Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [111]
That compulsive drive—to finish the act at all costs—might prove stronger than the intelligence that had protected him so far, the canniness that had allowed him to set up his victims (it could be dozens, including those from back east, never put together by local law enforcement because he would move out of their territories—attack and withdraw to safety).
He would be overwhelmed by the uncontrollable need to find another girl.
Now.
Who could I tell? Who would listen? All connections with the Bureau had been stripped. There were no more encouraging e-mails; hell, nobody even returned my calls. When it was announced that we were going to trial, Galloway must have come down hard. I couldn’t talk to Mike. For weeks we had stalked around each other in the confines of the house, avoiding mention of the case. He was my final sanctuary. I would not put him in a position of disloyalty now.
It was about two in the morning and I was awake, as usual, barreling through an old Donald L. Westlake mystery, dug up from the dad’s side of the hobby room, although not even a hilarious band of thieves could distract for long. I put the book down and finally, with restless despair, threw open the white cabinet that had been standing as an enigma all this time amongst the old possessions of Mike’s parents. Inside was a jewel box of sewing notions: a hundred rolls of thread lined up in rainbow order on hooks set in Peg-Board. There were drawers of bobbins, scissors, glue and markers. Scraps of crocheting and spools of ribbon, each in their places; a clear box just for Christmas glitter and felt.
Here was a marriage. Mike’s dad had built this cabinet for his mom, I was sure. He had made a place for her pleasure and her work, and she had done her work, and there were the garments, hanging on a rack—half-made blouses with the patterns still pinned. I sat down on the rancid carpet and allowed myself to become lost, handling old cellophane packets of bindings (twenty-five cents each), unrolling silver lace, finding peace, like an orphan, in the fairy-tale world of the phantom parents. It scarcely mattered whose parents they were, so deep was the yearning to be comforted. I dug into the cool layers of the button bin, letting them sift through my fingers like stories.
Then, emboldened, I pulled out a drawer in the sagging file cabinet that held the trout-fishing magazines. Burrowing into the one spot in the left side of the couch that still had spring, in the light of the fat brown-shaded lamp, I studied yet another watercolor rendering of a steelhead trout. Over and over these magazines showed the trophy, and it was always the same trophy. And what about those hours tying flies beneath the magnifying glass, only to have most of them, and the trophy, lost? What could I, as an investigator, learn from this?
I went back to the fishing magazines. Then I discovered that hidden behind them, way back in the file drawer, was a pile of Playboys dating from the sixties. The top cover (Miss February) was coated with a perfect layer of dust, as if the secret stash had lain untouched for thirty years.
Miss February’s interests were “tennis and kittens.” For the centerfold, she wore a G-string sewn with tiny hearts and stroked a white fluffy cat. She had enormous pinkish breasts that barely fit on the page. She’d be a grandmother now. What I loved most were the one-inch ads in the back of the magazine that whispered to the anxieties of the male psyche: “Helps you overcome false teeth looseness and worry”; “Bill Problems?”; “A Timely Message to the Man with Hernia”; “How to Speak and Write Like a College Graduate”—and a classic pictorial essay on “Favorite Valentine’s Day Gifts,” featuring Playboy bunnies and red satin sheets. Then I saw the photo credit.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in.”
It was Mike.
“Saw the light