The prosecution pointed out the evidence of PCP in Hardiman’s system, and judge and jury agreed that the drug could give an already deranged man the strength of ten.

No one believed the defense attorney’s argument that the PCP in Hardiman’s system was negligible compared to the amount found in Rugglestone’s and that Hardiman hadn’t added to it with speed, but cut into it with a combination of morphine and seconol. Add the alcohol to the mix, and Hardiman was lucky he could stand that afternoon, never mind perform physical feats of such staggering magnitude.

He’d burned Rugglestone in sections over the course of four hours. He started with the feet, and just before the fire had worked its way up to the lower calves, he doused it, went back to work with the hammer or the ice pick or a straight razor, which was used to lacerate Rugglestone’s flesh over one hundred and ten times, also from right and left angles. Then he burned the lower calves and knees, doused the flames again, and so on.

Examination of Rugglestone’s wounds had revealed the presence of lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, and table salt. Facial and head lacerations had shown evidence of two facial compounds—Ponds cold cream and white Pan-Cake makeup.

He’d been wearing makeup?

I checked the Hardiman file. At the time of his arrest, Hardiman, too, had been found with traces of white Pan-Cake compound in the roots of the hair closest to his face, as if he’d wiped it off but hadn’t had time to wash his hair.

I rifled through Cal Morrison’s file. Morrison had left his house at three on an overcast afternoon to head for a sandlot football game at Columbia Park. His house was less than a mile away, and while police had checked every possible route he could’ve taken, they’d found no witnesses who’d seen Cal past the point when he waved to a neighbor on Sumner Street.

Seven hours later, he’d been crucified.

Forensics teams had found evidence that Cal had spent several hours lying on his back on a rug. A cheap rug, the kind cut in sections unprofessionally, so that tufts of it stayed in his hair. The rug had also contained sediments of oil and brake fluid.

Under the nails of his left hand, they found type A blood and the chemicals used to form white Pan-Cake makeup.

Detectives had momentarily entertained the idea that they could be looking for a female killer.

Hair fibers and plaster casts of footprints quickly discounted the theory.

Makeup. Why were Rugglestone and Hardiman wearing makeup?

27

Around eleven, I called Devin on the walkie-talkie and told him about the makeup.

“Bothered me too at the time,” he said.

“And?”

“And it ended up being just one of those incidental things. Hardiman and Rugglestone were lovers, Patrick.”

“They were homosexual, Devin—that doesn’t mean they were cross-dressers or fems. There’s nothing in any of these files about them ever being seen wearing makeup.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Patrick. It never added up to shit. Hardiman and Rugglestone killed Morrison and then Hardiman killed Rugglestone, and if they were wearing pineapples on their heads and dressed in purple tu-tus at the time, it wouldn’t change those facts.”