4th of July

Chapter 55

BOB GOT UP AND walked over to a Mr. Coffee sitting on a filing cabinet. He poured us each a cup of coffee.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. “I don’t like Starbucks prices.” He smiled over at me. “Or that whole yuppie-on-the-go scene.”

Over tepid coffee with powdered milk, I told Bob about my first homicide case.

“We found him in a squalid hotel in the Mission District. I’d seen corpses before, but I was unprepared for this, Bob. He was young—somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one—and when I walked into the room I found him lying spread-eagled on his back, decomposing in a congealed pool of his own blood. Flies were all over him. A shimmering blanket of flies.”

My throat closed up as the image came flooding back; it was as clear as if I were standing in that hotel room right now, thinking, Oh, God, get me out of here. I sipped at the terrible coffee until I could speak again.

“He was wearing only two items of clothing: an ordinary Hanes tube sock, which was identical to hundreds of thousands that were sold all across the country that year, and a T-shirt from the Distillery. You know the place?”

Bob nodded. “I’ll bet every tourist passing through Half Moon Bay since 1930 has eaten there.”

“Yeah. Hell of a clue.”

“How did he die?”

“Throat slashed with a knife. And there were stripes, like lash marks, across his buttocks. Sound familiar?”

Bob nodded again. He was listening intently, so I continued. I told him that we’d canvassed the city and Half Moon Bay for weeks.

“No one knew the victim, Bob. His prints weren’t on file, and the room he died in was so dirty, it was a classic case of instant cross-contamination. We were utterly clueless.

“No one ever came forward to claim the body. It’s not so uncommon; we already had twenty-three unclaimed John Does that year. But I still remember the innocence of his young face. He had blue eyes,” I said. “Light red hair. And now, all these years later, more murders with the same signature.”

“You know what feels really weird, Lindsay? To think that this killer could be someone who lives in this town —”

The phone rang, cutting Bob off midsentence.

“Robert Hinton,” he said.

In the next instant, the color drained from his face. There was silence, punctuated by Bob saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Then he said, “Thanks for letting me know,” and hung up.

“A friend of mine who works at the Gazette,” he explained. “Ben O’Malley’s body was found by some kids hiking in the woods.”