Blood Marks Page 3

  Howland liked hearing that even less than he liked everything else. Romain was convinced, and so was Howland, now, that they had a serial killer on their hands, one who was sure to kill again. And there was not a single clue as to who he was, not one fucking thing. As unbelievable as it was, it was looking more and more as if it were true.

  And he was sure to kill again.

  "Forsch," Howland said.

  "As I told you, she might not be a part of the group. But if she was, then . . ."

  "Then I'd better concentrate on that one, " Howland said. "If it's the same man, he slipped up on that one."

  Romain put his elbows on the papers on his desk and steepled his fingers. "Let me tell you a little bit about serial killers," he said.

  Chapter 6

  Casey and Rob sat on the couch in Casey's apartment, relaxing in the air conditioning after finishing with the trailer, and sipping Seagram's wine coolers from the bottles. Casey had put them in the refrigerator as soon as she had arrived that morning and they were refreshingly cold. Margaret lay on the rug in front of them, watching The Princess Bride with close attention.

  "I loved that book," Rob said. "I thought the movie was OK, but the book was a lot better."

  Casey was surprised. Rob didn't look much like a reader. He looked more like someone who'd spend his spare time playing volleyball or jogging. She knew that she shouldn't stereotype men, or anyone else, like that, but she couldn't help it. It was a habit she had, and as was often the case, she'd been wrong in her assessment. It was as if she hadn't learned a single thing from her experience with the Asshole, who had seemed like such a classy guy at first.

  "I think it's a wonderful book, too," ' Casey said. "I always wished that Goldman would write another fantasy."

  "He did," Rob said. "The Silent Gondoliers. It's more like a short story than a novel, though, and it's no Princess Bride."

  "I never read it," Casey said. "I'd like to."

  "I have a copy somewhere," Rob said. "I'll see if I can find it if you'd like to borrow it."

  "I would," Casey said.

  Rob awkwardly set his bottle on a coaster on the coffee table in front of them. There was something wrong with his arm, not anything really noticeable, not anything that interfered with his being able to lift and carry, but something that just obviously caused him a bit of trouble now and then.

  He noticed Casey looking at him.

  "Bad break," he said. "I fell out of a tree when I was eight years old. That elbow will never be the same."

  Casey, embarrassed that she had been caught in what must have seemed a curious stare, changed the subject.

  "I'm sure glad you were here," she said. "I don't think I could have gotten that trailer unloaded by myself. I hope I didn't interfere with your vacation or anything."

  "I'm on a permanent vacation," Rob said. "Or that's what a lot of people seem to think when I tell them how I earn a living. I work at home most of the time."

  "Oh," Casey said. "What do you do?"

  "I’m a free-lance writer,” Rob said. "Articles mostly. I'm working on a novel in my spare time, but that's a long way from being finished. I get outside for research, but I can set my own hours."

  Casey was interested. As an English major she had a great respect for writers, and she suddenly realized that while she had read books and articles for most of her life she had never actually met a single person who made his living by writing.

  "Where have you published?" she said.

  "A lot of regional magazines," Rob said. "I did some articles for Houston City before it folded, and I had one in Texas Monthly once. I've done things for airline magazines, industrial publications, computer magazines, a little bit of everything. I even sold a poem once. I'm not getting rich, but so far I've been able to keep solvent."

  Casey told him a little about her own background, glossing over the divorce and concentrating on her study of literature.

  "I've never tried to write, myself," she said. "I know what makes good writing, and I can recognize it when I see it, but I've never been tempted to try it. I guess I'm afraid I won't live up to my own standards."

  "I'll try to keep my stuff out of your sight," Rob said. "I'm not sure how it would stand up to professional criticism."

  "Oh, no. I'd like to read something of yours," Casey said, meaning it. "I’d like to see how a real writer works."

  Rob smiled. "Maybe one of these days, then."

  On the TV screen, Inigo Montoya was about to extract his long-postponed revenge, to Margaret's evident satisfaction. She was lying on her stomach, her knees bent and her feet in the air. Her hands were folded under her chin as she watched.

  "How about a swim?" Rob said to Casey. "The pool here is one of the main attractions."

  Casey thought about it. Why not? Maybe all the stories she'd heard about how easy it was to make friends in city apartments were really true. Maybe the move to Houston was going to be the change for the better she'd hoped it would be. She certainly seemed to be getting into the swing of things more quickly than she had counted on.

  "Fine, she said. She reached out and touched her daughter with the tip of one toe. "What about you, Margaret?"

  Margaret didn't look away from the TV screen. "I want to see what happens to Wesley," she said, referring to the movie's hero, who was currently more dead than alive.

  "All right," Casey said. "You know where the pool is, and you can come out after the movie if you want to."

  The pool had been one of the first things Margaret had checked out that morning. She liked to swim, and she had already told Casey that she wanted to get into the water. She had not had much opportunity to go swimming when they had lived in West Texas.

  "OK," Margaret said, not very interested at the present time. Wesley's friend Inigo was suddenly in deep trouble, having just been struck by a thrown dagger.

  "Just give me a few minutes to change," Casey told Rob. "I'll meet you there."

  "There'll be a lot of people," Rob said. "Everyone likes to go for a dip after work. It relieves some of the tension they build up driving home on the loop." It was clear from his tone that he was glad he did not have to get out and fight the traffic every day.

  "Sounds good," Casey said. "I need to meet the neighbors."

  "Some of them are pretty strange," Rob warned. "You know what apartment living is like."

  Casey really didn't know about apartment living, but she told Rob that she was still interested in meeting everyone. "OK, then," Rob said. "Thirty minutes?"

  "See you there," Casey said.

  Chapter 7

  Howland had read the literature on serial killers, but he'd never heard anyone talk about them at length before, not the way Romain talked.

  Romain knew all there was to know, and he could speculate about a hell of a lot that wasn't known. The guy was eerie.

  "Let's talk about Forsch to begin with," the psychologist had said. "She doesn't fit the pattern, since there are actually a few clues in her case. Not many, not anything that seems particularly useful, but more than on the others."

  Saying there was nothing useful was like saying the Sears Tower was a tall building, or at least that was the way it seemed to Howland.

  "So you're saying Forsch's murder is not part of the series?" Howland said.

  "No, I didn't say that. It might not be, but it may very well be the most important part. It may be that she was the killer's very first victim, and in that case the most important one."

  "You're saying that because hers was the first of the motiveless murders we've been able to come up with, I guess," Howland said.

  "No," Romain said. He leaned back in his chair and reached for another cigarette. Howland wondered what the man's lungs would look like if he were ever autopsied.

  "You see," Romain said when he'd lit up, "in many serial killers something serves as a trigger. Something happens that sets them off. They may go for years before they kill their first victim, and all that time something is
building up inside them. Then something happens. We don't know what it is, or why, and it's probably different in each case, but eventually they see something, hear something, think something—hell, who knows. Then they kill, and it's almost spontaneous. They don't have the control that they develop later."

  "You're saying that after the first time, they plan better."

  "That's right." Romain looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette. "The first time is often impulsive. Then they have time to think about it. If they got away with it, they begin to think of how much fun it was, but at the same time they can see all the ways they screwed up."

  He drew in a lungful of smoke and said, "They don't want to get caught, you know, not most of them. That 'Stop me before I kill more' stuff, in most cases that just doesn't happen. So after the first murder, they take their time. They set things up very carefully."

  "I never thought of killers as being very smart," Howland said.

  "That's one of your biggest mistakes, then," Romain said. "It may explain why you didn't notice that the thing tying these killings together was the intelligence of the killer, his complete control of the crime scene from beginning to end."

  "Jesus," Howland said. "It's almost as if you admire the creeps who do this kind of thing."

  "In a way, I do," Romain said. His gaze behind the thick lenses of his glasses was intense.

  "I'm still not sure I agree with you about the intelligence part, though," Howland said. "A lot of these guys seem to get by just on pure dumb luck."

  "Some of them do,” Romain conceded. "A certain group, anyway. Those are the ones that are usually caught. They don't have any social skills. They're loners, with very few friends, and they're not smart. In fact, they're mostly of below average intelligence. They have sexual problems, too. Women don't like them, don't even like having them around. If they have a job, it's not a good one, not one that pays much above the minimum wage. They move around a lot, some of them anyway, and that helps keep them out of jail. For a while. They're not the kind of guys you'd invite over to meet the wife and family. You wouldn't even want them around you at work."

  "But you don't think we're looking for anyone like that, I take it," Howland said.

  "Probably not," Romain said. "There's another kind of serial killer, even more dangerous. He's the one who could pass, who does pass, for normal in almost any company. He makes a good impression. He's as smart as anyone else, often smarter. Has a good job, works hard, makes plenty of money. He doesn't appear—and let me stress appear—to have any sexual problems. He might have a steady girlfriend. He might even be married. And if he is, believe me, his wife would never suspect that there was a thing wrong with him. In other words, he's someone pretty much like you or me."

  Like me, maybe, Howland thought. I'd sure never put you down as being completely normal.

  "So we're looking for the second kind," he said.

  "If there's a serial killer out there, and judging from the reports you've shown me, I think that there is, it's the second kind," Romain said. "No doubt of it."

  "When will he kill again?" Howland said.

  Romain stirred the butts in the ashtray around until he had cleared a space where he could mash out his current smoke. "No one can tell you that, maybe not even the killer," he said.

  "You mean even he doesn't know?"

  "That's right. The first kind of killer we were talking about more or less does things at random. He'll just kill someone. He gets the opportunity, and he does it. That's what makes him easier to catch. He'll leave clues, and he might even kill in a place where he's known. He might kill someone he knows."

  "But not the boy we're looking for," Howland said.

  Romain nodded. "Not the boy we're looking for. He wouldn't work that way. He picks his victim carefully, though we may never discover just how. It will never be someone he knows, and he'll never kill near where he lives or works."

  "You don't shit where you eat," Howland said.

  "Something like that. He may even stalk his intended victim for days, possibly weeks before the murder. That may even be a part of the fun. Sometimes he might kill within days of a previous murder, sometimes within months. It's more often a longer period than a shorter one, however."

  "But there's usually a pattern," Howland said. "Bundy killed women who looked alike. The Green River killer went after whores, like Jack the Ripper. This guy"—he waved the folders—"this guy isn't giving us anything!"

  "Which just goes to show how smart he is," Romain said. "Assuming that he does indeed exist."

  "You mean we might be wrong about this?"

  "Of course we might. As you said, you might have simply nine motiveless killings with no clues at all."

  "Pretty damn doubtful, isn't it?" Howland said. "Pretty damn doubtful," Romain agreed.

  A new thought occurred to Howland. "We've been talking about a male all this time," he said. "I guess there's no chance that we're dealing with a woman."

  "There's a local saying that covers what you're asking," Romain told him. "It goes like this: 'There are two chances: slim and none."

  "Why?" Howland wanted to know.

  "Because women aren't generally serial killers," Romain said. "Don't ask me why, though."

  "Dammit, you're the psychologist."

  That doesn't mean I know everything. Sometimes I think I don't know anything at all."

  "You must have an idea."

  "Not a one. Oh, there have been cases of women who were multiple murderers, and they've even killed serially in a sense, but it's just not quite the same kind of thing we're talking about here."

  "Why not?" Howland said.

  "Usually it was husbands, and then it was usually for money. Insurance or an inheritance, let's say. Not for the thrill of it, the power trip, the sexual charge, whatever it is that the man you want is getting."

  "That's what I'd like to know," Howland said. "What the hell is he getting? There's no sign of sperm anywhere at these scenes. No rapes, no oral sex. What the hell is going on?"

  Romain permitted himself a thin smile. He didn't smile often, not at the office anyway. "That's something you'll have to ask him," he said. "If you can catch him."

  "And you don't think I can?"

  "You might. Maybe he'll make a mistake. Or maybe you'll spot something in those reports that no one's picked up on yet."

  "But you don't think so."

  "No," Romain said. "I don't. I think you're dealing with a man who doesn't make mistakes."

  "Bundy did," Howland said. "More than one. They caught him more than once."

  "This man may be smarter than Bundy."

  "And there's the Forsch murder," Howland said. "The 'trigger,' you called it."

  "There's that," Romain said. "It may be your best bet. Otherwise, what do you have to go on?"

  "Not a thing," Howland admitted. "Not a single goddamned thing."

  And now, looking back over the folders, Howland could see that there was no reason to modify that statement. He still didn't have a thing to go on, outside the Forsch killing, and the clues in that one were worthless unless he could develop something from them that the previous investigator had overlooked.

  Meanwhile, somewhere out there, the killer was getting ready to murder someone else.

  Howland put the folders on his desk and put the palms of his hands on them as if he might absorb something from the papers that would help him.

  "Not a thing," he said to himself. "Not a single goddamned thing."

  Chapter 8

  It took Casey a little more than thirty minutes to get ready, maybe because she stood in front of the mirror a little too long as she looked at herself in her new bathing suit. She had bought it because of the move to Houston, knowing that she would be living in an apartment with a pool and that she would be only thirty or forty minutes from Galveston Island and its beach on the Gulf of Mexico.

  Now she was wondering if it wasn't a little too much.

  Or a little too litt
le.

  She hadn't bought a suit in years, since swimming wasn't a big activity in Lubbock, and she hadn't really thought about how revealing the new suits were.

  They were pretty revealing, she thought now, as she looked in the mirror and wondered just when it had become all right to show almost your entire ass to the whole world. Still and all, she had to admit that it was a pretty good ass.

  She didn't have much of a tan, though. In fact, she didn't have any kind of a tan at all. She looked so pale that she might be taken for the victim of vampire attacks. Well, a few days at poolside would take care of that.

  She realized that tanning was now known to be very unhealthy, and she planned to put on plenty of sunscreen—or maybe to let someone else put it on her—but surely a little tanning was permitted. If everyone else was as tan as Rob, she was going to have a lot of catching up to do.

  The movie was over when Casey came out of the bedroom, and Margaret had decided that she wanted to go swimming after all.

  Casey told her to get ready. "Five minutes. That's all you're going to get. So get that suit on and get out here."

  "Right!" Margaret said. She ran into her bedroom, the smaller of the two in the apartment, and slammed the door.

  Casey gathered up a towel for herself and one for Margaret while she was waiting.

  Margaret was back in less than the allotted time, and Casey wondered how she had done it. She stopped wondering when she glanced into the room and saw the clothes strewn around, the shorts and shoes on the floor, the shirt on a chair, socks on the bed and the panties lying on a bed pillow.

  She didn't say anything, however. Margaret was generally a very neat person, and Casey was sure her daughter would clean up the room later.

  "Ready, Mom!" Margaret said.

  She was enthusiastic about everything, Casey thought. Most of her conversation sounded as if there were built-in exclamation marks at the ends of her sentences.

  Some of that enthusiasm came from the Asshole, as much as Casey hated to admit it. He was devoted to his teaching, and he loved his subject. He never relied on the traditional yellowing lecture notes for his courses; every spare moment during the semester and even on his summer vacations he was in the library reading all the latest research and doing research of his own into the Romantic poets. All of them, not just the major ones he taught in his classes.