J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Dean,” I say. “You’re on a first name basis?”

“Mr. Templeton thought it would be a good idea to pick my brain. You might have a hard time believing this, Roland, but there are people out there who take what I do very seriously, and he’s one of them. One of the many , Roland. My website has an international audience.”

“So Bayard showed up at your conference? Had you ever seen him before?”

She shakes her head. “He must have seen one of the flyers we put up, or maybe read about it online. He sat in the back through all the sessions, but I could tell he was riveted. Hanging on every word. And he wrote a lot of things down. At first I thought maybe he was a reporter. But no.” She frowns at the memory of disappointment. “Still, he’s the one who made the Q amp;A session such a success. He asked so many good questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The detective speaker, Mr. Lauterbach, went over all the things a modern investigation would do differently hunting a serial killer like Dean. It was so fascinating. David wanted to know whether they really were hunting any serial killers, right this minute. The detective said he couldn’t comment, but then Mr. Templeton said there were a couple of cases he’d been looking at, some murders that seemed to be connected. And the detective got this shocked look on his face, because one of those cases was his-and he’d made a connection too, but to a third murder. They started going back and forth. The rest of us went along for the ride.”

This is more or less the scene Templeton described.

“He wanted to know everything: why the killer would kill, why he would leave the bodies in the swimming pools, everything. Motive questions. Method questions. He was eating it all up. We all were. He’d never heard about the Fauk case before-Mr. Templeton talked about the case during his slide show-and he asked a lot of questions about that.”

“Brad did a slide show, too?”

She nods. “It wasn’t as fancy as the detective’s, just the pictures from his books.”

“His books? Do you have a copy of The Kingwood Killing ?”

She goes to the bookcase on the far wall, her sequins shimmering. “I have that one and the new one. He signed them both for me, too.”

I flip through The Kingwood Killing , turning the glossy image from the Nicole Fauk crime scene around so she can see. “Was that one of his slides?”

She nods. “It’s bloodcurdling, isn’t it? The way he bleeds them and dumps the bodies.”

The present tense isn’t lost on me, but I ignore the implication. Turning the book back around, I gaze at the black-and-white photo.

All this time, the pristine condition of Bayard’s book has been gnawing away at me. It should have been annotated and dog-eared, a physical artifact of his homicidal obsession. Instead, the pages were clean, apparently unread. Now it makes sense.

The book wasn’t the focus. The book was never the focus. The image drove him, and he didn’t need the book for that. Templeton had projected Nicole Fauk’s murder onto the big screen; he’d narrated the details, leaving nothing to the imagination, stamping the image indelibly into Bayard’s memory. He could have drawn on it anytime. Staging the scene to resemble Fauk’s was just another dodge, just another improvisation to make his crime blend in with those of the serial killer the detective and the author had just hypothesized into existence.

Only the killer is real. He just happens to be behind bars up at Huntsville, spinning stories in front of The Donald.

“Afterward,” she says, “when everybody else had left, me and David stayed behind to listen as the two of them went back and forth. It was fascinating, Roland, the way they built up the profile. Like there were four of us to begin with, and by the time they were done there were five. Like another person was with us in the room.”

“The killer, you mean.”

She nods.

“Did Bayard tell you why he was so interested?”

Her face lights up. “He was so sweet. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t come back for the regular meetings. I really took a shine to him, too. But I couldn’t help it. My maternal instinct kicks in. He reminded me of my own boys. The two of us stayed after Mr. Templeton and the detective left, and he just poured out his whole life to me in a gush. And he wanted to know all about me, too.”

“About you,” I say. “And did my name come up?”

She frowns. “So I’m not allowed to mention you, is that how it is? Not even in private conversation? I’ve always made a point in my writing not to mention you by name, not after the way you freaked out-”

“Did he want to know about me?”

“He did ask a question or two. It’s only natural since you investigated both of the cases in Mr. Templeton’s books, and since I’m your sister-”

“You’re not my sister.”

“-he naturally wanted to know. Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything negative. I told him you were very successful, that you were married to a beautiful woman. A lawyer, no less. A wealthy heiress.” Bitterness in her voice. “How for all your achievements in life, you still live in the old neighborhood, you’re still so down-to-earth-”

“Tammy, stop it.”

“Well,” she says. “I have to lie to people or they wouldn’t understand.”

The anger inside me. A kettle on the boil. I try to suppress it, to keep the lid halfway on. I can’t storm out. I can’t hit back. There’s something in all this I’m not seeing.

My maternal instinct. My own boys.

“How old is Bayard?” I ask.

“Roland, I don’t know exactly.” An annoyed shake of the head. “He must have been in grad school. He said he was studying criminal justice, that’s why he came. He was doing a paper on serial killers.”

“You’re talking about David Junior,” I say.

“Who are you talking about?”

My head fills with white noise.

I stop the recorder. I put it into my pocket. I rise from the chair. I retrace my steps to the front door.

“Roland, wait,” she says, looming behind me, snatching at my arm.

She stops me at the Christmas tree, her grip surprisingly strong. Her nails dig into my arm, gripping my sleeve in her fist. She jerks again with enough force to turn me toward her.

“You can’t just walk out on me like this. We still have some issues to confront. You need to face up to what happened.” She shakes me like she did when I was a kid. “Listen to me, Roland. I know this is hard for you to accept, but it’s time to let go of your guilt. It’s not your fault Moody died the way he did. It’s not your fault Dean killed him. There’s nothing you could have done, but what you need to do now-what he needs you to do for him-is accept what happened. Stop fighting the truth. You know what happened.”

I try to pull my arm free, but she holds tight. I jerk harder, dragging her forward, until a ripping sound shocks us both into silence. She drops her hand. The left sleeve of Lyndon Pellier’s Donegal tweed jacket hangs free from the shoulder, my shirt visible through the weft of veiny threads.

“Oh, Roland,” she says, stepping backward. “Your nice jacket. I’m so sorry.”

I move toward her. “You’re right about one thing: I do know what happened. And, Tammy, I’m not the one fighting the truth. I face it head on every day. I look it in the face and I don’t blink. The truth is Moody wasn’t murdered by some depraved pedophile. I know that and your father knew it, too. Dean Corll didn’t kill him. Nobody did.”

“That’s not true, Roland. You have to face the truth.”

“I know what happened, Tammy. Listen to me.” I take her glittering sleeve in my own hand now, shedding sequins on the floor. “I know what happened because I saw what happened. I saw it with my own eyes. He stole a gun from your dad’s shop. He left me on the sidewalk and went with them. He got into the car, Tammy. It was a green Ford-an LTD, I think. They all left together, Moody and those boys he’d been running with, and they were going to Dallas and who knows where after that.”