Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

But it was the same MO, the unsub had a signature, a ritual. Something else Rodriguez had been right about. She’d fed that info-two vics, two drawings-into VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, but there’d been no match.

A serial killer. Something no one wanted to say aloud. Not yet. Terri knew what it meant: that the feds would be all over it, and soon. Serial killers were their thing. Though in the last few years those particular bad boys had ceded a little bit of their numero uno status to terrorists, which the bureau was not quite as good at capturing or deterring, not that there was any way to deter serial killers unless the government opted for sterilizing all potentially abusive parents, for a start, which Terri thought was a damn good idea. Of course there was still that unexplainable part, the “evil gene” so many scientists were talking about these days. Score one for nature versus nurture, thought Terri. No doubt that cheered the parents of the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world.

“You saving that picture for framing?” Schmid asked.

“Sorry,” said Terri. She handed it back to the detective and cut out of the booking room, thinking about Nate Rodriguez and his special gifts. She wasn’t sure how he was going to help her, but she was working on it.

The odor hit me in the face the minute I entered the apartment and I froze, worried, until I realized it wasn’t that kind of smell. I knew that smell, had had the misfortune my very first week on the beat to find two bodies in the final stage, the putrefaction stage, in an abandoned crack house where they had obviously OD’d. I’ll never forget it.

I called out, “¡Uela!” and followed the odor’s trail down the dim hallway. It revealed itself in the kitchen, a large pot bubbling away on the stove, steam rising from it. I leaned over it holding my breath. Weeds. My abuela had been wasting her social security check at the local botánica, nothing unusual about that. She’s a true believer, a practicing santera, a sort of neighborhood priestess. People flock to her for answers and guidance. I think it’s because she’s kind and understanding and has a gift for making people feel good about themselves, but she sees it as her calling, and she’s devoted.

I went into the living room, which was decorated with bright purple curtains; a pink afghan throw on the couch; a mix of bold prints on the pillow covers; walls covered with drawings I’d made over the years, a few pictures of saints mixed in, and the eight-by-ten glossy of my father, a graduation photo from the police academy just above a white-clothed table tucked into a corner, the bóveda, a shrine to the dead. I’d seen it hundreds of times in various forms. Right now it held a dozen glasses and goblets filled with water, and I knew what it meant: My grandmother was asking something of her ancestors.

I took a step into the hall and heard voices from behind the closed door of the cuarto de los santos, the room of the saints, where my abuela held her consultations.

I knew better than to disturb her, though I thought it was nonsense; and occasionally dangerous, when someone should have been in a doctor’s office rather than the back room of a railroad tenement in Spanish Harlem, but it was impossible to convince my grandmother of that.

The door opened, the woman beside my grandmother looked up, startled when she saw me, gasped and crossed herself. Not a surprise. Many of the followers of Santeria remained Catholics. It didn’t seem to matter they were practicing a religion that bastardized the faith by renaming the saints, the orishas, after African gods to whom they prayed for guidance, forgiveness, even wrath and punishment for others, or that Santeria had been condemned by the church.

I had tried to explain the contradiction to my grandmother, as well as the origin-that Santeria was a consequence of forcing Roman Catholicism on Africans brought to the Caribbean by slave traders-but she would never listen. She went to church regularly and did not see any conflict. As a kid she had me memorize the names and powers of the individual orishas even while she was dragging me to church every Sunday. Between my maternal Jewish grandmother telling me about the deadly Passover plagues while stuffing me with latkes, and my abuela ’s heavy-duty mix of Christianity and Santeria, it pretty much explained my becoming an agnostic. But my abuela loved Jesus as passionately as she loved Olodumare, the supreme being, and I’d long ago given up trying to convince her otherwise because I loved her.

“Nato, pensé que te había oido.”

Of course she’d heard me come in, she always did.

She turned to her customer, whispered something in Spanish, handed over candles with garish images of saints, and explained when to light them.

“Did you charge her for those candles?” I asked after the woman had left.

My grandmother planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her dark eyes. “I do not steal from ones in need and pain.”

“I know that, uela. But you can’t spend all your money on other people.”

“Cálmate,” she said, a nice way of telling me to shut up, then got a tender grip on my face with both hands. At five feet tall, the top of my grandmother’s head just cleared my shoulders. “Ven, estoy cocinando.”

“Yeah, I know you’re cooking, but what, the cat?”

“Ay, qué chistoso.” She shook a finger at me, but smiled. “Why you never shave, Nato?”

Nato, her favorite among several nicknames for me; neno, nenito, the others. Nathan was impossible for her to say with its th sound, plus she’d never liked the name. She brought this up to my mother at least once a month, and I gave her credit for never quitting. Lately, she’d been lobbying for Anthony or Manuel. At my thirty-third birthday this past January she’d presented me with a wallet with the letter A stamped on it. “What’s with the A?” I’d asked. “In case you decide on Anthony,” she’d said. You had to give it to her. My mother almost plotzed, which was my Jewish grandmother’s favorite word or saying: I could plotz, she’d say, or I’m plotzing. My two grandmothers adored each other, though I don’t know if they ever understood what the other one was saying, which is maybe why they adored each other. Occasionally my abuela used the word plotz, and it always made me laugh.

We headed into the kitchen and she asked me again why I didn’t shave and I said it was because I didn’t like to look at my face. She called me a mentiroso, a liar, and waved a hand at me, the bangle and beaded bracelets at her wrist clanging out a tune.

I glanced at the pot on the stove. “Cooking up one of your potions for a client, a riego, right?”

“You think you know everything, chacho. ” Another nickname, this one generic, boy, to put me in my place.

“And of course you’re paying for it.”

“¿Qué importa?” she said.

“It matters because I don’t like to see you wasting your money.”

“It would be better if you worried a little about yourself, Nato. The way you stay in your apartment, alone, or at work, making pictures of those diablos . It’s time you found a girl, una mujer, to start making babies.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Do not oh brother with me, chacho. Find a nice girl, it’s time.” She took my face in her hands again. “Oye, guapo.” She was playing at being exasperated, but still called me handsome. My grandmother thinks I look like Fernando Lamas and every other good-looking Spanish actor that ever existed. Last week she added Ricky Martin to the list. I do not look like any of them.