The Blue Hour

Thirty

Hess lied to his partner then, excusing himself for an oncologist appointment. He was puzzled by this Colesceau, no matter what Merci thought, and he was going to ride that feeling for a couple more hours, before they headed up to Sacramento and the state Morticians’ Licensing Board. He was tiring of watching Rayborn start fights wherever she went. He felt like a nanny for the neighborhood bully.

First he went by Pratt Automotive and had a talk with Marvis Pratt, his wife, Lydia, and an employee named Garry Leonard. They told him Colesceau did his job okay, though Pratt didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. He hired guys like Colesceau because he thought people deserved a second chance, and because Holtz was a friend.

They showed him through the place — the front shop and office area, the high bay in back with the beautiful yellow and black Shelby Cobra that Hess just stood and stared at. It was the most beautiful car he ever seen.

“Four hundred fifty horse,” said Pratt.

“That’s a car and a half.”

“We’ve done a lot of restorations. They come here dogs and leave here dolls.”

“How much?”

“One eighty. Firm.”

“Colesceau ever drive a different vehicle to work here, not that old red Datsun?”

“No, just the truck.”

Hess looked at the expansive bay, the clean racks, the orderly tools, the rafters catching the late morning light through high windows. In dogs and out dolls, he thought. Paradise, for a car nut.

They went back to the office. “Does he call in sick, miss work, spend time on the phone?”

“No. He’s good about being here. It’s easy work. Mainly what he does is sits on that stool, helps some customers and wiggles his tits around every once in a while.”

“They hurt, Pratt,” said Lydia.

“Whatever. I gave him his walking papers. I can’t have a crowd demonstrating outside the place. Jesus, it’s hard enough to make a living anymore.”

Hess knew from LaLonde’s statement that “Bill” had computer printout sheets containing nine different car manufacturers’ specs on the alarm system frequencies. He noted the computer and monitor on the office desk, and a similar one behind the counter in the front store.

“The computers replace those old catalogs?”

Pratt said they did that, but lots more: he got daily updates, changes, recalls and corrections right from the factories. They’d get information on new models coming out, incentives going to dealers, even newsletters from different plants around the world.

Hess asked him to print out repair/replacement data on the 1998 Infiniti Q45 and 1996 BMW 525 antitheft systems. Lydia sat down and two minutes later Hess had eight pages of specs and exploded drawings.

“You can go on and on with this stuff,” she said.

“Colesceau know how to work the computer?”

“Sure. That’s part of his job,” said Lydia. She looked at Hess with a dark expression, then away. “I think it’s lousy what you guys did to him. Getting his neighbors all riled up for nothing. He’s a lamb, really. Mixed up, but a lamb.”

“I hope you’re right,” he answered mildly.

Hess then showed them the drawing of the Purse Snatcher and gave all three his work and pager numbers. Per usual, he got a home number from them, just in case. You never know.

In the office of Quail Creek Apartment Homes, the middle-aged and overweight supervisor, Art Ledbetter, told Hess that Colesceau had never complained or been the subject of a complaint until now. He assumed Colesceau paid his rent on time, but rent checks went to corporate up in Newport. Ledbetter did light security and scheduled maintenance work, took applications, fielded questions and complaints. But they had no choice but to evict. Thirty-day notice already served. What could you do with protesters camped out around the clock?

Hess stood and looked at a model of the complex, which hung from one wall. The aerial view was interesting. He saw that the complex was actually an enormous circle, and the quadrants of apartments were designed in perfect symmetry with each other. He noted the way that the developers were packing them in these days: each snaking row of units had a front facing one street and a front facing another, but shared a common rear wall. Thus, the illusion of privacy without real privacy at all.

“Ever see any unusual activity around his unit?”

“None at all. No complaints, like I said.”

“What about his hours? Come and go all the time, late at night, maybe?”

“I ride that little golf cart around ’til ten some nights. I’ve never seen him out and about at that hour. But, you know, one of the nice things here is you can use the remote, open your garage door and drive in without hardly disturbing anyone. Walk right into your unit from the garage. That’s the idea, keep things quiet, private.”

“Do you know most of the tenants?”

Ledbetter shook his head. “Some. There’s a batch of ghost people I never see. Maybe they work nights and sleep all day, never use the pool, I don’t know. Some fly in for business, stay a month, fly back out. But they pay rent every month, or corporate would serve them.”

“How about visitors to Colesceau’s?”

“His mother. And a couple — man and a woman. Twice, maybe. Not often.”

Hess asked him to describe them and he did: Holtz and Fontana, right down to Holtz’s Corrections Ford. Ledbetter was good with cars, like a lot of men are.

Hess looked down at the map of the complex that Ledbetter had given him. Colesceau’s was an end unit apparently no different than any other two-bedroom end unit.

“What about his immediate neighbor, to the left?”

“Nice young lady, works nights.”

“What about the unit behind his?”

“Old lady, never see her. One of the ghost people.”

“Ever seen a silver panel van at Colesceau’s?”

Ledbetter frowned. “Silver panel van. Well, yeah, a few months back I did see a silver van pulling out of the complex. One of those fancy conversion things with the running boards and the riser on top. But who knows what unit it came from. Driver could have been lost for all I know.”

Hess made his notes, gave Ledbetter a card and thanked him. “Would you mind giving me your home number, just in case?”

“Not a problem.”

Hess did a brief door-to-door after that, but six of the neighbors he called on were gone, and the other three had nothing of note to say about Matamoros Colesceau except that he should get the hell out of their city.

He got the Lifestyler’s address from the phone book — the closest wig shop to Colesceau. It was in a little shopping center by the freeway, between a community newspaper office and a walk-in clinic.

A young Chinese woman stepped up to greet him while an elderly woman who looked like her mother regarded him placidly from behind the counter. The walls were high, with long shelves full of white heads wearing all styles and colors of wigs.

Hess felt like a thousand faceless women were staring at him. He also felt the walls waver in and out just a little, like they were leaning in for a closer look.

He identified himself and gathered what he could about human hair wigs: they were available, typically 10 to 20 percent more expensive than synthetics, the upside was they looked good, the downside was that you had to shampoo, condition and set them just like you would your own hair — often.

He asked if they’d ever sold a long, blond, human hair wig to a man. The two women consulted in their native tongue, and the young one told Hess yes, several over the years. Sometimes, she said, men will buy for their wives. Sometimes for themselves. She exchanged glances with her mother and smiled very demurely at Hess.

The old woman stood and took up a long wooden pole with a metal V at the end. She shuffled along the wall behind the counter, stopped, reached and hooked a head off its platform. The hair was blond and wavy.

“Human hair,” the old woman said. “Eighty-nine. You try.”

“It’s not for me.”

“Okay. Sit. You try.”

The younger held open a little swinging door and Hess stepped behind the counter. He sat in the styling chair, facing a mirror surrounded by lights. The older woman displayed the wig for his inspection, then lifted it and snapped it over his head. Hess was surprised how tight it was. She snugged it into place, brought up a wide-toothed plastic brush and started picking the hairline locks down over Hess’s forehead. Thirty seconds later he looked like a signer of the Declaration.

He looked at the women behind him in the mirror in front of him.

“Good,” said the older. “Human hair. Eighty-nine.”

Somewhat amazingly to Hess, it was good. It looked like it could be his hair. If he just squinted a little and glanced at himself — as he did just now — he could believe this image in front of him was a man with long, wavy blond hair. Absurd, yes, but still... unified, credible.

He sat there for a moment in the wig, offering a deal with the younger: eighty-nine for the wig, copies of all receipts for blond human hair wigs sold to men for as far back as they had them, and a home phone number for each woman.

The old woman listened, then nodded and smiled cagily at Hess, who smiled and blushed.

“This isn’t for me,” he said.

Both women were smiling and nodding.

Old one: “Deal. Receipts come later.”

He used a pay phone to call Brighton’s direct number. The sheriff picked up himself.

“She wants an apology and she wants Kemp to stop,” said Hess. “She’s sorry she brought the suit.”

Brighton was silent for a moment. “Why couldn’t she tell me that herself?”

“She didn’t want to rat out a friend of yours. You’re her boss, Bright. She wanted to be a stand-up deputy.”

More silence. Then, “Thanks.”

Hess and Merci caught the one-fifty flight from Orange County to Sacramento. They rented a car at the airport and Hess drove them toward the city. The afternoon was bright and ferociously hot, with the rice fields wavering in the sunlight.

Hess felt light-headed and he watched the shimmering mirage of interstate before him with particular attention. A bird hit the windshield and he flinched. All it left was a clear patch of something wet and a ring of small gray feathers. Hess looked through it but didn’t look at it: part of him was still in Matamoros Colesceau’s apartment.

He used Merci’s cell phone to call Bart Young, the president of the Southern California Embalming Supply Company, again, hoping to pry loose the list of recent buyers. The pleasant sounding president was hesitant at first, then firm again in his decision not to give Hess the list. Hess could tell he felt bad.

He thanked him and hung up. “He’s close. Maybe if you called him back and said something about the victims, he’d cave in. He’s a decent sort, but he doesn’t want to betray his customers. Why don’t you try him? Get him to feel bad about the women? Men have a harder time saying no to women sometimes.”

Five minutes later Merci was castigating the man for his noncooperation and gutless mercantile behavior. Apparently he hung up because Merci pushed a button, cursed and slapped the mouthpiece back over the keypad.

“I’ve never once been able to sweet-talk anybody in my life,” she said. When Hess looked over she was actually scowling. Her hair was pulled back and her ears were red. “I’m the wrong one to get guilt or sympathy out of anybody. I made Mike cry once. And the way I look at it is, if he won’t cough up the names, then this embalming machine pusher’ll get a hotter place in hell for himself. It’s out of my hands. I wash ’em.”

Hess used the phone to run a records check on Rick Hjorth of Fullerton. He was intrigued that Hjorth was so eager to help. It was a fact of life that a high percentage of thrill killers liked to get close to the investigation of their crimes and Hess had detected something of morbid interest in the photographer’s attitude.

Hjorth came back clean.

Hess called Undersheriff Claycamp for an update on the panel vans: seventy-five done, nothing yet, another team ready for 5 P.M.

The Morticians’ Licensing Board was housed in a stately building near the capitol grounds. They were given an unused office, two chairs, a table and a pot of coffee. Two maintenance men wheeled in the file cabinets on dollies. Hess worked for a straight hour, then went to the men’s room and vomited. It was the twelfth time in the last three days, and Hess had no idea why he was counting. He brushed his teeth with a travel brush that had a small tube of toothpaste in the handle, purchased after his first round of chemo, just in case. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he saw shadows under his skin.

Three hours later they sat on the return flight, leafing again through the fifty-seven mugs they’d printed.

Bernal, Butkis, Carnahan... no Colesceau...

“The more I think about what he does, the more I think he’s off the grid,” said Hess. “He’s not a professional. Undertakers don’t even remove the things he’s removing.”

“Then why is he?”

“So they’ll last longer, is my guess.”

She looked at him. “But if he’s doing what we think he’s doing, he learned the skills somewhere.”

“I wish we could get a list of all the people who took mortuary science and flunked out. But junior colleges don’t keep records of who flunks, drops or fades out. They’re too big, too busy, too disorganized.”

Hess noted a woman across the aisle looking his way, then quickly somewhere eke.

“Well, dream on, Hess. I’m starting to think he just keeps them in the freezer, or down in the basement. Here, I’m going to try that supply guy again.”

Drascia, Dumont, Eberle, Eccle, Edmondson...

She pulled out the phone from the seat back in front of her and read the directions. Hess shook his head, blinked, tried to concentrate on copies of the mug shots. The Licensing Board had let them use a good-quality copier/enlarger, but the reproductions were one more step removed from reality. And when you figured a guy might be wearing a wig and fake mustaches it took the sharpness out of your eye. It could be just about any of them. The sky was the limit.

“Hi, Mr. Young, this is Sergeant Rayborn again, from the Orange County Sheriffs? Look, I really want to apologize for what I said earlier — I’m just really involved in this case, the sheriff is leaning on me hard, my partner’s screaming at me all the time, I’m at thirty-three thousand feet with no leg room and I’m just... frustrated.”

She looked at Hess with an exaggerated grin. She was nodding and holding up her free hand, yapping with her fingers and thumb.

“I know... I really do understand. It’s just that these women — well, he got another one Saturday night. She was nineteen years old and living with her mom and just a heck of a great gal from what I’ve gathered. Her name was Ronnie. I never met her. In fact, all I ever saw of her was a couple of pictures and a pile of her intestines and organs on the hood of her car... I’m serious, that’s what this guy’s doing. Plus, we’ve got two more assumed victims from a couple of years ago, possibly three. Uh-huh, yeah... well, sure, I can wait.”

Hess looked out the window. Below was a vivid grid of green and yellow stretching all the way to the tan hills in the east. Clouds whisked by, torn by the jet. He watched the engine housing vibrate.Colesceau came out of his apartment Saturday at six and nine, or nine-thirty. Gilliam said the heart in the purse stopped beating between 7 and 11 P.M. Indications are she was abducted after work. But what if he got her later? After the snooping photographer took his last shot? What if Hjorth or Gilliam are both off a half hour each way? That would give Colesceau an hour and a half to do what he did to Ronnie Stevens. Possible. Not probable... How would he get out of the apartment without anyone seeing?

No Pule... no Eichrod...

He closed his eyes and saw the layout of the place again: the living room, kitchen and downstairs bath; the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. Colesceau’s place was an end unit, so there were downstairs windows on the south wall, which was the kitchen. Ditto the west, which faced the street. Hess remembered the kitchen: a small cooking area and an alcove with a dinette in it, pushed up near the windows. Salt and pepper shakers on the dinette table, a stack of newspapers. He pictured the alcove and remembered green outside, with some color in it — bougainvillea maybe. Could you see the kitchen windows from the street, at night?

But how does he get the truck past the crowd without them knowing? It’s impossible. Then... another vehicle. Out of the apartment, on foot to another car... silver van, mismatched tires... no...

He made a note to canvas Colesceau’s neighborhood for the silver van, check Colesceau’s DMV records for a second vehicle registration, ditto his employers at Pratt Automotive — maybe they loaned him a vehicle to get him through the hard times. Also, get back to the apartment for a look at the south window by the kitchen, and talk to more of the neighbors. He wondered if there was any space under the structure, a crawl area for electrical conduit or vents, something he could wriggle into and out of without being seen.

Hess pondered the time line and it held up: Colesceau had been released from Atascadero on the castration protocol three years ago. Six months later, the first woman disappeared.

“—Okay. All right. Well, I sure thank you, Mr. Young. Bart, I mean. You’re doing the right thing.”

Merci hung up and looked at Hess. “I did it. Young’s going to fox us the customer list of all the embalming machines sold in Southern California in the last two years. By noon tomorrow.”

Hess could see the mixture of pride and surprise in Merci Rayborn’s face.

“Nice work.”

“It was hard. I feel lucky now. See what’s popped at headquarters.”

So she called her work phone for messages. Hess watched her shrug, then hang up.

“Well?”

“Nothing. But the Western Region rep for Bianchi sent me a pigskin shoulder rig. Free for ‘select law enforcement individuals.’ You know, the cops on the beat see I’m using a Bianchi, then make head of homicide by forty, they all buy one, too.”

“I’d rush right out myself.”

“I should have bought a Bianchi in the first place, because the snap on this one keeps popping off. I enjoy talking about weapons and gear. Do you?”