The Blue Hour

Twenty-Nine

“... I would say that the most drastic part of my treatment was the terrible feelings I experienced internally. It was explained to me that the hormone treatment would make me feel like I was constantly having premenstrual syndrome, but this description did not mean much to me because I was male. Am male. But it is a very bad feeling, as you know. Only in my case it lasted for three years instead of three days.”

“Constant or intermittent?”

Colesceau was still outside himself, looking down on the authoritatively seductive Merci Rayborn and his own rather hapless body. But he was having a good time talking to her, telling her about how the Depo-Provera murdered his sex drive and turned him into a peace-loving, nonsexual lamb of a man. His stimulation made him feel mentally sharp and physically lithe. It was like a spark being fanned.

“Three years seems very constant to me.”

The sergeant fostered confidence and energy in him and Colesceau was thankful for it. It surprised him. He wondered if he was changing.

Her dry, unloving voice again: “Did your imagination continue to work when you felt that way?”

“Regarding what?”

“Regarding things you’d like to do. Things you could do before and couldn’t do then? Could you picture things you’d like to do?”

Colesceau sighed deeply. He looked down at his own expression and thought it deserved some kind of award. He could be no more convincing than this. “For me, no. I lost my dreams along with my desire.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You would then win the bet. You cannot imagine what the death of that feeling is. The instinct to love and mate and extend the human race. Without it, you are nothing but a shell. Empty, like one of these eggs my mother decorates.”

“No sexual desire at all?”

“None.”

“Then how come you used your silver van to pin Ronnie Stevens’s car three nights back at the Main Place Mall?”

He was intrigued by this information. He felt his lips part and his face go slack. But from the outside, this had a positive effect: he looked bewildered and hapless. He looked innocent. And just a little bit insulted.

The neighbors started up their chanting again. He wished he could machine-gun every last one of them.

“I do not know Ronnie Stevens. I have never met him. I drive a red Datsun pickup truck from 1970. I haven’t been to the Main Place Mall in several months. Sergeant, remember one thing about me. About my behavior. This is it — never once did I deny my disease or my crimes of the past. I fully confessed to my acts. I am many things, Sergeant Rayborn, not all of them good. But one of the things I am, that I have never been able to change, is that I am honest. To a fault, perhaps.”

He watched her study him with her cold brown Doberman eyes. She looked dispassionate but unimpressed. It was the cop’s fundamental expression, he thought, and this Merci Rayborn looked like she was born with it on her face. He was sure now that she wore the holster strap unsnapped so she could get her gun quick and shoot fast.

“Okay, honest shitbird. Tell me where you were on Saturday night.”

“I was right here, as I explained earlier. I was even on TV, I believe. I’m sure the stations must keep video records.”

Hess went back down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the garage. It was nice to be able to get into the garage from inside the house, and Hess wished his apartment at 15th had the same feature. He turned on a light and looked at the decrepit little pickup truck. It was so old they were called Datsuns back then. Seventy, maybe, seventy-two? The doors were unlocked and the windows down. The registration and insurance were current. The odometer said 00000. The tires were in good shape and matched. Hess looked at the bed: lightly rusted and dented, no chemical or solvent stains. The glove box had the usual: tire pressure gauge, maps, pencils, cassette tapes. Hess pulled out three and read the titles: Eternal Health Through Yoga, by Sri Ram-Hara;TravelAudio #35 — Destination Romania; Deadwood, a novel by Pete Dexter.

Hess looked at the picture on the novel cassette: a long-haired, mustachioed gunslinger he recognized as Wild Bill Hickok.

... or that guy Paul Newman played in Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

Wrong Bill, right hair, thought Hess. He sat down in the passenger’s side and put back the tapes. He examined the headrest of the driver’s seat for hair. Same with the floorboards and the transmission hump. Nothing.

Outside the crowd started up again:

Hess was sure there were no crimes against children in Colesceau’s jacket, but told himself to check again. He was a little surprised by the volume of the chant, the way the combined voices reverberated through the thin plywood of the garage door. The voice of fear, he thought. The papers said the vigil had been twenty-four hours a day for four days now, and that the neighbors had vowed to continue it until Colesceau got into his miserable little Datsun and left forever. The mob had set its own noise curfew at 9 P.M. so as not to interfere with work, school and sleep. Hess also read the people were driving in from other cities of the county to join the protest and that CNB had cameras set up round the clock, going to them live when Colesceau was visible or during slow periods during the news day.

He got out of the truck and looked around the garage. It was small, with two cabinets against the wall, which contained nothing of interest to him. No Deer Sleigh’R, no gambrels or ropes, no big game cleaning implements, no Porti-Boy embalming machines or fluids. No blond wigs made of genuine human hair. No canning jars with missing lids. No chloroform. Clean, Hess thought. If he does it, he doesn’t do it here.

Merci joined Hess in the small downstairs bathroom. She leaned against the sink, and could see Colesceau still sitting in his living room. She couldn’t tell by Hess’s look whether he’d scored big, small or not at all. His eyes sparkled in the bright bathroom lights and she wondered what he was thinking.

“No silver van with mismatched tires, I take it.”

“Not one.”

“Well?”

“He’d take them somewhere else.”

“He says the crowd outside saw him here at least twice on Saturday night, when Ronnie got it. Says he was at the movies on the Kane date, and may have a ticket stub to corroborate. The Jillson night, he was having dinner here, with his — get this — his mom.”

“He’s got a Tuesday night ticket stub upstairs. One of several.”

“It doesn’t mean much.”

“I know that.”

“Did he say anything about the second bedroom?”

“It’s for his beloved mother, of course. She comes to dinner often and stays over.”

Hess nodded and the vertical lines between his eyes deepened.

“I vote no, Hess. Much as I’d like to pinch his vicious little head right this instant. He’s supposed to be chemically castrated — until Wednesday, anyway. He’s weird. He raped helpless old women, not strong young ones. He’s got a spare bedroom for his mommy. Everything physical about him is wrong except for those eyes that Kamala dingbat Petersen fell in love with. She saw his face on TV, for Chrissakes. Or was it a dream? Nobody’s said anything about our golden-haired boy talking with an accent — not LaLonde, not the Arnie’s guy, nobody. This place is clean. He sure as hell didn’t walk in and out of here Saturday night without the lynch mob seeing him — that’s for sure. I’d love to pop him for something — anything — but I think we ought to keep turning over rocks for our main man. Let’s put a loose surveillance on this nutcase and forget about him. Give him line. If he swims anywhere pertinent we’ll yank him aboard and see what he’s been nibbling.”

“All right.”

She looked into Hess’s eyes in the hard light. The fact that she couldn’t determine his thoughts irritated her because he was the only person whose thoughts she wanted to determine.

“Do you agree?” she asked.

“You’re the boss.”

“Goddamnit, that’s not what I asked.”

“I agree. But I get a bad feeling here.”

Merci tried to think it through. What she kept seeing was an elaborate waste of precious time. One thing about Hess was sometimes he acted like they had all the time in the world. When, theoretically, he had less than most people.

She said, “My fear is, he speeds up, now that he’s got the hang of it. And while we’re firing down on this nutless, teary-eyed little creep, the real guy’s out there looking for number four. I think we’d be better off with ten lady cops, dressed to kill, hair up, planted at ten malls.”

“That’s a real possibility, Merci.”

She looked out at the back of Colesceau’s head. He sat motionless where she had left him. She could see the shine of his scalp below the thinning black hair.

“Hess, I mean, look at that guy. Look at the back of his head. He’s crawling with progesterone and he’s got the muscle tone of a bean bag. He’s beyond pathetic and disgusting. He’s like a bug that’s already been stepped on.”

“There is that about him.”

“I think we’re after someone with a higher octane rating.”

“There’s something about him I don’t get.”

“Maybe you should be thankful for that. Look, if he so much as shows his face, those people start blowing gaskets. It’s about time we got some help from the spoiled middle-class fatheads we serve and protect.”

“Well said.”

Outside, several of the protesting neighbors said they saw Colesceau not once but twice on Saturday night, Ronnie Stevens’s last. They concurred that Colesceau had come out once around six and once later — around nine or nine-thirty. The rest of the time he watched TV. They described what he said to them and what he was wearing, and Hess took notes. He discovered that before Colesceau’s cover was blown, none of these neighbors paid him much attention at all. They’d see the little faded truck come and go, and that was about it.

One of the organizers was a woman named Trudy Powers, whom Hess remembered from a newspaper article. She said that she received from the “damaged man” a hollow decorated egg — a promise of his good behavior until finding a more suitable place to live. She said she believed he was looking for a new apartment because he had promised her he would. Trudy Powers implied an understanding and relationship with Colesceau that she seemed proud — or somehow obligated — to not explain. Hess wondered about her. She had enough qualities in common with Lael Jillson and Janet Kane to make him genuinely uneasy. But how could he tell her that? What he did do was look her straight in the eye and tell her to be careful. She seemed to pity him, but Hess couldn’t tell if it was because of what he said or how he looked.

A young man with a camera case hanging from his shoulder said he saw Colesceau not twice but several times Saturday night because he crept up close and looked through a crack in the blinds. He did this around seven-fifteen, eight-thirty, and again around ten-thirty, before he left for home. Colesceau was watching TV. The neighbor said it was the news, then a police drama, then a movie.

Hess asked if Colesceau saw him peering in.

“No. The TV in there feces the street, so all I saw was the back of his head.”

“How come you kept checking in on him?”

The young man shrugged and looked away. “I took some pictures. But the film’s still in the camera.”

“I want that film,” Hess said.

“I thought you might. Three left.” He unslung the case, took out the camera and shot one picture of Hess and one of Merci and one of them together. He rewound the film and smiled with an odd expression of pride as he handed it over to Hess.

“I’m glad to help. Can I have them back when you’re done?”

Hess got his name, address and phone number.

Rick Hjorth of Fullerton, ten miles north.

The County News Bureau reporter assigned to “Rape Watch, Irvine,” was a tense blonde who fell into step with them and introduced herself as Lauren Diamond. Her video shooter trailed behind with a heavy-looking rig over his shoulder. She proffered a microphone to Hess, who kept walking. Hess remembered Merci’s early orders to leave all public relations to her. Merci didn’t break stride either.

“Why were you inside with convicted rapist Matamoros Colesceau?” Lauren asked Hess.

“No comment,” said Merci.

Still to Hess: “You’re heading up the Purse Snatcher investigation. Any connection to the Purse Snatcher?”

“I’m heading up the Purse Snatcher investigation, lady, and it’s still no comment.”

Hess shook his head, mostly to himself. He saw the shooter getting all this down, wondered if Merci was even aware of him.

“Then what is it in connection with?”

Hess could feel the heat emanating from right beside him. It was like walking next to a solar panel. She was about to speak but he beat her to it.

“Routine parole stuff, Lauren,” said Hess. “That’s all.”

“Is Colesceau a suspect?”

Hess fixed a look on her, hooked his thumb back toward the crowd. “Pretty good alibi.”

“Miss Rayborn, can you tell us something about your sexual harassment suit?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Lieutenant Kemp has denied all the charges.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Five other female deputies have come forward since you did. Phil Kemp is a twenty-five-year employee of the department with a clean record. Why all of this, so suddenly?”

Merci whirled and pressed her face into that of Lauren Diamond. “Buzz off, lady.”

Lauren Diamond slowed, then stopped, but the shooter kept up behind them. Hess turned, gave him a little wave, tried to make things look casual, and kept going. Merci was half a step ahead of him now as they headed toward the car.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Do not tell me I should have felt what she was feeling, or thought what she was thinking.”

“Oh hell, no. She’s just an ambitious young reporter who might be happy to help you someday. It would have taken about thirty seconds of your time to be civil.”

“So I screwed up again.”

“Why be a bitch all the time?”

“I’ll get the hang of good manners sooner or later.”

“I’m starting to think you don’t want to.”

“Now you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

When they got into the car Merci exhaled and looked at Hess.

“I’ll tell you something, partner — bringing that suit was the dumbest goddamned thing I’ve ever done in my life. How can I get out of it now, after I’ve started all this?”