing persons report on a girl who came even close to fitting the killer’s profile. They just paged me. Something’s come up.” I didn’t have the guts to prod him. I waited until he started talking again. “One of your roommates filed a report. Seems one of the girls hasn’t been seen since Wednesday night. Missed class yesterday and today. Her family hasn’t heard from her.”

  The three Midori sours started churning in my st
omach. “Oh, my God. We were wrong. We must have been wrong. We didn’t publish that goddamn letter, and he went out and did just what he threatened to do.”

  “We don’t know that. There may be a perfectly logical explanation.”

  “But your people were supposed to watch her. They were supposed to guard her like they were guarding me. Oh, Jesus, poor Marci…”

  “Alex, it isn’t Marci who’s missing. It’s C.A.”

  I gaped at him. “C.A.? That’s impossible. No one messes with C.A. She was raised in the army, for Chris-sake. She knows how to protect herself.”

  “Like I said, she could walk in the door tonight. But she’s been gone more than twenty-four hours, and your friend Marci called the police.”

  I felt my shoulder muscles relax. “Marci does have a hysterical side. She’s been known to overreact.”

  “That very well may be the case. But there’s something else odd.”

  “What?”

  “Her dog is missing too.”

  11

  I KNEW SHE’D BEEN ABDUCTED. I WAS SURE FROM THE minute I looked through her stuff, because it was obvious she hadn’t gone willingly. For one thing, her dad’s army duffel was still on the top shelf of her closet, and none of us had ever seen her travel without it. We couldn’t find any of her clothes missing except the ones she’d been wearing. And most importantly, her dog’s medication was still in the bathroom cabinet.

  “What kind of medicine is it?” Cody asked. All five of us—Steve, Marci, Emma, Cody, and I—were sitting in the living room. Marci looked as though she’d been crying all night, and Emma was drinking a martini out of a jumbo plastic cup. With Steve there, it struck me that it was the first time in a long time all of my housemates had sat down together. Then I remembered C.A. was gone, and I felt like crying myself.

  “It’s enrofloxacin,” Emma said. “It’s an antibiotic. Nanki-Poo has prostatitis, so he’s got to take it for three more weeks.”

  “Can he live without it?”

  “Live? Oh, certainly. But the infection will come back, and then you have to begin the course of treatment all over again.”

  “What I need to know is, would C.A. have left this behind? Forgotten it, maybe?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. The dog’s been taking it twice a day for three weeks already.”

  “Could she have another bottle of it with her?”

  Marci shook her head. “It’s expensive. We get a vet student discount, but only one bottle at a time.”

  “What kind of car does she drive?”

  “Like I told the policeman before, she doesn’t have a car. She rides her bike everywhere.” Marci started sniffling, and Steve got up to hand her another box of Kleenex. As he crossed the room, I noticed he wasn’t too overcome with grief to check out the pecs beneath Cody’s plaid cotton shirt.

  “We’re going to do everything we can to find her,” Cody said. “We have officers out canvassing, both downtown and up on campus. We’ve sent out alerts to the surrounding counties. Marci, I want you to know you did the right thing by contacting us immediately. The earlier we get the report, the more likely it is we’ll find someone. You said her parents were coming into town?”

  “They said they were coming the moment we called them,” Emma said. “They were so very certain it wasn’t like her to go off without a word.”

  “Her father’s a colonel,” Steve interjected. “We used to joke about how he was, you know, ‘a full bird,’ because I’m an ornithologist…” He got up and retrieved the Kleenex.

  “Her mom’s so upset,” Marci said. “Not just C.A. gone, but poor Nanki-Poo…”

  Cody looked a little put off. “They’re upset about the dog?”

  “No doubt it will seem quite senseless, Detective,” Emma said by way of explanation. “But when he was younger, the dog was one of her grandmother’s show champions. She only let C.A. have him because the dog really bonded to her one summer. They were flying him back home to Ohio in a few weeks.”

  “Why?”

  “C.A.’s grandmother was insisting that she breed him one last time before the neutering. I gathered that there was a certain female coming into heat that she’d matched him up with.”

  “Neutering?” The word seemed to make him a tad uncomfortable.

  “I’m sure this is far more information than you wanted, but Nanki-Poo suffered from a condition called prostatic hyperplasia. It’s quite common in older dogs who haven’t been neutered. It can lead to chronic infections, and sometimes the animal has trouble… hmm… ‘lifting his leg,’ as they say. It’s quite treatable, of course, but only by castration.”

  That particular word seemed to bother him even more than the last one. No wonder women like to say it so much. “And C.A.’s family asked her to hold off on the operation until he could, um, father one more litter?”

  “That’s right.”

  Cody rose. “Please let her parents know we’d like to talk with them as soon as they get here. And if you remember anything, anything at all that might help us find her, don’t hesitate to call. Middle of the night, it doesn’t matter. Alex, will you walk me out?”

  We went to his car, but he made no move to get in. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked. “You look pretty ragged.”

  “I’m okay. I like C.A., but the truth is I barely know her. Marci and Emma and Steve are much closer to her than I am. But I’ll be honest with you, Cody. I have a terrible feeling about this.”

  “I’ll be honest with you too. So do I.”

  “Do you think you’ll find her alive?”

  He seemed about to backpedal and say something comforting, then pulled himself up short. “I don’t know.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “I wouldn’t want to guess.”

  “I just can’t help but feel like we’re responsible somehow. If the paper had run that miserable letter, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. We were warned, weren’t we?”

  “We rolled the dice. Quantico made its best prediction, and we followed it. The FBI profile said it was a hoax. But it’s not an exact science. I wish it were.”

  “You’ve got to find her. Please, you’ve got to.”

  “We’re doing everything we can. But, Alex, don’t do this to yourself. You have to remember that whoever killed those girls doesn’t play by the rules. I don’t know if he took your friend or not. But I do know this much. He’s a killer. Don’t think running that letter or not running that letter would have made a damn bit of difference. This guy is going to kill whenever he gets the urge. Now, I hope to God he didn’t take your friend. But if he did, there’s no way it has anything to do with you.”

  “How can you possibly know that? I found the second body. He was there then, Cody. I could feel him. And then I got that letter. Maybe this was no accident, no random abduction. Maybe he took C.A. because she’s my housemate. Maybe he’s playing with me. Maybe…”

  I could feel myself edging into hysteria, and Cody knew it too. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently. “Ssh… come on, that’s enough. We don’t even know if she was taken by the same person, or if she was taken at all. I know it’s hard, but you have to keep your head together. You can’t let the fear get the better of you. Alex, listen to me. I can’t promise you we’ll find your friend, but I promise you this much. Nothing is going to happen to you. I’ll protect you. I swear. Do you believe me?”

  I looked up at him. He had so much muscle, it would have taken a backhoe to dislodge him from my person. “At this point, I think it would be a fatal blow to your ego if I got snuffed.”

  He cracked the beginning of a smile. “Good. Because there’s something else I want to talk to you about, and I need you to focus if we’re going to move quickly.”

  I took a steadying breath. “Okay.”

  “We think that whoever took the first two girls kept them alive for a while so he could… mistreat them. We’re not sure how long, maybe just a day or two. But if we’re dealing with the s
ame person, then your friend’s best chance is for us to get her face in front of as many people as we can, as fast as we can. We’re setting up a police hotline, and we want you to run her picture in the paper. Tomorrow. Can you do that?”

  I shook off the tears that still threatened to pounce. “Give me your cell phone.” I dialed Bill’s direct number in the newsroom. It was eleven, and the editors would be going insane in anticipation of the one A.M. press run. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to talk them into messing with page one, but they did it. Two minutes later I was in the car with Cody, delivering a head shot of C.A. to the newsroom. On the way I called the news director of the local TV station at home and talked him into cutting a missing persons bulletin first thing in the morning, to run as a public service announcement whenever the cable stations had airtime.

  When we got to the Monitor Cody waited while I ran inside to have the photo scanned on one of the newsroom layout computers. I was on my way out the door when Bill yelled after me. “Bernier, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Over to the…”

  “Fuck it. I need a goddamn story to go with this picture. You got me to rip page one, remember?”

  It was obvious enough, but I hadn’t thought of it. “But I have to…”

  “I have no cop reporter. Mad is nobody knows where. Everybody else filed and went home like good little children. You’re here. So write.”

  “Okay. Just let me go over to the…”

  “Bernier, I have no fucking page-one story. Do not take a step until you file one, or I’m dropping in the old one. Now.”

  I sprinted across the newsroom to my desk, opened up a new file, and started typing. I stopped long enough to call Cody. “I’m still up here. I need to write a story to go with the picture. Can you give me ten minutes? Yeah, I can do it in ten. But listen, I need you to do me a favor. Call the Benson student paper.” I gave him the number. “They’re on pretty much the same deadline as us. Ask to talk to the city editor—no, wait, they call it the news editor. Tell her about C.A. and that we’ll be bringing by a photo in twenty minutes. Oh, and if she gives you a problem, mention that the Monitor already has the story and is running it on page one tomorrow morning, picture and all. Wait, before you go, give me a quote. Something about the investigation.” I typed as he talked. “Okay. Fine. I’ll call you back in five to check facts on this thing.”