Chapter 10

There are always street people downtown – some genuinely homeless through no fault of their own, and others, the ones the "homeless advocates" and the talking heads on TV never mention, who are there by choice. They're all sad, but those who can't help it are the saddest. It's hard to be completely sympathetic toward someone who could, if he wanted, have a decent job, a decent place to live, daily showers, enough food, and all the other things that make up a decent life. But those who, for whatever reason, just can't do one or more of those things deserve sympathy and help.

Of course mentally berating the lazy segment of the homeless did no good, nor for that matter would it do much if any good if I lectured them out loud. And anyway we weren't there to solve the homeless problem by ourselves. If we could we would, but we couldn't, and we weren't there to try to solve it but to see if we could develop some information that would help the police find whoever was killing street people – and, no doubt, not bothering to discriminate between those who were there by chance and those who were there by choice.

I found us a space in a lot on the edge of downtown, put the Blazer in it, and put money in the box. We set off afoot in the general direction of the main library, where I knew we would find at least two or three people hanging around, whether inside or out. On the way we might run into someone, or we might not – there are sections of downtown where they keep the street people away so as not to run off the paying customers.

As it happened we didn't run into anyone walking, but as we stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the library after crossing Copper, I recognized one of the men sitting at the Rapid Ride bus stop. "Hey, George!" I called as we walked over.

He looked up at me – filthy, smelly, dressed in layers of ragged clothes, a couple of Wal-Mart bags at his feet and who knew what in his pockets or otherwise stashed about his person. "Hey, Cowboy," he said, his voice rough and soft.

I sat down beside him – I've learned over the years to ignore the sometimes nauseating odors that some street people carry with them. Cecelia squatted on her heels on the sidewalk in front of us, an instance of her marvelous instincts leading her to the right thing without me having to tell her. Sitting beside me would have put her too far from George, and sitting beside him would have made it hard for her to see me and might have crowded him.

"Cecelia," I said, "this is Lonesome George. And George, this is my wife Cecelia, whom I've told you about."

"Hey, Cecelia," he said.

"Hello, George," she said, not correcting his familiarity although she would have chopped someone else off at the knees for calling her by her first name so quickly.

"Have you heard about the killings?" I asked bluntly. There wasn't any point in trying to sugarcoat it.

"I heard something," he said. "But I bet you know more."

"Well, it's like this. They's somebody going around snatching people off the street, killing 'em, and then dumping 'em where someone's sure to find 'em."

"You mean one o' those serial killers, like you hear of?"

"Exactly," I said.

"I heard something," he said again.

"Well, me an' Cecelia are tryin' to see if we can't figure out something about who's doin' it. We don't much like having someone walkin' around slicing people."

"Where's the cops?" he asked.

I grinned at him, and saw Cecelia smiling. She no doubt was thinking what I was thinking. "Would you talk to the cops?" I asked George.

He laughed softly. "I ain't talked to a cop since the last time I was in jail."

"An' before that you didn't talk to no cops either, did you?"

"You're right there."

"So it don't much matter where the cops are, does it?"

George glanced at me – he'd been looking straight ahead, at Cecelia I thought, during the conversation. "You got me there." He had a habit sometimes of making statements that were complete, and leaving them at that.

"Yeah, I do. As it happens, though, we're workin' with the cops. They called us in 'cause they know I can talk to y'all better than they can."