J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

It did, though, day after day.

Nobody could remember anything like it before. The shifts stacked up like a house of cards, and the higher they went the more afraid we were just to breathe.

We went from talking about the streak all the time to saying nothing, afraid of jinxing the run. Nine days and counting. I remember getting up on the morning of the tenth day, wondering what would happen if all the sudden people stopped murdering each other. Just like that, for some random reason, they finally stopped.

Lying in bed staring up at the fan, pretending I didn’t have to go in that day because the city didn’t need me anymore. . on that day, the tenth day, I loved my job.

On day eleven we got a call: a body found in an empty house. On ten I was in love, and on eleven I hated it more than I ever had, and I’m still not sure I could explain why.

Staring at Jason Young across the table, I feel that way again. Maybe it’s a reflection of the hate Templeton turned on me, making me loathe myself and what I do.

“I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Jason, but were you aware that Simone was involved in a relationship with another man?”

He rubs at the puffy flesh under his right eye, shakes his head.

“Can you answer out loud, please? For the recording.”

“No,” he says.

There are fresh cuts and bruises on his face and hands, livid against the backdrop of the fading injuries of a week ago. Another fight at another bar, though he is naturally reticent on the subject, deferring to his attorney, a young, fat counselor cinched too tightly into his suit at the waist and throat, his button-down collar flapping free on one side. Despite his slovenly demeanor, the lawyer is sharp, scrutinizing every word out of my mouth as if he can actually see them on the air. I’ve had enough of lawyers for one day.

“Did she ever say anything that would give you reason to suspect?”

He shakes his head again. “No.”

“When she came to you for money,” I ask, “did she mention anything about being pregnant?”

His eyes flash in surprise.

“Did she say anything about needing the money for an abortion?”

“A what ?”

He tucks his head down, shoulders rolled forward, almost like he’s trying to curl up into a ball. I take no pleasure in this line of questioning. If I’m going to eliminate him as a suspect, though, I have no choice. If he knew about Epps and the pregnancy ploy, that might be enough in a jury’s eyes. But judging from the reaction, I doubt he knew a thing.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” I ask finally. “When you gave us consent to search your apartment-” The lawyer interrupts with an audible huff, letting me know how much he thinks of that consent. “When we searched, there was something I found surprising, something missing. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“There weren’t any books. I was looking for one in particular. I showed it to you, remember? You didn’t recognize it, and there wasn’t a copy in the apartment, but I started to wonder if maybe you had a storage unit or kept some things over at a friend’s house. It’s strange not to find any books at all.”

“So what?”

“Where are the books? You do have some, don’t you?”

He looks to the attorney, then back at me. “I sold them. Put ’em all in a couple of boxes and brought ’em to Half Price Books, the one on Westheimer.”

“What kind of books were they?”

“The kind they don’t give you much for,” he says.

I place The Kingwood Killing on the table, drawing a raised eyebrow from the lawyer. He motions me to slide it over, which I do, his strategy being to glean as much information from my questions as possible without letting his client answer anything detrimental. Turning the pages, he glances up with recognition and I half expect him to say something. Instead, he slides the book back across the table and makes a note on his pad.

“You ever read this book?” I ask.

“It’s a free country, Detective,” the lawyer says. “People can’t be prosecuted for what they read. I think this line of questioning has run its course.”

“It’s okay,” Young says. “I never even seen that book before. That’s not my kind of thing, anyway.”

“What is your thing?” I ask, expecting him to say the Bible.

He rubs his eye again. “I don’t have a thing. This is my thing.” Pounding the table. “ This is all I think about anymore, and I. . I don’t think I can stand it.”

This is not my thing either, not anymore. We wrap the interview and I ask the attorney to meet with me for a second, leaving Young at the table. With another impatient huff, he accompanies me back to my cubicle, where I pull up the Silk Cut surveillance footage for him to watch. He asks to see it a second time.

“What is this?”

“You can see what it is.”

“What I mean is, are you charging him with something related to the incident?”

“I’m not. But it looks to me like he’s been in another fight, and that combined with what he said just now makes me wonder about his emotional state. Your client seems to have some kind of death wish.”

“He loved his wife, and she’s been brutally murdered, and now he has you telling him she was cheating on him and pregnant with someone else’s kid. Maybe he’s just upset.”

Something Candace Walker said comes back to me. “She liked them bad,” she’d said, referring to the kind of men her daughter had once preferred. Now that she’s dead, Jason Young seems well on his way to becoming one.

“You’re right,” I say. “Maybe it would be a good idea to see about getting him some help.”

“I’m touched by your concern. I wish I’d seen more evidence of it in the interview room.”

“My concern is genuine.”

“And so is my skepticism. Now if that’s all?”

He collects Young and leads him out, putting a paternal hand on his client’s back despite the similarity in their ages. That hand makes me feel better, but not enough. I pick up the phone and dial Reverend Blunt, the only person in Young’s life who might feel an obligation to help and have the means to do so. He doesn’t pick up, and though I’m reluctant to leave a message, I do it anyway, warning him to keep an eye on Young.

When I hang up, Bascombe appears over the cubicle wall, the first time I’ve laid eyes on him since this morning’s conference.

“How did that go in there?”

I shrug. “He’s not looking like a suspect to me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that ’cause you could sure use one about now. I had a look at Detective Lauterbach’s case after you left, and if we don’t close this thing quick, it might never get closed. For sheer insanity, that guy is brilliant. He’s come up with a way to link all those different cases and left enough wiggle room so the inconsistencies can all be explained away.”

“In other words, the cases don’t connect.”

A hard smile. “They do when it’s him talking. There are some real similarities, too, enough to get you thinking. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of these really are the work of the same person. Just not all of them.”

I give another noncommittal shrug, not wanting to concede even a partial victory to Lauterbach.

“I think you’re being sold a bill of goods,” I say. “I talked to Templeton today, and it turns out he’s the one behind all this. He met Lauterbach at a talk he gave, then they collected all these cases and concocted a theory for how they could fit together. And I helped them out, though I didn’t mean to. I gave Templeton some details on Simone Walker-but even then, he already knew about the case-and he realized she could plug into their grouping just as easily. It was probably him that sent Lauterbach over here, all out of spite. He blames me for letting a serial killer run amok.”