P. Parrish - Paint It Black

“Why you asking about Walter?” she yelled back.

“This man here is asking.”

Emily sidled up. “You going to talk to her?”

Louis nodded and walked down the bar. The woman saw them coming and her eyes flared with contempt, but Louis suspected it was at Emily, and not him.

“Do you know Walter Tatum?” Louis asked.

A few other patrons had gathered, interested in what was going on. Lucille stared at Louis with heavily made up Cleopatra eyes. Then she looked down into her glass.

“Leave me be. I’m grieving here.”

“For Walter Tatum?” Louis asked.

“Walter was my man,” she said.

Louis caught Emily’s eye.

“Was Walter here Tuesday, March first?” Louis asked.

Lucille didn’t answer or look at him. Finally she nodded.

“Were you with him that night?”

Lucille nodded again. “He left about two,” she said. “Said he couldn’t stay.”

Louis wondered if Lucille knew about Roberta. Or vice versa.

Lucille spun to face him suddenly. “You know who killed him?”

“No,” Louis said.

“They saying in the papers a white man did it,” Lucille said bitterly, “one of them skinheads or something.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Louis said. The crowd was pressing close around. Louis glanced up at Emily. She was standing very still, like she was trying hard to blend into the inky smoke. Her face looked very small and very white.

Louis looked back at Lucille. She was staring hard at Emily.

“What are you doing here?” Lucille demanded suddenly.

“I’m an FBI agent,” Emily said. Her voice was firm but her hand fumbled as she reached for the badge that had disappeared into her raincoat.

“Did Walter leave alone?” Louis asked quickly.

Lucille looked back at Louis. “Yeah. He said he was tired and was going home to sleep.” She smiled wanly. “He was always tired after I was done with him.”

Her friends snickered.

“Is there anywhere he might have stopped?” Louis asked.

The bartender had wandered down and was listening. “Not much traffic out there after midnight. All the action’s out on the beach and that’s ten, twelve miles from here.”

“Okay, thanks,” Louis said.

They left the bar. It was raining harder, and they didn’t talk as they hurried back to the car.

Emily let out a breath, leaning back into the seat.

“I would have come to your rescue,” Louis said.

“Shut up,” Emily said, wiping her face on her sleeve.

They sat there for several moments, the thumping bass from a nearby bar beating time to the rain on the roof. Finally, Louis started the car and they pulled out. He took the most direct route back toward Sereno, staying on busy Summerlin Road until they reached the causeway. At the boat trailer parking lot, Louis pulled in and stopped.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just thinking.”

For several minutes he just sat, watching each car as it made its way past, into the darkness toward Sereno Key.

“This was a waste of time,” Louis said. “The killer did not stalk Tatum from Queenie Boulevard.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“No white guy would hang out there,” Louis said.

Emily nodded. “Zone of comfort,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Serial killers operate within a zone of comfort,” she said. “And you’re right. If the killer is white, he would not have blended in or felt he could stalk his victim from Queenie Boulevard.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Maybe he isn’t white,” Farentino said. “Have you considered that possibility?”

“Yeah. . but just for Levon.”

“Serial killers rarely choose victims outside their own race,” Emily said. “It’s part of the pattern.”

Louis looked out at the water. Something Roberta Tatum said came back to him. Something about Wainwright believing the killer was black because it was easier to accept black genocide than white racists murdering out of hate.

He looked over at Farentino. Was it easier for her, too?

“My gut says the killer’s white,” Louis said.

“Is that a professional or personal point of view?” she asked.

He put the car in gear. “I don’t know,” he said.

Louis took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. There was too much information spinning in his mind. Did the killer stalk or was he an opportunist? Why did he paint them? Where did he live? What was his connection to Sereno Key? And why did he kill so viciously?

He rose, stretching his back muscles. He heard his bones crack as he made his way to the coffeepot. Wainwright was on a call on the south end of the Key, and Farentino hadn’t shown up yet.

He poured a cup of coffee and stepped back to look at the bulletin board. Yesterday, they had moved it from Wainwright’s office to a small adjoining conference room. That had been Emily Farentino’s idea. She said she needed room for her files, room to work. So rather than let her share his desk, Wainwright had moved everything to the conference room. She had immediately taken over the table, spreading out files, photographs, and papers.

The bulletin board was still covered with the color-coded note cards. Wainwright dutifully kept it maintained. Emily ignored it, sticking to her carefully organized files. Officer Candy had walked in this morning and nicknamed the whole mess “the war room.”

Little did he know, Louis thought ruefully.

He stirred in three sugar packs. He took a sip, grimaced, and stirred in one more. His gaze drifted up to the photos on the bulletin board of the homeless man’s pulverized face. The gruesome photo was becoming as familiar as his own face in the mirror. It was with him day and night. He stared at it now, his neck muscles tightening. Gone. . just gone. No eyes, no mouth. It was as if the killer had wanted to erase him.

Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. Not all the grisly pictures in the manuals, not the decomposed body found in a field that he had responded to back when he was a rookie. Not even what had happened in Michigan.

Was evil born or bred? He had heard other cops talk about it, but he had always figured it was something best left to shrinks and priests. But now, he found the question lurking in the back of his mind. The rational part of him, the part that had read all the books and heard all the experts, that part of him believed monsters were made, molded from shortcircuited brain chemistry and society’s illnesses.

But after he had seen the homeless man’s brutalized face, the other part of him, that vestige that still held all the primal fears and the dark terrors of childhood, that part of him was feeling the brush of something cold.

“Louis!” Officer Candy hollered from the front office. “I think you better come out here.”

Louis put the cup down and went to the door. The outer office was a square room with a couple of desks, a radio console, where the dispatcher sat, and a counter for complaints.

The double glass entrance doors were bleached with morning sunlight and all Louis could see was a giant silhouette against them. He knew who it was immediately and he tightened, adrenaline surging forward. But he didn’t move.

The silhouette didn’t move either.

He heard Candy’s voice to his left. “Chief’s five minutes away.”

Louis kept his eyes on the doors. “What about the sheriff’s department?” he asked softly.

“Ten minutes.”

Louis squinted into the light, trying to decide how to play this. The dispatcher glanced at him and he motioned for her to stay still.

The silhouette shifted slightly and let out a breath that sounded like a heater fan kicking on.