Hush (4 page)

Ivy detected a muffled reply, but couldn't
make out any words. Abraham disconnected and slipped the phone back
into his pocket. "Max Irving," he said by way of explanation. "I'll
tell you about him on the way."

The woman sitting on the wooden bench outside
Max's office wasn't what he'd expected. Then he decided she had to
be someone else entirely until she stood and introduced
herself.

"Hi, I'm Ivy Dunlap." She extended her
hand.

Now he could see that she was of medium
height and was as compact as a ballet dancer. She wore a light
skirt that fell neatly over curved hips and flat stomach to flutter
in colors of red and black and burgundy around her knees. Her top
was a black, slightly fitted T-shirt, on her feet a pair of running
shoes. Over her shoulder was a green canvas backpack.

He didn't know why, but for some reason he'd
expected her to be on the far side of middle age, rapidly flying
toward retirement and winters spent on the Gulf Coast. Turned out
she was probably close to his age. Well, according to some—Ethan,
for instance—that could be considered old. Funny how one's
perception of age changed over a life span.

He shook her hand and studied her at the same
time. Her hair was red and straight, and she had those kind of
short, Audrey Hepburn-waifish bangs. Her cheekbones were dusted
with the same pink as her nose, making her look as if she'd been
working in a garden all day. She reminded him of somebody. . . .
Who? And then it came to him. Ethan. The coloring. Her blue eyes.
Her cheekbones, the shape of her face.

He was in control of the handshake. He was
always in control of the handshake. When meeting a man, his grip
was firm and strong, held just long enough to be polite without
seeming too chilly. When meeting a woman, his grip was firm but
nonthreatening.

He released her hand.

As he looked into her eyes, he felt a weird
jolt of surprise, or possibly recognition, even though he was
certain he'd never seen her before. Her eyes—they were old. Not
old, as in the old he'd expected, but sad. When she looked at him,
there was no shrinking away, no slow closing of the eyelids, no
pretense. Just that bold, straightforward sorrow. And yet it was
more than sorrow, as if she'd moved past the pain and could now
face anything. In his job as a detective, he'd seen such eyes
before. Like the faces of concentration camp survivors, they always
belonged to someone who had lived through the horrendous.

For some reason he couldn't explain, the
sight of her made him all the angrier. Christ, he was going to be
baby-sitting. He didn't have time for this shit.

He wanted to grab her and shake her and ask
her what the hell she was doing there. Instead, he managed to tamp
down his reaction, to pull a mask over the most rampant of his
feelings. Rather than attacking her directly, he said, "You know,
there are people out there being murdered." He wanted to make her
understand this wasn't a game.

He'd expected her to recoil at his
straightforwardness, at the hostility in his voice.

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. "I know," was
all she said.

I know! Didn't she get it? She was in the
way! She was in the damn way!

She pulled a file folder from her backpack
and handed it to him.

"What's this?"

"A profile."

"I've already seen it."

"Not this one."

He held up the folder, trying even harder to
keep his anger in check. "This is your profile?" he asked in
disbelief. The woman was incredibly brazen. Her putting together a
profile and expecting him to take it seriously was like telling him
she was a brain surgeon even though she'd never had any schooling
or been in an operating room.

"What if we're dealing with a copycat
killing? Then your profile doesn't mean shit."

"Do you think it's a copycat?"

"Maybe." He felt no compulsion to fill her in
on his theories.

"You need to read my profile. I'm interested
in hearing your comments."

He shoved the folder back at her until she
was forced to take it. He had to stop this now, before it went any
further. And he had to let her know who was calling the shots. "I'm
gonna be straight with you," he said. "Because I don't have time
for bullshit. You can tag along. It'll be a pain in the ass, but
I've got my orders. You can get me coffee, get me newspapers, food.
You can do research when I ask you for it. But nobody said I have
to play cop with you."

"You're not going to read it?"

"Hell no, I'm not going to read it."

"Then I'll tell you what it says."

She began spouting off the profile. She had
the damn thing memorized.

"The killer is male, most likely of European
descent, in his early to mid-forties. Graduated from high school.
Went to college, most likely intending to major in mathematics, but
flunked out due to an inability to focus and excessive time spent
in fantasy. He lives with a relative, most likely his mother. As a
child, he lacked a male role model and exhibited traits that make
up the homicidal triad: bed-wetting past a nor-mal age,
fire-starting, and cruelty to animals. As you know, the most common
motivators for serial killers are domination, manipulation, and
control. This man is a loser who feels society has screwed him. He
will come across as extremely confident, but in actuality he feels
inadequate. His murdering of women is a redirected hatred of his
mother. The babies are simply innocent victims. Killing them makes
him feel as if he's not only getting back at her, he's saving
himself at the same time. In short, his overriding fantasy is to
rid himself of his domineering, abusive mother." She stopped.
"There's more, but that's probably enough for now. I can see I'm
boring you."

Boring? "Hardly that."

What the hell was Abraham thinking? And the
weird way she'd delivered "her profile" only reinforced his idea
that he was dealing with some wacko.

Yet he couldn't deny that it bore an uncanny
resemblance to the profile put out by their own guy. Had she
somehow gotten a copy? That would explain things. That and the fact
that ever since retired FBI Agent John Douglas began writing his
profiling books, everybody wanted in on the game, and everybody
thought he, or in Dunlap's case, she was an expert. But let Ms.
Dunlap get a good look at a violent crime scene and she'd be out of
his hair.

"And you came by this knowledge . . .
how?"

While he spoke to her, Ivy was intensely
aware of his presence in the crowded hallway, but also the presence
of people she couldn't even see. They filled the building, sitting
in offices, riding elevators, flowing out the double glass doors to
board buses on the noisy Chicago street.

The city of Chicago housed millions of
people. She could feel those people. She could feel their pulsating
presence, smothering her, suffocating her. And not only feel the
people who were there now, but also the people who had been there
before.

"I have a degree in criminal psychology and
have been studying psychopathic behavior for the last ten
years."

"That doesn't necessarily make you an expert.
Have you had any actual field experience?"

She let out a heavy sigh. "Listen, I don't
want to argue. I'm tired, and I still need to find a place to stay.
A place that allows cats."

Cats?

He looked past her. Now he could see that
under the bench where she'd been sitting was a gray plastic animal
carrier, the kind people used on airplanes.

She'd brought her damn cat with her.

Ivy knew that coming back to Chicago would be
one of the hardest things she'd ever done. She'd mentally prepared
herself. She'd pulled in, shut herself off, focusing on her
immediate problems—finding a place to stay and dealing with the man
in front of her.

Interacting with another human being was the
last thing she felt like doing at the moment, especially one as
irascible as this one.

"A cat?" he asked, his voice echoing her own
disbelief.

Indeed, why had she brought poor Jinx
here?

"You brought your cat?"

Detective Irving wore black dress pants, a
rumpled white dress shirt, and a tie that had been yanked open at
the throat. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, and he was
sweating. Behind her, in a dark corner where the wax on the
linoleum had turned a yellow brown, an oscillating fan blew
stagnant air in their direction.

Click, half circle, click, return.

"I didn't have anybody to leave him with,"
she said.

One hand at his waist, elbow out, he
scratched his head with his free hand, completely at a loss. In
that moment, she allowed herself to feel a little sorry for him.
For a fraction of a second, she wondered what his home life was
like. It could be bad. Really bad. She thought of several
combinations of bad scenarios, then let it go.

Abraham hadn't given her any personal
information on Max Irving, only saying he was the best at what he
did, going so far as to relate a case where Irving had used
hypnosis to aid in an investigation.

As she looked at him now, she was surprised
to distantly note that some women would probably find him
attractive, with his short dark hair that was as boyishly rumpled
as his shirt, with his distracted air, piercing brown-green eyes,
skin that looked as if it had been dusted with gold.

"Okay," he said, seeming to arrive at some
kind of decision. "Come into my office."

Once inside, he grabbed a phone book that was
so big she would have had to hold it with two hands. He dropped it
on his cluttered desk and began tearing through the pages.

"What's your price range?"

She mumbled a figure she thought
adequate.

"Not in this city," he said as if to further
underscore how little she was in touch with the real world.

She knew that the building they were in
wasn't all that old, having opened in the early eighties, when Jane
Byrne was mayor. But for some reason his cramped office had the
feel of all old buildings—of being a little off-center, a little
warped by time, a place where eras collided. Chicago had witnessed
the rise and fall of Al Capone, who, when compared to the sick,
twisted Madonna Murderer, seemed almost a nice man just making a
living.

While Ivy was dwelling on Chicago and how
much it had seen, Max Irving was barking into the telephone,
jotting down numbers and addresses on a yellow tablet. He hung up,
tore the top sheet from the tablet, and announced, "Found you a
couple of places. Rent by the week. You can have a pet, but it'll
cost extra."

She put out her hand for the paper, but he
ignored it. "They're not far from here. I'll take you."

"That's totally unnecessary."

He still wouldn't give her the paper with the
addresses. Five minutes ago, he'd seemed eager to get her out of
his hair. He would have been ecstatic if she'd told him she was
leaving the country. Now he was going to help her find an
apartment. Why?

"I'll fill you in on the case on the
way."

She gathered up poor Jinx, who was still in a
highly sedated state from the drugs the vet had given Ivy.

"Pretty mellow cat," he said, looking at Jinx
lolling in the corner of the cage.

"Isn't that what they always say?" she asked.
"He seemed like a nice guy. Quiet. Kept to himself."

At first she could see that he didn't know
she was kidding. Then he smiled even though it was fairly obvious
he didn't want to. "You Canadians think you're pretty damn funny,
don't you?"

She shrugged. "Best comedians come from
Canada."

He was thinking about arguing, but then she
saw defeat cross his features.

She smiled back at him. Americans had a hard
edge. Interacting with them was like remembering how to ride a
bike. You might be a little wobbly at first, but you could pick it
up again pretty easily.

Max gathered up the Sheppard case file in its
brand- new, stiff and slick manila folder, complete with eight-
by-ten color photos of the crime scene, then grabbed the Madonna
Murders file in its soft-sided, fingerprint- stained folder, wound
a huge rubber band around both, latching them together, then tucked
the whole mess under his arm.

"No suitcase?" he asked Dunlap, looking
around the hallway, not seeing anything.

"Left it at the front desk."

"How long have you known Superintendent
Sinclair?" he asked as they walked down the hallway. He should have
offered to carry the animal crate, but he'd be damned if he was
going to trot around with a cat.

"A long time," she said.

An elusive answer. "Years?"

"Yes."

"Where'd you meet?"

"I can't remember. It seems I've always known
him. Have you ever felt that way about someone?"

Max didn't answer. Besides, it was a
rhetorical question.

They passed the front desk where phones were
ringing, people were conversing, computers were humming. A
prostitute in handcuffs was led past them. A street person was
crying, begging to be allowed to go home and feed his cats.

"In just a minute, Mr. Van Horn." The clerk
looked up at Max and his companion, and shot Max a questioning
look. Max just shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"This yours?" Max asked, indicating a black,
canvas suitcase with a paper airline tag around the handle.

She nodded, and he picked it up.

His goal was to get Dunlap out of the
building before he had to introduce her to anybody. His instincts
told him she was too fragile to handle such a difficult
investigation, and there was no sense in wasting time introducing
her to people she might never see again.

Crime-scene photos used to be black and
white, the argument being that they were less disturbing that way.
But there were a lot of things that didn't show up in black and
white, so now they were always in color. Color was good. Color
weeded out the people who couldn't hack it.