Distemper (36 page)

“No way does a guy go out and kill chicks and then show up at some asinine rally where he might get himself arrested. It makes
no fucking sense.”

“I thought about that, and you’re probably right. But if he’s really such an animal fanatic, maybe he couldn’t resist.”

“Wouldn’t he be more likely to just break into a lab and liberate the beasts?”

“So why hasn’t he done it?”

“Because he’s not even
in
this stinking town, how about?”

“Well, if he’s not in this stinking town, then he’s not our problem, and we’re looking for the wrong guy. But so far he’s
our only lead, so we might as well follow it. Right?”

“If you insist.”

“What’s your problem? Wait, I get it. You’re just pissed because you didn’t think of it first.”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Yes.”

He waved the contact sheets. “So what do we do with these?”

“We scour them for anybody who might be Gravink. Then we get Melissa or Wendell to blow them up for us.”

“Scour them? They’re so small, I can’t make out a damn thing.” I handed him one of the loupes I’d lifted from the darkroom.

“Bernier, has it escaped your little brain that we have a story to finish?”

“Oh, right. I sort of spaced.”

He threw the loupe and prints on the desk. “Not a good time for it.”

“You finish the interviews?”

“I was just getting off the phone with your boyfriend when you came running in with your titties in a twist.”

“He is
not
my… Oh, hell, what did he say?”

Mad screwed his face up into something resembling pity. “He wants you to call him.”

“So he can wring my neck?”

“Probably.”

“Oh, fuck. I knew this was going to happen. How the hell did I manage to get myself into this crazy goddamn mess? I swear,
I’m never dating another cop as long as I…” I stopped ranting long enough to notice that Mad was trying not to laugh, and
failing. “Are you messing with me?”

“Totally. Truth is, I got the impression he was rather proud of his little sweetie.”

“Now I
know
you’re setting me up.”

“No shit.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“What did you expect, that he’d go all macho on you?”

“Of course.”

“Well he didn’t. Can we finish the story now?”

“Hmm…”

“You still got something up your skirt?”

“You men are very vexing.”

“We like to keep you guessing, cutie pie.”

“And at that,” I said, “you are damnably adept.”

I
T WAS
A
MY
S
UE
G
RAVINK
. T
HERE WAS NO DENYING IT
, and the cops had no desire to try. They’d gotten a tip from a student intern in the Ag school admissions office—someone
considerably less paranoid than the woman who’d called me—and went barreling up to campus. There, they’d proceeded to mess
up a year’s worth of files, without managing to unearth Amy Sue’s application. (And one of their number had, presumably, found
the time to leak the whole story to Gordon, thank you very much.) Within hours they’d faxed Sugarland for her dental records,
made the match, and notified a great-aunt in Minneapolis whose main concern was whether she was going to get stuck paying
for the funeral.

Mad and I filed our story, whereupon he declared that he wasn’t doing a damn thing until he got himself a beer, and not one
out of a bottle either. So we moved over to the Citizen Kane (arguably the worst place in Gabriel to do something you don’t
want every other reporter in town to know about), huddled in a back booth, and tried for the
first time in our lives to be inconspicuous. But our favorite watering hole isn’t known for quiet contemplation; we would
have blended in better with a drunken shouting match. Mack came over twice to ask us what the hell we were doing—which, frankly,
was a good question.

“Tell me again what we’re looking for?” Mad said after Mack was safely back behind the bar.

“You know. White guy in his early twenties.”

“Yeah, he’ll stand right out on a college campus.”

“Okay, a white guy in his early twenties who looks criminally insane.”

“Maybe I ought to switch to tequila.”

“Look, I’ll bet my boots this guy’s no joiner. I seriously doubt he’d get in the cops’ faces with that civil disobedience
crap. All I’m saying is, let’s look through the crowd shots and see if we can find somebody who looks like a loner.”

“Somebody in the
crowd
who looks like a loner?”

“Oh, hell, you know what I mean. Hanging back. Watching but not participating. Strangely fascinated, but not quite…”

“Okay, okay, I get the idea.”

But after twenty more minutes of squinting through a haze of secondhand smoke, all I was getting was a headache. I didn’t
need Mad to tell me this might very well be the most pointless tangent I’d ever sent us on.

“Oh, crap,” I said finally. “You win. I give up.”

“Are you saying uncle?”

“Uncle, aunt, and all your goddamn cousins.”

“At last.”

He poured out the rest of the Labatt’s, stretched his enormous wingspan toward the ceiling, and managed to
elbow the girl behind him right in the head. She turned around with a very bitchy look on her face, which promptly melted
into a toothy smile.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Oh, wow,
no
problem.” She slithered into her seat and turned back to her girlfriends. They all giggled, and one of them said, “What a
hottie.”

My mood was deteriorating rapidly.

“You want me to leave you alone with your new friends?”

“Hey, I was just being nice.” He held the empty pitcher over his mug in case he’d missed a few molecules. “Time to fill the
trough. You want another soda?”

“I’m thinking something stronger.”

“G and T?”

“Tanqueray, two limes, not too boozy.”

“But of course.”

He went to the bar, leaving me to choose between staring at the Bessler cheerleading squad or the headache-inducing photos.
I opted for the photos.

Even with the loupe it was hard to distinguish one person from another, or just tell the men from the women. (Come to think
of it, they look pretty much the same around here even when they’re life-sized.) And since all I’d ever seen of Gravink was
a couple of lousy profile shots, I had no prayer of picking him out. I decided to suck it up and mark every frame that someone
of his description might possibly be in—which meant just about all of them.

“You find something?” Mad said when he sat back down to find me circling frames in red grease pencil.

“Nah. I’m just marking these so Meliss can blow them up.”

“All those? It’ll take her four hours.”

“I know. It’s gonna cost us.”

“Us?”

“Jeeze, your enthusiasm for this story goes up and down like the Assyrian Empire. One minute you’re dragging me to Texas,
the next you don’t give a damn.”

He shrugged and looked at the contact sheets again, then tossed them away. “Christ, these guys make me want to heave.”

“Because?”

“Because to them it’s all so fucking facile.”

“Yeah, well, they’re not much into ambiguity. They think animal testing is just evil, no matter what.”

“Never mind that some actual good might come out of it.”

“I guess they don’t think the ends justify the means.”

“And how about this joker?” He jabbed his finger on a close-up of a screaming protester. “Didn’t you tell me he won’t even
talk to his own parents because they own a goddamn Burger King?”

I glanced down at the picture. Even in miniature and in black and white, you could tell the guy was apoplectic. “David Loew?
Actually, he’s just about the most reasonable of the lot. Most of the time, anyway.”

“Yeah, I’d still like to—“

“Wait a minute. That’s it. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

“What?”

“David Loew.”

“You think this big-mouth hippie is your serial killer?”

“Oh, Christ, of course not. But he’s the ringleader. If Gravink…”

“Hey, what are you guys up to back here?”

We looked up from our confab to find Gordon Band standing over us, and taking what I would definitely call an unhealthy interest
in our contact sheets. Before he could lay his paws on them I scooped them up and shoved them into my backpack.

“Just got a new pitcher,” Mad said, suddenly every inch the jolly pub-crawler. “Get yourself a mug.”

“Already got one,” Gordon said, pulling the frosty object from behind his back. Mad raised the pitcher, and Gordon extended
his mug. Then he sat down next to me, forcing me to scoot over or have him half on my lap. “Hey, Alex, what’s news?”

“Not much. You file yet?”

“Just did. Ten-incher. How about you?”

I reached across him to relocate my drink. “Hour ago.”

“How about that Amy Sue Gravink shit? What a rush, huh? Poor little country girl comes up here to the mean streets of New
York and gets herself dead. My editor totally gobbled it.”

“Gordon, the girl came from
Houston
, and she got whacked in the middle of the woods. I think you’re mixing your metaphors.”

“Yeah, whatever. Guess where they’re running it.”

“Gee, I don’t know. Page one?”

His face fell, and even farther than usual. “Uh, no. Guess again.”

“They’re holding it for Sunday Styles.”

“No, it’s on the front page of the Metro section. Stripped across the bottom.”

“Jeepers.”

“That’s twice in a row. I’m doing a follow-up for tomorrow too.”

“With your real name on it and everything? You must be
so
proud.”

“Hey, Band,” Mad said when he tired of the spectacle, “I gotta know. Where did you come up with the Canine Killer crap? Brilliant.”

“Source.”

“Oh, twaddle,” I said. “Nobody’s calling him the Canine Killer, and you know it.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “They are now.”

“You know, I remember when you were Mr. Ethics. And now you’re chumming the waters like you’re reporting for the
Post
, and I don’t mean the one in Washington.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Of what?”

“That I broke the Canine Killer thing. And that you didn’t get the scoop on Amy Sue.”

“Poor little white boy. Wait until you read tomorrow’s
Monitor
.”

That got him. “
What
?” He gave me a pleading look, then tried it out on Mad. “Come on, please tell me. What’ve you got?”

“Paper costs thirty-five cents, Gordon. Enjoy it with your morning coffee.”

Mad made a meowing sound. “Ouch, Bernier, pull in those claws. No reason to torture the man.” He said this, but made no move
to relieve Gordon’s agony.

“So?” he said in a voice that came perilously close to a whine. “Come on already. I’m groveling here.”

“Band,” Mad began slowly. “Do we look tanned to you?”

“Huh?”

“Well, do we?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. What’s your point?”

“Doesn’t it make you think maybe we might have spent some time in a very
sunny
place recently? Hmm?”

When he wanted to, Mad could be plenty bitchy himself. Even I couldn’t stand to watch the poor guy squirm much longer. “Gordon,”
I said, “who the fuck do you think dug up Amy Sue Gravink in the first place?”

He gaped at us. It was very satisfying. “No. Oh,
God
, no. You’re not serious.
Are
you serious?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sure that ten-incher of yours is dynamite,” Mad said with a nasty smirk. “But it just so happens that we have a whole
package on the little lady running tomorrow. Quotes, color, the whole shebang.”

Gordon made a strangling sound. It wasn’t pretty. “Oh, crap,” he said once he’d gotten a hold of himself. “And me kvelling
about my lousy ten inches.”

“In your
dreams
you’ve got ten inches,” I said. They both ignored me.

“Don’t sweat it, Band.” Mad topped off Gordon’s mug, his version of offering the olive branch. “You scoop us, we scoop you,
you scoop us back. Keeps life interesting.”

“I feel like such a schmuck.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let it go. Have a beer nut.” He pushed the bowl across the table, and Gordon nibbled a few.

“Can I tell you guys something?” he said after a while.

“Sure,” Mad said. “Shoot.”

“It’s not exactly easy for me. I don’t talk about my, you know,
feelings
very much.”

Mad looked queasy all of a sudden. I recognized the expression as one I’d often seen on his face upon exiting the men’s john.
Uh-oh. “Oh, man, Band,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re queer.”

“
Mad!
Don’t be such a jerk. If Gordon wants to come out to us, we should…”

“Stop,” Gordon shrieked. “Oh,
God
, just stop. If my mother heard you, she would’ve had a coronary by now. And no, I am not gay.” His eyes darted from me to
Mad and back again. “Did you really think I was gay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Mad just thinks any guy who shares his feelings is a member of the man-boy love club. Go
on.”