Blackbird (26 page)

4’
68 91723
50

Four groups of digits, three short and even, the fourth long and odd. None of the groups was a prime number. Was it significant that no digit was repeated? I picked up a pencil and wrote the numbers in reverse order:

05
32719 86
‘4

The underlined numbers could then be read as March 27, 1986. I made a note to myself to check the media files for that date.

I turned the page upside down and looked at the numbers, but they didn’t mean anything to me that way either. Borrowing Mouncey’s compact mirror, I looked at them in reflection. Same story. I clicked the pencil against my teeth, wondering if this could be part of a longer string of numbers. Was it possible the writer had failed to finish the series?

Somebody was saying, ‘Oughta have a national database of bite marks. Ever’ perp, give him a bite of cheese, make a cast of the marks and file it – ’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw LA walk back into the room, diet DP in hand. Noticing my expression and the page on the table in front of me, she stopped beside my chair and rested her hand on my shoulder, saying, ‘What are you doing with that?’

‘Mainly going nuts,’ I said. ‘This has got to mean something, but I don’t know what the hell it is.’

‘I do,’ she said.

THIRTY-ONE

‘It’s Welsh code,’ said LA.

‘Say what?’ said Ridout as everybody gathered around.

‘Welsh code.’

‘They got they own codes?’ marvelled Mouncey.

‘Ever see anything written in Welsh?’ said Wayne. ‘The language is a code all by itself. Takes the whole alphabet to yell at a cat.’

‘This Welsh is a man’s name,’ said LA. ‘The numbers are the old way of summarising an MMPI profile.’

‘What’s that?’ said Wayne.

‘It’s that big old test you have to take now before you hire on,’ said Ridout. ‘Prove you ain’t crazy.’ He looked to LA for confirmation, got a nod.

‘The one they’re using now is the MMPI-2, and most psychologists just file the profile itself in the chart,’ LA said. ‘If they use any kind of summary it’s usually no more than a three- or four-point code. This is kind of a fossil.’

‘Any current uses for it at all?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. Maybe to retrieve archived records or maybe in some system that requires it, which I think the VA used to.’

‘Would anybody but a psychologist be able to read it?’

‘Not likely. A few counsellors and psychiatrists, maybe some medical records and research people. That’d be about it.’

‘What does it mean?’ I said.

LA took the page, studied the numbers. ‘This is a pretty bad one, actually. Antisocial and paranoid traits along with atypical thinking and a lot of energy. Unstable, probably sadistic. Could be a dangerous person.’

‘Criminal?’

‘Yeah, especially at a lower level of intelligence. Going up the IQ scale, you’d be talking about an unscrupulous manipulator, maybe a white-collar criminal, lawyer, politician, something like that.’

‘How you tell that from them little numbers?’ asked Mouncey.

‘The numbers and markings and spaces, and the order they come in, give you the shape of the profile, and that gives you the personality structure.’

‘Any idea what all this might have to do with anything?’

She shrugged, saying, ‘Just that it’s connected with psychology and Gold was a psychologist. Otherwise, who knows?’

Bertie stepped into the room, pale as death, thumbs and forefingers pinching the corners of a sheet of notepaper and an envelope in the dead-rat carry. Beyond her in the squad room I could see a couple of curious faces following her progress.

‘Acetate,’ she said tightly.

Wayne found a couple of clear plastic page-covers in
one of the cabinets, held them open as she laid the sheet and envelope gingerly inside.

‘I handled these before I knew what they were,’ she said. ‘My prints are going to be all over them.’

We all gathered to look at the envelope and the letter, which had been scrawled on cheap drugstore tablet paper.

‘It was in with the rest of the mail,’ said Bertie. ‘Postmarked downtown.’

Wayne disappeared down the hall to get his photo and print gear. I held the letter up to read it aloud.

‘Well, kiss my sweet pink ass,’ said Ridout.

‘What all that preacher talk about?’ said Mouncey.

‘It’s Scripture,’ said Wayne as he rejoined us. ‘That first line’s something Jesus said, and the other about dying is from the Old Testament. The sword part’s from Genesis.’

‘How you know that?’ said Mouncey.

‘Used to teach Sunday School. Here, let me shoot that, Lou.’

‘Suppose this has anything to do with our case?’ asked Ridout, watching Wayne prep the letter.

‘Naw,’ said Mouncey. ‘This about the Lindberg case, darlin’.’

THIRTY-TWO

The next day LA was standing by the bookcase in my office flipping through some of the old Highway Patrol journals that came to the office unordered, and stayed there by the year unread, when Ridout and Mouncey showed up to report on what they’d learned about the possibility Gold might have engineered her own death.

Consulting his notes, Ridout said, ‘My end, I didn’t find anybody who ever heard Gold talk about killing herself, she didn’t buy any insurance, no big debts. Her internist and her ob-gyn both say as far as they know she didn’t have any life-threatening disease. Swung by for another chat with the husband. He says nope, she never said anything about killing herself and if I knew her I’d know that was never gonna happen.’

‘I could’ve told you that,’ LA said without looking up from the five-year-old article about police pensions she was skimming.

Ridout eyed her. ‘So how come you didn’t, doc?’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Oh.’ He cleared his throat and continued. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘still no findable connection with any of the kind of guys we’ve been talking about that she might’ve hired to do her
in.’ He shrugged. ‘In other news, Wayne says to tell you there’s no match on the gum you got from Jamison’s place and what we picked up at the scene.’

‘How about the other people in Gold’s office?’ I said.

‘I’d say we got zip on that one. Secretary’s a twenty-one-year-old lawyer’s daughter named Jessica Destin who belongs to a riding club and takes accounting classes at night, which is where she was the night Gold got it. She just replaced the old secretary, a church lady with a dying husband, name’s Earlene Cutchell. The counsellor’s a Margaret Ailesworth, been with the practice about four months. She’s almost retirement age, plays bridge with some other old ladies or goes birdwatching with her husband John in her free time. Played bridge, then went out with a few of the other players for coffee. That broke up a couple hours later, putting her on the road too late to be nailing anybody up in a tree. No indication she knows anybody that might’ve done it for her. The psych associate who worked for Gold is a guy named Peregrine Espy, and no, I ain’t shittin’ you, so don’t even ask. He’s a flaky gay kid who probably weighs one-twenty with rocks in his pockets and is into TV shows about old crockery and dancing. Seemed worried mostly about where he’s gonna find another job. Home with Mom on that fateful night, watching
Antiques Roadshow
, no connections with Gold outside the office, no involvement with extremist groups, no sheet on him or Mom, yada yada yada. Jackie Milner, Jamison’s ex, didn’t have much to say except she’s pretty happy with her life now and Dr Gold was probably right about the marriage being a horse with a broke leg – said after the first week or so she wouldn’t have taken Andy back even if she could’ve had him. Hated Gold in a quiet
kind of way, but her day planner stays pretty full with her job and the kids and the guy she’s dating now, real-estate developer named Chuck Aiken. Background on both of them pretty much dittoes Ailesworth and Espy. My take, put ’em all in a bag, shake ’em up real good with some flour and you still got nothing to fry.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And stop looking so damn cheerful about it. M, have you got anything?’

Leaning forward to set her Sprite on the edge of my desk, she found the notebook page she wanted and tapped it with a long purple nail. ‘First off, Pendergrass’s ex, like you ast for. Name Laura, she a cosmetologist, live in Houston. Say Pendergrass a sure enough asshole, anything sit down to pee, he got to nail it. Don’t know about no group sex or butt-whuppin’ or any that other stuff, but come to him, nothing gone surprise her. Said let her know if she be any help lockin’ his sorry ass up.’

Another dry hole. ‘Moving right along,’ I said.

‘Next thing, her shrink. Name Runnels. He a Oreo.’

‘A what?’

LA said, ‘Black on the outside, white on the inside.’

‘Co-rect,’ Mouncey said. ‘Got the tweeds and the pipe and the Porsche, belong to the country club, golf trophies on the shelf – he got the whole possum-trot goin’ on. Probably a Republican to boot.’

‘Ain’t all doctors Republicans?’ said Ridout with a glance at LA.

‘What did you get out of him?’ I said.

‘He not too happy talking to me at first so I tell him that be fine, he right, best we do it by the numbers, I be back in thirty minutes with a subpoena for him and all them files he got, bring along the U-Haul, prolly no need shuttin’ down
his practice more’n a month or two while we go through ev’thing with him, he figure out something to tell the medical board when they come sniffin’ around, and maybe I get to meet all them
Dateline
folks up in here doin’ they interviews. He rethink it a little and pretty soon he see his way clear to help me out. Say the doc been seeing him a year and a half, mostly for drugs. Say she got a “mixed personality disorder”.’

I looked at LA. ‘Earn your salt,’ I said.

She said, ‘He didn’t mean they were actually mixed – it’s more like stacked. He was saying she had more than one personality disorder, or more likely traits from more than one. Did he say what they were?’

‘Uh huh. “Paranoid and antisocial with narcissistic traits.” Also say she agitated. Now and then he give her some Oxy and whatnot for that.’

‘Nothing about depression?’

She shook her head. ‘Ast him if she be the kind to kill herself. Say that about the last thing he be lookin’ for.’

‘He say anything else?’

‘Tole me she got no friends, don’t trust nobody, use people, see the world divided up between predators and prey, naturally she prefer to be on the predator side. Seem like we talkin’ about hawks and rabbits there.’

‘Ugly picture,’ said Ridout.

‘It get better,’ said Mouncey. ‘Doctor Oreo say she got “sexual compulsions”.’

‘Such as?’

‘In addition to she SM all the way, she “polymorphous perverse” too.’

‘What the hell’s that?’

‘She gets it on with anybody,’ LA said. ‘Male, female,
old, young, somewhere else in the food chain – wouldn’t matter much to her.’

‘You got it,’ said Mouncey. ‘She a equal-opportunity ho.’

‘That fit with the Welsh code?’

LA nodded.

‘Must be easier to get dates that way,’ I said.

‘Best part, the doc like pee parties. Call it the golden shower.’

‘Holy shit,’ said Ridout.

‘You not listenin’,’ said Mouncey. ‘We talkin’ whiz here.’

‘Who whizzes on who?’

‘Don’t know, darlin’. Might be you want to research it a little deeper.’

‘What about the coke?’ I said.

‘Look like she snorting about a eight-ball a day. Don’t run it or smoke it. Her connection that lawyer Feigel, like you say, Lou. He Jewish too, by the way.’

‘Sayin’ he’s next on the cross?’ asked Ridout.

‘Cain’t never tell,’ said Mouncey. ‘Top of all that, I got something else might be good.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Talkin’ to that snitch down on the stroll, got the disease make him bark and cuss all the time – ’

‘Tourette’s?’ LA said.

‘Yatzee,’ Mouncey said. ‘
Too
-rets.’

I’d run into the guy myself. He worked at a car wash, knew a lot of people in the life and liked to think of himself as a spy.

‘So anyway, we talkin’ little this, little that, he telling me about some kinda scam they running out the fed prison, getting stuff on other people’s credit cards and what-have-you, then he off about some old white guy they got out
there used to be a math professor or something. But he a preacher too. Name Jaston Keets. Say he real smart, he some kind of guru for them fat honkies dress up like soldiers, run around in the woods.’

‘But he’s been on the inside for a while?’ I said, wondering where this was going.

‘Went up six years ago. He one them Sword of the Lord guys had they camp on top the mountain, takin’ potshots at the feebs when they come round.’

‘Lummus’s group,’ I said, feeling the beginnings of a small mental buzz. ‘Hey, didn’t those guys have some kind of sign up at their compound, a logo or something?’

‘Uh huh,’ she said, producing a dog-eared leaflet denouncing America’s godless ways and the Jewish-black-immigrant-unChristian government’s “goon squads”, the kind of flyer that occasionally showed up on windshields in parking lots around southwest Arkansas and into northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana. I’d seen them without seeing them for years, but I sure as hell saw this now, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I said, ‘This logo – ’

‘Seen them little doodles you been drawing e’where,’ Mouncey said as I was pawing through my top drawer. Finally I found what I was looking for – a sticky note with my latest rendition of the baking soda figure I had been drawing, a flexed, muscular arm holding what I now realised was a short, thick sword. I held it next to the flyer. The two drawings were almost identical.