William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

I threw myself into my not very comfortable desk chair and wiped the water from my face. “Granger was telling me about his big breakthrough in the case. He’s identified the last victim.”

“That’s his big breakthrough?” Patrick turned toward Granger. “I thought one of your detectives recognized her from the head shot. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

I raised an eyebrow.

Granger stammered. “W-Well… we were assisted by a certain degree of facial recognition pattern in-”

I gave him a look that would turn flesh to stone. “You mean your great moment of deduction came because one of your detectives is into S &M?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s important that detectives stay hip to the mean streets of the city. You never know when-”

“Oh, give me a break.” I did my best imitation of his whiny voice. “ ‘That’s why they call us detectives.’ Jesus. More like ‘That’s why they call us porn addicts.’ ”

“Hey,” Granger said, “I didn’t see you finding the corpse. Figuring out what that ‘neon’ reference meant.”

Patrick spoke again. “Didn’t O’Bannon tell me that the owner of that sign graveyard found the corpse? And called you.”

I couldn’t believe it. “And this was how you obtained your other big insight?” I stood up and did my best impression of a macho stud walk-even groped myself. “We be studs. We be detectives.”

“You’re disgusting,” Granger said, walking away.

“Sticks and stones,” I muttered, watching with pleasure as he departed. Probably stupid to piss him off so badly. But if he’d had the clout to get me fired, it would’ve happened a long time ago.

Darcy made his way up the stairs. I grabbed his hand. His face lit up like a lightbulb. “Darcy, guess what the third victim’s name is.”

He thought for, like, a nanosecond. “Lenore.”

“What? Someone already told you.”

“I do not think anyone told me. I just got off the bus. But I thought that maybe all of the girl’s names were from Poe poems. And Lenore is the most popular-”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I do not think you asked me.”

“You don’t have to be asked, Darcy. If you know something, you should just… volunteer it.”

“My dad does not like it when I do that. He says I tell people a lot of boring things they don’t want to hear, and sometimes I say things that get me into trouble because I don’t understand. He says I should be quiet unless-”

“Listen to me, Darcy. New rules. If you know something-anything-you tell me. Immediately.”

Patrick stepped in. “So the victims’ names are all found in these poems?”

“Right. I was suspicious when we had an Annabel-’Annabel Lee’ is one of Poe’s most famous verses. But having a Lenore clinches it. That’s the name of the girl in ‘The Raven,’ and he used the name in other poems as well. Always to represent some lost love. Actually, all of these names represent some unrequited or lost love.” I tossed Darcy my library copy of Poe: His Life and Legacy by Jeffrey Meyers. “Would you mind reading this tonight?”

“Okay,” he said with alacrity. “Why?”

“Because you’ll remember it.”

A line crossed Patrick’s forehead. “You really think this biographical material will be important?”

“It may be critical,” I answered. “It may hold the key to the whole puzzle. Even that last message.”

“So in your view, our killer thinks he’s Poe?”

I squirmed. “I don’t know that he literally thinks he’s Poe. It’s more that… that… he takes inspiration from him, his work. Not just when he’s selecting his murder methods, but-everything.”

“Edgar Allan Poe is his role model?”

“Kind of, yeah. Which explains a lot. According to this book, the public image of Poe as this ghoulish creepazoid is inaccurate. His work was creepy, but he wasn’t.” Except when he was on a drinking binge, of course. “He thought of himself as a proper southern gentleman. He was offended by vulgarity, impropriety.”

“And what does that tell us about the killer?”

“Well, for starters, it might explain why he removed the painted nails. Piercings.”

Patrick nodded slowly. “Shaved Helen’s hair.”

“Because it was dyed an unnatural color.”

“This is beginning to make sense. I mean, a twisted, narcissistic, antisocial, delusional kind of sense.” He thought for another moment. “But if the women in these poems represented some sort of Poe ideal-”

“They all died,” I said, thinking off the top of my head. “That’s the key. Helen was a woman he admired when he was an adolescent. Annabel Lee and Lenore were versions of his wife, Virginia, who died of tuberculosis.”

Darcy spoke. “ ‘And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side / Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride…’ ”

“Exactly. Annabel Lee, Lenore, and a dozen other characters in Poe’s poems and stories. They’re all his dead wife.”

“But,” Patrick said, “what’s the point of it all?”

“I don’t know. But that quote-the last one. I think that’s the key. We have to figure out what it is. What it means.”

“And,” Patrick added, “we need to make a list of all the female names used by Poe in his stories and poems.”

“It’s going to be a long list,” I said, “but I agree. It might be useful. Maybe we can put out some kind of warning. Darcy, are you up for it?”

“Did you know that Poe wrote fifty-three poems and seventy-three short stories?”

“No, but you do, which is why you’re the best man for this job.”

“So the guy has been choosing women with these Poe names,” Patrick said, his mind still racing. “But why so young? Are they easier to control? Is the killer a repressed pedophile?”

I shook my head. “Don’t you know?”

“What?”

Even when the agent was a decent guy, knowing something the FBI didn’t was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. “That bride of Poe’s? Virginia Clemm? He married her when she was thirteen.”

Overnight, the Van Helsing Ballroom had been converted into the nerve center for Dr. Fara Spencer’s Wanted Dead or Alive operation. The room was a beehive of noise and activity, a bombinating assault on the senses. And yet, he observed, it was not chaotic. There was an almost serene order as all concerned careered from one area to the next going about their designated tasks. A dozen operatives milled through the room in straight ties, white shirts, and rolled sleeves, some of them private detectives, some retired police officers, some specialists hired to lend expertise or to screen potential informants. Security officers were posted on all doors. Interviews were conducted in private alcoves. Two rows of phone banks, with over two dozen phones, filled the length of the ballroom, and they were constantly ringing, ringing, ringing… to the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, / From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells-

He soaked up the view, smiling. The hive was running smoothly. But where was the queen bee?

Dr. Spencer did not so much walk as march into the ballroom, two men on either side of her, several behind, all talking constantly. At least one of the hangers-on was a reporter; he was not sure about the others. He knew she had a fleet of so-called behavioral experts advising her on the case, suggesting potential avenues to explore. Earlier, while posted at the front door, he had managed to overhear most of an absurd exchange between the queen and two of her minions.

“Fundamentally,” a pedant in horn-rimmed glasses had explained, “serial killers can be divided into two categories. Social and nonsocial. Organized and disorganized.”