“A week after Hexcamp was jailed I took up residence at the farm where he and his band of mutants lived.” Willow paused to sip from his bottle of beer. “A half-dozen evidence techs had found nothing. But I had been tracking the monster for months. Once I saw him in the flesh, sat in the shadow of his monumental ego, I knew he’d have something. I was thinking souvenirs of the killings. Photos. Some type of memento. He’d need them.”
I drifted in the glider; Willow sat across from me on a wicker chair. Harry leaned against a porch support. Cumulus scudded across the Bay, bronzed by fading sun. A western breeze made the air tolerable.
“I ate there. Kept my clothes in his closet and my food in his refrigerator. One morning I was in the barn, converted to what he called his studio, sitting at the table where he worked. Nature called, and there being no facilities in the barn and the house a couple hundred feet away, I headed to the outhouse. It hit me that a warped man wanting to hide something might find a good place for it beneath a pile of shit. I got a flashlight and found a strand of clear, high-test monofilament running down the chute of the old two-holer.”
“How was the fishing?” I asked.
“Caught me a waterproof case. Inside were rolled canvases I figured destined for the collection, works in progress.”
“What did they look like?” I realized I was whispering.
“A brilliantly rendered skull, a rib cage with flesh rotting from it. Several pages of philosophical musings - dark, bleak stuff, created while under the spell of tracking and taking his victims. A poem about the beauty of the final moment, beautifully worded ugliness.”
Harry whispered, “Jesus.”
“Jesus was never anywhere near Marsden Hexcamp. He burrowed out of hell.”
Harry said, “If you’d kept these works you’d be showing them. Or copies at least.”
He shook his head. “I took them to the Mobile cops for safekeeping and they disappeared two days later. Presto, gone. Luckily, they weren’t needed for the trial; he’d left a wide red path. Not long later Hexcamp was shot dead in the courtroom. There should have been much more sensation following the events, but if you know history, you know -”
I nodded. “Hexcamp was sentenced in the morning, Governor George Wallace was shot that afternoon.”
Willow nodded. “The shooting was a wave crashing over everything. Marsden Hexcamp was washed from public attention.”
“And you?”
“I went undercover to investigate the murder of a union leader. Years passed. But I never got those pieces out of my mind. Hexcamp’s last words were spoken to me, Detective Nautilus. He said, ‘Follow the art, Jacob.’ Then the little son of a bitch rolled over and died.”
Harry said, “So that’s what you’ve been doing for over thirty years - following the art?”
Willow caught the allusion to obsession. His eyes tightened, but his voice stayed even. “What I’ve been doing for the past thirty years is pretty much same as everyone else, Detective: working, shopping, paying taxes, fishing when I get a chance - the sane and standard stuff. But now and then a case brought me into contact with people on the fringe, sado-maso-scato-whatevers. You know them - the people without souls.”
I could only nod my head. When you know these types, no words are necessary. Or sufficient.
Willow said, “Some of them talked about the collection, of having seen it. Stuff like that got me wondering about Hexcamp for a while, then another case’d be added to my workload and he’d go to sleep in the back of my head again.”
Willow took a deep breath. “The piece of art, whatever, you found at the convent - you couldn’t bring it along?”
I shook my head. “Left it with the Chilton County cops, their jurisdiction. They’ll send it to the AFB in Birmingham, we’ll find out anything as soon as they do.”
Harry said, “What about this woman that shot him, then ate the gun herself?”
“The Crying Woman; name was Cheyenne Widmer. From what we pieced together, she was Hexcamp’s main lover - though they all bounced between one another like rabbits, one big happy family: sex and love and death.”
“Sounds like the Manson clan,” Harry said.
Willow nodded. “Hexcamp enlisted others in his crimes, made them proud to serve him. But Manson was a pox-brain druggie, Hexcamp a genius - Van Gogh with a homicidal heart.”
Harry frowned. “Assume - assume - for a moment this big chunk of whatever is out there. Why would someone kill for it?”
Willow snorted. “Status. Telling others you have it; being admired for it. The only difference is, with serial-killer memorabilia, you’re important in a smaller crowd. But these people make up for size in devotion. Worship even. Some are run-of-the-mill spookies, sure. People stunted in adolescence. Others are as serious as people who collect Ming vases. And some are rich, big rich. Owning the Hexcamp collection would, for these people, be about the same as owning the Mona Lisa.”
Harry said, “Let’s break this down, start at the beginning, see if we can get a sense of where this crap got to.”
“Probably the best place to start is with the stuff you found in the outhouse,” I said to Willow. “Where it might have gone.”
Harry thought a moment. “If it disappeared from the property room, there probably weren’t a lot of folks who could have made that happen. Know anyone who might…”
Willow narrowed his eyes. “I’ve suspected someone all along.”
Harry said, “Someone tied to Hexcamp?”
“Someone tied to the need to make a buck.” Willow looked at me. “Remember how I told you money pulls stuff out of property rooms…if the right person’s in charge of the room?”
“It’s been thirty-something years,” I said. “This person still around?”
“Ambrose Poll. Haven’t seen his name in the obituaries,” Willow said. “Not that I ain’t been hoping.”