The Blue Hour

Twelve

It angered her to pose for a rapist but she knew Hess was right: if Izma got interested he might talk to impress her.

Hess talked to the manager while Merci stood in the lobby and read the LA PALOMA HOTEL RULES sign:

“Three-o-seven,” said Hess.

“How come I haven’t seen this creep’s name on the SONAR lists?”

“He’s not considered high risk.”

“A low-risk rape-kidnapper.”

“That’s what they say.”

They took the stairs to the third floor and walked down the hall. Merci touched the gun that was snugged against her ribs the way a Catholic might touch a medallion of St. Christopher. It was for luck and for something more than luck: it was for peace. Her last qualifier was her best in ten years, putting her fifteenth overall in a big department that had a lot of good shots.

Mercy had drawn down only once in her life and didn’t have to fire, but she was steady on target in a Weaver stance and would have hit him clean if she’d pulled. She liked what she’d said to the creep, something unrehearsed, something that just came out and worked real well, at least on this guy: Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole?

That had done it. Luck. Peace. The nine.

Before they got to the door Hess said, “Let me lead it. I know a little about him.”

“Just stand there and look my best?”

Hess stopped outside 307 and turned to her. “It would be better if you sat. He liked them small and helpless.”

“I’m five-eleven.”

“He’s six-ten.”

When Ed Izma opened the door Merci’s heart gave a startled flutter, then settled uncomfortably. Part of the reason was the size of the man, his head coming almost to the top of the seven-foot door frame. She leaned back reflexively to look up at him. She could feel the willingness of her right hand to move up under her coat, so she made a point to keep it at her side.

He was not an ugly man at all, in fact his face had an economy of line that was interesting, and his eyes were a placid and unthreatening gray. He was smiling and his teeth were large and even. Merci thought his head looked small.

“Sorry to upset you,” he said. “But nice to meet you. I’m Ed.”

He offered his hand. Merci took it and understood instantly that he had her now, could easily force her any direction he wanted, or snap her into the room and right out the third-story window if he wanted. It seemed an awful long way to his eyes or balls, and she doubted she had the speed and strength to damage them.

“Sergeant Rayborn, OCSD.”

He smiled down on her and let her hand go. His eyes had light in them. “You know, I haven’t committed one serious crime in the last thirty-five years, Hess. In fact, I’ve only committed one serious crime in my entire life.”

“It was kind of a whopper.”

Merci, in the center of the room now, turning to her left, saw Ed Izma’s gaze bearing down on her. Hess had told her Izma raped his victim a dozen times in the two days he had her. The cold of the freezer had actually helped keep her alive; that and Izma constantly putting her in and yanking her right back out for various reasons. She’d had the luck to be put in an old freezer with bad wiring, a poorly fitting top and a shot gasket. She’d needed a blood transfusion when they got her to the hospital.

“By today’s standards? I don’t think so. I never took another life.”

“One that we know about, anyway,” said Hess.

Merci was suddenly aware of multiple facts: hot room, thick air, useless air freshener, a fen oscillating to her right; Hess and Izma to her left, five hundred plus pounds of antagonistic male bulk. There was a large bed that took up most of the room. It was made. She felt like she was looking at things through a hot fog. Dizzying. Another room behind: bath and bedroom but too small for the bed? She was aware of being stared at. Didn’t the room smell like air freshener and semen? Where was the real air in here, anyway?

“Something to drink, Merci?”

“Water. Ice if you have it.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have either.”

“What do you have?”

“Nothing, actually.”

“Thanks anyway, shitbird.”

“I really dislike foul language from a woman.”

“She doesn’t care what you like, Ed. She doesn’t want to date you.”

Merci, breathing deeply and letting the anger clear her head, caught the flash of meanness and pride in Ed Izma’s gray eyes.

“Something like that, though — right, Hess? A little temptation?”

“She’s my partner.”

“You’re a lucky man, then. Sit. Please. I wiped these chairs off just for you.”

The chairs in question were two white plastic patio chairs. Merci looked hard at the seat, wondering what the giant had had to wipe off.

Izma lumbered into the other room and she heard the suck of air and gasket, then water running. Tricky bastard, she thought. He wore a white singlet and a pair of very tight shorts, a swimsuit probably, that made him seem even bigger than he was. The swimsuit was yellow with white piping. His legs were trunklike and pale and mostly smooth, with an occasional patch of very dark hair. His feet looked enormous. He wore the kind of cheap rubber thongs that click when they hit the bottom of a heel.

Merci felt the hair on her neck rise.

Luck. Peace. The nine.

She took a deep breath, then another.

Hess was seated well away from her but close to the huge bed that sat against the wall. He was looking at the bed. His legs were crossed and his hands were folded over one knee, and Merci saw him for the first time as a calm and strong man, a man you wouldn’t want to mess with, and she was happy to see him this way. He looked at her but said nothing and his eyes asked the same of her.

She felt trapped in the dismal room and her palms were still damp but she could feel her reason coming back. Hess’s level stare helped. She nodded, gazed around. There were indentations on the carpet at the midway point along each wall. They looked to Merci about twenty by twenty inches, the size a TV set might make, or a small nightstand, or a file cabinet. They were a darker shade of yellow than the carpet around them — no sun on them.

What had been there, and why had Izma moved them?

The light diminished as a body darkened the doorway and moved toward her with a glass of ice water.

“Just kidding,” he said.

“You’re a crack-up.” She took the glass.

He chuckled quietly and moved away. He sat at the foot of his bed.

Then he arched his back and hiked up his feet and walked himself backward across the bedspread on feet and hands. His legs were spread and his hips raised high. His genitals slopped out from behind the mesh liner of his bathing suit, and he smiled at her over his groin — a bloated, four-legged, upside-down spider dragging melons across a web.

It only took about three seconds. It was the single most vulgar thing Merci Rayborn had witnessed in her thirty-four years. She had no idea if Hess saw it because she refused to look anywhere but back into Ed Izma’s happy gray eyes.

“Now,” he said. “What can I do for law enforcement?”

He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress with the pillows behind his back and his back against the wall. His hands were in his lap and Merci could see that he could move his trunks aside and flash her whenever he wanted.

She looked to Hess in appeal. He was already looking at her, with a bland, admonishing expression on his face.

Up both of yours, she thought.

“We’ve got a guy who’s taken two women, Ed. He’s got them somewhere — home on ice, preserved in a storage unit — we’re not sure where.”

Izma’s head angled to Hess. “Preserved how?”

“We don’t know that yet, either. But we found chemical.”

“The Ortega Highway women. They were nice-looking babes, from the TV pictures.”

“Nice women, Ed.”

Izma said nothing. Merci watched his small still head and wondered what was arcing between the poles of his brain. Then he was looking at her. She could see his hands doing something down in his lap but she wouldn’t offer him the satisfaction of discovering what.

“Ed, put your hands to your side.”

She had never heard this tone of voice from Hess. There was a threat in it and it was a threat that she would have taken seriously. But it was calm. Izma was staring at him.

“But I’m not—”

“—Hands at your side or I’ll hurt you.”

The big arms flopped to the bed.

“There. There you go.”

The giant sighed and his head pivoted and he gave Merci a look of contempt.

“Keep them there, Izma,” said Hess, his voice still flat with latent violence. Merci wished she could get a tone like that, although, Hey Jack, you gonna be just another dead asshole? had worked just fine.

“So, Ed,” Hess continued, “we got to thinking about this guy out in Ortega. He seems to like women, like you did. He’s keeping them with him, like you did. He’s probably making sure they’re in good shape, like you tried to. So I thought to myself: Ed Izma might be able to tell us something about him. Ed’s a bright guy, tested in at just under genius. Maybe he understands this guy, can help us understand him too.”

Izma sighed and seemed to relax. His hands moved from the mattress onto his lap again. He looked down at them, then put them back on the bedspread. He looked at Merci, then to Hess.

“The difference is, he’s not man enough to deal with them alive. Like I did. I always wanted Lorraine to be alive. I wanted Lorraine alive and happy. But I needed her in every sexual way, constantly. I was quite a virile young man back then.”

“She had come to your door selling... what was it?”

“Cutlery. TrimCo. I’m Lorraine Dulak with TrimCo? is what she said. And sometimes, well, everything just comes together for a man. Inside a man. You know what I mean. I had to invite her in. The DA didn’t believe I could truly love a woman after knowing her less than two minutes. I disagree. I mean look at what happened. You don’t do something like that to a woman you don’t love.”

Merci looked down and she wondered again what had left the square dents in the carpet, and why Ed Izma had removed them from her view. She looked at these things and knew the whole time that Izma was looking at her. She disliked being held captive in someone else’s thoughts, someone this close and this hateful. It was like being fucked by his imagination.

Hess’s voice seemed to rescue her. “Okay. This guy isn’t man enough to deal with them alive. I think you’re right. But now what?”

“He wants them lifelike. So, maybe a freezer. Not parts, though. Whole. A guy who would cut a woman into parts to freeze her isn’t a real man at all.”

“Why keep them? Why not just use them and let them go?”

“Because that would be just like letting them run away. This is about love, Hess, not just sex. He really loves them. That’s why he wants to be with them. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you. You don’t just discard it. I mean, when you get right down to it, us special types are awfully sentimental.”

Merci felt her throat tighten and her stomach shift. “Especially vile and disgusting, is what you are,” she said.

“You could have her de-barked.”

Hess’s lethal voice again. “Look at me, Izma. Not the woman. What’s he looking for in them? Why take one but let another go?”

“It’s just his needs. They’re different for all of us, what makes things come together for us. I noticed the faces on the TV. They’re both very beautiful women.”

“But what else, Ed? What’s he see that makes things come together for him?”

“Well, they were both extremely sophisticated, you could tell. They had intelligent faces. Now to me, when I see a woman that intelligent and educated, with that kind of look on her face, I want to smash it. I prefer humble women. I like women who work with their hands. I like no-frills women, but they’ve got to be pretty. Blue collar. Peasant stock. Like Lorraine. Or Merci.”

She returned Ed Izma’s stare.

Merci saw the giant’s pelvis start to move. His hands were still on the bed. His head was small and distant, like a remote controller left on top of the set.

Hess stood. “I’m going to show her what’s in your closet, Ed.”

“Don’t touch, please.”

Merci felt the blood rush from her head as she stood. “Keep your balls in your shorts, pinhead. I’ll be right back.”

She followed Hess into the back room.

Hess gestured toward the open closet. At first Merci was startled, then it made some kind of sense, then she was just chilled. There were five of them in there, standing along the wall of the closet, looking at her.

“These are what made the carpet impressions you were looking at. He had some of these sweethearts back when he took Lorraine Dulak.”

Four were mannequins dressed like tradeswomen — construction worker, a Post Office employee, a mechanic or plumber, a cop. The fifth wore a smart little skirt and had a head of luxuriant black hair that suggested to Merci her own. This last one held a card in her hand. Merci leaned in and read it: Lorraine Dulak, TrimCo. The mannequin bases were square.

“I should have puked when I first got here, gotten it over with.”

“I’m sure he does the hair and makeup himself. Probably changes them around, buys different clothes. I don’t know why he wanted to hide them from us. Maybe he thought I’d be envious. Or you’d be jealous. Or maybe he thought he was being a bad boy.”

She saw his small dry smile and shook her head. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Hess. I mean, what did he really tell us?”

“He doesn’t understand himself well enough to help us on purpose. But I thought we might see something in him that we could apply.”

“Well, did you?”

“I think the Purse Snatcher loved Janet Kane and Lael Jillson the same way Izma loved Lorraine. I think the Purse Snatcher is a collector. He’s collecting them like Izma does mannequins and pictures of mannequins. This is all about keeping your true love from running away from you.”

“It makes me want to vomit.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a lie. And I’m sick of creeps who try to justify what they do by calling it love.”

“It doesn’t matter what they call it. It’s only a lie to us. To guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher, it’s the truth.”

“Fuck guys like Izma and the Purse Snatcher. You spend an hour with this guy to find out that?”

“It was worth it. We’ve been here exactly thirty-two minutes. I learned something about our man and you got a chance to understand something you don’t understand yet.”

“Yeah? What.”

“That other people don’t think like you. So you have to think like them. They don’t feel like you. So you have to empathize. They don’t behave like you, so you have to get a feel for what they’re going to do next. That goes for creeps, so you can catch them, and everybody else, so you can get along with them.”

“And what if I just decide not to?”

“Then you won’t make sheriff by sixty.”

The rage hit her heart like a shot of speed. “Fifty-eight. And that’s not a joke to me.”

“I’m not joking. And you could handle that job, so long as you understood that the only person in the world who thinks like you is you. Being a good hunter isn’t about being in touch with your feelings, Rayborn. It’s about being in touch with everyone else’s. That’s how you find the people you need, no matter what you plan on doing to them. Creeps or husbands, you find them the same way.”

“I don’t want a husband. And you picked a helluva time for a lecture on feelings.”

“It was important.”

“I’m not convinced. Now, can we just get the hell out of this room? I’ve had enough. And if I spend another two minutes with that... gentleman out there who thinks and behaves differently than me, I’m going to draw my cheap Chinese Italian stiletto, cut off his tiny gonad-sized head and flush it down the nearest toilet. Can you understand me and my feelings now?”

He shut the closet door. “I don’t feel that great either.”