“How do you know Tawnya has a tattoo there, of all places?”

“It was sunny the other day and she had on a white blouse, remember, kind of sheer? When you turn just right light goes through and you can see skin. I saw a dark shape sticking up from her skirt. Either it’s a real big birthmark or a tattoo.” Rebecca grinned mischievously. “But since it’s Trampy Tawnya, I’m betting tattoo.”

Nautilus didn’t know what to say, so he sat back within the sanctuary of smoked windows and watched the incoming parade of staff. You could tell the local employees – landscapers, electricians, maintenance types – from the part-timers, the former tossing out last-minute smokes from their cars and trucks as they entered the lot, the latter fresh-faced and younger and often arriving in groups. To the former it was a job, the latter saw a mission.

Nautilus looked in the rear-view and saw a blue Toyota van enter the lot, Tawnya at the wheel. The van pulled up to the employee entrance and a quartet of young women exited before the van pulled away. Nautilus scoped out the faces as the girls angled toward the back gate.

“That girl …” he said, nodding at a twentyish woman in tattered jeans and a tight gray tee, brushing back shoulder-length brown hair as she walked with her head down. “She’s the one Tawnya slapped.”

“Are you gonna go talk to her?”

Nautilus continued scoping out the girl, looking anxious, somehow frail, even in her youth. “I’m afraid she’ll get spooked. Especially if a guy comes up out of nowhere—”

“And has a voice like this deeeep,” Rebecca said, dropping two octaves, “and is about ten feet tall.”

Nautilus nodded. The kid not only saw things, she saw into things.

“Lemme do it,” Rebecca said, pushing on the door handle. “I’ll talk to her.”

“No way, stay here and we’ll—”

But Rebecca Owsley was out the door and moving across the parking lot.

Ten minutes passed and Nautilus was about to go after the girl when he saw Rebecca striding from the employee entrance, her face pensive. He opened the passenger door and she jumped inside.

“Rebecca, you can’t just go on your own like—”

“Her name is Greta. She’s scared to talk to you. She’s kinda weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Like she’s not all there, like maybe sixty per cent of her brain got turned on this morning. Anyway, I told her a friend of mine saw her get slapped and was wondering if she was OK. She got all scared and owlish, y’know?”

“Owlish?”

Rebecca widened her eyes to imitate fear. “Going, who? Who?”

“And you said?”

“You weren’t with the park, but a guy who took care of people, like a protector. She’d been all like go away, but when I said protector, she said, How? It was a good thing.”

“Who to How is good?”

“Who was scared, How was hopeful, at least just a little bit.”

Nautilus stared at the kid. She was sixteen?

“What happened then?”

“Greta got all schizo because some other workers were getting closer. I gave her your number and said call you, just to talk. She said she didn’t have a cell … she wasn’t allowed. I gave her my phone.”

Nautilus refrained from shaking his head. “You said you did other things in there. Like what?”

“I walked around to see if I could see Trampy Tawnya. No luck. Maybe she was busy slapping someone.”

49

When awakened I had the energy to head to the Palace, grabbing a shower and change of clothes. At eight I had called Belafonte and given her a quick overview of what was happening, telling her to continue her research on Johnson. I next left a message for Dr Nancy Wainwright to call as soon as she arrived at work.

Dr Wainwright had been the director of the Institute for Aberrational Behavior for six years. I had last been there five years ago on the Bobby Lee Crayline case, Wainwright calling me out of the blue when the sociopath’s legal team had wanted to hypnotically regress Crayline to his childhood, part of a defense strategy. Both she and the former director of the Institute, Dr Prowse, were terrified that the regression would blow the hinges off whatever final door kept Crayline in limited restraint.

The procedure went ahead anyway, and to disastrous effect, but I had answered Dr Wainwright’s summons and driven to the Institute to try and forestall the hypnosis. In my book she owed me one and it was time to collect on the chit.

Her call came at 9.45, and I was on it in a single ring. “Detective Ryder,” Dr Wainwright said, her voice pleasant and familiar. “It’s been a while. You’re still in Mobile I expect?”

“In Florida, Doc,” I said, picturing Wainwright, a slender woman now in her mid-fifties with penetrating and intelligent brown eyes behind round-framed glasses. She’d proven to be an excellent steward of the Institute founded by Dr Prowse, so much so that the former Alabama Institute for Aberrational Studies was now the National Institute for Aberrational Studies. “I’m an agent with the Florida Center for Law Enforcement.”

“Still specializing in the disturbed cases?”

“We all have a calling,” I said. “Listen, Dr Wainwright, we’ve got a problem here.”

“Miami? The Menendez woman? Have they found anything yet?”

“No, but I’m calling about another case. A former patient of the Institute has been killing women here. He stones them to death, wraps them in cloth, douses them with olive oil and accelerant and sets them on fire. Two of the three were still alive when he set them alight. Last night he killed a cop by bashing in his head with a hammer.”

“My God,” she said. “Who?”

“Frisco Jay Dredd.”

Seconds ticked by, followed by a soft exhalation of breath. “Not unexpected, Detective.”

“I need to know more about Dredd,” I said. “Anything you can tell me … and more.”

“You know I can’t go into—”

“Bobby Lee Crayline, Doctor Wainwright. You needed me, I came running. I need you now.”

“It’s different. That wasn’t—”

“Did I mention that Dredd has another woman? She’s probably alive … for a bit.”

Another long pause. “I’m, uh, not in a good place. Let me call you back. Fifteen minutes.”

It took seventeen, me staring at my phone, waiting.

“I drove off the Institute grounds,” she said. “I’m parked a half-mile down the road. I don’t know why … it makes me feel better about, uh, talking.”

“I understand. What can you tell me about Dredd?”

“Frisco Dredd is reality-challenged, Detective. Sometimes he seems normal, gentle. Other times he’s delusional, and can be completely under the sway of his delusions.”

“Religious delusions, unless I miss my guess.”

“Frisco Dredd believes himself a battleground between Good and Evil. One night an attendant heard moaning in a shower stall. He found that Mr Dredd had somehow managed to strip a length of hollow plastic conduit from a wall, a tube. He jammed one end into a faucet, inserted the other end deep into his bowels and turned the hot water on full.”

“A high-powered enema,” I conjectured. “Trying to wash the evil away.”

“He nearly died from a perforated intestine and later explained Satan had crawled up his anus while he was sleeping and needed to be flushed out. There were psychological aspects at play, Detective. Dredd is bisexual, and it wasn’t Satan that had violated his anus.”

“It was other men,” I said, not in my brother’s league but still no stranger to the symbolisms of a tortured mind.

“In Dredd’s upbringing, homosexuality and its practice was a mortal sin against God and Nature. Dredd also manifests Hypersexual Disorder. You’re acquainted?”

“Sex often starts as impulsive in earlier life, ramps up to compulsive, all-encompassing. An addiction as desperate as a heavy heroin jones.”

“The victim is driven by libido,” Wainwright affirmed. “Masturbation a dozen times a day or more, sexual fantasizing beyond the normal range, countless anonymous sexual partners. The victims are often terrified by the intensity of their drives, but it would affect Frisco Dredd even more.”