Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“Now see, this always bothered me,” he said, flapping a large cardboard rectangle at Tess. “They kept a calendar. The days that her boyfriend were gone were crossed off-see?”

He handed Tess a calendar from a local insurance company, the months noted by not-very-good photographs of the Chesapeake Bay. Shot through a gauzy sentimental fog, the photos managed to render the bay generic and uninteresting. Beneath a harvest scene, the last three days of October had been circled.

“You said you took copies of everything. But this is the real thing. Shouldn’t it be logged in with the rest of the stuff?”

Carl blushed, which made him appear to be the same red-orange shade from the open neck of his shirt to the top of his scalp. “It’s something I found later, and nobody else seemed to care, so I just kept it. Otherwise it was just going to be packed away, with all the other stuff in the house. But I thought it might be significant.”

“How?”

“Like I said, it shows the dates her boyfriend was away.” He flipped through, showing her where days were circled.

“It doesn’t say what these days were,” Tess pointed out. “They’re just circles.”

“Yeah, but we know he was away those three days in October. So I worked backward from that. Someone else could’ve figured it out, too.”

“You think someone saw this ahead of time? That the killer had this information?”

“Yeah, maybe. Only the calendar wasn’t out in the open, like it would be in most houses. I found it in a kitchen drawer, one of those drawers where people keep their junk.”

“So if it’s not where someone can see it, how can someone know when the boyfriend-what was his name?”

“Alan Palmer.”

“How can they know when he’s going to be away?”

“I figured whoever killed Lucy hid the calendar, so no one would make the connection. But if it was on the refrigerator-and there’s a mark, up on top, as if it had been held in place by a magnet-it would have been in plain view.”

Tess held the calendar closer to a small table lamp. She couldn’t help noticing it had a rose-colored shade that was fringed in maroon. There was a faint rust-colored line, the kind a metal clip might leave behind.

“Anyway, let’s say you’re a plumber or a cable television installer. You come and go through people’s houses all the time, you see things, you take notice of things. You realize there’s a pretty young woman whose boyfriend travels a lot. You realize the calendar is the key to when he’s gone. Maybe she even tells you that’s what the circles are for, or you’re making an appointment and she says, ”No, not then, because Alan is away at the end of the month.“ But if you take it off the refrigerator and put it in a drawer, nobody else makes the connection.”

“So did Lucy have anyone do work on the house in the year before she was killed?”

Carl’s shoulders slumped. “Not that I could find. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t use somebody. There are a lot of fellas around here who work off the books, you know? Who do stuff on a cash-only basis.”

Tess was following her own thoughts, down a different track. “If the same man killed Tiffani Gunts and Lucy Fancher, how did he come to meet them, to fixate on them? You couldn’t meet such women by sheer accident. There’s a connection we haven’t figured out yet. And why are the deaths so different?”

“You said the girl in Frederick died of a gunshot wound,” Carl pointed out. “So did Lucy.”

“Yes, but Tiffani’s body was-well, intact. Lucy’s head was cut off postmortem, and the killer kept the body for a couple of days. That’s a pretty big change in just eighteen months.”

“Serial killers do change their methods, contrary to popular belief. And they don’t leave little notes for the cops, egging them on, inviting them to come and find them.”

“Who said anything about a serial killer? We’re talking about two homicides, and we haven’t proved they’re connected. It’s just a wild hunch on my part.”

“A serial killer doesn’t have to kill dozens and dozens of people,” Carl said. “Law enforcement guidelines used to say it has to be three or more, but others say two is plenty. Maybe we’re seeing this guy early in his career.”

“Please don’t use that word to talk about homicide, okay? Killing is not a career, unless you’re a hit man.”

Carl leaned forward in his chair, which took some effort, for he fit so well into its deep-set grooves that its slick surface stuck to his skin. He almost had to peel himself away, which made a rude sucking sound wherever chair met flesh.

“You came to my door, remember? You’re the one who made this link. Don’t be afraid of your own intuition. I stopped being a cop almost three years ago. But I never stopped hoping for a break in this case.”

“This isn’t what I was hired to find. Quite the opposite. I’m looking for evidence that law-enforcement types who don’t handle a lot of homicides make basic mistakes-” She broke off, realizing a second too late how rude she must sound. I’m here because you and your ilk are supposed to be bozos. But Carl just nodded, signaling her to continue. “My clients care about domestic violence, not the random acts of some psychopath. This has nothing to do with what I’ve been asked to investigate.”

“I dunno.” Carl’s face glowed in the lamplight. His head was very round, and the orange cast of his hair and complexion made Tess think of a jack-o‘-lantern-which unfortunately made her think of Lucy Fancher. The photos that Carl had plucked from his cardboard box were still sitting in plain view, on a dainty table covered with a lacy antimacassar. She nudged them away with her elbow.

“These are crimes against women, after all,” Carl continued. “You said you thought it was all about jealousy, that someone had set out to destroy two people and their happiness. Do you know where that other girl’s boyfriend ended up?”

Tess shook her head. “Out of state, according to her family. He was heartbroken because he couldn’t have custody of his girlfriend’s daughter. It was easier for him, apparently, just to cut off contact.”

“Well, as you know, Alan Palmer is stuck in a hospital, living on a ventilator. The hospital social worker called me when he was transferred, said he’d probably live out his days there.”

“The reporter at the local paper seemed to be hinting he had a breakdown.”

“The reporter at the local paper,” Carl said, “doesn’t know shit. She thinks everyone’s always having a breakdown because she’s constantly on the verge of one.”

Having met Margo Duncan, Tess could see his point.

“Anyway, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say this killer wants to hurt the guy as much as he wants to kill the girl. Maybe more. So that’s why he had to ratchet it up, raise the stakes. He didn’t manage to destroy the first guy, but he sure as hell ruined Alan Palmer. I’m not sure the guy even took a drink before this happened. Two women dead, two men shattered. That’s a kind of domestic violence, isn’t it?”

“You keep saying he. Is that just generic sexism? Or do you assume a serial killer-assuming this is a serial killer-has to be a man?”

“More bunk,” Carl said, waving his hand in front of his face as if to dispel a bad odor. “There are plenty of women serial killers. But I just figure this is a man. It’s the kind of jealousy a man would feel, you know? I hate to say it about my own kind, but when you see a guy with a good-looking woman, you’re kinda like, ”Hey, how did he get that?“ And then, ”Where can I get me one?“ Alan Palmer was a nice enough guy, but ordinary. If someone saw him with a pretty girl, they’d want to know how he did it. What about your guy?”