Rage Against the Dying

Five





The rest of the group started up the hill in pretty much the same order they’d come down it, but Sigmund gave me a look and bent over to pick up a piece of trash the techs had left behind. “Sloppy,” he said. He straightened and handed it to me like a memento of the occasion, then tucked my hand in his arm, pretending to help me over the uneven ground and up the steep slope of the hill. “Ah Stinger, a sad triumph it is,” he said, as we slowly started after the others. The sound of his voice comforted me, but I didn’t feel a need to respond.

Then, “That Agent Coleman is one smart cookie,” he said, when we were lagging far enough behind so no one could hear our conversation.

We had worked so long together, him in profiling and me in undercover, that in the past it had always been the Sig and Stinger show. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Silly.

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“She was trying to interview me all the way from my hotel to your place. All about if I knew of any other case where a serial killer had switched his modus operandi from rape and strangulation to necrophilia.” Sigmund never said MO like the rest of us. I think he may be too proud for acronyms.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“That it was new to me, but that there was that other case where the killer went from simple execution-style killings with a .22 to mutilation with a knife and drinking his victim’s blood. She said she was familiar with that case. She asked, too, about my theories regarding trophies and souvenirs, that sort of thing. She had done her homework, and wanted my opinion of Floyd Lynch.”

“Did you give it?”

“You know I detest professionals who give an opinion without ever talking to the alleged perpetrator. In addition to that, in my case I have to be cautious because there’s bias, being so familiar with one of the victims.”

One of the victims. I wanted to say that detachment was all well and good, but we were talking about Jessica here, not some generic victim, and it hurt not to say so. But agents didn’t talk about their feelings like that, even me and Sig. If he knew what I was thinking he didn’t let on but continued seamlessly, “I told Coleman I would not comment at all until after the full battery of competency tests and then only in a written report.”

“And how did she react?”

“She tried to disguise it, but she was frustrated. She seems ambitious. Wanted to move faster. She reminded me of you.”

There was that twinge again. “Is that why she was a little stick-up-the-ass in the car?”

“Possibly. And perhaps we both intimidate her a little, too. We are respected and famous, aren’t we?”

“Absolutely, in a washed-up kind of way. So what do you think? Is he sane?”

Sigmund pulled his glasses down and twinkled at me over the rims, declining to answer.

“If you want my opinion, I think he’s skeevy in spades,” I said.

He gave in with a nod. “An abomination of all things human. Yet for a sexual sadist, lacking in that certain psychopathic je ne sais quoi?”

Only Sigmund could dig me out of the pit and lighten me up a little even at a time like this. “Yeah, that,” I admitted.

“I picked up on it, too. And yet remember Harry Winthrop?”

“A real twerp. It was hard to imagine him cutting off male organs and sewing them to female torsos.” But I wasn’t in the mood for reminiscing. “Come on, I won’t tell anyone what you tell me, what does your gut say?”

“My gut, as you call it, is conflicted. He’s different from the man I expected to find. And yet it’s all there, the body on his truck killed in the same fashion as those of the Route 66 murders, the journals, the confession, knowing where the body is. I might have entertained the possibility of a copy cat, but he did know where the body was. If the dental records match, we’ll even be sure that, of the two bodies in the car, he identified Jessica’s body correctly. It’s cut-and-dried.”

“Open and shut. How’s Greta?” I asked, changing the subject in that kind of mental leap that only friends are capable of.

“She divorced me shortly after you left.”

“What the f*ck?”

“She said I was too introverted to feel strongly. While I never met her therapist I would suppose those were his words she was quoting.”

Bullshit. Anyone who knew Sigmund, who knew what he had been through during his time crawling around in the muck and stench of killers’ minds, knew that he had done all the feeling there was and he was just all felt out.

“How about you, have you married well?” he asked because he knew it would be the next line in small talk.

“Gosh yes.” I smiled and felt my face go warmer at the mention of him. “I’m crazy about Carlo.”

“Gosh? That is linguistically uncharacteristic of you.” He glanced at my face. “As is blushing.”

“Stop profiling me,” I said, but couldn’t help but explain, “The man used to be a priest and I’m working at cleaning up my language.”

He shook his head in disbelief as if this revelation was more bizarre than any encountered in his career. “Stinger Quinn, going Stepford.”

“The name is DiForenza now,” I said, sounding as smug as I felt.

We approached the lip of the hill where the cars were parked, and, once begun, I hated to stop talking with my old buddy. I asked him over for dinner, said I’d take him back to his hotel after.

Even as I said it I thought about how with Sigmund, Carlo, and me, it could only be half a conversation, nobody saying what was really on their mind. At the time I thought I had divided my lives that successfully. I hoped he would say no. Sigmund knew that, too, and like a typical man didn’t try to make excuses for it.

“No,” he said.

“Are you coming to the ME’s tomorrow?”

“No again. I’ll visit Morrison because I haven’t spoken with him yet and I should have followed protocol, but Agent Coleman wanted me to be here this morning.”

“Was she worried I’d go all ten-eight on Lynch?”

“Of course not. We all knew you would maintain admirable restraint.” He lowered his voice as we got closer to the others. “Agent Coleman, on the other hand, could use a trifle more restraint. They might have ended it, but at some point I feel confident she and Hughes have had sexual relations. They’re trying so hard to not show it their body language makes them look like same-pole magnets.”

“Good old Sig, I can always count on you for some profiling parlor tricks.”

He disengaged my hand from the crook of his elbow and patted it in brotherly fashion before opening the door on my side of the car. “So tomorrow I’ll talk to Mr. Lynch. And this evening you, Stinger, have a phone call to make.”