More Twisted

grandparents—his parents too—had died years before; the story about the move to Oregon was apparently a complete lie.
    The few relatives the detective could track down confirmed that he’d just disappeared and they didn’t know where he might be. They echoed his boss’s assessment, describing the man as intelligent but a recluse, one who—significantly—loved to read and often lost himself in novels, appropriate for a killer who took his homicidal inspiration from a book.
    “What’d his letter to Andy say?” Wallace asked.
    With an okaying nod from Altman, Randall handed it to the reporter, who then summarized out loud. “He askshow Mr. Carter did the research for his book. What were the sources he used? How did he learn about the most efficient way a murderer would kill someone? And he’s curious about the mental makeup of a killer. Why did some people find it easy to kill while others couldn’t possibly hurt anyone?”
    Altman shook his head. “No clue as to where he might’ve gone. We’ll get his name into NCIC and VICAP but, hell, he could be anywhere. South America, Europe, Singapore . . .”
    Since Bob Fletcher’s Robbery Division would’ve handled the vandalism at the Greenville Library’s Three Pines branch, which they now knew Desmond was responsible for, Altman sent Randall to ask the sergeant if he’d found any leads as part of the investigation that would be helpful.
    The other men found themselves staring at Desmond’s fan letter as if it were a corpse at a wake, silence surrounding them.
    Altman’s phone rang and he took the call. It was the county clerk, who explained that Desmond owned a small vacation home about sixty miles from Greenville, on the shores of Lake Muskegon, tucked into the backwater, piney wilderness.
    “You think he’s hiding out there?” Wallace asked.
    “I say we go find out. Even if he’s hightailed it out of the state, though, there could be some leads there as to where he did go. Maybe airline receipts or something, notes, phone message on an answering machine.”
    Wallace grabbed his jacket and his reporter’s notebook. “Let’s go.”
    “No, no, no,” Quentin Altman said firmly. “You get an exclusive. You don’t get to go into the line of fire.”
    “Nice of you to think of me,” Wallace said sourly.
    “Basically I just don’t want to get sued by your newspaper if Desmond decides to use you for target practice.”
    The reporter gave a scowl and dropped down into an officer chair.
    Josh Randall returned to report that Sergeant Bob Fletcher had no helpful information in the library vandalism case.
    But Altman said, “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got a better lead. Suit up, Josh.”
    “Where’re we going?”
    “For a ride in the country. What else on a nice fall day like this?”

    Lake Muskegon is a large but shallow body of water bordered by willow, tall grass and ugly pine. Altman didn’t know the place well. He’d brought his family here for a couple of picnics over the years and he and Bob Fletcher had come to the lake once on a halfhearted fishing expedition, of which Altman had only vague memories: gray, drizzly weather and a nearly empty creel at the end of the day.
    As he and Randall drove north through the increasingly deserted landscape he briefed the young man. “Now, I’m ninety-nine percent sure Desmond’s not here. But what we’re going to do first is clear the house—I mean closet by closet—and then I want you stationed in the front to keep an eye out while I look for evidence. Okay?”
    “Sure, boss.”
    They passed Desmond’s overgrown driveway and pulled off the road then eased into a stand of thick forsythia.
    Together, the men cautiously made their way down the weedy drive toward the “vacation house,” a dignified term for the tiny, shabby cottage sitting in a three-foot-high sea of grass and brush. A path had been beaten through the foliage—somebody had been here recently—but it might not have been Desmond; Altman had been a teenager once himself and knew that nothing attracts adolescent attention like a deserted house.
    They drew their weapons and Altman pounded on the door, calling, “Police. Open up.”
    Silence.
    He hesitated a moment, adjusted the grip on his gun and kicked the door in.
    Filled with cheap, dust-covered furniture, buzzing with stuporous fall flies, the place appeared deserted. They checked the four small rooms carefully and found no sign of Desmond. Outside, they glanced in