Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

He had to park out on the asphalt. They had taped off the sandy road hoping the Professor's boys might lift some tire or shoe impressions. But with this rain, it was unlikely. Things washed away pretty quickly. Boldt crossed a spongy fairway. A weird place for a homicide, a golf course. The guys hadn't touched the body. They were still doing photographs when Boldt reached them. The back of the station wagon was open. Connie Chi was wearing relatively new shoes by the look of the soles. Her underwear had snagged on the right shoe. Both ankles were tied to opposite ends of an umbrella, spreading her legs.

Sadness washed through him, replaced a few seconds later by an intense and unforgiving anger. "Sexual assault for sure," the Professor's sidekick told him-Boldt had forgotten the man's name, "though Dixie will have to confirm it."

"Where is Dixie?" Boldt asked. "On his way. Be here any minute."

Boldt looked in at her. Naked from the waist down. Hands tied with plastic grocery bags, spreading her arms open like Jesus on the cross. Tied to the back seat door handles. He glanced just once at the head. A car flare was thrust deeply into her mouth, sticking out like a cigar. The phosphorous had burned a white hole through her throat. No blood at all. just an ugly two-inch hole.

The other guy said, "Doing her Groucho imitation." Trying to be funny. There was always a tendency toward humor around crime scenes.

Boldt got away from there quickly, over to the bushes in case he puked. He'd been away for two years-his stomach had forgotten about this. Fifteen years earlier he would have been embarrassed to puke; now, he wished he would, just to make himself feel better.

He wanted to think that some monster had done this to her all by himself. But the inescapable feeling was that he, too, was responsible. He and his crew had blown the surveillance. He and his crew had made their interest in Connie Chi apparent. They had marked her. "Over here," one of the Professor's boys hollered.

Boldt and some others joined him. At the end of the man's Bic pen was a spent condom and a blue wrapper. Looked pretty fresh. One of the others said, "A place like this, the bushes are probably full of one finger gloves. You want it, Sarge?" he asked Boldt, inquiring if it should be collected and marked as evidence. "I want everything," Boldt replied in a voice that cracked. I want her back alive, he felt like saying. I want a second chance at that gas station surveillance. He could picture himself running alongside the van, his hand on the door handle-he could feel it. He could see that finger lock the door before he got it open. He could see the van pull away into traffic. "We're looking for animal hairs-white animal hairs. Carpet fibers. Fingerprints."

"Prints are out. The vehicle is wiped clean," — one of the technicians called out.

In an authoritative voice that rang with anger Boldt ordered, "Don't forget to check under the back seat. He may have folded the back seat down at some point. He may not have remembered to wipe it down." Had this guy thought of everything? "And get someone from Sexual Assaults down here. I want the rape angle treated just as carefully as if she had survived. This is a hell of a lot more than …" He caught himself. The entire group of maybe ten guys, including the uniforms, were looking at him. Staring at him. Only then did he realize he was crying. Crying buckets.

Only then did he wish he had never come back at all.

Donnie Maybeck entered the First Avenue storefront that advertised "Peep Show $1." Inside, behind a black velvet curtain, a row of well-used nickelodeons showed endless-loop adult videos. Loners, who smelled bad and couldn't keep their hands from shaking, pressed their faces to the viewing lens, squinting. Donnie thought that if someone had been running a camera in the back of his van when he had knocked those runaways or when he'd jumped Connie that he'd be a porno star by now. Donnie Does Debbie. Live Healthy: Eat A Vegetable. He could see the titles now. Worthless dirt bags, these guys. They should all be zoomed.

The one behind the counter was called Bogs. He had a tattoo of a skull on his left cheek, and he chewed gum so fast he sounded like a dog eating. Bogs knew everything and everyone. When the word had reached Donnie that Bogs wanted to buzz, Donnie had made tracks to the shop.

Donnie said, "Hey," because that was how Bogs said hello. You had to know these things.

Bogs said, "Hey," though his mouth never stopped chewing. "I hear you got a C-note for me."

"The laptop?" Donnie shouted it. He couldn't control himself. "What the fuck do you think?" The man winked slowly at him. His right eyelid was tattooed with the word

"Fuck." When he winked his left eye, Donnie read "You." He repeated the sequence proudly fuck YOU-just in case Donnie had missed it. Donnie could see this guy doing this into a mirror, reading the words backwards, smiling, chewing his gum. Probably chewed gum in his sleep. "You got the scratch?" he asked Donnie.

Donnie dug into his pocket and withdrew Tegg's money. He hated to see it go.

Bogs said, "I ain't promising you it's yours, you know. I got no way to know if it's yours."

Donnie realized he should have split the reward into two payments. He hated it when he did stupid things like that. He said, "If it's not mine, I'm coming back for the scratch."

"A Toshiba, right?"

Donnie answered this with a nod. "Young kid, dark hair?" Another nod. "It's yours." Bogs pocketed the money. "North side of Pine between First and Second, just up from the market.

You know the place?"

"I'll find it."

"You're never going to get it without the stub. You know the way it works. But that's your problem."

"You got a name for me? Someone I could grease?"

"Grease someone at a hock shop? What kind of dumb shit are you?"

Donnie was sick of taking insults from everyone. "Up yours!" he said ' losing his temper. "I'll get it back."

Bogs shook his head at him. That really pissed Donnie off.

"You'll see," Donnie said childishly.

Bogs offered only the same winking of the eyes, that same message flashing back from his darkened eye sockets: Fuck … you.

Boldt was folding laundry when the car pulled up out front. The image of Connie Chi's murdered body still lingered in his mind's eye. Liz was on the couch reading a novel. Miles had fallen asleep in the Jonny JUMP-Up, effectively guarding the way into the kitchen and preventing anyone from attempting to clean up. Scott Hamilton played sensuous sax from the stereo. Boldt knew every note, every nuance. But tonight it all seemed so trivial. In his mind lingered another image as well: Sharon Shaffer, her chest cut open, her heart removed. Were they too late to stop it?

The plates on the van had turned out to be stolen. No real surprise to Boldt but still a disappointment. They had alerted area pawn shops to notify them of any hocked laptop computers. It was pretty much wait-and-see at the moment. it was frustrating as hell, "That's a brown and a black-just in case you care," Liz said, pointing out the socks Boldt was in the process of rolling together. She was like that: She could split her attention among several things at once. Not Boldt-he tended toward obsessive. His mind, his emotions locked on and wouldn't let go. Despite the present activity of his hands, his attention was not on the socks. He was on autopilot, stuck with the rookie cop dilemma of reliving his mistakes. He broke the pair apart, said

"Thanks," and started again. She cared-that was the point about the socks, about him. She looked after him, and he was thankful for it. She didn't nag, she observed. She didn't force herself on him. She re THE

minded him to shave when he forgot. She threw his shirts into the wash-even though he did the wash. Right now she was probably worried sick about his skipping dinner.