Even the Wicked Read Free Page B

thought it was Spanish and I was understandin’ it.” He shrugged. “Young dude got the decision.”
    “It figured.”
    “These two don’t look to be in a hurry. They just takin’ their time.”
    “They’ll have to do it without me,” I said. “I have to go out for a while.”
    “Some kind of business?”
    “Some kind.”
    “Want me to tag along, maybe watch your back?”
    “Not tonight.”
    He shrugged. “You be thinkin’ ‘bout that computer, though.”
    “I’ll give it some thought.”
    “Ain’t got much time, if we’s gonna join the twentieth century.”
    “I’d hate to miss it.”
    “That’ how they gonna catch Will, you know. Computers.”
    “Is that a fact?”
    “Put all the letters the fool writes into the computer, press the right keys, an’ it’ll analyze the words he uses and tell you the sucker’s a forty-two-year-old white male of Scandinavian ancestry. He be missin’ two toes on the right foot, an’ he a big Jets and Rangers fan, an’ when he a child his mama whupped him for wettin’ the bed.”
    “And they’ll get all this from the computer.”
    “All that an’ more,” he said, grinning. “How you think they gonna get him?”
    “Forensics,” I said. “Lab work at the crime scenes and on the letters he writes. I’m sure they’ll use computers to process the data. They use them for everything these days.”
    “Everybody does. Everybody but us.”
    “And they’ll follow up a ton of leads,” I said, “and knock on a lot of doors and ask a lot of questions, most of them pointless. And eventually he’ll make a mistake, or they’ll get lucky, or both. And they’ll land on him.”
    “I guess.”
    “The only thing is,” I said, “I hope they don’t let it go too long. I’d like to see them hurry up and get this guy.”
     
2
     
    One newspaper column started the whole thing. It was Marty McGraw’s, of course, and it ran in the Daily News on a Thursday in early June. McGraw’s column, “Since You Asked,” appeared in that newspaper every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. It had been a fixture in New York tabloid journalism for ten years or more, always with the same title, though not always on the same days, or even with the same paper. McGraw had jumped ship a few times over the years, moving from the News to the Post and back again, with an intermediate stop at Newsday.
    “An Open Letter to Richard Vollmer” was what McGraw called this particular column, and that’s what it was. Vollmer was an Albany native in his early forties with a long sheet of arrests for minor sex offenses. Then a few years back he’d been sent away for child molestation. He did well in therapy and his counselor wrote a favorable report for his parole board, and Vollmer returned to society, sworn to behave himself and devote his life to helping others.
    He’d been corresponding with a woman on the outside. She’d answered a personal ad of his. I don’t know what kind of woman thinks it’s a good idea to exchange letters with a convict, but God seems to have made a lot of them. Elaine says they combine low self-esteem with a messiah complex; also, she says, it’s a way for them to feel sexy without ever having to put out, because the guy’s locked away where he can’t get at them.
    Frances Neagley’s pen pal did get out, however, and there was nothing in Albany he wanted to get back to, so he came to New York and looked her up. Franny was a thirtyish nurse’s aide who’d been living alone on Haven Avenue in Washington Heights since her mother died. She walked to work at Columbia Presbyterian, volunteered her services at church and block-association fund-raisers, fed and fussed over three cats, and wrote love letters to upstanding citizens like Richie Vollmer.
    She abandoned her correspondence when Vollmer moved in with her. He insisted on being the only felon in her life. Before long she didn’t have much time for the church or the block association. She still took good