Chapter 26

Lt. Stubblefield had scheduled the case review for the next week, but that was before the note came into the office. He showed up along with a flood of uniforms and detectives, and every member of the task for except Captain Jones, the State Police officer. I'd been right to close the office - as I'd known would be the case, there were cops there all day, literally, though as the hours went by the number grew fewer. They interviewed me, Cecelia, and Cris - multiple times. Different officers would take us into another room, usually the conference room but before it was all over they'd used everything but the bathroom, and go over things with us again. I knew what it was, and so did Cecelia - 99% of investigation is grinding, tedious routine, trying to get the last little scrap of information and then trying to fit it with all the other little scraps in the hope that eventually it'll all make sense. Magnum or Spenser might beat people up or shoot them – Mike Hammer made a career of using violence as an interrogation method – but that's not how it happens in real life. Cris wasn't so familiar with things, not being an investigator, but she saw how calmly Cecelia and I took it, and that helped steady her down.

Before he left, just as the sun was setting, Stubblefield told me, "I'm moving the review up. This guy's going public, more or less, and that means we need to find him. We're starting the review tomorrow at 8 AM. Be there, you and your wife both."

"We workin' through Christmas?"

He gave me a hard look - cops know how to do that, it being one of the necessary tools of the job. "Carpenter, what's more important to you - opening presents or catching this mutt?" He left without waiting for an answer.

And the fact is that the answer was obvious, and I knew it before he asked the question. If we didn't find the murderer soon, someone else was going to die - and the note did indicate a change, an ominous one. Serial murderers wind up playing games with the cops - teasing, mocking, daring the police to catch them, arrogantly confident that they're so much smarter than the rest of the world. And unlike the average criminal, who's in and out of jail and prison so often precisely because he's so stupid he makes it almost impossible not to catch him, serial murderers are always very cunning, and sometimes even genuinely intelligent. Some of them get away with their crimes for decades ... some we never do catch.

One shrink has estimated that 4% of the population is psychopathic. That means that out of 300 million Americans, there are 12 million psychopaths – enough to fill 12 cities the size of Albuquerque. And if only one percent of those become serial murderers - and I have no idea what the actual percentage is – that makes 120,000 serial murderers roaming the United States at any given time. That's a terribly small percentage of the total population, just .04% of all Americans, and it's probably too large a number, at least it seems so to me. Let's say only a quarter of that number is right - 30,000 serial murderers running around. If the average "butcher's bill" is five victims, that comes to 150,000 victims, with the total growing by the year.

I still think that's too high a number – the precise combination of factors that turns an "ordinary" sociopath into someone who gets his kicks from repeated ritualized murder is a rare thing, or we'd be awash in blood. But even one such person is a terrifying thing. Jack the Ripper confined his activities to prostitutes in one London district – only one of his victims appeared outside the West End, and the City of London isn't far away – yet he terrified a metropolis of millions. Gary Ridgeway up in Seattle kept women in the area frightened for years, even though he also only killed prostitutes. The savagery of serial murderers, their abysmal perversion, and the fact that they usually go on killing for some time before they get caught, makes them in a way even more terrifying than a Pol Pot or Josef Stalin, who kill wholesale rather than retail and count their victims in the hundreds of thousands or even multiplied millions.

So, yeah, the answer was obvious. And when Cecelia came back into the reception area after going over things again, I told her, "Stubblefield's given us a forthwith." That was a bit of slang from the Red Hawk Police Department - it had originally, I thought, come from New York City, where many of the department's first officers had come from. "He wants us there at 0800 tomorrow to start the review." Normally my brother Memphis is the one in the family who uses military time, having spent eight years as an officer in the Air Force, but so had the Red Hawk PD, and in the context the usage came back to me easily since we'd been there last year.

"I dislike the thought of working on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day."

"Yeah, me too. But..."

"You need not finish the thought, beloved – it has already occurred to me, and I do not question the necessity. Either we must exert ourselves in this endeavor even on days which are holy to us, or we must withdraw from the effort. And I for one cannot in good conscience submit to a withdrawal. But that does not require me to enjoy doing what I know I must do."

"True, true," I muttered.

"In any event, Darvin, I believe we're free to retire to our quarters – as you can see, the last officer is packing up."

He was indeed, a detective whose name I'd not managed to catch. When he had his papers all together in his briefcase he told us he was off and that we were free to open for business in the morning, and then went out the door. Cecelia promptly locked it behind him, and set about turning off all the but the nightlights that we keep burning in case one of us needs to get in at night without breaking his neck tripping over something. I held the back door for her, and locked it behind us. We hadn't been home all day – we'd called out for pizza, and had to help the delivery guy bring it in, both because there were so many boxes and because the cops were kind of testy ... for which I could hardly blame them. I wasn't in a good mood myself.

At any rate, I was ready to get home, collapse on the sofa, and think about what I wanted to eat for supper. And that's exactly what I did.