Dreams in the Key of Blue by John Philpin Page B

People change, but he always needed a home base.”
    “He’s a little guy, right? Like what you’re describing.”
    Markham certainly had the time to get to Ragged Harbor and kill. “The orange,” I began.
    “That came through on the bulletin we got,” Jaworski said. “The way I hear it, he killed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Dumped his fruit leavings in all the New England states but this one. That may not mean anything to him, but I ain’t comfortable with it.”
    Jaworski dropped a package on the table. “More reports and photos,” he said, preparing to leave. “We can talk tomorrow, but I’ve got one more question, Lucas.”
    I looked at the worried expression on the cop’s face and knew what was coming.
    “Markham or not, we could have more victims, couldn’t we? We’re talkin’ about somebody who’ll go on killing until he’s caught.”
    “Yes,” I told him.

AS I SIPPED MY MORNING COFFEE, I SPREAD THE NEW crime scene photographs on the kitchen table, then walked around the table and gazed at them from different angles. I stopped walking long enough to thumb through the most recent reports, then I started pacing again, looking at the graphic portraiture of death.
    Something was wrong with the gestalt. The parts remained just fragments; the crimes lacked a sense of completeness.
    A murder scene informs. The killer’s droppings wait to be analyzed for hints at thought patterns, pathways into twisted fantasy, descriptors of personality.
    I was refusing to see these three women as anything other than vibrant young people with their lives in front of them. Jaycie was a new friend. I was not allowing myself to view her and her roommates as prey, which is what I would have to do if I expected to experience the savagery that intruded in their night.
    The education and training that I bring to the analysis of a homicide is less important than the flexibility of mind, the willingness to visit the beast in the wild and to liberate the one inside. If I approached a crime scene with a plan,I’d already conceded defeat. Savagery has its own logic, conforming to no rules but its own.
    I could not force the mind-set.
    I had other matters to attend to, so I set aside my work and drove into the village.
    I APPROACHED THE TURN FOR THE COLLEGE AND SAW the media camp that Jaworski had blocked from Crescent Street and that Stu Gilman had locked off campus. Half a dozen trailers and four large flatbeds decorated with satellite dishes reduced Main Street to two congested lanes. A virtual truck rodeo surrounded the college entrance, directly across from the locked gate to the Screamin’ Demon, Ragged Harbor’s small amusement park and roller coaster.
    I sat in traffic and gazed at the park entrance, the mouth of a giant aluminum monster. I imagined an army of kids in summer, trooping gleefully beneath the demon’s silver fangs, then running for the 1950s-era wooden coaster.
    A cop waved me through the traffic snarl.
    As they prepared to broadcast from Ragged Harbor to the world, TV reporters and technicians sipped coffee or brushed their teeth over Styrofoam cups. Print reporters tapped at laptop computers. Their TV counterparts wore microphones that resembled wasps clinging to lapels; these were connected to battery packs clipped to the backs of their belts.
    A college security guard checked my identification and allowed me to pass, prompting glares from two media people standing near the barrier. I was familiar with news reporters’ sense of entitlement from my Boston years. More recently, they’d given us O.J. with a cast of thousands, instant experts, and Dolby Surround sound, thenmilked the presidency as if it were a prurient soap opera, frequently reminding us of their obligation to report the news. TV producers and newspaper editors spent more time checking audience share and distribution than verifying the accuracy of their stories.
    The campus resembled a ghost