LITMIR.BIZ

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B.A. was from the local state university, criminal justice, psychology minor, 3.8 average, her only Bs a couple of painting courses she’d attempted. Some of her college friends were horrified at her career choice. But she wouldn’t be anywhere else. In a cheap blue shirt and matching trousers, a uniform shabbier than the ones the inmates got, working impossible hours at insultingly low pay. But none of that mattered. She liked her job. It made a difference in the world, a modest one perhaps, but essential. And the job kept her alert, focused, living close to the bone. And she liked using the camera, being a photographer who never had to tell her subjects to hold still, never got a complaint about unflattering angles.

      Alexandra was twenty-nine and had been doing this work for eight years. It still felt new. Every night, every scene, something different, something human and extreme. From eleven till seven, alert for eight hours. Wired. Just after dawn, she’d take her run on the beach, then go home, still pumped from the night before, and make breakfast for Stan and her father. She’d ride that high most of the morning. Just steal a few hours of sleep in the afternoon while Stan was at work and her dad was doing basket weaving at Harbor House, four or five hours at the most; then by eleven the next night, she was ready to go again.

      It was a little before midnight, Wednesday, October the seventh. No traffic on Tigertail Avenue. No human noises. Only the jittery fizz of the sulfurous streetlights. She lowered her camera, stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape, walked forward five paces, raised the Minolta again, and took half a dozen medium-distance flash shots of bloodstains on the asphalt parking lot. Several drops gleamed near the rear bumper of a Corvette with dark windows and a BAD BOY logo. She got a shot of the Vette, its license plate. A wide-angle shot of the other four cars parked beside it. Then she knelt down for a few close-ups of the blood. It was dry now but still gleamed in the yellow streetlights.

      She got back to her feet and scanned the pavement with her Maglite. She worked between the cars, found more blood near the sidewalk, a bloody footprint. She took one establishing shot of the footprint from five feet out, then placed her ruler down next to the print for accurate perspective and took one shot, then another just to be sure she had something.

      Eyes neutral. No personality, no throb of self. The flat, disinterested perspective of an android whose assignment was simply to see and document. No Alexandra, no daughter, no wife, no bundle of dreams and wishes and memories. Nothing but the viewfinder, the square frame, the footprints. Step by step, moving closer to the heart of the crime.

      On the sidewalk in front of the apartment, she popped out the used film, marked it, and threaded a new roll into the Minolta. Kodak Plus 200. From the window of the bottom apartment, a cat watched her. It was a gold tabby with a bell on its collar. As she came near, the cat stood up on the inside windowsill and stretched itself, then slid away into the dark apartment as if it had witnessed its quota of misery for one night.

      Alexandra took another flash shot at the bottom of the stairway. More speckles of blood and more footprints. She found the bloody outline of a hand on the wood rail and got a medium shot and a five-inch close-up of it. Clear enough to blow up later and use the fluorescent-light enhancement to get a usable print. She took one more shot as she was going up the stairs. The bottom of the bleeder’s shoes had deep waffle patterns. The same size ten Nikes he’d worn on the four previous occasions.

      The killer had walked down the stairway, dripping blood in front of him, then stepping into the spatters he’d made. His fifth assault in as many months, identical MO as the others. Lots of theories were circulating about why a guy who’d just raped and murdered took such care to leave his bloody prints behind. A taunt, perhaps. A wish to be caught. Or some ritualistic fantasy he was dramatizing. The Miami Herald and one of the TV stations had dubbed him ‘the Bloody Rapist’ and theorized that he was trying to show the incompetence of law enforcement. A former cop perhaps thumbing his nose at his old colleagues. Here’re my fingerprints all over the place, my DNA, my shoe prints, and you idiots still can’t catch me.

      But Alex didn’t buy the profile. As usual, the media jocks assumed everyone else wanted what they themselves hungered so deeply for: publicity, high ratings. But this guy didn’t strike her that way at all. No headline hound. His whole scenario was too intense, too private for that. To Alex, that blood seemed fiercely primal, like the spoor of some fatally wounded animal, a beast too blinded by its hurt to care about the trail it was leaving.

      Higher up the wooden railing was another bloody handprint. Alexandra got an establishing shot from five feet away, then two close-in shots. Good clear prints. She moved slowly, warily, eyes roaming in precise concentric circles, five feet out, ten feet, farther. As she’d been trained to look. Second nature now.

      Down the hallway, Dan Romano was smoking a cigarette, gazing out at the night sky. Heavy guy with white hair swept back. Thirty years on the force. Homicide lieutenant who was running the Bloody Rapist investigation. Dan was due to retire any day now. Getting philosophical these last few months on the job, bugging everyone with big unanswerable questions. Why is the sky blue? Why does the ivy twine?

      ‘Place is pretty quiet,’ she said. ‘You run everybody off, Dan? Your charisma on the fritz again?’

      Dan flicked his cigarette out into the night, turned to look at her.

      ‘ME’s getting his pants on; everybody else is rolling. Be here momentarily.’

      ‘What do we have?’

      Dan gave her a wan smile.

      ‘Your guy’s been naughty again.’

      Alexandra shook her head.

      ‘You can drop that crap. It’s not funny anymore.’

      ‘Hey, I’m not the only one to notice. Folks are starting to talk.’

      ‘He’s not mine any more than he’s yours or anybody else’s, so cut the shit.’

      Alexandra checked the settings on the Minolta.

      ‘Like right now, Alex. How tightened up you are. Stiff-jointed. That thing happening with your eye.’

      She stared at him.

      ‘Yeah? And what thing is that?’

      ‘That twitch, right there in the corner of your left eye. I’m not the only one to notice it. You got a reaction going on, Alex. This guy’s hit a nerve.’

      ‘I was winking at you, Dan. Flirting. You couldn’t tell?’

      He gazed at her for a few seconds and his voice softened.

      ‘I don’t think so, Alex. I think this is getting to you. I think you need to talk about this to somebody with some training.’

      She shook her head, lowered her camera.

      ‘Come on, Dan. All the shit we wade through every day, I guess I’m entitled to a goddamn eye twitch now and then, don’t you think?’

      He kept staring at her for a moment or two; then he sighed and his eyes drifted off to the horizon. He lit another cigarette, took a hungry pull.

      She said, ‘I’m finished shooting out here. You want to show me around inside? Or just do it on my own?’

      Dan blew out a cloud of smoke and didn’t move. His eyes were scanning the dark heavens.

      ‘Tell me something, Alex. I been meaning to ask you.’ His voice with that dreamy edge.

      ‘Oh, brother, here it comes.’

      He drew in another hit and let the smoke drift out with his words.

      ‘Why do you do this shit? You’re a smart, good-looking woman. You got skills, a college diploma; you could do anything. What the hell motivates you?’

      He brought his eyes back from the dark and peered at her.

      ‘It was either this or a nunnery.’ She gave him a light smile, but he didn’t notice.

      ‘I’d hate to see you wind up like me. Because you know what I’m starting to think, Alex? I’m starting

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