The Girls He Adored (29 page)

You're a doctor, Irene reminded herself, struggling to keep the horror she was feeling from showing on her face
.
You've seen disfigurements before. “Thank you. I'm Irene Cogan.”

Instead of introducing herself in return, the woman extended one of her gruesome claws as if for a handshake. But when Irene reached out to take it, she snatched it away, grabbed a lock of Irene's frosted blond hair between her skeletal thumb and forefinger, and yanked.

“Ow!” Irene yelped and drew back. “What did you do that for?”

The woman ignored her. “A clever boy, that Ulysses,” she muttered aloud, calmly examining Irene's roots by the rosy light of the stained-glass lamp. “Wicked, but clever. Now finish your supper, and I'll show you to your room.”

Welcome to your new home, thought Irene, scalp stinging, sudden tears blurring her vision.

I
N ROOMS
15
AND
19
of the Sleep-Tite Motel, the whores and johns came and went. In room 17, Pender stuffed his thirty-twodecibel-proof foam plugs into his ears and began mapping out the initial computer search in his head.

Step one: Juvenile records were sometimes expunged, but not if the juvenile went on to become an adult criminal. Assume that was the case with Buckley—a statistically supportable assumption. Then look for hits on criminals with a first or second name of Buckley who'd done time in juvenile facilities anywhere in Oregon between—Casey looked to be in his late twenties—between '82 and '92. . . .

Step two: hope to hell step one came up with a manageable number of hits. Because that was about as far as the search could be narrowed on computer: step three would require a face-to-face interview with every Buckley on the list, in the hope that one of them just might recognize the boy whose name was Max or Christy or Lyssy or Lee from the adult Casey's mug shot.

All that would take time, manpower, and luck, Pender knew, and even if he managed to find out who Casey was, he would still be faced with the daunting task of tracking him down without the considerable resources of the bureau behind him. The sense of exhilaration he'd felt after interviewing Ng suddenly drained away. In its place, exhaustion, discouragement, and a wicked headache.

I'm too old for this shit, thought Pender. He went into the bathroom, washed down two Vicodins with a cupped handful of tepid water scooped out from under the tap (the plastic glass did not claim to have been sanitized for his protection), then brought his
bound shadow copy of the Casey file back to bed with him, and while waiting for the medication to kick in, opened it at random like a born-again Christian seeking inspiration in a Bible.

A photocopy of Dolores Moon's eight-by-ten glossy stared up at Pender. Impish grin, curly strawberry blond hair. Tiny little thing with a great big voice. Born Huntington, Long Island, 2/12/69. Last seen, Sandusky, Ohio, 4/17/97. In between, a career playing itself out just below the show-biz radar line—her last role was Snoopy in a Sandusky dinner theater production of
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Pender flipped backward a few pages. Tammy Brown. Born Pikeville, Kentucky, 9/22/78, last seen Pikeville, 7/3/96. Kentucky collegiate heavyweight power-lifting champion out of (where else?) Pikeville College. Not one of your buffed, ripped, steroid powerlifters, however, but rather a shy, fat, good-natured, drug-free Christian with a round, multiple-chinned face right out of a Botero painting. The polar opposite of Dolores Moon: heavyset, introverted, by all accounts virginal. The two women had nothing in common but strawberry blond hair and bad luck.

The Vicodins were starting to kick in. Pender closed his eyes, saw the vision that in one form or another had been haunting him, driving him on, for the last several years. This time it was Dolores and Tammy staring up at him through the darkness. Waiting. Waiting for him. His eyelids fluttered open again, and he forced himself to turn to the back of the file, to Casey's last victim but one—two if you counted Dr. Cogan.

Donna Hughes. Born Sanford, Florida, 12/20/56. Last seen, Plano, Texas, 6/17/98. Casey did most of his hunting in the spring or summer months, leading the investigators to speculate that he lived in a climate where the winters were not conducive to travel. Pender wondered if Pastor knew that. It might help narrow the search.

“I should
be
there,” he said aloud, his voice sounding strange and distant with the earplugs in. “I should
be
there—they'll never catch him without me.”

But he wasn't there, he had to remind himself. Instead he was here. In Dallas. Which was right next door to Plano. And suddenly, though he was by now so wrecked on the painkillers that he could scarcely think, Ed Pender understood to a stone certainty exactly what his next move had to be.

A
NGER.
D
ENIAL.
D
ESPAIR.
B
ARGAINING.
Acceptance. These were the stages the human mind passed through when faced with the prospect of its own demise. Irene Cogan had been going back and forth between anger, denial—or at least dissociation—and despair for thirty-six hours. Now, alone in what under other circumstances she would have considered a charming little third-floor guest bedroom with an antique brass bed, big maple bureau, night table, escritoire, and adjoining bathroom, she had reached the bargaining stage.

She began by apologizing to the Virgin Mary for the things she'd said about Her Son and His Father after Frank died, and for not having been to mass since then, but pointed out that she had tried to live a good life, hadn't sinned much, at least in deed, and had helped quite a few souls in need, professionally (although she had to admit she had been well paid for it). She promised Mary that if She did intercede on Irene's behalf, she would go to mass every Sunday and volunteer her services at one of the free clinics in Seaside, Watsonville, or Salinas.

That was how Irene bargained in her head after the woman had locked the bedroom door behind her. It brought her little if any peace. Then she went through the contents of the bureau and the closet and slipped into deeper despair. For in the top drawer of the bureau she found underwear in a variety of styles and sizes, bras ranging from 32C to 40DD, barely-there bikini panties and capacious bloomers, bobby socks, knee socks, pantyhose, all showing signs of wear. Similar range of sizes for the neatly folded T-shirts, jerseys, and blouses in the second drawer—smaller sizes to the left,
larger ones to the right—and for the sweaters, slacks, and jeans in the bottom drawer.

Inside the deep, narrow closet were skirts, dresses, coats, sizes 6 through 16. On the closet floor were shoes, sneakers, sandals of varying sizes, all previously worn. Irene slammed the closet door and backed away, then sat down heavily on the bed. How many women had contributed to this collection? she wondered. Dear God, how many women?

She dropped to her knees and began to pray in earnest, not with her head this time but with her heart. Dear Jesus I'm so frightened. Help me Mother Mary, I can't do this alone. Holy Spirit, give me strength. Give me wings. Help me our Father in heaven hallowed be thy name I'll believe in You with all my heart I'll never forsake You again. And even if You can't save me, even if it's part of Your plan that I die here, please, please,
please
be with me. Don't leave me alone here. Jesus. Please.

She didn't realize she was crying until the first teardrops hit the hardwood floor. But by then the worst of the despair had passed. Irene tried to tell herself that Jesus had answered her, but she couldn't help thinking about something one of her professors once said on the subject. The comforts of religion don't actually require the existence of a deity, he'd informed the class—only a belief in one.

“Thanks anyway,” she said aloud, climbing to her feet and wiping away her tears. Then, with bravado, only half-joking: “I'll take it from here.”

Normally—previously—Irene hadn't been much of a believer in what the New Agers call affirmations. Saying, “I am a radiant being,” into the mirror every morning, that sort of thing. As a psychiatrist, she knew too much about the subconscious for that, knew that every time you say, “I am a radiant being,” your subconscious replies, “Are not.” A hundred affirmations a day, a hundred
are nots
—a person would be lucky to break even.

But desperate times require desperate measures. She made up an affirmation on the spot: “I
will
stay alive. Everything else is secondary. I
will
stay alive.”

And it helped. She was nowhere near the acceptance stage, but at least she felt able to function. She opened the closet door again. Hanging from a hook on the inside of the door was a floor-length cotton nightgown the color of marigolds. As she reached for it, something nagged at the back of her mind—something about the
clothes. So after undressing and slipping the nightgown on over her head, Irene did a little detective work, forcing herself to go through the bureau drawers again, taking a closer look at the dresses in the wardrobe. Different sizes, yes; different styles, too. Small women and large, younger women and older, chic women and women with no taste whatsoever.

But there was one thing the clothes all had in common: the color scheme. Warm Spring on the seasonal charts. Delicate tones. The neutrals were camel browns, creams, and grays. Some true greens and golden yellows, but no true blues, only aquas, turquoises, and teals.

Not quite a redhead's palette, though: the clothes on the red end of the spectrum were not the brighter shades that would have flattered a classic redhead. Instead, salmons, corals, pumpkins, peaches, and roses, the softer pastels she herself had favored before frosting her own strawberry blond hair.

Irene backed away from the closet, her mind spinning. The women who had left these clothes behind—were they all strawberry blonds? Was that why that hideous creature in the glorious strawberry blond wig had plucked her hair out—to examine the roots?

The implications were unthinkable. Suddenly Irene felt unbearably claustrophobic. She staggered over to the small four-paned sash window, opened it, stuck her head out. As she gulped in the sweet mountain air, she caught a glimpse of Maxwell trudging across the meadow toward the house, his head down, his blond hair white in the starlight.

I
will
stay alive, Irene told herself, quickly pulling her head back inside and lowering the window again. Whatever's going on here, I
will
stay alive.

Will not,
replied the little voice in her head.

F
OR A MOTEL THAT RENTED
rooms by the day or hour, the beds in the Sleep-Tite were fairly comfortable. The alarm on Pender's watch woke him from a sound sleep at seven. At seven-thirty he phoned Thom Davies, the British-born database specialist.

“Morning, T. D. Hope I didn't wake you.”

“Pender? For God's sake, man, it's eight-thirty on a Sunday morning.”

“It's only seven-thirty here, and
I'm
up.”

“Central time? I thought you were keeping regular in Prunedale.”

“I'm in Dallas. How's my account in the old favor bank?”

“I believe you still owe me several lunches and your firstborn child.”

“Care to make a deposit on my second-born?” He told Davies what he was looking for.

“I'll get on it first thing tomorrow morning,” said Davies.

“Not quite what I had in mind.”

“Ed, it's Sunday morning.”

“He's averaging two murders a day since he escaped, Thom. You do the math.”