'I hear your actress found a body on the beach,' Maria said. 'Thing there's anything in it?' Arvo shook his head. 'I doubt it. Just unlucky, I guess. On the other hand...' What?' 'I don't like coincidences, that's all.' 'So what's she like?' 'Who?' 'You know . The actress. Sarah Broughton.' 'You watch that show?' 'Sure do.'
Arvo shook his head slowly. It was late Friday afternoon, and Maria was sitting opposite him. He hadn't seen her since the Sandi Gaines interventions. The only other team members in the office were Eric Metering and Kelly Norris, one of the three females on the unit. 'Me, too,' Kelly called out from the far hutch. 'That Jack Marillo guy's got a great bod. Maria laughed. 'So tell me about her', she insisted.
'What's she liked? In the flesh?' In the flesh, Arvo still thought that Maria herself was a desirable woman as he had ever met, though he hadn't told her that, and just about the opposite physical type to Sarah Broughton. They were different as day and night. Maria's sexuality was sensual and earthy, while Sarah Broughton's was more cerebral. While lovemaking with Maria would be joyous and uncomplicated, Arvo imagined , with Sarah it would mean searching for and freeing repressed emotions, finding ways through barriers and other defences.
Maria's skin would be warm, would offer Sarah's would be as smooth, and possibly as cold, as marble. 'What kind of question is that?' Arvo asked. "What's she like?" 'A pretty simple one, I'd've thought,' said Maria. 'Is she pretty?' 'Of course she's pretty. She's TV actress.' 'They're not all pretty,' Maria countered. 'Especially the Brits. Some of them are downright plain and homely.'
'They've all got crooked teeth,' Kelly chimed in. 'Okay, so her teeth are a bit crooked,' Arvo said. 'So what? So are mine. Does it mean you can't be pretty if you've got crooked teeth?' 'You think you're pretty, Arvo?' Maria asked with a mischievous smile. That's not what I said. You're misinterpreting me. What I said was-' 'I know what you said. So you think she's pretty?' 'Sure she's pretty, in a cool sort of way.' 'What does that mean?' 'You know, she's blonde, pale complexion, has that accent.'
'You think she's frigid, is that it?' 'No, I didn't say that. Loook-' 'So she's sexy as well was pretty?' 'I guess so.' 'Guess so? Come on, Arvo, you can do better than that.' 'Okay. Yeah. She's sexy. All right?' 'How sexy?' 'Just sexy.' 'No need to blush.' 'I'm not blushing.' 'Yes you are,' yelled Kelly. 'What about her personality?' Maria asked.
'General impressions?' 'Well you hardly know her intimately. Or do you?' 'She's an actress. You know actresses. She was partly in character. The cop she plays.' 'Anika O'Rourke,' Kelly chipped in again. 'That's the one.' 'So,' Maria went on, 'you're saying you didn't get a real good sense of her?' 'She's very reserved.' 'Sounds like a typical Brit.' 'I guess so,' he said. 'But I think she's scared, too.'
'Maybe she's got good reason to be. What's your sense of the guy who's writing the letters?' Arvo thought for a moment, recalling the letter he had been studying earlier. 'He sees himself as her long-lost lover, now become his saviour, her rescuer, her knight in shining armour.' 'Rescuer form what?' 'From the evils of Hollywood. From Them'. 'The usual semi-literate diatribe?'
'Not really. This guy seems reasonably well educated. Not that means a lot, I know. Bizarre forms of spelling and grammar hardly represents a greater threat than correct grammar -expect to literacy. There are some unusal capitalizations- nouns like "Machines," "Powers" and "Crazy". 'Germans capitalize their nouns, don't they?' said Maria. 'Uh-huh. But this seems more like some sort of mental tic.
It makes the concepts sound Big, and it goes with his gushing flowery prose style.' 'What about the handwriting?' Kelly Norris asked. She had left her own hutch and was now standing beside Maria, interested, hand resting lightly on the divider. A tall, big-boned woman with a mass of curly grey hair and spots of colour high on her cheeks, Kelly had been the first woman on the team. She was wearing threadbare black cords and baggy white cardigan over a red blouse.
Kelly always did dress casually. 'It was done on a laser printer,' said Arvo. 'That means he either owns a computer set-up or he works in a place where he can get access to one.' 'Where did he send the letters?' Maria asked. 'Home address. She thought she kept it a pretty closely guarded secret.' Kelly and Maria laughed. 'Her and everyone else.'
'Yeah. Well, maybe we can do a bit of checking around with agencies and private detectives who sell that sort of information. See if anyone's bought Sarah Broughton's address recently.' 'Good luck,' said Maria. 'In my experience, those guys give you dick.' 'True enough. Still worth a shot.' 'Any occult?' Kelly asked. 'No' said Arvo. Often, the writers insisted that the victim should be initiated as Dawn Goddess of the Order of the Golden Monkey Foreskins, or something.
Arvo had seen plenty of those, and they always gave him the same feeling: somewhere between the creeps and the desire to laugh out loud. 'Apart from the romantic stuff,' he went on,' there are a few disturbing references to hacking away the corrupt flesh. And a bit about biting through her nipple and luxuriating in the flow of blood and milk.' 'Sick-o', said Kelly. Maria put her finger in her mouth and mimicked barfing. Even Eric looked up from the file he was working on and wrinkled his nose.
'The big three,' Arvo said. 'Sex, death and Mother. All in one sentences. All very mysterious.' But he stopped himself from reading too much into the images. After all, he wasn't a psychiatrist; he only had a degree in Communications, that to do when they were between eighteen and twenty-one. And the TMU didn't demand special prerequisite training from its members, only that they be good detectives. Keen intuition, strong research abilities and general social skills were the essentials.
He shook his head. 'And Sarah Broughton's a puzzle, too. I think she knows more than she's telling .' Maria raised her black eyebrows. Better watch yourself, Arvo,' she said. 'I've never known a man who wasn't a sucker for an enigmatic woman.' She nudged Kelly and they both laughed. Eric kept his head down, shiny bald pate towards them. 'Package for Detective Arvo Hughes!' Arvo raised his hand and the patrolman walked right up to his hutch and handed over a thick manila envelope.
He signed for it, stuck his thumb under the flap and ripped it open. Crime-scene pictures spilled out over his messy desk. Jesus , he thought, as he looked at the stark black-and-white images and the garnish colour Polaroids, someone had certainly done a number on John Heimar. There were pictures of the general area and the body half buried, in situ, with bloody stump of an arm lying beside it, where, Arvo assumed, Sarah Broughton must have dropped it.
Then there were photos of the various body parts as they were unearthed and pieced together on a canvas sheet on the beach. Photo after photo showed the reconstruction of a body: first the arm, then arm and head, then an arm, a leg and the head, and so on. There was very little blood; clearly most of it had been spilled somewhere else and the rest had drained into the sand.
The rough edges of flesh where the head and legs had been severed gaped like cuts of meat in a butcher's shop. Arvo became aware of Maria's perfume and felt her warm breath on his neck as she came around and leaned over him. 'My God,' he heard her mutter. 'This is what your actress found?' 'Uh-huh.' 'The poor woman.' But Arvo wasn't looking at the images of violent death any longer.
Something in one of the early black-and-whites had caught his eye. The photograph had been taken from the landward sides of the body, and judging by the angle, the photographer had probably knelt to take it. The time must have been soon after sunrise, because the sun was shining over the hills in the east and casting fairly long shadows.
Just beyond the body, where the sand was getting wet from the tide, Arvo though the could make out a faint indentation, as if something had been drawn there, then mostly washed away. He could only see it because of the sun's angle, and even then it was no more than an indistinct outline. It could have been merely a trick of the light and water, he thought, but it looked exactly like a heart shape.