After my seance in the rain with Faith, I had a restless sleep, but no dreams to make waking a struggle.
Admittedly though, it’s hard after our visits to endure those pangs of longing.
At least I can still connect with her, I muse, though the consolation rings hollow.
I shake off the fogginess and take myself by the ear and force my body to go through the motions of dressing for work, even stopping for coffee and donut en route to put me in the mood for my gruesome occupation—lead detective on a serial murder investigation.
It’s a hard patch, but it’s my field of work and it drives out mostly everything else from my mind—while I’m on the clock…
But it’s facing nights alone that are my purgatory.
“Did you make any progress on the Dorm Murders?”
My partner, Robyn, is sipping takeout coffee while scanning the files.
The light from the copy machine bathes her in pale light, not unlike the Moon. I look away, not wanting to be reminded of how lovely she is.
“Naw, I’m stymied—what about you?”
“There was a lot of rain last night—brownouts in my building—the lights kept dimming, so I gave up and went to bed.”
“Sounds like my night.”
She looks at me, and I know she sees fatigue shadows and lines.
“Doesn’t look like you got much sleep—you look wasted.”
I nod. “Comes with the territory.”
She pauses, gazes at me sadly, and then, gently looks away.
There’s a poetry of gesture between us—an unspoken ballet of nuances, inflections and things left unsaid.
Sometimes, silence can be beautiful, but too much, and your life’s sterile—like mine.
I force myself to flip the mental page, pick up the file and try to unravel the motives of a killer who slices off women’s breasts.
Robyn seems to read my mind, “It’s hard isn’t it, trying to put yourself inside someone’s head, when that person’s so alien you can’t possibly figure out what they intend?”
“Oh, but you can—eventually. You just have to discern the locus of their need.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Last time I heard the term, ‘locus’, I was in Geometry class, going through teenage angst.”
It brings to mind the yearbook picture she showed me one day—red hair spiked, black eyeliner, and school uniform kilt hiked up to mid thigh.
Baby, Baby, I crooned.
She balled up a wad of paper and tossed it at me, but her pink flush, told me she was pleased.
I lean back in my swivel chair, hands behind head, fingers laced—and suddenly, it hits me—a glimmer of an idea.
“Hey, Robyn—what do I usually say when we’re stuck in a case like this?”
“For real?” she smirks, “what you always say—once is a coincidence, but twice is a pattern.”
“Exactly! I fairly shout, “But when is a pattern not a pattern?”
She shrugs, “ I give up, Sherlock—when?”
“When you have series of coincidences that resemble a pattern. Do you get it?
Sometimes, when the sample is small, you can infer a relationship that isn’t there at all.”
She furrows her brow. “So what did we ‘infer’ wrongly about the Dorm Murders?”
“The Dorm.”
“But all the murders took place in dorms,” she protests.
“Right, but the sample is small—three university girls living in residence—so we assume the killer is a student and his hunting ground is the university.”
“Seems logical,” she deadpans sarcastically.
I ignore her defensiveness. “It is logical to assume that, but violent murder is not logical and there’s no reason to presume the university is the hunting field.”
“Where else could it be?”
“What if the connection is not the university per se?”
Her eyes brighten. “Okay, I’m following you—but how could we possibly know where the killer finds his victims?”
I shrug. “Follow his need. What’s he obsessed with?”
“Busty coeds?” she asks sarcastically.
“Is a campus the only place you find young, well-endowed female students?”
She begins to follow my drift. “No. You might see them on Internet pornography sites that specialize in that particular obsession.”
“Or bars?” I suggest.
Her eyes widen.
“There is a restaurant bar near the university—I went there one night with a girlfriend and she was disgusted with the sexual exploitation. It was like Hooters, except all the waitresses wore school girl uniforms—you know, kilts, knee socks and plunging, unbuttoned blouses.”
“I’ll bet they hire a lot of university girls as waitresses,” I add.
Her face falls. “Damn it! You asked me to look into the connections among the victims and I just saw the obvious.”
“We all did, Robyn—don’t be so hard on yourself.”
She sits there sullenly, and I know she’s going to brood about it—but, all of a sudden an idea hits her and she brightens
“Why not let me pose as a waitress at the restaurant, and maybe we can lure the killer?”
Again, the image of an Britney Spears schoolgirl floods my mind, along with a deep sense of foreboding.
I mean, I lost one woman in my life—am I about to lose another?
