Paint It Black

Chapter Thirty-seven

He stared at their faces.

They stared back, silent images tacked on a bulletin board. Walter Tatum. Anthony Quick. Harold Childers. Roscoe Webb.

Louis walked slowly to the desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out the stack of photos Captain Lynch had given him. He rifled through them until he found a photo of Tyrone Heller. It was blurry, and he was standing behind Woody, but it was all he had.

He walked back to the board and tacked it next to Roscoe Webb’s photo. Now there were eight. Emily Farentino didn’t fit but she was still number nine.

Louis felt himself tighten but he refused to turn away from the board. His eyes moved over the maps, the color-coded cards, the pushpins and faces, his mind straining to find that one piece, that single strand, that might give them a break.

The door opened and Louis turned. Wainwright came in, his face drawn, his eyes vacant. No one had gotten much sleep in the last two days, but Wainwright looked like he had aged ten years overnight.

“I thought you were out there with the rest of them,” Wainwright said. He went to the coffee urn and poured a cup.

“I thought maybe I could do more here.” Louis hesitated. “Anything? Any word?”

Wainwright shook his head. He slumped into a chair at the table.

“We’ll find her, Dan,” Louis said. He said it, but he wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

Wainwright didn’t look up. Louis couldn’t stand seeing the guilt in Wainwright’s eyes. He turned back to the board.

“Tyrone Heller doesn’t fit,” Louis said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Wainwright asked.

“Farentino’s profile. He doesn’t fit.” Louis pointed to one of the cards. “Mayo knows this kid Heller. He worked with him on the same boat for almost a year. Farentino says this guy only kills strangers.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Wainwright said flatly. “Gunther knew their routine, knew they went to dinner at the Dockside. He knew exactly where to find Heller.”

Louis concentrated again on the victims’ photographs. They began to mutate into brown blurs. He rubbed his gritty eyes.

“Dan, you have the photos of the other cases?” Louis asked.

Wainwright sifted through a folder and handed the three photos to Louis. They were color copies of autopsy photos. Louis tacked them up next to the others, in the order of their abductions. He took a step back and looked at them.

Nothing. Nothing was coming.

His eyes moved from the first-Barnegat Light, New Jersey-to the last-Roscoe Webb. His eyes lingered on the blurry snapshot of Tyrone Heller. Heller was. . young, younger than the others. That didn’t fit either.

He went back to the New Jersey and Fort Lauderdale files, snatched them up, and returned to the board. He wrote the victims’ ages on each photo. The man in New Jersey was fifty-five; the two in Fort Lauderdale were fifty and forty-eight. Tatum was forty-five, Quick was forty, Harry Childers was forty-eight, and Tyrone Heller was twenty-five.

They were getting younger.

But there was something else, something right there in front of him that he wasn’t seeing.

Then, suddenly, he saw it.

The skin colors. The Barnegat Light victim’s skin was ink black. The Coral Springs, Florida, man was maybe a shade lighter. The man from Lauderdale Lakes looked mahogany-toned. Tatum’s skin was the color of maple syrup. Quick was cinnamon-skinned. Harold Childers was tawny. Roscoe Webb was a medium tan. And Heller. .

Louis stared at Heller’s picture. He was as light as he himself was.

“They’re getting lighter,” Louis said quietly.

“What?” Wainwright said.

“The victims,” Louis said. “Their skin colors are getting lighter.”

Wainwright eyed the board over the rim of the cup. “So?”

“It means something.”

“What?”

Louis tried to get his brain in gear. He was tired; it was hard.

Wainwright came up behind him. “I don’t see what it could mean,” he said, but he was studying the faces carefully.

“I think I do,” Louis said. “The killer is aware of skin color, of the importance that people put on shades of skin color. The lighter the skin, the more prized it is.”

Wainwright was looking at Louis now. But Louis was staring at the faces on the bulletin board.

“Black people with lighter skin get preferential treatment,” Louis said quietly. “The lighter the skin, the less threatening the person is to the white power structure.”

Louis paused, his eyes locking on Tyrone Heller’s tawny skin. “We do it, too. To ourselves. No darker than a brown paper bag,” he said softly. “That’s the ideal.”

Louis turned away from the bulletin board. He went to the table, dropping into a chair, rubbing his tired eyes.

“You think the killer picks these men based on the exact shade their skin is?” Wainwright asked.

“Yes. It’s too big a coincidence.”

“But how many white men really notice shit like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. .” The thought was there, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t make sense of it. “Maybe he’s working toward someone who looks like the real object of his hatred.”

“A white man?”

Louis nodded.

“Then why involve the black guys at all? Why not just kill a white guy?” Wainwright said sharply. “Shit, this makes no sense. This guy is hung up on race one way or the other. It’s what drives him.”

Louis turned, his own frustration bubbling over. “Then explain the faces getting lighter. I’m telling you he knows exactly who he wants and in what order.”

Wainwright leaned on his desk and drew in a deep breath. The room was quiet except for the occasional spatter of radio traffic.

Finally, Wainwright spoke. “So you think his last victim will be white?”

Louis nodded.

“I don’t know, Louis. That sounds kind of farfetched.”

Louis looked at Wainwright tiredly. “Not if that white man is himself.”

Wainwright blinked. “Suicide?”

Louis didn’t answer.

“But what if he’s not on self-destruct?” Wainwright asked. “What if it’s some other white person? What if it’s Farentino?”

Louis stared at him. Jesus. He hadn’t thought of that.

Sleep was impossible.

Around six, Louis took out a squad car and headed to the wharf. He saw other cruisers-Sereno, Lee County, Fort Myers, they were all out, searching. The radio traffic was muted. Too quiet.

He went across the bridge and turned down Estero Boulevard. The street was almost empty, the tourists still asleep, the honky-tonk neon silent. The radio traffic had deteriorated to the occasional unit just checking in. The stretches of silence had grown longer.

He pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car. He walked to the beach and stood gazing out at the dark expanse of sand and water. The sky was a murky gray, that soft blanket of half-light that covered the earth just before dawn.

Quiet. Just the sweet lap of the waves curling gently against the shore and stretching endlessly into the darkness.

He walked slowly across the sand, stopping at the water’s edge.

He had grit behind his eyes, his neck and shoulder muscles throbbed. And his head. . his head pounded, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t even move now, couldn’t do anything that would make any difference.

His mind was gripped by images of what he might be doing to her. He couldn’t erase them, couldn’t change them.

It would almost be easier to be in her place, have some measure of control, no matter how small.

Oh Jesus, he hurt.

And he knew now what lay behind the emptiness in the eyes of June Childers, Anita Quick, and Roberta Tatum. He knew now what haunted Wainwright.

Dealing with what the evil leaves behind.

He tightened, against the sense of impotency and the vivid images that had been building all night in his head. He felt pain, as if his gut had been taken and twisted into a knot. He sank to his knees in the sand.

He felt a coolness on his knees and opened his eyes to see that the waves had crawled to his knees.

The waves retreated and came again, and he watched their rhythm numbly, finding a strange comfort in it. For a long time he didn’t move, lost in the cool, bleak grayness of the dawn.

From somewhere in the distance, he heard a voice. It was Wainwright. The radio in the cruiser. They were calling him.

He stood and trudged back to the car. He grabbed the portable and responded.

“Kincaid to Sereno One.”

Wainwright’s voice sliced through the silence. “They found her, Louis. She’s status four.”