Raimo’s first impression was that she was an upper-level administrator or a lawyer. Something about the way she entered his small office as though she were commandeering it for a PowerPoint presentation. She lacked the hesitation of every client who entered his small office on Bridge Street.
The firm handshake bespoke confidence as well. Tasteful makeup, a scent composed of layers, bergamot followed by a zestier note of mandarin, not the usual nose-prickling backwash some female of his clients chose. He’d prefer citrusy perfume to men who doused themselves in the cologne du jour.
“I’m Special Agent Alina Storr from the Chicago field office.”
“How can I help you, Agent Storr?”
She was part of a multi-agency task force hunting a killer across several states. They didn’t have a name, fingerprints to match in AFIS, or DNA to upload to CODIS. He was a ghost, a chameleon who blended into any environment, as comfortable trolling in Los Angeles as he was in Thackerville, Oklahoma. His body count was hard to determine; some corpses were so advanced in decomposition no evidence was usable. The FBI’s computer model set the percentage of one killer for all victims at sixty-three percent probability.
“Is it need-to-know, or can I ask how your team concluded your killer is in Northtown?”
“That’s my job. I’m a profiler.”
The Bureau had resources on call to flood any city with a hundred agents and a world-class crime lab back in Quantico. But there she stood—inside his office in a rust-belt, port town on the Great Lakes.
She handed him a buff file folder with surveillance photos of an averaged-size, short-haired male in a check shirt taken with a telephoto lens from parking lots. One showed him walking out of a diner with a chicken logo. He could be anyone.
“He’s skilled with a computer,” Storr said. “He uses aliases. He provided himself with paperwork to go with the names. We ran them all through and nothing rang the cherries.”
She said he was never been booked or printed. Never bought a gun or applied for a job that required a background check.
“He’s clean.”
She seemed unaware of the irony in saying that.
A second file contained photos that were stomach-churning of fresher corpses before they became unrecognizable from time, weather, or animal foraging.
He asked why they didn’t bring him to let some veteran interrogators sweat him.
“We want him for multiple murders, not criminal impersonation.”
Ray felt the frisson of uneasiness coming over him, like the onset of cold. Something bothered him.
“We’ve been hunting him without results,” she said. “A large FBI presence in a small town attracts attention. Local cops expect to be formally notified if we’re running an operation in their jurisdiction. Word gets out. Before we can set up a surveillance team, we’re running into reporters and he’s on the run again. We don’t want to spook him.”
Further evidence they were on the right track came from the fact that no abductions or murders had occurred since they had him under surveillance after he quit a fry cook job in Terre Haute to come to Northtown. Other “unsubs” were looked at and dismissed as new evidence pointing to him was compiled.
“Unsubs?”
“Unknown subjects.”
Prior to having him under observation, she added, all but two abductions or murders took place within twenty-five miles of an off-road racetrack. Most recent victims could be placed closer where a racing event was held.
“A nineteen-year-old girl attending Ivy Tech Community college in Terre Haute had a boyfriend into motorcross. She attended his meets. By the time a neighbor complained about the smell coming from an abandoned house, we’d lost his track.”
She saved this glossy for last and pushed it across his desk with two fingertips.
The girl’s face was battered and half her face dented beyond recognition. One eye was missing. The blood that pooled in the socket was crusted black like alligator flaking of weathered paint. A rictus grin exposed teeth along the upper jaw.
Ray pushed the photo back to her.
“I’m going to get this animal,” she said quietly. Her eyes were bright. She had all the TV cop cliché mannerisms in the determined set of her mouth.
“What’s wrong, Mister Jarvi?”
“I’ll help you if I can.”
He couldn’t dispel the uneasiness she brought with her. Something in the air wasn’t right.
“We must have spooked him in Terre Haute,” she said. “He left work after punching in and exited the back door. Didn’t go back to his motel for clothes or anything.”
“He looks older than his victims. Wouldn’t he stand out if he approached his victims?”
He was thinking of the crowds at the racetracks.
“You get every age if you add in the support staff, the sponsors, the journalists, and the older friends and families of the riders. It’s not hard to blend in and he’s a master at it by now, as I said.”
After that, she talked in general terms about VICAP profiles of serial killers, how they routinely put a hundred-thousand miles on their odometers every year. “It’s nothing to roam the nation’s freeways trawling for victims,” she said. She wasn’t trying to impress him with her superior experience, he thought, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been dragged into something over his head.
She was talking about motorcross circuits, BMX racing, and mountain biking venues. None of which he knew anything about.
“We think our sixth victim was grabbed off one of the biking trails in Nevada.”
None of the backing-and-filling narratives he was used to hearing from clients. She laid pertinent facts down like a dealer in Texas Hold ‘Em once he agreed to join “the team.”
“I wish I could tell you more but it’s confidential,” Storr said, adjusting her files.
Ray picked up the one surveillance photo she wanted him to keep.
“He looks harmless, doesn’t he? Remember the Green River Killer in the eighties? He claimed to have killed eighty women. Every hooker from every dive bar on Highway Ninety-Nine was warned by cops a serial killer was prowling that road, yet they all got in his car because he was such a harmless-looking nobody.”
“Does he key in on women particularly?”
“He’ll take victims from both genders. The oldest one we have is a retired teacher from Boise. Most are female, younger. That shouldn’t surprise you, although you told me you didn’t come from law enforcement.”
Storr was about to sign the standard contract for Jarvi Investigations when Ray’s former classmate from Sts. Stephen & Basil made his typical blustering entrance. Bart Massey wore sunglasses and a scowl until his gaze lit on the attractive woman seated opposite Ray; then he gave her the full caress of perfect teeth.
Ray winced, still dealing with his uncertainty in what she expected of him and unhappy about his friend’s buffoonish appearance in his office.
“Agent Storr, this is Deputy Bart Massey of the Sheriff’s Office. Deputy, this is Special Agent Storr.”
“Bad timing?” Bart said, his eyes searching Ray’s face for a signal to stay or retreat.
“Unfortunately, no,” Ray said, turning back to Alina. “We’re going to need him.”
***
Bart entered, nodded at Ray, and headed for the coffee machine. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what it is. Something’s off.”
“You’re drinking from the Keurig where us little people have to go instead of your primo stuff with the—that Aruban-Babylonian-wherever concoction.”
Ray picked up the bag. “My Kopi Luwak.”
“Christ, that stuff you told me was shit out by a bobcat and made into coffee. You’re sick, Ray.”
“An expense, I admit. I got this bag at half-price for forty-eight bucks. And it’s an Asian palm civet cat from Java, not a bobcat.”
“And you wonder why you’re not making enough money.”
“That’s what’s bugging me about Agent Storr. She’s paying cash.”
“You think she’s gay?”
Ray barked a laugh. “You think any woman that isn’t into you once she sees you jiggle your pecs at her is a lesbian. You’re something, man.”
“My ass still hurts from that strip she took off it.”
Alina Storr had no time for Bart’s machismo and informed him in clipped English that, if he wanted in, he was to follow her orders without demur or hesitation whatsoever.
“So why aren’t you home sleeping? A strapping fellow like you must need sleep between chasing women, patrolling the back roads of the county, and online betting.”
“Ouch, don’t mention it. I dropped five hundred Sunday on FanDuel.”
“The Browns beat the Ravens.”
“I took the Ravens, you mope. Wake up.”
“Mea culpa. What brings you here?”
“My FBI man you asked me to check with about Agent Storr called me. He didn’t want to leave a message. We played phone tag until I got him at home. It’s bad news, Ray.”
“Tell me.”
“She’s off the reservation. The FBI folded that task force months ago, my guy tells me. Chicago put her on unpaid leave and ordered her to see a shrink. Office scuttlebutt said it’s a nervous breakdown, her obsession with the killer. She argued with her SAC, then the ADIC, whatever that is, and even flew to DC. She made a scene at headquarters with some muckety-muck in the Bureau.”
Ray put his head down on his desk in despair.
“You remember the network of killers leaving the smiley-face symbol near victims?”
“As I remember,” Ray said, “the FBI debunked it.” His mind raced with worry over his exposure from a federal agent’s rogue op. Cases were hard to come by. Being a public joke meant he could kiss his business goodbye.
“It gets worse,” Bart added. “They debunked her serial-killer theory, too. You’re—we’re being played for patsies—”
“Hang on… let me think this through.”
“While you’re slumped over thinking like Rodent’s Thinker, I’ll drink my coffee.”
“You did graduate high school, right? It wasn’t blank like one of those social promotion diplomas?”
“Right as rain, Rai-mo… So what do we do?”
“She’s been paying us out of her own money. That tells me she’s not going to stop until her money runs out.”
“That would be tomorrow,” Bart said. “Cut me my share and I’m out of it. You handle it. Any blowback reaches the Sheriff and I’m shitcanned. Sayonara, pension.”
“It could be worse,” Ray said. He drummed his fingertips on the desk calendar. “She might want to go after this guy we’re surveilling tonight, give him a bump—confront him with a story, maybe accuse him, see what he does, get him to react and then—”
“Annie Oakley time, fuck me. There’s no way to keep me out of it?”
“I’m no lawyer, but I better get one for us both.”
“There’s no time,” Bart said. “You’re on call to watch her, ahem, unsub’s motel, and she’ll expect you pronto.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Good luck, bro,” Bart said, one hand on the doorknob.
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve been around a few pissed-off women in my life. And she looked bad when she relieved me last night. Hair an unholy mess, clothes all wrinkled, stained, bags under the eyes, no makeup or lipstick. She could have used some of that fancy perfume she wore. Eyes darting around like a wild animal’s. I’ve pulled over users that looked at me like that. Seen it a hundred times.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Don’t thank me. No chick I dumped had an arsenal at her disposal like her. One of those rounds she keeps on her night table can go ten inches up a block of ballistic gelatin.”
***
“What is it with you small-town and gumshoes and cops? I told you, and I specifically told your sidekick, that walking bag of testosterone, to stand down… Jesus Christ.”
She leaned toward the steering wheel and placed a hand on her forehead while she swiveled her head slowly side to side.
“I didn’t plan to upset you,” Ray said. “But I had to let you know.”
She was past the stage of deshabille Bart had implied. The car had a pungent smell to it from the backseat. Getting inside, he glimpsed what might be a portable toilet. A bag spilled over with soiled Kleenexes. The footrest was jammed with crumpled papers and bags from fast-food places. She was living inside her car, probably had her guns and clothing jammed in the trunk. Every marathoner experienced “runner’s trots” owing to the redirection of blood from the GI tract to the running muscles during a race. He’d never heard of anybody on surveillance needing to evacuate bowels inside a car.
“You did not have my permission to check out Alan Reynolds, did you?”
“I had to be sure we weren’t targeting some innocent loser. Alan Reynolds has public records in Northtown going back to ninety-one with convictions for drunk driving, aggravated menacing, domestic violence.” Ray ticked off the infractions on his fingers. “He’s done time in the county hoosegow. He’s known to cops.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I—we ran checks on every Alan Reynolds in this godforsaken state?”
“He matches the physical description of your guy. That’s all it is—that and your obsession.”
“My obsession? My obsession? Who the hell are you? I am the Federal Bureau of Investigation talking to you, loser. You shitkicking nobody—”
“—not anymore,” Ray said, barely audible compared to the rant she’d leveled in his ear. It worked like a slap to her face. She reared back in her seat, both hands gripping the wheel until the knuckles seemed to glow in the darkened interior of her vehicle. Her mouth hung open like an opera singer who forgot the next phrase of her aria.
“What… what did you say?”
“I had you checked out. You’re suspended. There is no killer hiding under the name Alan Reynolds stalking the highways. There’s just you! And your desire to make a name for yourself.”
Her mouth opened and closed, a goldfish. “My… our computers—”
“Your computers are wrong, Alina.”
“Get the fuck out of my car! If he comes out to check his car and sees you, I swear I’ll—”
“What? Kill me? You need to stop, former Special Agent Storr.”
***
Empties lined the tiny concrete stoops of the rooms. Cigarette butts pockmarked the sidewalks out front. He imagined the interiors: carpets with worn nap, flimsy pillow cases from industrial laundering, some so yellowed in the centers they’d never be clean. Rusty circumferences of sink drains. A fuggy smell of stale booze and sex in the rooms.
Before he knocked again, he cast a look over his shoulder where Bart sat in his car watching. Before he got out, Bart was already checking his service Glock.
Ray stooped near the driver’s side window.
“You think there’s a chance she’s right?”
“Little late now for that, Ray, don’t you think? The woman’s a ghoul when I’m around, I don’t know what to think. But Reynolds? All we know he’s a transplanted shitkicker with a violent record.”
If Reynolds was another alias of a psycho-killer, as she claimed her computers said, then what would the guy do when a stranger knocks on his door and says there’s an FBI agent who might be crazy surveilling him? Would he grin and say, “Hang on, while I fetch my gun under the pillow, come back out here, and blow your head off before I hightail it out of town…”
The man who did show up at the motel door Ray knocked on looked hungover, red-eyed, and mean as a two-headed snake.
“Who the fuck’re you?”
The stale air buffeting him from inside the room came with a whiff of marijuana. “My name’s Ray Jarvi. I’m a private investigator—”
“Fuck off. I ain’t done nothin’.”
he door swung toward him, but not that fast Ray couldn’t insert his shoe between the jamb and the door.
“Wait a second! There’s an FBI agent—”
Reynolds might have been coming out of a booze fog but his reflexes weren’t. He grabbed Ray by the shirt collar and whipped him into his room like a bullfighter sidestepping horns. Ray didn’t catch his balance in time and just avoided a full-on face plant.
“Get up,” Reynolds said. “You know I’m going to kill you, motherfucker.”
It wasn’t a question.
Before Ray could sit up, a corkscrewed blur of fist took him on the side of the jaw and sent him flying backward into the corner of the bed. His head bounced against the mattress but his back slammed into the metal frame and air whoofed out of his lungs. It didn’t matter because the black whirlpool swirling in his direction was already sucking him down.
Hearing is the last sense to go. Before Ray sensory apparatus shut down, he heard the splintering of wood. He hoped it was the door before he was spaghettified into oblivion.
***
Someone grunted… maybe him…
Turquoise and cherry lights, a pretty cascading of lights around the parking lot like a miniature Niagara Falls effect at night. Ray’s neocortex was back; he sat with an ice compress against his jaw.
“It’s not broken, but you should get an MRI to be sure,” the EMT said. “Could be a hairline fracture in there.”
“Thanks,” Ray said, regretting speaking immediately.
He watched the trio of Bart, Reynolds, and the motel manager on one side, with a uniformed cop on the other with a notepad. Behind them were another EMT and two more officers. A fourth cop stepped out of the motel room where the door canted to one side like a tongue lolling from a dying patient’s mouth.
Ray’s head and legs weren’t working in sync yet, but he wanted to stand up to test the waters of his vertigo. So far, so good. The jaw hurt but was intact. No bones broken. Bart had bumrushed into the room before Reynolds could fulfill his lethal promise. The fight apparently didn’t last long. The room looked totaled even from his limited glimpse at the edge of the ambulance.
Patrons of the motel stood on the stoops. Or those willing to expose themselves to public view, given the place’s reputation. As cops like to say of the “frequent flyers” in their custody, Ray was no stranger to Bill’s Bide-A-While Motel. On those three prior occasions, he was merely practicing his “window-peeping” job as the chief of police said contemptuously of his profession. The place was used by even the bourgeois couples cheating, albeit more than one husband or wife complained of the tiny red bedbug bites as reminders of the marital oath-breaking.
Bart came sauntering over twenty minutes later.
“One tough hillbilly,” he said, grinning at Ray and pointed a finger toward his swollen eyebrow. “Probably a black eye tomorrow.”
“Thanks, kemo sabe.”
“That mean a bonus?”
“You know my policy,” Ray said. “If I get one, I cut you in.”
“Cheap bastard.” Bart snorted.
The male-bonding ritual concluded, Ray asked what the cops said.
“First, the good news. A public disorder citation, no assault charges. We both agreed on that. I agreed to pay for all damages to the motel room.”
“That means I’m paying.”
“Right.”
“What else?”
“Reynolds buying that? He looks like he lost the fight.”
“He did. Mine and him, that is. When the cops pulled up, I told you’d piece him off if he kept his mouth shut.”
“Figures.”
“Listen, Ray. I said nothing about serial killers so you keep your mouth shut too. The cops think you were doing a cheating gig out here and accused the wrong guy. It happens. That’s how it’s going down.”
“I’m sure Agent Storr will abet that swindle.”
“Never mind that bitch now. She took off as soon as the cops arrived with sirens screaming.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s not still gunning for Reynolds.”
“Can it, Ray. Cops are looking at us. I could not get that wiry bastard into a chokehold or put his ass down. It was like fighting in a closet.”
“Bart, save your heroics for the office. Shit, he’s coming over.”
Reynolds stood close, easily invading Ray’s space, the alpha dog back in place. His lip was split and dried blood caked in one nostril. His left cheek puffed out like a chipmunk packing too many nuts in one side. Bart stood off, hands relaxed. Ray hoped Bart would be as fast to react if Reynolds tried to pick up where he left off.
“So we all agree on this, huh,” he said, looking only at Ray. “No charges. That’s good. You bring the money around tonight before I leave for work or my next call will be to the police.”
He jabbed a hard finger into Ray’s chest for emphasis. “Don’t make me wait, neither, motherfucker.”
“You threatened to kill me in that motel, remember? I mention that in case you decide to change your mind or come back for more later. I can file charges faster than you in this town, shithead. Blackmail and aggravated menacing will put you away for good. Just keep that in mind.”
“Fuck you.”
“Back off,” Bart intervened without moving an inch. “He said he’d pay.”
Reynold’s head slightly turned in Bart’s direction. “You jumped me from behind, big boy. Wasn’t no fair fight. Maybe next time they’s gonna be a whole different outcome.”
“Think so, white trash?”
“Let it go, Bart,” Ray said. To Reynolds: “I warned you. There’s an FBI agent out there who believes you’re a serial killer. She wants you dead.”
“Youns need to get your head checked out, boy.”
Reynolds spat on the ground between Ray’s feet and took his time walking back.
“Youns.” One mean streetfighter right out of the steel mills in Wheeling, West Virginia.
“There goes your FBI cash, Ray.”
“You mean Alina Storr’s cash. We saved an innocent man from being murdered.”
Ray saw no computer in Reynold’s room, which didn’t mean he didn’t have a laptop with incriminating data on it. The room itself told him the occupant was a sad, two-bit drifter who made his way in life by bullying and small crimes.
“Yeah, look at him,” Bart said, watching the banty-rooster strut of Reynolds pause in his open doorway, enjoying the acclaim of onlookers and cops alike. He gave the side-eye to the half-dressed couple on the stoop beside his room. He snarled at them: “You lookin’ at me?”
“Fuck, he thinks he’s Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver,” Bart said.
The supervisor of the officers came over and explained to Ray in more detail what Bart had told him. Being a deputy on scene, however, helped out the sordid situation. Ray being an outsider listened to his friend and a brother officer chat amiably, even laugh about something he wasn’t privy to said about Reynolds. He felt an odd pang of kinship with Alina, she being a woman in the FBI boys’ gun club. She was an outsider, now one with a criminal indictment hanging over her.
Bart snapped him out of his reverie. “C’mon, Ray. You need to get to the bank today. That lowlife wants money to make this mess go away.”
***
“I don’t think it’ll hurt our business much,” Bart said and tossed the morning issue of the Herald-Tribune of his desk.
Ray read the short article—just three paragraphs in Crime Beat. His name was mentioned. Bart’s was omitted. Reynolds’ name was mentioned as the occupant of the motel room where the police were called to the “disturbance.”
“Short and sweet.” Bart did a hand-washing motion to accompany his pronouncement, as though he’d arranged it all.
“You said something about ‘our’ business,” Ray acknowledged with a tilt to his head. “Does that mean the Sheriff has asked you to tender the resignation he’s been after for two years now and you are applying for full-time work with me? You do realize I’m thousands of dollars lighter after that little escapade at the motel and can’t afford to pay much?”
“Nope, I’m still on call, Still ridin’ the lonely back roads,” Bart replied. “Believe it or not, the Sheriff didn’t do more than ask me about it. I blamed it all on you.”
“He probably thought you were there on one of your romantic liaisons.”
“That place? Don’t insult me.”
“Not so bad now,” Ray lamented. “That pot-bellied manager has a lot of nice new furniture out there thanks to me.”
“Money well spent. You’re not clutching steel bars between your hands and worried about your cellmate growing too affectionate.”
“I’m thinking of ex-Agent Storr.”
“Don’t,” Bart said. “She’s not your problem. The Chicago office fired her. She’s a nobody on civvie street—unless they bring charges for impersonating a federal agent, whatever. They washed their hands of her.”
“I checked on Reynolds,” Ray said. “He quit work. The manager said he didn’t show for his shift but demanded his last paycheck. Created a scene, she said. They almost called the cops on him. He kicked over a display of CDs on his way out the door.”
“It makes me wish she was right,” Bart said. “He was the guy they wanted. Maybe she’s on a rooftop right now drawing a bead on him.”
“A whimsical thought. Not a charitable one, though.”
“I’m all out of charity where that trash is concerned… What’s all that paper on your desk for?”
“I’m looking up unsolved murders in the U.S. We don’t know to a certainty Reynolds isn’t the one. Alina could be right.”
Bart headed for the Keurig. “It’s Tuesday in America. People are going to die every day.”
“I never fully appreciated your morbid sense of humor back in high school. But, then, we didn’t hang out. Me the bookworm, you the big jock football and baseball star.”
“I saved you from all those bullies, remember? Come to think on it, I’m still saving you.”
“Now comes the pitch for a bigger bonus,” Ray said.
“Better spent on me than on that cat-shit coffee you like so much. Now that you brought it up…”
***
Ray wondered how the writers had got it so wrong. All the busting down doors, the geewhiz spy equipment, the laconic quips and morose philosophizing deep into the night, not to mention the gunfights. His directional mic, bought on impulse from Amazon, lay unassembled in the closet behind his desk. His Beretta, a worse impulse buy, lay in the gun safe.
He had one friendly contact at the Northtown PD, and she was always on the verge of cutting him loose. But the symbiotic relationship he’d developed with Det. Bolsterli of Missing Persons had paid off for both over the years. She agreed to keep him posted on the FBI’s VI-CAP website. So far, nothing. No sudden appearances of a nondescript male’s mugshot with sandy-brown hair using the alias Alan Reynolds.
The streets outside his window were the same today as yesterday: packed with shoppers and people on their way to and from restaurants. Life ordinary, non-violent, non-bloody. But it was a cosmos filled with light-speed violence, and he resided on a small, insignificant planet in it where the one species evolved toward higher thinking had a reverse tendency toward mindless, insatiable violence. It would be that way until Newton’s entropy brought the whole thing to a frigid collapse into endless blackness.
Some passersby glanced in at the window, looking for a peek at the occupant within. If the late-afternoon sun were pitched at certain angle, they’d gawk at him trying to see through the glare of his big plate-glass window. He’d see them with perfect clarity. For a few moments of each day, he enjoyed that off juxtaposition, a reversal of the normal.
But everything seemed like that to him since Agent Storr walked into his office months ago wafting that exquisite perfume with her. Part of him dreaded finding her in an online news article. His imagination painted the grimmest scenarios. The one he feared most wasn’t that she’d put an expanding bullet through Reynolds’ head and turn his brain into stew. Bart was right about that—he’d be no loss to humanity. It was suicide. He saw her over and over again as he did that night in her hoarder’s car, a lonely, anguished woman who had sacrificed so much to be on the side of the angels in a world full of demons.
He often thought of what she said to him about the killer she believed in had the keys to hell and she wanted to send him back there. Somehow through the rooms of memory constructed and preserved in his brain since his own lonely boyhood, he remembered a stint of bible reading until that, too, was set aside for something else he craved. It came from The Book of Revelations.
He wrote it down and stuck it next to his desk calendar. He thought of the two women he knew every time he read it: Alina the good angel versus Alina the fallen angel: “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.”
[Image Credit : Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash]
