Distemper (14 page)

“Her mom’s so upset,” Marci said. “Not just C.A. gone, but poor Nanki-Poo…”

Cody looked a little put off. “They’re upset about the
dog
?”

“No doubt it will seem quite senseless, Detective,” Emma said by way of explanation. “But when he was younger, the dog was
one of her grandmother’s show champions. She only let C.A. have him because the dog really bonded to her one summer. They
were flying him back home to Ohio in a few weeks.”

“Why?”

“C.A.’s grandmother was insisting that she breed him one last time before the neutering. I gathered that there was a certain
female coming into heat that she’d matched him up with.”

“Neutering?” The word seemed to make him a tad uncomfortable.

“I’m sure this is far more information than you wanted, but Nanki-Poo suffered from a condition called prostatic hyperplasia.
It’s quite common in older dogs who haven’t been neutered. It can lead to chronic infections, and sometimes the animal has
trouble… hmm… ‘lifting his leg,’ as they say. It’s quite treatable, of course, but only by castration.”

That particular word seemed to bother him even more than the last one. No wonder women like to say it so much. “And C.A.’s
family asked her to hold off on the operation until he could, um, father one more litter?”

“That’s right.”

Cody rose. “Please let her parents know we’d like to talk with them as soon as they get here. And if you remember anything,
anything at all that might help us find
her, don’t hesitate to call. Middle of the night, it doesn’t matter. Alex, will you walk me out?”

We went to his car, but he made no move to get in. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked. “You look pretty ragged.”

“I’m okay. I like C.A., but the truth is I barely know her. Marci and Emma and Steve are much closer to her than I am. But
I’ll be honest with you, Cody. I have a terrible feeling about this.”

“I’ll be honest with you too. So do I.”

“Do you think you’ll find her alive?”

He seemed about to backpedal and say something comforting, then pulled himself up short. “I don’t know.”

“What are the odds?”

“I wouldn’t want to guess.”

“I just can’t help but feel like we’re responsible somehow. If the paper had run that miserable letter, maybe this wouldn’t
have happened. We were warned, weren’t we?”

“We rolled the dice. Quantico made its best prediction, and we followed it. The FBI profile said it was a hoax. But it’s not
an exact science. I wish it were.”

“You’ve got to find her. Please, you’ve got to.”

“We’re doing everything we can. But, Alex, don’t do this to yourself. You have to remember that whoever killed those girls
doesn’t play by the rules. I don’t know if he took your friend or not. But I do know this much. He’s a killer. Don’t think
running that letter or not running that letter would have made a damn bit of difference. This guy is going to kill whenever
he gets the urge. Now, I hope to God he didn’t take your friend. But if he did, there’s no way it has anything to do with
you.”

“How can you possibly know that? I found the second
body. He was there then, Cody. I could
feel
him. And then I got that letter. Maybe this was no accident, no random abduction. Maybe he took C.A. because she’s my housemate.
Maybe he’s playing with me. Maybe…”

I could feel myself edging into hysteria, and Cody knew it too. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently. “Ssh… come on,
that’s enough. We don’t even know if she was taken by the same person, or if she was taken at all. I know it’s hard, but you
have to keep your head together. You can’t let the fear get the better of you. Alex, listen to me. I can’t promise you we’ll
find your friend, but I promise you this much. Nothing is going to happen to you. I’ll protect you. I swear. Do you believe
me?”

I looked up at him. He had so much muscle, it would have taken a backhoe to dislodge him from my person. “At this point, I
think it would be a fatal blow to your ego if I got snuffed.”

He cracked the beginning of a smile. “Good. Because there’s something else I want to talk to you about, and I need you to
focus if we’re going to move quickly.”

I took a steadying breath. “Okay.”

“We think that whoever took the first two girls kept them alive for a while so he could… mistreat them. We’re not sure how
long, maybe just a day or two. But if we’re dealing with the same person, then your friend’s best chance is for us to get
her face in front of as many people as we can, as fast as we can. We’re setting up a police hotline, and we want you to run
her picture in the paper. Tomorrow. Can you do that?”

I shook off the tears that still threatened to pounce. “Give me your cell phone.” I dialed Bill’s direct number in the newsroom.
It was eleven, and the editors would be
going insane in anticipation of the one
A.M.
press run. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to talk them into messing with page one, but they did it. Two minutes later
I was in the car with Cody, delivering a head shot of C.A. to the newsroom. On the way I called the news director of the local
TV station at home and talked him into cutting a missing persons bulletin first thing in the morning, to run as a public service
announcement whenever the cable stations had airtime.

When we got to the
Monitor
Cody waited while I ran inside to have the photo scanned on one of the newsroom layout computers. I was on my way out the
door when Bill yelled after me. “Bernier, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Over to the…”

“Fuck it. I need a goddamn story to go with this picture. You got me to rip page one, remember?”

It was obvious enough, but I hadn’t thought of it. “But I have to…”

“I have no cop reporter. Mad is nobody knows where. Everybody else filed and went home like good little children. You’re here.
So write.”

“Okay. Just let me go over to the…”

“Bernier, I have no fucking page-one story. Do not take a step until you file one, or I’m dropping in the old one.
Now
.”

I sprinted across the newsroom to my desk, opened up a new file, and started typing. I stopped long enough to call Cody. “I’m
still up here. I need to write a story to go with the picture. Can you give me ten minutes? Yeah, I can do it in ten. But
listen, I need you to do me a favor. Call the Benson student paper.” I gave him the number.
“They’re on pretty much the same deadline as us. Ask to talk to the city editor—no, wait, they call it the news editor. Tell
her about C.A. and that we’ll be bringing by a photo in twenty minutes. Oh, and if she gives you a problem, mention that the
Monitor
already has the story and is running it on page one tomorrow morning, picture and all. Wait, before you go, give me a quote.
Something about the investigation.” I typed as he talked. “Okay. Fine. I’ll call you back in five to check facts on this thing.”

I pounded out the story, called Cody back to confirm everything, and filed it with Bill. He read it with speed-bag jabs of
his pinkie on the
SCROLL DOWN
key and slapped on a headline:
VET STUDENT REPORTED MISSING
. “Fine. Get out of here. And, Alex?” I stopped. “Sorry about your friend.”

For Bill, that was a Hallmark card wrapped in a valentine. “Thanks.”

I met Cody in the back parking lot. He was sitting on the hood of his car, smoking a cigarette. “Give me one of those goddamn
things.”

“Alex, believe me, you don’t want to…” I shut him up with a look, and he even held out his lighter.

“Let’s go. The student paper office is just down the street. They aren’t owned by the university, you know. They’re independent.
That’s why they don’t suck.”

“I’m not taking you anyplace until you promise me one thing.”

“Okay, I swear I won’t take up smoking again forever.”

“Not that. Jesus, Alex, look at this place.” He gestured at the
Monitor
parking lot, with its Hoffa-era loading dock, Dumpsters, delivery trucks, and trailer full of spare
parts for the pressroom. If some crazy killer wanted to play hide and seek, this was the place for it. “Promise me you won’t
come out here alone at night. When you leave work, I damn well want you to have an escort. Get someone from the paper to walk
you to your car. Drive with your doors locked. Call home first to make sure someone’s there. If no one is, call the cops.”

“Deal.”

“You swear?”

“What did you expect me to do, argue? I’m not stupid, and I’m definitely not suicidal. I’m as attached to living as the next
guy.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

We waited while they scanned C.A.’s picture at the Benson
Bugle
, then dropped it off in the mailbox at the TV station. “They’ll take a shot of it to use on the air in the morning. We can
get it back then if we need it.”

“You really thrive under pressure, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say I work well on deadline.”

“Where to now?”

“That’s it. Unless you count how badly I need another drink.”

“Then let’s go scare one up.”

“You must think I’m a total lush.”

“Doesn’t it go with the job?”

“Supposedly. But don’t they need you back at the cop shop?”

“I’m in first thing in the morning. We’ve got people looking for her, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do overnight. You
can’t exactly go knocking on people’s doors at one
A.M
. asking if they’ve seen her. And if I don’t get some sleep I’m not going to be any good to anybody.”

“Then you can just drop me home.”

“Probably should, but the truth is I’m wide awake. And anyway, I think we both could use some winding down.”

I looked at my watch. “Bars close in twenty minutes.”

“Your place?”

“Everybody’s either crying or drunk. I don’t think I can deal. I just feel like I need a couple of hours to…”

“Not think about death?”

“How did you know?”

“Occupational hazard. How about we go to my place then?”

“Won’t that be a little… weird?”

“Sleeping with the enemy again? Unchaperoned?”

“Sounds silly when you put it that way.”

Cody lived on the top floor of what used to be a big one-family house six blocks from the police station, on the outskirts
of what passes for the ghetto around here. The house was well kept up, though, and the yard was free of forty-ouncers, possibly
because it was surrounded by a spiky wooden fence.

“We ought to be quiet. Landlords have little kids.”

He unlocked the door at the top of the stairs to reveal a comfy-casual living room with an overstuffed couch, a matching chair,
and stacks of newspapers overflowing the coffee table. It took me a second to realize there was also a very fluffy gray-and-white
dog by the door; he was sitting there so quietly, I hadn’t even noticed. “This is Zeke?” I let him sniff my open hand. “What
a hunk.” I bent down and kissed him on the snout, leaving a pucker of brick lipstick on his muzzle. “Doesn’t he move?”

“Zeke, okay,” Cody said in the commanding voice they teach you in dog school, and that I’d never been able to
manage. The dog stood up, did a yoga stretch, and followed us into the kitchen. “Want a beer? I don’t think I have any wine
in this place.”

“Do you have anything stronger?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I’d sell my soul for a gin and tonic.”

“I think I can swing that. No limes, though.” He held up a plastic lemon.

“Primitive, but adequate.”

He mixed me a drink, let the dog out, and opened up a Sam Adams. We sprawled on the couch, and he lit us each a cigarette.
“When this pack is empty, we’re both through. Agreed?”

“When you catch this bastard, we’re through. How’s that?”

“Dangerous thing for me to say—‘I’ll clean up my act when this case is over.’ Because there’s always another case, so there’s
always another excuse to keep up the bad habits.”

“But this is the first time you’ve even thought about quitting. Hardly a string of broken promises.”

“Good point. All right. It’s a pact.”

We sat there for a while without talking, just listening to the Eagles on his stereo. The gin and tonic didn’t turn out to
be half bad, even with the faux lemon; you have to respect a guy who keeps Tanqueray and Schweppes around the house. Maybe
Cody was more civilized than I’d figured.

“Cody, listen. I don’t really want to talk about C.A. Not talking about it seems very much the point right now. But there’s
something I wanted to tell you. And before I do, let me just make it clear that you don’t have to tell me
diddly if you don’t want to. I’m not trying to dig here. But let me ask you one thing off the record. Have you ID’ed the first
victim yet?”

He seemed to be debating whether or not to tell me anything. Finally he just said, “No.”

“And you’ve checked all the missing persons reports for the U.S. and Canada? And runaways that would have been the right age?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Mad and I were brainstorming at the bar tonight, trying to figure out how that could possibly be—how a girl you’d think
would have friends and family could just disappear without anyone reporting her. And we were thinking—you’ve probably thought
of this already—but we were wondering whether she might have been killed by the same person who would have filed the report
in the first place. I mean, how else can you explain a person just getting… misplaced like that? How could there be no one
left to miss her?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. Off the record.”

“So maybe once you figure out who
she
is, you’ll also know who
he
is.”

“It’s possible. And I think we’d better change the subject.”

Then the doorbell rang. “Who could that be at this hour? Jealous girlfriend?”

“Jealous boyfriend.” He jogged downstairs, opened the outer door, and came back with Zeke.

“Do not tell me the dog rang the doorbell. How the hell did you teach him that?”

He grinned. “Basic training principles. Positive reinforcement. Discipline. And a whole lot of hot dogs.”