The Perfect Husband (21 page)

“New good luck charm?”

Lieutenant Houlihan shifted from side to side, looking suddenly sheepish. “My wedding band.”

“Really?”

“Well, it meant a great deal to my wife that I wear a band. I kept telling her, in my line of work you don't want to give that much personal info. Three days ago was our one year anniversary. She had my band melted into this medallion and gave it to me. Now we're both happy. Maybe it is lucky. Luck wouldn't hurt these days. You married?”

“Recently divorced.”

Houlihan pointed to his necklace. “Third wife,” he confessed. “She's a trauma nurse, it works out much better. I come home three hours late saying I'm sorry but there was a traffic accident and it took us two hours to find the driver's arm, she just nods, tells me she was held late with a drive-by shooting, and dinner's on the table.”

“I see your point.”

“But I imagine with all the traveling you do, it's still rough. Nothing spells cop — or agent — like d-i-v-o-r-c-e.”

Quincy shrugged. The breakup of his marriage still bothered him. “Yeah, and then guys like Bundy are getting married and fathering children from death row. I'll never understand women.”

“Not that you're bitter.”

Quincy laughed reluctantly. “Not that I'm bitter,” he agreed.

“So, Agent, do you have any good news for me?”

“I have news,” Quincy said with a sigh. “But I don't think it's good.”

He led Houlihan over to the small working space he'd managed to claim. His laptop was already open and running. “Okay, so Beckett has a pattern.”

“You solved Beckett's pattern?”

“We did, and you're going to like this. We've been looking at numerology, astrology, lunar cycles. I had a friend of mine from the CIA — a decoder specialist — looking up longitudes and latitudes of crime scenes and trying to crack an encrypted message. Computers have been chewing away on this stuff, all because we know how clever Jim can be. And you want to know the answer? I'll show you the answer.”

Quincy turned his computer so Houlihan could see the screen.

“Shit,” the lieutenant said.

“Absolutely. Strictly grade-school stuff. You know how hard he must have been laughing over this in his prison cell? He's so clever, he makes stupid look good.”

Quincy shook his head. It was all there on the screen and he'd discovered it purely by accident. He'd been listing all the female victims in order in one column. Then he'd listed the crime scenes in order in the next column. He'd glanced at the column. If you took the first letter from each city and scrambled them, they read: Jim Beckett. The bastard had spelled his name in dead women.

“Help me out here, Agent. What does this mean?”

“It means there's method to his madness. It means his talk of discipline isn't completely smoke and mirrors. And, Lieutenant, it means he isn't done.”

“Sure he is, he spelled his name. No letters are missing.”

“These are the dead women, Lieutenant. His past work. Then he attacked his wife in Williamstown—”

“He didn't kill her.”

“Nope, he didn't. But he was sent to jail, and there he killed two prison guards. At MCI Cedar Junction in
Walpole
.”

Lieutenant Houlihan fell silent. Then, “
W
. He wanted the letter
W. Jim Beckett w
. What does that mean?”

“It means he has more to say. Maybe
Jim Beckett was
something or
Jim Beckett wants
something. I don't know. But there's a phrase in his head and he won't stop until he's gotten it out. He's not done, Houlihan. He's not done.”

“Lieutenant,” a voice called across the room. “I have Lieutenant Berttelli from Connecticut on the phone for you.”

Houlihan and Quincy exchanged glances. Houlihan took the call at a nearby table. It lasted just a few minutes.

“They found Shelly Zane. You coming?”

“Yes. What city?”

“Avon. Avon, Connecticut.”

Quincy added it to his column.

IT TOOK THREE hours to drive to the cheap roadside motel outside of Avon. The crime scene photographer had just finished up, and now the Connecticut task force officers were bagging the evidence. Two officers were trying to figure out how to move the queen-size bed, which was bolted to the floor. Finally they decided severing the bolts would disturb the crime scene too much, so they instructed a rookie to crawl beneath the bed and retrieve the victim's fingers.

When Quincy walked in, that was the first thing he saw — some rookie's butt sticking up from beneath the bed as he reached for Shelly Zane's fingers. Those were the games Beckett liked to play. He liked to mutilate his victim's hands and he liked to mess with cops. Somewhere right now Jim was probably driving down a highway and chuckling at the thought of some rookie on his hands and knees recovering bloody fingers and trying not to retch.

Quincy walked into the bathroom, where Shelly Zane's body lay splayed out on the cracked blue-tiled floor between the toilet and the bathtub. Her arms were over her head, her mutilated hands palm up, as if she were caught in the act of surrendering. A pair of nylons were tied so tightly around her neck, they'd almost disappeared into the flesh. Quincy had already spotted the empty package of Hanes Alive Support hose in the wastebasket. Bundy had bragged that they had superior tensile strength, making them the garrote of choice for ligature. Apparently Beckett had paid attention to that part of the Bundy interview notes.

Postmortem lividity was most pronounced in the head, above the ligature line, and in the arms and lower legs, indicating that she'd been hanged. Around the knotted nylons, ruptured blood vessels had turned her neck black and blue. Petechial hemorrhages had darkened the whites of her eyes bloodred.

The back of her head was thick with blood and gray matter. The walls bore the spray pattern. Beckett had strangled her to death, dropped her down, then beaten her with a blunt wooden instrument. Typical homicidal overkill.

Thirteen victims later, Beckett's rage was only growing worse.

Shelly Zane's body was already outlined with chalk, unusual for this early in the evidence-gathering process. Behind him, Lieutenant Berttelli was raking a young officer over the coals for it. Probably the officer who'd arrived on the scene first.

“What the fuck were you thinkin'?” the lieutenant was screaming. “Didn't they reach you to
never
mess with the crime scene until the photos are taken? What am I supposed to tell the DA now? I got a bunch of fucking photos of a fucking outlined corpse that no fucking judge is gonna admit as evidence.”

“I swear, I didn't do it—”

“Well, it wasn't the fucking chalk fairy.”

“Beckett,” Quincy said calmly. Lieutenant Berttelli shut up long enough to pay attention. “Beckett knows the rules of evidence,” Quincy continued. “And he likes to mess with our minds.”

Quincy's gaze came to rest on the note pinned to Shelly Zane's stomach.

“The officers left it for you,” Lieutenant Houlihan supplied.

The note had his name on it. It said in simple block letters: SHE WAS NO LONGER OF USE TO ME.

Quincy rose. “He's on the move.”

“You think he's going after Tess?”

“Yes.”

“We should call and warn her.”

Quincy eyed him sharply. “I thought you didn't know where she was.”

Lieutenant Houlihan shifted. “I don't personally know where she is, but I know who does.”

“And you would contact this person and he would contact her?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Quincy nodded. “Lieutenant Houlihan, absolutely, positively, do
not
do that.”

“What?”

He gestured at the note, and for the first time Houlihan caught the anger simmering in his eyes. “Don't you recognize those words? Do you think it's mere coincidence that he's using the same phrase I used in the briefing one week ago?”

Houlihan blanched. “Holy shit.”

“Do you see now how much he's toying with us? That note is a lie, Lieutenant. Because Shelly Zane is still useful to him. You react to her murder. You break the silence, you contact the person, who contacts Tess—”

“Which is exactly what he's waiting for us to do. He's watching us, hiding wherever the hell he hides. The minute we break silence, he'll have her. Holy shit.”

Houlihan looked as if he'd gained ten years in ten seconds. Quincy figured he looked the same.

“Tess was right to go out on her own. We are absolutely, positively, dangerous to her. Beckett's too close for us to see, he hides in our wake. And he's not going to stop until he finds her. He's got his message in mind, but his ultimate target, his ultimate goal, is killing Tess.”

Houlihan looked at the blond corpse on the bathroom floor. He stared at the note piercing her skin. “God, I hate this job.”

“Me too, Lieutenant. Me too.”

THE YOUNG, SOMBER-FACED man walked into task force headquarters, went straight to the officer on duty, and flashed his badge. “Detective Beaumont,” he introduced himself. “I'm from Bristol County and I have an urgent message for Lieutenant Houlihan.”

“I'm sorry, Detective, but Lieutenant Houlihan is currently unavailable.”

“Officer, you don't understand. This is urgent, I mean
urgent
. I just drove up forty minutes from Bristol to make sure Houlihan gets the news. I need to speak with him.”

The officer wavered. Detective Beaumont leaned forward.

“Please. We think we may know where Jim Beckett is. I have to get word to Tess Williams or Lieutenant Difford immediately. Help me out here, Officer. Speed matters.”

She caved in with a sigh. “See that man standing over there? That's Sergeant Wilcox. He's in charge of the safe house. He can probably help you.”

“Sergeant Wilcox?”

“Yes, that's him.”

“Thank you, Officer. You've been very helpful.”

EDITH SMOOTHED A hand over her old blue flannel shirt and tried not to shift too much on the front porch. Last night she'd received a call from Martha, stating that she would arrive first thing this morning — the poor woman had been driving all the way up from Florida over the last few days. That was Martha for you. At sixty years of age, the woman was as proud and independent as they came. She'd moved into the neighborhood only a few years earlier, but the first evening she'd knocked on Edith's door and offered a pint of scotch. The two women had sat on Edith's patio, opened the fifty-year-old bottle, discovered a mutual love of cigars, and spent two hours agreeing that there hadn't been a decent president since Eisenhower.

Edith appreciated such relationships. She was too old for foo-fooing or fussiness. Most women her age started off talking about Jell-O salad and soon fled from the premises when Edith stared them straight in the eye and declared, “Who the hell cares about Jell-O? It's the rapid proliferation of assault weapons that keeps me awake at night.”

She didn't want platitudes or shoulder-shrugging. Everyone should say what they wanted. It saved time.

Martha spoke tersely. At times she could be imperious, but Edith figured that's what came from living your whole life head and shoulders above the rest. Martha was tall, and that was an understatement. Of Swedish descent, she had her father's impressive height and shoulders, though neither was so attractive on a woman.

Most men were too intimidated to come anywhere near a woman of Martha's impressive bulk, but apparently she'd met an equally impressive Swede in her youth and before he'd died, they'd had one sizable blond son. Edith had never met the son. From the few things Martha had casually mentioned, he was a salesman of some kind and moved a lot. Martha didn't see him often and generally didn't go on and on about him the way some mothers did.

Edith appreciated that. Having spent all her life childless, she got impatient with endless stories about whose son was being promoted to what position and whose daughter was giving birth to how many grandchildren. Good Lord, the world was already overpopulated and overextending the earth's resources. Didn't people give the matter any thought?

An old brown Cadillac turned down the street like an unwieldy boat. Martha had arrived. Minutes later Edith was pumping her neighbor's hand vigorously.

“Lord, Florida was good for you!” Martha's faded blond hair had lightened to a snowy white, which looked natural with her sun-darkened skin. It had been years since they'd last seen each other, but after one glance Edith could tell that Martha was Martha. She still had the same startling blue eyes and smooth complexion; Swedes aged so nicely. Martha's taste in clothes hadn't changed either. Today she sported a huge pair of brown polyester pants and a man's oversize red flannel shirt. A wide-brimmed straw hat perched precariously on her head, smashed there at the last minute.

Martha patted her generous waistline. “The food was too good,” she drawled huskily, her voice still carrying a hint of Swedish mountains. “But the weather was too hot. I missed snow.”

Edith shook her hand again. “It's good to have you back,” she repeated. And it was good. She tried to pretend she didn't see things. She tried to pretend she didn't feel things. But the air in their community was different these days. Edith didn't like it.

And more and more often Edith found herself staring next door and thinking that now was not a good time to live so close to an empty home.

“Let me help with your luggage,” Edith volunteered, already moving toward the trunk and shaking away the shivers creeping up her spine. She had no use for “feelings” or “visions.” A person couldn't act on a feeling. “You travel light.”

“At my age, who needs things?” Martha pulled out two suitcases. “And the house?

“Just the same as you left it.” Edith had agreed to take care of the house when Martha had announced she was going to visit Florida for a spell and try her hand at golf. Edith had a key to the place and gave it the once-over every month. Martha called every few months to ask about the house, though generally the discussion turned quickly to politics. Martha didn't like Clinton. Edith couldn't stand Newt. They both enjoyed the conversations immensely.