“Another psychic?” I ask, though it’s really not a question. “Maybe a mental?” I add, then pause and look up, not at her, but at the wall directly in front of me, as if it holds some secret revelation. “Or better yet,” I muse, “a twice-convicted felon looking to get his charges dropped for some half-baked information? Yeah, I like that. Please let it be a half-baked felon,” I say, turning toward Tami.
“Wow!” she snorts. “And I thought I was jaded.” Her left eyebrow is perched high on her forehead, looking like some mutant hairy cobra about to strike. It’s pointed in my direction. “Just my personal opinion,” she says, “but this one seems legit.”
Legit. That would be refreshing.
I stare disappointedly at the steaming stir-fry, my mouth watering. With an intentionally loud sigh I set my fork next to the unopened chopsticks. Placing the bowl in the community fridge—which smells like ten-day-old balut—I wipe my hands on a paper towel and follow Tami to the lobby.
Chas Lindstrom doesn’t look like a psychic or a psycho—not that I know a lot of either type. He doesn’t strike me as an ex-con, either, so I extend a hand, force a smile, and greet him like I’m ever so glad to see him. In twenty sentences that could have been two, he tells me he’s a cell phone salesman for Verizon—Salesman of the Month in May—and is on his lunch break.
Lunch break, I think, forcing a smile. Me, too. Feigning an itchy eye, I remove my special glasses for a moment and quickly size Chas up: dirty purple with a stucco texture. Not even close to Sad Face. Still, I had to check. Serials, particularly the killers and burners, have been known to inject themselves into investigations. Some get an extra thrill out of it; for some it’s just an extension of the fantasy they’re making up as they go along; and for a few it’s a way of muddying the water to throw off the investigation.
Three years ago I had just such a case. The guy wasn’t a serial—yet—but he was working on it. With two victims to his credit, he was a walk-in, like Chas, and claimed to have seen the second victim get into a tan Volvo wagon after the bar closed. We interviewed him for an hour before I happened to take off my glasses to rub my eyes, and there he was: all essence and texture.
I’m a little more suspicious of walkins these days.
Still, Chas seems to be on the level.
“About two months ago,” he jabbers, “I go out to my truck to go to work and I notice this piece of paper lying on the seat. It stands out because I keep my truck neat—no garbage, no clutter. My sister, Peggy, she’s got like six months of fast food bags, empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, and crap like that on the floor of her car. It’s disgusting. I don’t know how she can drive around like that. Know what I mean?”
He pauses, like I’m supposed to respond to that. I just nod my head in agreeable disgust.
“Well, like I said, the paper stood out and at first I thought it dropped out of my notebook—I keep a notebook to track my sales statistics, sales techniques that seem to work better than others, that sort of thing.” He produces his leather-bound portfolio and flips it open to the indexed pages with their color-coded entries. “The note was folded into quarters, though, and I don’t fold my pages, as you can see. The creases weaken the paper and distort the text. It’s just not a smart practice.”
I’m starting to like this guy.
“So then I’m thinking someone stopped by to visit while I was in the bathroom or asleep, and they just left a note in my truck—weird, I know. But when I open the note, there are just these fifteen entries, one to a line, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re first initials and last names. The top eleven entries have a little check symbol next to the name, and the first ten have a line through the name.
“So now I’m thinking it’s someone’s fantasy football notes or something like that and I put it in the glove box in case someone comes looking for it—at this point I’m still thinking it belongs to one of my friends; one of my three friends, actually. I find that any more than three or four friends at a time is a bit of a burden, don’t you? Anyway, there it sat. I completely forgot about it. And then I saw the newspaper this morning. J. Green, T. Rich, D. Grazier, A. Lister, they’re all on the list. So now I’m thinking this isn’t fantasy football. This is like a death list or something. Am I right?” He pauses. “Which means this is the killer’s list and he was in my truck for some reason.”
I suddenly feel that prickly sensation you get when the hair rises on your neck, and I hear myself asking, “Do you have the list?”
“Sure,” Chas replies, “it’s right here.” He reaches for his shirt pocket and I shout, “No!” startling both of us. Holding a finger up, I say, “Don’t touch it. Stand right here and I’ll be back in a second.”
Rushing into the reception office, I bark two words: “Tami. Gloves.”
Without missing a beat, she tosses me a box of disposable latex gloves. I pull out a pair and toss the box back.
The latex groans softly as I pull them on, first the left, then the right. Gently, I reach into Chas’s shirt pocket and retrieve the folded paper. With my left hand, I lift my glasses an inch and gasp aloud at the brilliant amaranth and rust. The paper is awash in it, almost as if the bastard had rubbed it over his body.
“Chas,” I say, “I think you’re my new best friend.” I hold up that single universal finger, the one that everyone understands regardless of language or culture—no, the other universal finger. “Stay here for just a moment,” I say. His eyes are fixed on my index finger like a drunk doing a sobriety test. Probably doesn’t help that I have it six inches from his face.
Tami’s on the phone when I rush into her office. After listening politely to the person on the other end of the line for twenty seconds—an eternity—she says, “Please hold,” and directs the call to Detective Forgendirgenstern or something like that and smiles at me as she hangs up the phone.
“You called that one spot-on,” I say, thumbing toward the reception window and the lobby beyond, where Chas is taking a seat and looking around at the plaques and pictures on the wall.
“You got something?”