date for the night.”
In the corner of the bedroom, they found both Beta and VHS video recorders and a stack of pornographic video tapes. It looked as if Cool had been rerecording the Beta tapes onto the VHS machine. The man, who had apparently communicated with no one in the real world, had led a rich fantasy life behind the door to his apartment.
Thong underwear, like that the dead man tagged “Whiskey Doe” had worn, but in garish patterns of animal prints and exotic colors, was scattered in the bedroom. “I wonder if he posed in that mirror?” O’Leary mused.
All of Cool’s windows were covered, some with aluminum foil and some with dark green plastic garbage bags so that no natural light could get in and, perhaps most particularly, to prevent anyone from looking into his world.
The mediciney smell was explained when the investigators checked the bathroom. They had seen a number of containers of drugstore items in the living room, but nothing like the proliferation of bottles, jars, boxes and vials of nonprescription vitamins, pain-killers, herbal remedies, sports rubs, patent medicines, skin tonic, mens’ cologne, hair dressing, and lotions that littered the counters and the sink and were jammed into the bathroom cabinets. The sink was too full to use, and to accommodate the overflow of products, Cool had fashioned a box that fit in the shower and he’d piled more of the stuff in there. The containers in the medicine cabinet had been there so long that their bottoms had rusted to the shelves. Most of the tops were also rusted or dried shut. This looked more like the bathroom of a very old man than it did that of an athletic-looking man in his early forties.
They found two pellet guns, and several knives—both hunting knives and switchblades. The man who had lived here seemed prepared to protect his bleak lodgings.
The kitchen was pretty much what they expected; dirty dishes and accumulated boxes covered the counter tops and filled the sink. The refrigerator’s contents looked as if no one had really made a home here. The crowded shelves had the remainders of take-out dinners from a supermarket deli—fast food, half-eaten and moldering. There were many tiny bottles of alcoholic beverages, the kind that airlines serve. The oven and stove were filthy, covered with baked-on grease.
Only the refrigerator gave a clue about the man who had lived here. He had left notes to himself, anchored with magnets, some of which must have made sense only to him.
Who
was
Silas Cool? Or, rather, who had he been? Where had he worked, and with whom had he spent his time? Did anyone else know about this musty, pornography-filled apartment where he had apparently lived for almost fourteen years?
Silas Cool was dead, quite probably by his own hand. Seeing the .38 caliber bullets and the gun box, the three detectives suspected that he had also killed Mark McLaughlin, and attempted to take a bus load of thirty-three strangers down into the depths of the Lake Washington Ship Canal with him.
* * *
It was very late. After a last check with the hospitals to query the condition of the survivors, John Nordlund, Steve O’Leary and Gene Ramirez signed out of Homicide for the night. Tomorrow, they would hope to find someone who had actually interacted with Silas Cool—someone who might explain what forces had driven him. The man had lived in Seattle for at least thirteen years.
Somebody
had to know him.
“It was strange,” Steve O’Leary would recall. “Usually, we get lots of calls after something like this from people who have something to share with us. Not one person from his neighborhood ever called us about Silas Cool—not one clerk at the supermarket to say she had rung up his groceries, nobody who knew him from the Laundromat, no one who talked with him on the corner. No neighbors. No one who should have been at least tangentially close to him. It was almost as if he had existed in a vacuum. An invisible
In the corner of the bedroom, they found both Beta and VHS video recorders and a stack of pornographic video tapes. It looked as if Cool had been rerecording the Beta tapes onto the VHS machine. The man, who had apparently communicated with no one in the real world, had led a rich fantasy life behind the door to his apartment.
Thong underwear, like that the dead man tagged “Whiskey Doe” had worn, but in garish patterns of animal prints and exotic colors, was scattered in the bedroom. “I wonder if he posed in that mirror?” O’Leary mused.
All of Cool’s windows were covered, some with aluminum foil and some with dark green plastic garbage bags so that no natural light could get in and, perhaps most particularly, to prevent anyone from looking into his world.
The mediciney smell was explained when the investigators checked the bathroom. They had seen a number of containers of drugstore items in the living room, but nothing like the proliferation of bottles, jars, boxes and vials of nonprescription vitamins, pain-killers, herbal remedies, sports rubs, patent medicines, skin tonic, mens’ cologne, hair dressing, and lotions that littered the counters and the sink and were jammed into the bathroom cabinets. The sink was too full to use, and to accommodate the overflow of products, Cool had fashioned a box that fit in the shower and he’d piled more of the stuff in there. The containers in the medicine cabinet had been there so long that their bottoms had rusted to the shelves. Most of the tops were also rusted or dried shut. This looked more like the bathroom of a very old man than it did that of an athletic-looking man in his early forties.
They found two pellet guns, and several knives—both hunting knives and switchblades. The man who had lived here seemed prepared to protect his bleak lodgings.
The kitchen was pretty much what they expected; dirty dishes and accumulated boxes covered the counter tops and filled the sink. The refrigerator’s contents looked as if no one had really made a home here. The crowded shelves had the remainders of take-out dinners from a supermarket deli—fast food, half-eaten and moldering. There were many tiny bottles of alcoholic beverages, the kind that airlines serve. The oven and stove were filthy, covered with baked-on grease.
Only the refrigerator gave a clue about the man who had lived here. He had left notes to himself, anchored with magnets, some of which must have made sense only to him.
Who
was
Silas Cool? Or, rather, who had he been? Where had he worked, and with whom had he spent his time? Did anyone else know about this musty, pornography-filled apartment where he had apparently lived for almost fourteen years?
Silas Cool was dead, quite probably by his own hand. Seeing the .38 caliber bullets and the gun box, the three detectives suspected that he had also killed Mark McLaughlin, and attempted to take a bus load of thirty-three strangers down into the depths of the Lake Washington Ship Canal with him.
* * *
It was very late. After a last check with the hospitals to query the condition of the survivors, John Nordlund, Steve O’Leary and Gene Ramirez signed out of Homicide for the night. Tomorrow, they would hope to find someone who had actually interacted with Silas Cool—someone who might explain what forces had driven him. The man had lived in Seattle for at least thirteen years.
Somebody
had to know him.
“It was strange,” Steve O’Leary would recall. “Usually, we get lots of calls after something like this from people who have something to share with us. Not one person from his neighborhood ever called us about Silas Cool—not one clerk at the supermarket to say she had rung up his groceries, nobody who knew him from the Laundromat, no one who talked with him on the corner. No neighbors. No one who should have been at least tangentially close to him. It was almost as if he had existed in a vacuum. An invisible
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