Hush (30 page)

He rubbed his hands together. "I do like to
cook, that's true, but when I'm not cooking I transcribe
music."

She made a note of that, balancing the
clipboard against her leg. "What does that mean exactly?"

"Say, would you like something to drink? Iced
tea? Pepsi? Water?"

"No thanks, but that's nice of you to ask.
What do you mean by transcribing music?" she repeated.

"I listen to music and transcribe it into
notes."

"Oh, wow. So you're a musician?"

"More into music theory."

She had no idea what that meant, but she
plowed on. "Anything else? Do you do anything else?"

"I write code part time for a place called
Astral Plain."

"Code?"

"For computer programs."

"That must be tough. I don't know anything
about computers. I mean, I know how to read and send E-mail and
that's it. I keep thinking I should take a class. I think the
department even offers them for free."

"Yeah, you really should."

"So you design programs?"

"No, I write the code. Code. You know. The
system of numbers that gives the computer the commands."

Red flag.

But the connection with numbers didn't really
mean all that much. She'd had a lot of red flags that day. In fact,
one of her interviews was with a math teacher, another an
accountant. It seemed like the mathematics field went hand in hand
with mental instability. Good thing she hated math.

He stared at her, trying to read her mind,
but couldn't.

She was one of those tacky kind of women with
huge bleached hair, big boobs, and a cocky, almost mannish way of
carrying herself. When she wasn't working, she probably spent a lot
of time in bars or at home laughing along with a sitcom
soundtrack.

"Do you like foreign films?" he asked,
noticing that she wore no wedding band.

She waved his words away. "When I see a
movie, I don't want to have to read the print at the bottom of the
screen—"

"Subtitles. They're called subtitles."

"Well, I don't want to have to read anything,
and I want the actor's voices to match the movement of their
mouths." That said, she got back to the questions. "How long have
you worked at your present occupation?"

Sweat was rolling down her face, taking
cream- colored makeup with it. Her shirt was wet at her armpits,
and she was beginning to smell up his house.

"Are you married?" he asked.

"Can we please stick to the question? And no,
I'm not married."

"Five years," he said. "I've been with Astral
Plain five years. I've been transcribing music a lot longer. It's
kind of an off and on thing, you know."

She jotted that down. "Well, that's it. Told
you this wouldn't take long." She got to her feet and held out her
hand toward him, obviously expecting him to shake it.

He didn't want to touch her, but he forced
himself to take her hand—and immediately knew he'd made a
mistake.

The handshake was the final part of the
interrogation.

"That's quite a scar you have there," she
said, turning his arm so she could get a better look. "Did you get
it cooking?"

He laughed nervously.

"It's a burn from a car accident I was in
years ago. Doctors tried doing a graft, but it didn't take." His
mind raced. "Hey," he said as smoothly as possible. "Would you like
to take a jar of spaghetti sauce with you?"

At first he feared she was going to refuse.
But then she smiled with those big yellow horse teeth of hers and
said, "Sure. I'd like that."

He hurried to the kitchen, his eyes rapidly
moving from place to place, looking for something, something—

He opened one drawer, then another.

There. A heavy wooden meat tenderizer.

He picked up a quart jar of spaghetti sauce,
wrapping a big kitchen towel around the base, hiding the wooden
mallet, then scurried back out to the living room.

"Careful," he said, extending the spaghetti
sauce to her. "It's still hot."

"That smells great." She reached for the jar
with both hands.

He pulled the meat tenderizer from under the
wrapped towel. Swinging high and swiftly, he brought it down
against her temple, the blow dropping her to her knees, the
spaghetti sauce falling with her, breaking, the sound muted by the
towel and the thick red contents of the jar. Dazed, she moved her
sauce-covered hand to her gun. Before she could make contact, he
stepped hard on her hand, her fingers snapping. He struck again,
and again, and again until she lay on the floor unmoving.

He stopped his ragged breath and listened for
any sound from the bedroom. Nothing but the television blaring
away. She hadn't heard a thing. Why did drugs get such a bad rap?
If he had his choice, he'd keep his mother medicated for the rest
of her life.

"Are these all the reports from today's
canvass?" Max asked, thumbing through a stack of papers. He stood
in front of the wall of fame—the wall loaded down with an
ever-growing array of crime-scene photos, the metro map with the
yellow-headed marking pins denoting every Madonna Murderer crime
scene since the very first eighteen years ago. In the center of the
wall someone with a sense of humor had enlarged a color photo of
the formaldehyde globe with its floating tattoo so it was now the
size of four eight- by-tens.

It was 7:00 P.M. and most of the superficial
members of the task force had gone home two hours ago. The only
people left were Ramirez, Ivy, and Max. Any phone messages would be
handled at the main switchboard.

"Wait a minute, Detective." Ramirez dug
through a stack of papers. "Hastings faxed these to us about an
hour ago." He handed them to Max.

"Why didn't she bring them in?"

"Says she got sick when she was out doing her
canvassing," Ramirez said, leaning so far back in his office chair
Max thought he might tip over. "Heatstroke, maybe." Ramirez
shrugged, pulled another sheet of paper from the desk and handed it
to Max. It was a faxed note from Regina.

"Anything stand out in the interviews?" Ivy
asked.

She sat at a table in the corner of the room,
a half- eaten sandwich at her elbow, along with a cold cup of
coffee. She'd spent the entire day reading and rereading
crime-scene interviews, trying to find anything that may have been
missed the first, second, and third times through, something that
might tie in with Max's number theory.

Max handed her half the stack, then dropped
down on the sofa.

"An amazing percentage of mental patients
have some kind of math background," Ivy commented.

"I have three right here," Max said.

"That seems odd. Doesn't that strike you as
odd?"

"What are you saying? That the answers aren't
accurate?"

Ivy rubbed her temples. She'd been sitting
under fluorescent light for too long. All the numbers and letters
on the page in front of her were jumping around. "I don't know. I'm
not thinking straight. So where do we go from here?"

"We'll pull the patients with a mathematical
background, and you and I will interview them starting early
tomorrow."

Ivy nodded dully. She needed to close her
eyes for a while. Maybe she would he down on the couch. Take a
little nap before going home to feed Jinx. . . .

The sound of a plastic receiver clattering
into the cradle jarred her, and she realized she'd been sleeping
while sitting at the table. She'd been dreaming about lying
down.

"She doesn't answer her phone."

"Who?" The question came from Max.

"Regina."

"If I were sick," Ivy said, talking with her
eyes closed, "I wouldn't answer the phone. Half the time it's just
a telemarketer anyway."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right." Ramirez
got to his feet, gathering up his take-out trays, wrappings, and
cups. "Maybe I'll swing by her place in the morning, see if she's
feeling any better."

"Let's all call it a night," Max said. "I
promised Ethan I'd be home early." He checked his watch and
realized it was already too late for that.

The next morning, Ronny Ramirez went by
Regina's place even though it was a whole forty-five minutes out of
his way and would mean fighting rush-hour traffic on the way back
to Headquarters. She had an apartment in a suburb north of Area
Five. It wasn't a great place, not like Ramirez's warehouse
apartment, but it was okay. The building was a huge brick thing
that looked like a hospital—and maybe had been a hospital at one
time. A lot of old people lived there, and a lot of crying kids.
When you walked down the dark hallway, you could smell the gross
stuff they were cooking. At his place, they didn't allow kids. His
place was geared toward single people in their twenties, with a lap
pool and a great workout room.

Her car wasn't in the parking lot. She'd just
gotten it two weeks ago, having him come out and look at it when
they were taking a break. Like a kid with a new toy, he thought,
smiling to himself.

She must already be at work, he decided.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed
Headquarters. "Extension 280."

A woman answered, but it wasn't Regina.
"Regina there?" he asked.

Whoever was manning the phone must have been
new—she had to ask, and then she came back on the line with a
negative.

Ronny pushed the end-call button, then sat
there drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. She should have
been at work by now. Thirty seconds later, he parked his black
Lexus and went into the building.

He buzzed her room, but there was no
answer—not unexpected. So he buzzed the office manager and asked to
be let in to check on the welfare of a friend.

The female manager accompanied him to
Regina's room, knocking. When there was no answer, she unlocked the
door.

He'd been to her place several times in the
past two weeks but still hadn't been able to get her to soften
toward him. She thought he just wanted in her pants. He did want in
her pants, but he'd been forced to grudgingly admit to himself that
he liked her. Hell, he couldn't quit thinking about her. He'd
always been physically attracted to her, but something happened the
day she told him about being raped and almost dying. He began
seeing her as a multidimensional person with feelings and a past.
And he suddenly wanted to prove to her that he could treat her with
the respect and admiration she deserved.

The only pet Regina had was a fish she'd told
him was called a betta. He wasn't a pet person—pets were a pain in
the ass. Anytime anybody in his building left for a few days, they
always had to find somebody to take care of Muffy, or Fluffy, or
Foo Foo. At the time she'd told him about the fish, he'd wondered
why anyone would want a damn fish, but later he'd caught himself
looking at it, admiring the colors.

"Regina!"

Silence.

It didn't take but a minute to see that she
wasn't there—the apartment consisting of a combined kitchen- living
area, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bed was a mess, but the other
times he'd been there it had been unmade. The bathroom didn't have
that humid, recently used feeling. The sink was dry, and, when he
pulled back the pink shower curtain, so was the tub.

He went back to the bedroom, where her
computer was set up against the wall opposite the bed. Neatly
stacked near the monitor were the inquiries she'd faxed him.

"She's not here," said the manager, a young
black woman who seemed nervous now that she'd allowed him access to
the room.

She'd been there, that much was obvious.

He suddenly felt like an idiot. It wasn't
like him to overreact, and he didn't quite know how to deal with
it.

Yesterday she'd been really pissed about,
being given the street assignment while he got to sit in air-
conditioning all day. So, knowing Regina, she'd gone out, gotten
more pissed with each growing minute, and finally decided to play
hooky—since she'd also been complaining about needing a day or two
off.

She'd come home, faxed the questionnaires,
then gone to visit a friend. Probably a guy, Ronny figured, a
jealous knot forming in his stomach. She was most likely at the
guy's place right now, laughing about how she'd duped
everybody.

Well, he wouldn't squeal on her. He might
need her to cover for him sometime.

"Thanks for letting me in," he told the
manager, as they both headed for the door.

"I have some information for you," the voice
whispered in Alex Martin's ear. Alex gripped the receiver tighter
and glanced up from his desk to see if anyone was within hearing
distance. Heads were bowed, workers pecking away at their computer
terminals.

"What kind of information?" Alex whispered
back into the telephone.

"About the Madonna Murderer."

"Who is this?"

"I can't say."

Thrilled, his heart racing, Alex said, "I'd
never divulge a source."

"I can't risk it. If I tell you, if he finds
out I called you, I'll be killed. Can you meet with me someplace
where we won't be seen?" The man's voice was of medium timbre,
static, and trembly. He was scared shitless.

"Where?"

"A cemetery. I'll give you directions."

"Why a cemetery? Why not a coffee shop?"

"Because people know who you are. I can't be
seen with you." He gave Alex directions, then said, "I have to go.
I hear him coming. You'll be there, won't you? Please be there."
The caller hung up.

A lead. A real honest-to-God lead.

Alex quickly found Maude, who was sitting in
front of her computer, huge green bifocals on her face.

"I'm heading to the Daley Center to do a
little research," he told her.

"On the Madonna Murder case?" she asked.

"Yeah."

He hated lying to her, but he was afraid if
he told her the truth she might insist on his calling the cops, and
he wanted this to be his story. He could almost smell a Pulitzer.
The cops were already taking credit for the dead-baby letter, when
he knew damn well it was something he could have come up with if
given a chance.