to put her food on the conveyer belt and readied herself for his compliments.
“Hey, it’s the Fruit Lady,” he said merrily and loudly. He had probably meant to be funny, as a conversation starter, but it caused a gut reaction in Mai Bhago.
Her face became plastic, a method her acting coach had taught her after the first time she didn’t win an Emmy. Don’t move the muscles in your face, he would say. Smile but don’t show teeth. You are disappointed you didn’t win but happy for the actress who did. She had spent hours practicing it. At the next Emmy show, when Joyce DeWitt, sitting two rows in front of her, got up to go to the stage instead, Mai Bhago went plastic without a thought. The camera flashed to her and she was plastic. When Joyce breathlessly gave her acceptance speech, Mai Bhago smiled along with the rest of the crowd. Plastic. Stay plastic. She had done it years ago, but she couldn’t do it now.
Mai Bhago took the money out of her wallet and handed it to the stupid, stupid cashier. She grabbed her bag, almost knocking over the person in line behind her. She didn’t apologize. She got out to her car and did some calming stone breaths to center herself, but it was only when she reminded herself that he was just a man, and an impure one at that, that she finally felt calm.
Gil walked back to Joe and the car, wondering why he hadn’t asked Lucy what she knew about the videotapes. That had been why he had gone to see her. When they were face-to-face, it didn’t seem so easy.
He got into the car and pulled out of the parking lot. After a moment, he said to Joe, “Let’s get back to the office and write up our report summaries. Something might jump out at us. At the very least, we’ll have all our ducks in a row in case the FBI shows up. Then we have to get that court order from the police for the tapes.”
They walked into the station and were inundated by questions and offers of help, which Gil was glad of. Gil asked two officers to go through local police reports where a suspect, victim, or patient—or anybody—had expressed delusions, especially about Mary or the Catholic Church. He asked a few other officers to call local churches to see if any had gotten threatening phone calls or letters, or had disgruntled parishioners.
Gil and Joe were just sitting down in front of the whiteboard again when Joe’s phone rang, a personalized ringtone of “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
He answered, “What’s up?” Followed by “Uh uh . . . uh uh . . . damn. I thought we had something there. Thanks.” He hung up and said, “So there aren’t any national serial killer profiles that even come close to matching this. Could this be a new one? You read all that profile crap, Gil. What do you think?”
Gil tried not to smile as he said, “Well, by definition, a suspect has to kill more than one person to be considered a serial killer. As far as we know, he hasn’t.”
“Damn, I thought we were really onto something . . . I guess it could be a serial killer from, like, Sri Lanka,” Joe said as he looked over the suspect list.
“We still haven’t really thought about the notes he left us,” Gil said. “I think that’s significant. He’s making a statement.”
“Yeah, but what does ‘I was dead and buried’ mean? . . . Wait a minute,” Joe said, as he popped open his phone and started typing. “Okay, so no real hits on the Web with that phrase.”
“Well, let’s just write it on the board for now,” Gil said. “I don’t really have any better ideas of what to do with that. I guess we could have one of the other detectives do more research on it.”
Joe went up to the board and wrote in large block letters I was dead and buried. He then crossed “serial killer” off the suspect type list. Gil wasn’t sorry to see that theory go. That left the suspect list with four items: “pedophile,” “mentally ill,” “cult,” and “retaliation killer.”
Gil was asking yet another officer to find out about getting a court order for the security tapes when his phone interrupted him. It was Liz Hahn, finally returning his calls.
“Sorry that I’m just getting back to you,” she said. “I wanted to