Kill some victims, just stalk and harass others?”
“Sure. For one thing, a victim’s behavior can alter the equation. He feels insulted or rejected by her. She says the wrong thing, turns left instead of right. She wouldn’t even have to know. Don’t forget, most serial killers have never met their victims. But these women star in the fantasy. Or he might see one woman in one role, cast another differently. Love your wife, then go out and kill. Cast one stranger as prey, another as friend.”
“So, once someone starts killing, he could still revert to his earlier, less violent tactics on occasion?”
“He might.”
“So someone who is seemingly just a nuisance could be a lot more?”
“Definitely.”
“Someone who phones a victim, follows her, sends her gory sketches isn’t necessarily harmless, even though he keeps his distance?”
“You are talking about St. Jacques, aren’t you?”
Was I?
“Does it sound like him?”
“I just assumed we were discussing him. Or whoever it was kept the bridal suite you guys tossed.”
Open up your mind, let the fantasy unwind . . .
“J.S. I—It’s gotten personal.”
“What do you mean?”
I told him everything. Gabby. Her fear. Her exit. My anger, now my fear.
“Shit, Brennan, how do you get yourself into these things? Look, this guy sounds like bad news. Gabby’s creep may or may not be St. Jacques, but it’s possible. He stalks women. St. Jacques stalks women. He draws pictures of eviscerated females, doesn’t exactly have a normal sex life, and carries a knife. St. Jacques, or whoever this devo is, is killing women, then cutting them up or disfiguring them. What do you think?”
Turn your face away from the garish light of day . . .
“When did she first notice this guy?” J.S. asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Before or after this whole thing broke?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much. He hangs out with hookers, pays for sex, then plays a scene with lingerie. Carries a knife. Most of the women won’t have anything to do with him.”
“That sound good to you?”
“No.”
“Tempe, I want you to report this to the guys you work with. Let them check it out. You say Gabby is unpredictable, so it’s probably nothing. She may have just taken off. But she’s your friend. You’ve been threatened. The skull. The guy who followed you in the car.”
“Maybe.”
“Gabby was staying with you. She’s disappeared. It warrants a look.”
“Right. Claudel will rush right out and collar nightie man.”
“Nightie man? You’ve been hanging with cops too long.”
I stopped. Where had I gotten that? Of course. Dummy man.
“We have a fruitcake that breaks in, stuffs lingerie, stabs it, then leaves. Been at it for years. They call him dummy man.”
“If he’s been at it for years he can’t be that dumb.”
“No, no. It’s what he makes with the lingerie. It’s like a dummy.”
Synapse. Or a doll.
Feel me, touch me . . .
J.S. said something, but my mind was veering off at warp speed. Dummy. Lingerie. Knife. A hooker named Julie who plays games with a nightie. A sketch of carnage with the words “don’t cut me.” News articles found in a Berger Street room, one about a break-in with a nightgown dummy, one with my picture, clipped and marked with an X. A skewered skull, grinning from my shrubbery. Gabby’s face in 4 A.M. terror. A bedroom in chaos.
Help me make the music of the night . . .
“I’ve got to go, J.S.”
“Tempe, promise me you’ll do what I say. It’s a long shot, but it could be that Gabby’s creep is the sicko that kept the Berger Street nest. He could be your killer. If so, you’re in danger. You’re blocking him, so you’re a threat to him. He had your picture. He may have put Grace Damas’s skull in your yard. He knows who you are. He knows where you are.”
I wasn’t hearing J.S. In my mind I was already moving.
It took thirty minutes to cross Centre-ville, go up the Main, and find my alley spot. As I stepped over the splayed legs of a wino who sat slumped against the wall, his head bobbing to the muted thud of C&W coming through the brick, he smiled and raised a hand in a one-finger wave, then opened his palm and extended it toward me.
I dug in my pocket and gave him a loony. Maybe he’d watch my car.
The Main was a smorgasbord of night dwellers through which I nibbled a path. Panhandlers, hookers, druggies, and tourists. Accountants and salesmen jostled in clumps, reckless with binge merriment. For