Chapter 27

"Like I said, I'm guessin' all over the place," I said to Cecelia, "but here's what I think. I suppose that he read Firestarter somewhere or another, and that sentence jumped out at him like it did me. But where to me it's just an odd thing that, if King had lopped off the second part and put it in the mouth of an evil character, would have been great for establishing that the guy was evil, it came across to our perp in a different way. I'm guessing that to him it's an excuse to do what he does. 'Life is short' – so why not kill indiscriminately? 'Pain is long' – so why not inflict it? If death is right at everyone's elbow and pain is something that everyone endures, I suppose he's thinking, then there's nothing wrong with inflicting either on someone."

"That is a gross perversion."

"It is. But then sociopaths are the most perverted people there are. We call 'ordinary' child molesters perverts, and rightly so – but someone who goes beyond that to thinking that every single human being is a mere thing, for him to use as he sees fit, and to decide that the proper use of such people is as things for him to inflict pain and death on, and in the process get his kicks, that is perversion beyond most people's ability, or at least willingness, to comprehend."

Cecelia was silent for a moment, chewing her own bite of sandwich. "I believe," she finally said, "that you have for the first time in my hearing not called those who lie down with children, 'baby rapers.'"

I grunted. "That's what I call 'em, yeah. I guess my predilection for talkin' good English when I'm gettin' pseudo-profound kicked in."

The degree of her disgust with the people we were talking about showed in the fact that she didn't gig me for my English. "It's an accurate term – though I suppose a child of 10 or 14 is no longer strictly a baby."

"I guess not."

"Meanwhile, beloved, I am glad that you do not so misuse Mr. King's drivel to justify execrable behavior on our part." Cecelia just doesn't like horror fiction, no matter who writes it.

"You can call it drivel all you want to, C," I said. "But yeah, this guy's misusin' King. And he's misusin' a knife too, an' I am to nail his hide to the barn door."

As it turned out, Stubblefield didn't make us work Christmas. We got Saturday and Sunday off, and were back at the grind Monday morning. And we found that Friday's 12 hour shift hadn't been an aberration – he kept us there every day for 10 or 12 hours, going through files, scrutinizing everything – handwritten notes, typed reports, computer generated documents, crime scene photos, even a few WAGs, as Stubblefield called them, that had gotten into the files. What he meant was pure guesswork, couching it in profane terms.

It was on Wednesday that I turned over a photo from the autopsy of one of the victims and reached for the next one, and stopped, and turned the first picture back over to look at it again. Without raising my head I called out, "Anybody got a magnifying glass?"

Rudy did, and he passed it down from the other end of the table where he was sitting, looking sharp in his APD uniform. His lieutenant's badge was one of the new ones, with a sharper outline and cutouts on the sides, that looks so much better than the old pattern that could have been any police department in the country.

But I wasn't there to admire how Rudy looked, and when the glass got to me I applied it to the photo. After a bit I said, "C, come look at this."

She'd been standing by one of the marker boards, contemplating the list of dump locations that Stubblefield had written on it. We hadn't been able to discern any pattern in the sites, but periodically one of us would stop and give it another whirl, as we would with all the other stuff that paraded around the walls.

Cecelia stepped over and took the magnifying glass from me. I handed her the photograph without comment, and she examined it. After a minute or so she asked, "Do we have any photographs of this arm without the accumulated soil?"

I flipped through the autopsy photos, and found one where the victim's arm was cleaner. "Here you go," I said, giving the picture a glance but not looking closely at it.

Cecelia did look closely, both with and without the glass. She nodded sharply and gave both back to me. "Kevin was wearing those colors when he arrived in Albuquerque."

I looked at the photo. "Yep – that's the Skulls." I put the picture and the glass down on the table and hauled out my cell phone. I scrolled through the phone book, found the number I wanted, and hit Send.

After a couple of rings a female voice answered. "Hello?"

"Yeah, Karin, it's Darvin. Is Kev handy?"

"He's up to his elbows in an engine right now."

"If you could dig him out, it's important."

"Okay – hold on."

Cecelia had taken her seat again, at my right so that my left hand and her right wouldn't clash. "Do you believe that Kevin can identify this man?" she asked.

"I think it's worth a shot. From what he's said the Skulls aren't that big a gang, so there's a real chance, however small, that he knew this guy when he was in Fresno."

Just then a male voice came on the phone. "Yeah, Darvin."