The Blue Hour (23 page)

So he drove away and into
the cluttered construction zone he'd scouted earlier, just .85 miles from the
mall according to the van odometer. The mess had something to do with Cal
Trans and the 1-5. He found the bumpy turnoff and drove along the beaten
chain-link fence, past the scaffolding and the water trucks. The gate was
closed but not locked. He drove inside with his headlights off and parked,
hidden between two big Cats. He cut the engine and sat there a moment. The moon
was just a faint face risen prematurely in the eastern sky. It looked alone and
embarrassed. Perfect— just two blocks from a stop for the OCTA bus, which would
take him straight into the mall when he was ready.

Bill slipped to the
back of the vehicle and opened the toolbox. He wouldn't need Pandora's Box
because Ronnie's car was almost certainly too old and cheap to have a comprehensive
antitheft alarm wired in. Good. Less to carry, less to depend on. No fuses to
slip out of place and end up who-knew-where? That meant he'd only need the
knockout cloth in the heavy-duty freezer bags, his shopping bag and his trusty
Slim Jim. Traveling light.

He got the gas bag
out from his instrument kit. It sat atop his surgical "sharps"—the
scalpels, dissecting scissors, retractors, forceps, needles and catheters used
for the preliminary veinous removal of blood and arterial introduction of
fluid.

Holding his breath,
he gave the chloroform cloth a heavy fresh dose from the 50mm bottle he'd
stolen from the body and paint shop where he'd briefly worked, Saturdays only,
over two years ago. He had been a prep man and gofer, tasked sometimes with the
unpleasant job of mixing chloroform and alcohol for use as a solvent. The
liquid was heavy and smelled kind of pleasant, he thought. When he'd tried it
out on a near helpless drunk one night up on Harbor, he had been surprised how
quickly it worked.

Bill sealed up the
bag very thoroughly and waved his hand in front of his face before breathing
in. It was wonderful stuff—fast acting, quickly metabolized out of the system
and only occasionally responsible for heart failure and strokes in people and
animals who had breathed a little too much of it.

He
slipped the plastic bag inside another one, sealed it, and set the thin package
into the shopping bag. The shopping bag was black, large and strong, featuring
thick twine handles and the name of a department store in gold script. His book
and bedsheet were already in it. New latex gloves, too. He added the Slim Jim.
It extended a few inches from one end so
Bill
used the sheet to cover the top of it, disguising it as a mysterious purchase,
or perhaps something to return. The sweet, ethereal smell of the gas lingered
as he went back to the driver's seat.

His last piece of working
gear was the micro .32 derringer that he now took from the glove box and
slipped into his coat pocket.

Bill always brought
reading material for his short bus rides. In this case, F
odor's Los Angeles,
to suggest he was just visiting. He sat near the front of the bus, on the right
side, glancing out the window only occasionally and otherwise engrossed in the
book. In fact he was picturing Ronnie: her shapely legs, dark curly hair and
high, intelligent forehead. Tall and young. Wouldn't it be something if she'd
worn her hair up today?

He disembarked at the
north side of the Main Place, then walked around the parking lot to where
Ronnie's car was still waiting on the south side.

The light wasn't
particularly good where Ronnie had parked: perfect. He walked past her car and
noted it was a Chevrolet. He looked around, saw no one nearby, then went back
to the car, set the bag down and acted like he was getting out his keys.
Instead he bent down and got the Slim Jim, leaned up close to the old sedan and
slid the tool down between the window glass and the door. He kept his head up,
his eyes alert. It was a matter of feel at this point, and Bill had plenty of
that. He'd practiced on hundreds and hundreds of cars so that this part of his
job would go smoothly. And it did. On his third pass with the Jim he caught the
lock arm and he pulled it up. He heard the tinny report of the lock opening and
saw the little black plastic rod stand up inside the glass like a soldier at
attention. Then he opened the door, set his bag on the passenger's seat, sat
down and slammed the door shut.

A moment later he was in
the backseat on the driver's side, slumped down and head back like a dozing
airline passenger, keeping his eyes on the mall exit.

The black shopping bag
with the F
odor's
and Slim Jim were tucked behind the passenger's seat.
The gas bag was on his lap. It was important to have that in a convenient place
when you needed it, because if you opened it too soon they might smell
something funny and whirl around and ruin the whole capture.

That hadn't happened, yet.
The closest was Irene Hulet—his third—who had sneezed one second before he was
going to clamp his hand over her mouth and apply the chloroform cloth. That
had left him with the cloth already out, spreading its deadly fumes into the
closed car.

Luckily, the sneeze had
left her without breath for a few nice seconds, as sneezes often do. So by the
time she was ready to breathe again, Bill had his left hand tight against her
mouth and his right cupping the cloth over her nose. About seven seconds. The
reason it worked so well was that people inhaled abruptly and deeply when they
were surprised and frightened, then needed to do it again quickly when they got
mostly gas. That, plenty of CHCL and a little muscle. It helped if the
headrests were solid rather than adjustable, so you could clamp your forearms
around each side for purchase as you pulled back.

Bill slid down a little further for comfort, but kept
his eyes open. His heart was beating hard and fast. He wanted to hurt someone
badly while he felt good. Real good. He was angry, and getting angrier the
longer he waited. He could almost smell the anger inside him, like a bad wire
smoldering deep within its bundle. He worked his hands into the gloves.

Then he saw Ronnie
come through the door.

He melted down into the
floor space behind the driver's seat, unlocking the outside gas bag and
positioning his thumbs and index fingers on the lips of the inside one. The
closing of the car door would be his cue to open it.

He heard her keys in the
lock, then the door opening. Her purse clunked to the passenger's seat. When he
felt her weight settle and heard the door slam he rose behind the seat and
clenched his open left hand over her mouth. A split second later his right
snugged the damp rag over her nose and Bill pulled back, hard, like a rower
going for speed.

"Evenin',
honey."

Ronnie was a strong one.
One. Two. She felt like a big wild animal. Three. Four. But Bill was stronger.
This part of it was like a cowboy trying to stay on a bucking bronco. Five,
while her feet kicked the pedals and her knees banged the underside of the
dash. Six. She dropped the keys. Seven.

Then it was over. He felt
her head go loose on her neck and he wrenched her down and to the right, out of
sight. He slid up onto the seat, resealing the cloth and tossing it into his
shopping bag. Bracing his feet on the front seat he pulled Ronnie toward him like
a spider gathering in a huge moth. Head and shoulders. Butt. Legs and feet. One
shoe had fallen off somewhere.

She whimpered. The sweet
smell of the chloroform lingered in the car.

He was breathing hard as
he got her laid out across the back and squeezed himself into the front of the
car. He pulled the sheet out and covered her, tucking it just under her chin
like she was asleep. The keys had landed right in the middle of the floor mat,
as if she'd placed them there just for him.

Three minutes later he was
slipping the big Chevy in between the towering earth movers, up next to his
van. The fury was at bay now and he could feel the deeply meaningful sensation
of affection stirring again down there. He looked out at the moon, then back at
the unconscious woman.

He imagined
cruising into his garage and having the door shut automatically behind him,
then getting things set up. Preparation was sacred. He imagined the candlelit
garage with Ronnie on the table and the Porti-Boy pulsing rhythmically as the
fluid ran in. He could feel his hands massaging the fluid deep into her thirsty
tissues, bringing her body to life again, to a rosy glow that began its bloom
at the jugular in her clavicle and spread down, throughout her system and
finally back to her angelic face. She would bloom beneath his touch like a
flower. He could see her eyelids flutter as they awoke to the fluid of
eternity. And he could see himself restored, too, gradually, as he worked the
spirit back into Ronnie's tired body. Yes, slowly it would come to him—the
feeling worth any price, the feeling that was the spark of his dreams and the
flame of his humanity. He would caress her with the expensive scented oils,
perfume and dress her in the silk and satin lingerie, dry and style her hair
while he grew powerful in his desires. He imagined carrying her upstairs to
bed, whispering in her ear. And then he'd really find out how much she wanted
him. It was the best thing this short, sad life had to offer, for both of them.

Hess stood beside Merci near the CAT D6 and looked at
the tire tracks left by the vehicle that had carried Veronica
"Ronnie" Stevens's body into the night.

Kneeling and pointing with
his pen, he commented on the tracks of the mismatched tires. They were some of
the best tire prints he'd seen at a crime scene because of the soil here in the
construction yard—oily, damp and loosely packed.

Hess had been awakened by
Merci's call at 6 A.M. He was a little groggy then, but unfettered by chemotherapy,
radia' tion and the stout scotches he'd drunk before bed. Now his mind felt
sharp and clear, though his fingers were oddly heavy, like saps at the ends of
his hands.

"I hate this
man," said Merci, quietly, slowly. "1 want to commit mayhem on him."

This was one of the most
dismal scenes Hess had ever run across: the big slick of blood that had spread
over soil that was already oil stained and packed by heavy machinery; the
splash of it against the CAT track; the forlorn Chevrolet with the keys still
in the ignition and the purse sitting upright and open on the hood, overflowing
with multicolored vitals that spilled out and sent up heat waves from the
paint.

Hess had never seen such a gruesome thing. He had stood there for a
moment in the early sunlight in disbelief.

Merci had stared in
silence with him.

He'd be more
likely to send you something UPS.

After that, as
always, work to do.

"He must not
know," he said. Hess had been wondering if the Purse Snatcher knew about
his tires and now had to guess he didn't. Either doesn't know or doesn't care,
he thought: and so far he's been very careful. He slipped the pen back in his
pocket, his fingers thick and imprecise. He glanced at Merci but she was still
looking at the bloody ground.

"Not know how
much I hate him?"

"That he's
riding on two different tires."

"He'd change
them."

"He
hasn't."

"He thinks we're as
stupid as 1 feel. I wish I had one of those drinks from dinner right now."

She'd insisted on joining
him in Scotch at dinner on Friday. This had not surprised Hess. They had gone
to Cancun, a deputy's hangout in Santa Ana. The food was good and cheap and
they made the drinks strong if you appreciated them that way. He could feel the
disdain when they walked into the place and he knew it was for Merci and not
for himself. Kemp was there, unfortunately, with a table of his friends, and
the drunken tension in him had leaked into the atmosphere like a gas. It had
been too late to back out and go someplace else, so Merci had downed the
drinks.

"It wouldn't do
you any good, Merci."

"This
girl was nineteen years old, Tim. That's just unforgivable. There ought to be
special circumstances for victims under twenty-one. You do somebody under
twenty-one, any reason, you get the fucking guillotine."

The patrolmen had taped
off the scene and kept the construction workers out of the yard as best they
could. A foreman had found the car and purse, seen the blood and guts and
called it in. He'd heard about the Purse Snatcher, seen Merci on TV, knew what
he was looking at. He got her to autograph a piece of paper for his kid.

Hess watched the CSIs
working the purse and the door handles of the car. The hood was smeared and
murky where the innards and purse had been. Goddamned flies. He wondered if
the Purse Snatcher had picked a woman in an older, alarmless car because Lee
LaLonde's electronic override box had lost a fuse in Janet Kane's BMW and
failed. Maybe he just liked her. Maybe she had her hair up. Two hunts in two
weeks.

Building. Growing.
Speeding up.

Would he get his alarm
override back to LaLonde for repair?

Hess recalled the
statement. LaLonde was selling his inventions at the Marina Park swap meet in
Elsinore on a Sunday in late August of last year. A medium-height, medium-build
male Caucasian, blond/ brown, had approached his table. Around thirty years
old. "Bill" wore his hair long. Bill asked how LaLonde knew
electronics; LaLonde told him of father, schooling, aptitude. Suspect asked if
LaLonde knew how to build a small device that would override the alarm system
on cars. LaLonde said there were too many combinations on door locks and
keyless entry chips to make a universal unlock device feasible—it would be too
slow and possibly too large. Suspect then said he didn't care about the locks,
he cared about the
alarms.
LaLonde said that both the lock and the
disarm combinations were frequencies digitally registered by a microchip in
the keyless entry module— and constantly emitted by the alarm system of a
vehicle. He told Bill he could configure a universal override if he had the
manufacturer's specs on the frequencies. The suspect had shown him several
sheets of paper that "looked like computer printouts" by nine of the
major carmakers, containing the information. The suspect said he had a friend
in the business. Three weeks later, LaLonde had sold Bill a working override
device housed in a cell phone body, for $3,000, and given Bill back the
printouts.