Deja Blue (15 page)

Which meant he’d done it not for her but for himself. He needed the mirror gone, completely gone. It returned Rae to the why of it. Why? The answer could help catch this sociopathic monster.

The victim’s bedding had been removed but not every stain from the mattress or the floor had been cleaned, snipped, collected and whisked away. That only happened in CSI television. As a result, Rae could clearly see precisely where the attack had occurred.

The destroyed mirror over the dresser stood across the room from the attack. Rae moved deeper into the room, and now she stood at what must be the very spot where the killer had taken nail and hammer and awakened Marci Hatfield-Cottrill from sleep to horror all in the time it took for him to swing the hammer.

Colder still. She stared across the mattress, seeing that he’d’ve surely seen himself at some point in the act, reflected in that mirror in the dark. She must assume he didn’t care for what he saw in the glass.

“Why didn’t I notice a broken mirror in the other death room?” she asked Orvison.

“Hatfield began noticing the pattern of broken mirrors, pictures turned to the walls, and he’s taken the others downtown for possible DNA as he suspects aside from hammer blows to the glass, the killer may’ve bloodied his hands at times in his ahhh…war with looking glasses and reflective surfaces.

“But not a word of this in the reports.”

“Or the press,” added Kunati. “And we’d like to keep it that way, right Carl?”

Orvison nodded. “Another item we held back for the day when we catch this creep.”

“I see.” “But you didn’t predict that now did you?” asked Kunati. “That one got by you because it isn’t in the ME’s reports.”

“You got me, Detective.” But she was staring hard into the cracks, crevices, and the roadmap the killer had made of the mirror. “Why hasn’t Hatfield come back for this one?”

“He saw no trace evidence of blood or prints on the glass. Besides, at the time, he had no idea it would continue to be a thread that’d run through the

investigation.”

But he knows now, and yet , she thought but did not say. Perhaps he simply couldn’t face this scene a second time, the awful way in which his sister had left this world…at the hands of evil incarnate. For Roland Hatfield, this had to be far too personal. Rae’s own nightmare, to walk into a crime scene and recognize the face of the victim.

Still Dr. Hatfield might’ve sent some of his people here for the mirror. “So this is the only ahhh…destroyed looking glass that hasn’t been tested for anything?”

“Right.”

“No one’s so much as touched it?”

“Except to blue light it for traces of blood and prints, which came out negative, no.”

“This could be my touchstone.”

The two detectives looked at one another. Kunati shook his head. Orvison began filming the moment he realized that Rae was already in a trancelike state before the shattered mirror.

The camera must pick up the fact that very few areas remained of the mirror that could actually reflect back, but those areas that did have a smooth surface showed Aurelia Murphy Hiyakawa in twisted, broken pieces, making a puzzle of her features. She stood before the mirror, focusing on the small sections that could reflect back this room. She heard her father’s voice in her ear say, “In reflection, one often finds results.”

The puzzle pieces reflected back the bed, but in reverse of course, and it did the same with the dark outline of other items like a coat rack. Rae concentrated, her mind like a laser beam directed now at the largest remaining section that reflected back. Behind her left ear in this section of glass, she saw a dark figure of a man standing the other side of the bed. At first, she thought it Kunati, getting in the way, but no, this was a man her own height if not a bit taller. Seemingly hefty of build in a shapeless outfit, he raised a hammer overhead and let it fall with his full might behind it.

The killer , she quaked inside, holding her breath. Just an image of him; not really him, she admonished herself for the fear.

A second form lay on the bed below the covers, but she hadn’t seen it or the covers until this apparition shot in a total reflex to the hammer blow. Marci Cotrrill grabbed hold of the hammer and fought for it as she might a snake that’d bitten her, but dazed, she could do little to make it a fair struggle.

“What’s going on?” cried out Orvison. “What’re you seeing?”

Kunati remained dubious, silent, brooding in the doorway.

Rae began telling the two detectives and the camera recorder what she was seeing in the distorted mirror. “He…the killer is putting his knee on her…holding her down for the second blow…putting a great force on her windpipe, nearly choking her to death as he now drives in the nails, first two into each eye, three more into the brain. Five in all to her screams and thrashing.

“That’s a damn accurate account of what went on,” said Orvison.

Amos Kunati agreed only sarcastically. “ME’s report on this one showed the bruise to the throat and thorax where he held her down with his knee.”

Rae readily nodded her agreement. “I am allowed to read the autopsy reports, Detective. But there’s something here not in the reports.”

“What’s’sat?” asked Carl Orivison.

“She wears contacts…often falls asleep with them still in. Her glasses…they are driven through with the nails. They reflect him back in her dying gaze; he sees himself in her eyes. Reflective in the weakest light. The killer drives nails into their eyes for the same reason he destroyed this mirror, to in a sense kill or destroy his own reflection.”

“A killer afraid of his own reflection?” asked Orvison.

“Is that anything like being afraid of your own shadow?” asked Kunati.

“It’s a phobia, an obsession with him,” she declared, “like many another. But if he’s sleepwalking when he kills like he’d have us believe, how can he be ‘conscience’ of a phobia?”

“How can you know if he has a phobia?” asked Kunati.

“Attacking mirrors is evidence enough of it, but I also knew she had lenses in her eyes.”

Orvison considered this. “First case set the tone.

“That sleepwalker defense nonsense is absurd,” said Kunati, and she felt he meant to add and so are you, Dr. Hiyakawa, for that matter.

“Men have gone free on crazier defenses,” she replied. “We have to prove he was awake and fully functional when he killed, and this mirror thing…well this might be the key element in charging the bastard.”

“You think so?” asked Kunati, tongue-in-cheek. “My sentiments exactly,” said Orvison, his eyes alight with certainty. “I mean this could shut down any silly-assed defense about not being aware and conscience when the killing took place.”

“If only the courts accepted psychic hearsay,” said Kunati, eyes rolling, head shaking.

“For once we agree,” Rae replied to Kunati. “No court’s going to accept anything merely on my say so. However, if I can scare this madman, if he thinks I can read him, he may just throw up his hands and confess.”

“Good sound reasoning,” said Orvison.

“So how does a sleeping man strike out at his prey and yet find himself so repugnant in the act that he can’t look at himself in a mirror?” She paced before the cracked mirror, her image reflecting back at ten separate angles.

“His defense attorney’ll just say the killing act wakes him from the catatonic state,” replied Orvison, still filming, “and seeing the deed, and in seeing himself bloody, hard, and sexually aroused, he strikes out at the mirrors.”

“You getting anything else?” Kunati asked her. “Can we get out of this creepy hole now?”

“The killer is my height or thereabouts, reasonably well built, strong, Caucasian, and he wears some sort of overalls or uniform. His clothes make him somewhat shapeless.”

“Shapeless in overalls but well built; how can you know if he’s shapeless.”

“I said reasonably well built; tall, not greatly overweight so far as I can tell. Bald, hairless, no facial hair.”

“So far as you can tell? But how can you tell at all?” Kunati had returned to his normal doubting Thomas pose.

“So far as what the mirror tells me,” she replied, pointing to the myriad cracks staring back at the men. “One of my best things. It’s called kinetic energy, psychic kinesis.”

“Anything else? You getting anything else?” asked Orvison, still filming.

“No…nothing more coming through. Sorry…I know it’s anticlimactic, but that’s it…all that’s here,” she lied.

FIFTEEN

On the drive to the second victim’s home, Rae relaxed in the seat alongside Orvison. Kunati followed in his car. Still, the drive was accentuated by a deep silence. Outside, a gray empty sky had moved in to cover the area in a grim light, mournful and dull in its every aspect. Finally, she asked, “How much time elapsed between the Hatfield killing, that is Marci Cottrill, and the second such murder?”

“Three, three and a half weeks. I’d have to check to be sure, but I recall it was just under a month.” Chief Orvison had made a beeline to an entirely different part of town, a place Orvison called Kanawha City, the community hugging the river on one side, a strip of restaurant chains, motels, gas stations, and malls along McCorkle Avenue on the other, all of it crisscrossed by train tracks, while overhead loomed the interstate and toll road exits and entrances. A huge, ugly green metal bridge spanned the river here, dominating the view. This, she was told, was Yeager Bridge. All a raw mix of concrete, steel, and commercial strip malls, the main thoroughfare lined with the signs of every food chain imaginable while the bridge looked on.

Shortly, Orvison pulled into the crunchy gravel driveway of a nondescript home back of the Auto Zone and the Kroger’s Grocery, where a small neighborhood slept tucked from sight until now, until they’d turned down secondary streets with numbers for names.

“Tell me, Chief, did the killer again smash mirrors in this victim’s home?” she asked, staring at the small brick and mortar home with its cottage appearance, a pinnacled roof over a red door, hedges covering most of the exterior.

“Yes, he did.”

“As I suspected.”

“I suspect you’re right about the reason for the broken mirrors.”

“I saw him, Orvison…in that mirror; I saw the killer’s vague outline.”

“If you’re sure it was him…perhaps we should confiscate the mirror, have you take it to your pyramid at Quantico, maybe.”

“No…no, if it’s going to give up any more detail, it’ll be in that room.”

“What’re you suggesting?”

“I need to spend a night in that trailer.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly so.”

“When?” “Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

Kunati pulled in behind them, got out of his car and came toward the house as Rae and Orvison climbed from the other car. She caught Kunati’s black, red-streaked eyes in her own black and blue orbs and she spoke directly to him. “Whataya think, Detective Kunati about our monster sleepwalking from the St. Albans area where he chose that trailer to hit to this location?”

“What’re you getting at?” he asked, giving her a stare, his bloodshot eyes clearing a bit.

Orvison watched her work Kunati.

“This home is flanked on two sides by other homes of a similar style and size. Nothing hidden. If he drove up as we did, he might easily have been noticed.”

“So he’s become bolder, less cautious. Letting out all the stops.”

“Exactly. Asleep or awake, our monster has taken a much bolder step here. Maybe he thinks he’s invincible by this point, early in his career as it is.”

“He is more deliberate, perhaps, while taking more risks, you mean?”

“Yes, deliberation. Under the control of Morpheus, God of Sleep? I don’t buy it. On some level, this creep knows his every step.”

“You think he came on foot to this door, don’t you?” asked Kunati.

“I believe he did so, yes. Might’ve parked in the KMart lot we passed. Could easily have walked here from the bowling alley with his burglar tools, and his killing hammer and nails.”

“That’s been my take on it all along.” Kunati smiled at Orvison as if he’d scored points with the chief.

“I know,” she replied, and her response widened the younger man’s eyes. “I know.”

# # #

The second location of murder proved far less psychically charged, the geography simply not as energized than had been the trailer with the huge broken mirror. However, it impressed upon Rae that the first murder had far more significance to the killer than the one that had followed several weeks later. Exactly how significant or why more significant escaped her for the moment. She just knew that from the moment of walking into the second murder scene that she’d get nothing useful here. In fact, she was right, and the trio left like house hunters in a depressed market.