landlady grimaced and said, “I wouldn’t touch anything in here either.”
Once alone, I stepped just inside the door and shut it. From my tote bag I moved aside my gun, which I had placed there prior to leaving the house that morning, extracted a pair of latex gloves, a shower cap, and paper booties for my feet. I put the shower cap back, remembering that the turban took care of keeping my hair from the place.
The room I stood in was ten by ten and served as living room, kitchen, and bedroom all in one. The kitchen in one corner consisted of a hot plate on a card table and a two-foot-tall refrigerator on the floor next to it. A door at the far end looked like it led to a bathroom, which would have the only sink in the place. Even with the garbage tossed about, fast-food wrappers, and unwashed T-shirts, I was able to comb the place pretty thoroughly because I knew what I was looking for.
Not bones, not here, not yet. The place was too small and a quick scan of the hard earth in the undisturbed yard as I walked up told me Peasil hadn’t used it as a graveyard. For now I was looking for other things, things that were obviously not Peasil.
I let my fingers travel gently over a chair with faded upholstery that was worn down to the wood frame in the arms. Opened the greasy blinds to see if anything lay between them and the one window in the room. Felt under the metal TV tray that must have served as both desk and dining room table. Looked into the empty refrigerator. Searched quickly for any nook that might contain a laptop computer or cell phone with some incriminating evidence on it.
Finally I found the non-Peasil things tucked under the grimy half-inflated pool float that he had used as a bed in one corner of the room. When he was here, he slept on his souvenirs. They were stuffed into a black plastic bag and used to pad the floor under the float.
From inside the bag I pulled women’s clothing: socks with holes in the toes, a sweater more tattered than not, a dirty white blouse with a drawstring at the neck, a skirt with the ghost of what had been a geometric design before the repeated washings had made it fade away. Another skirt with what looked like a bloodstain. These victims had been poor women. Homeless? I thought. Was that what Peasil meant when he said he went after women who wouldn’t be missed?
A couple of items had fallen to the bottom of the bag because of their weight. I spilled them onto the floor. A crucifix made of two popsicle sticks on a piece of string and a little laminated prayer card. On the front of the card a picture and the name of Saint Jude. The back contained a prayer in Spanish, which I can read, mostly. The prayer said, “Oh, Holy Saint Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes great in virtue and rich in miracles, faithful something of all who request your special something, help me in my present and urgent need.”
Causas perdidas. Lost causes. I guess Saint Jude wasn’t of much use. Lots of women coming over the border this way, lots of hungry and thirsty women, weakened by the elements and their age, who would gladly accept a ride in a van and the promise of something to drink. A hundred square miles of serial killer smorgasbord.
Peasil had been preying on these women.
Crouching and ready to jump up at the sound of the woman returning, I squeezed the bag once more to see if anything had failed to drop out. I could feel something like a short length of rope through the two layers of the plastic bag and my latex gloves and reached in again to pull out a long gray braid, tied at both ends by twine. One end had bits of pale material stuck to it, bits that, when viewed under a microscope, would most likely be remnants of human scalp. I grimaced at the image of how that might have happened. When I looked closer, I could see that the three strands of the braid were slightly different from each other. One was near white, one a more silvery gray, and the other salt and pepper.
The braid had been plaited after death, with the hair from at least three different women.