Blood Loss (21 page)

‘He’s a good speaker, that guy, Rader,’ said Paul.

‘He is,’ said Ren.
‘
Thanks for looking after me last night. I know I was such good company.’

‘You were lovely,’ said Paul.

‘You look … like … not great.’

‘Fight with Marianne this morning.’

Like hearing her name even less now.

‘Ah,’ said Ren. ‘I hope it wasn’t anything too serious.’

‘No … just about the girls, and her having a weekend away with her … boyfriend …’

OK, thanks for sharing.

‘Well,’ said Ren, ‘we better say goodbye. I guess you’re going back to D.C. now that we’re all done.’

Paul nodded. ‘I’ll be back in Denver soon, though. Us CARD shufflers still have to give that talk we were meant to give when we got called away for this.’

‘Well, keep in touch,’ said Ren.

Paul frowned. ‘Of course I’ll keep in touch … what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ren. ‘Just keep in touch.’

‘I really want to kiss you now …’

Ugh.

Ren smiled. ‘OK, I gotta go. Safe trip back.’

Why do I do this? Why? Why? Why?

Ren made it to work for eight thirty on Monday morning. She had canceled Ben. Instead, she had read one of Annie’s obscure novels and pushed men out of her mind for the two minutes it took her to fall asleep. She wanted escape. She wanted a world where nothing bad happened.

Her office phone rang. It was Glenn Buddy. She listened quietly as he delivered more bad news.

There was a third rape: a woman, alone on the street, surprised by a man who had violently assaulted her, beating her relentlessly as he raped her. She had just left a beauty salon and the first person to see her was a man who didn’t care about all the things she had done to make herself as beautiful as she wanted to be. He had pushed her down onto the ground, and dragged her by the feet into a laneway. He had slammed her up against a dumpster, and her head had banged off it, over and over, and the stench of garbage, and of wet animals, had filled her nostrils. A rat had fallen from the dumpster right by her face, and had run, disappearing under an empty bag of fun-sized chocolate bars. Three of the gold stars that had been glued to her nails had broken off. She noticed that the polish had smudged on one of them, she guessed, when she put her coat on at the salon, even though the girl had helped her with it …

The victim remembered all these details clearly because she would rather watch a rat, and smell a stench, and read the five fun flavors in an empty bag of tiny chocolate bars than focus on what this man on top of her was doing. He was gone, she had figured, he was somewhere else, and she didn’t want to go wherever that was. She wanted to be right there in a filthy alleyway, focusing on everything but an unreality. She knew women could disassociate at a time like this, and she didn’t want to, she was too afraid. There would be too much, already, in the aftermath, too much physically to overcome. She didn’t want to add to that a search for her mind.

He left her a drawing too.

Ren sat at her desk, staring at the new drawing – a cityscape, towering buildings, and lightbulbs scattered across the sky. That a rapist could draw this, with the same hands he had used to restrain these girls, this woman, the same hands that he had pressed over their mouths, the same hands he had used to tear at their clothes, and punch, and choke them, was incredible. That the same mind that had composed the image she was now looking at could create, and make real, his unspeakable fantasies, could violate a human being so thoroughly, was too much to make sense of.

The FBI profiler categorized the rapist as anger-retaliatory: short, impulsive, blitz attack, displaced anger, victim likely to represent someone else/women in general, extreme violence until the anger goes, possibly comes from a broken home, possibly spent time in foster care, socially competent, athletic, not seeking to kill, drug/alcohol abuser, mid to late twenties.

Each rape appeared to be unplanned, which meant that the rapist had not gone to the Kennington party with a victim or even a rape in mind. He had only been there for a short period of time, he had seen Ally Lynch and he had pounced.
Ren removed elements of the profile based on Ally Lynch’s account: her rapist was younger than his twenties, which Matt had backed up, the rapist was strong, but he was not athletic, and, at least on the night he had attacked Ally, she said that he had no alcohol on his breath.

Who the hell
are
you?

Ren picked up the phone and called Matt.

‘Matt, I need some art theory help. I’ve got a drawing here from a crime scene …’

Silence.

Yes, let’s not mention the whole ‘screw you’/hanging-up-the-phone thing.

Matt decided to go along with Ren in forgetting their last encounter.

‘A drawing?’ said Matt.

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘A drawing. It was found at a crime scene.’

‘You really are Nancy Drew,’ he said.
Nancy Dwew. Dwawing.

I could listen to your endearing voice all day long. That’s the Matt I love.

‘It’s weird,’ said Ren. ‘It’s like a monkey on a skewer with chains coming out of his hands. On the left, the chain is attached to a bed with a bird on it. On the right-hand side, the chain disappears into some kind of megaphone. And there’s a life-preserver hanging off it.’

‘See-no-evil hear-no-evil?’ said Matt.

‘That’s what one of the detectives said, but I don’t think so.’

‘Can you send me a JPEG?’ said Matt.

‘Sure … burn on reading, OK?’ said Ren.

‘Of course. I’ll call you back.’

Ten minutes later, Matt called back. ‘You have to look with better eyes,’ he said.

She stared at the drawing.

‘First off, it’s not a monkey,’ said Matt. ‘It’s a man’s face or boy’s face split in two – one side looking left, the other looking right. The downturned mouths are joined up – that’s what’s making it look like a monkey. The left side is chained by the wrist to a bed, with a cuckoo on it. That would be the proverbial cuckoo’s nest, I’m guessing—’

‘Really?’ said Ren. ‘Minus the actual nest?’

‘Looks like a hospital kind of bed to me,’ said Matt. ‘And look at the right-hand side of the picture: the shape of the links on the chain is different. The chain looks like it’s made of pills.’

‘Pills are my thing these days,’ said Ren.

‘Crushing them up and snorting them?’ said Matt.

‘Only when I sense a random drug test on the horizon.’

‘See in the picture,’ said Matt, ‘the pills are forming a megaphone …’

‘And look at the bed,’ said Ren. ‘The thing that looks like a medical chart at the end of the bed also looks like a sliding volume control. It’s up to the max.’

‘You’re getting the hang of this,’ said Matt.

‘So … ’ said Ren. ‘In terms of the artwork itself …’

‘It’s very simplistic, but it’s detailed,’ said Matt. ‘And the message isn’t terribly sophisticated—’

‘Thanks for that …’ said Ren.

Matt laughed.

‘So,’ said Ren, ‘this picture was drawn by …’

‘I would say a teenager … a teenage boy.’

Ally Lynch said the rapist was not much older than her.

‘Well, that makes sense,’ said Ren. ‘So what’s he saying? That he’s being restrained by pills and chains and nobody’s listening to him …? Is he a psych patient?’

‘Possibly. But he’s not actually in the bed. If he was, I would venture he would have drawn the monkey-boy in there. Instead, he’s been left hanging. It looks to me like he’s being pulled in two different directions: one toward physical restraint, one toward pharmacological restraint. I’m not sure that’s a word, but you get the gist.’

‘As if a hospital isn’t going to medicate him anyway …’ said Ren.

‘True. But some people really do need meds, Ren.’

Silence.

Matt sighed. ‘I do
not
mean you at this moment in time.’

‘Well, when the moment arrives when you do mean me, do let me know.’

‘Not-fighting-dot-com,’ said Matt.

‘Not-wanting-to-fight-dot-e-d-u,’ said Ren.

‘E.D.U. – I love it. A higher purpose.’

‘Hey,’ said Ren. ‘Look again on the right … that chain, the one made of pills … it’s going into his head, not onto his wrist like on the other side. Could the pills be making the voices louder?’

‘Maybe,’ said Matt. ‘And … look. The life preserver …’

‘Has a hole,’ said Ren.

‘It’s a sad piece of art,’ said Matt.

‘It is,’ said Ren.

‘I’m taking it the red dots on the picture are not to indicate a sale.’ There was no humor in his tone. ‘What did he do?’

‘He raped a fourteen-year-old girl, and possibly more.’

‘And you’re on the hunt …’ said Matt.

‘Not my case,’ said Ren. ‘But, I’m assisting … hopefully. OK, gotta go.’

Ren took out the second drawing from the rapist. There was something in these drawings … or the sense of something … she just wasn’t quite sure what. She sat forward.

The curve. It’s the curve of the bird’s wing, the bird perched on the bed. It’s like the curve of a scythe. She had seen it before. She had seen that shape … on the lightning strike that marked the path to Kennington Asylum.

Ren put a call in to Glenn Buddy. ‘Glenn, those drawings – the curves in the bird’s wings and on some of the buildings in the second drawing … they’re the same curves on the lightning strikes on the ground at Kennington. I think they were drawn by the same person.’

‘Really?’ said Glenn.

‘It looks that way,’ said Ren. ‘I’m looking through my notes here, and I was thinking – we should go talk to the boy that Ally Lynch said she liked that night. If the feeling was mutual, if he had any connection with her, he could be the one to break his silence and tell us who organized the party or who did the artwork that led to it.’

‘OK – I’ll pick you up,’ said Glenn.

Ren followed Glenn into the Principal’s Office of St John’s Academy in Park Hill. There sat the object of Ally Lynch’s affections: Rigg Raskin. A name straight from
Gossip Girls
.

Rigg was handsome, athletic and devastatingly unattainable to most girls. And, in the way he moved to settle himself in the chair …

Possibly devastatingly unattainable to all girls
.

‘So, Rigg …’ said Ren.
Where the hell did you get your name?

‘I know you gave your statement about the party,’ said Ren, ‘and you said you didn’t know who was running it—’

‘That’s correct, ma’am,’ said Rigg.

Nice and polite. I’ll cope with the ma’am.

‘I just showed up,’ said Rigg.

‘But who told you it was on, and where to go?’ said Ren.

‘The same bunch of people you guys interviewed already. We were all, like, afterwards saying that it seemed to go in a circle – we all thought we heard from each other, but no-one had an outside source.’

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘I have a different question for you.’ She placed the image of the lightning strike on the table. He sat forward.

‘This, as you know, was used to guide you to the door of the party, and everyone’s hands were stamped in invisible ink with the same logo.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who did the stamping at the door?’ said Ren.

‘I don’t know, they were older, bouncer types, there for the start of the party, and apparently they were gone by the time any late people arrived.’

‘Do you know who drew this?’ said Ren.

‘Who drew it?’ said Rigg.

Ren nodded. ‘It’s important.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you think you can find out for me?’ said Ren.

Glenn Buddy leaned forward. Very far forward. ‘I don’t think giving us that information will expose whatever dealer was behind the party that everyone is afraid of.’

A trace of fear flashed in Rigg’s eyes.

‘We’re not interested in the dealer,’ said Glenn.

For now …

‘Or,’ said Glenn, ‘their suppliers, despite what movies you’ve seen. Special Agent Bryce and I want to know where this symbol originated, and we figure that it wasn’t with whoever threw the party.’

If he was the rapist, he wouldn’t have been arriving after midnight to his own event.

‘I guess I could try,’ said Rigg.

‘No trying,’ said Glenn. ‘That’s not what we want here. We want a name.’

Rigg turned to Ren with an imploring look in his eye.

‘It’s an important part of our investigation,’ said Ren.

Rigg nodded. ‘Agent … ma’am … there’s a rumor … about Ally Lynch …’ He stared at the ground. ‘I haven’t seen her. I know you can’t say, but … if it’s true, please … I’ll do … I’d like to do what I can. Ally’s … Ally’s a cool person. She’s a really good person.’

‘Here’s my card, Rigg,’ said Glenn. ‘If you find out who drew this, call me right away. And don’t speak about this to anyone.’

‘Sure,’ said Rigg. He turned to Ren. ‘If … if you see Ally, tell her I said hi …’

Rigg Raskin, you sweet boy. Poor Ally Lynch is not ready to hear that you care, because the idea of you even having a clue what happened to her would crush her spirit even more.

Ren arrived back at the office to an email from Matt.

OK, Ren, I do not want you to hate me for this, but I’m sending you an email that I’d really like you to read. Call me afterwards, if you like but … look, I’m not saying it will be easy reading, but please just think about it, OK? I love you very much. Just remember that.

She opened the email:

Ren, I’ve gone back over some of our emails from earlier this year, and I’ve taken out some of the things you wrote me, so you can, hopefully, see a pattern. I know it won’t seem a fair or a kind thing to do but … I just hope you can understand why I’m worried about you. Love, always, Matt.

Ren frowned.
What?

Jan. 02 to Jan.11: No emails (same thing for last three years).

Jan. 12: OMG – Livestock Show Party! Amazing night! Roped v cute extreme rider (LOL!!!). THE worst hangover. EVER.

Jan. 15: On trail of Tiny Toes Bandit – guy with tiny feet who robs banks while wearing shoes that are too big. Left a teeny tiny footprint at one scene, lost a shoe at another!!! Idiot!!!