Текст книги "Slaughter"

Автор книги: John Lutz

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

5

Jordan Kray sat in his apartment watching the news on his small flat-screen TV. Although he could easily afford a bigger set, he liked to watch the news small, so he could wrap his mind around it. Understand it. Learn how things work.

He sat in his stocking feet with his knees drawn up sideways. His living room was spacious, with a view of the tree-lined street where he’d moved a year ago, when a well-thought-out financial strategy had brought him a windfall. Moving the money from his victims’ accounts to his own had been painful for them but a pleasure for him. He relived their agonies each time he turned the key in his front door.

There were two kinds of people in the world. He was a winner, and the other kind didn’t matter. Once they were dead and disinterested, what was theirs became his. Cash, jewelry, valuable antiques . . . it all became negotiable and found its way into his portfolio of ETFs and mutual funds. The devil’s own treasure chest for one of his disciples.

He’d stopped off at the kitchenware department of a store on Broadway and bought two identical automatic pop-up toasters—one to use in his kitchen, and one to disassemble so he thoroughly understood how the toasters worked. Did they raise the toasted slices of bread when they had become sufficiently toasted, or was the whole thing all about times? Like it took a certain amount of time to toast bread and that was that. Simple. No thermostat, nothing that Jordan couldn’t understand.

But what about the timer? If there was one.

He glanced at the TV screen. People in Arab clothing were throwing rocks at each other, while those not involved in some kind of demonstration cowered and tried to stay safe. This was news?

He shifted his attention to the toaster and used a screwdriver to remove its chrome cover.

There were the heat baffles that were within fractions of an inch of the bread slices. They would probably glow red and stay that way until the bread was sufficiently browned.

But how does the toaster know?

On the TV screen, a battered pickup truck arrived on the scene. Men with what looked like Kalashnikov automatic rifles began jumping out of both sides of the truck’s bed as it coasted down the street toward the rock throwers.

The killer glanced at the TV, then returned his attention to the toaster. It appeared that what he thought of as heat baffles were actually spring-loaded devices whose purpose was to isolate the toast so it was kept from touching the heating coils.

Not wanting to be fooled twice, the killer left the chrome body of the toaster off, and slipped the power cord into a wall socket. He put no bread in, but depressed the toaster’s handle.

It took less than a minute for the coils to glow bright red.

The sound of gunfire erupted from the TV, and a woman’s breathless voice began talking about “the army and the terrorists.”

There were several explosions. The pickup truck that had recently arrived at the scene was now upside down and burning. People were bent over and running, crossing the Arab street to escape gunfire.

The killer unplugged the toaster and let it cool. He had it now. He understood how it worked. How this brand of toaster worked, anyway. It was controlled by a timer rather than by a thermostat to register the temperature that would brown the bread without burning it.

Crowd sounds drifted in from the TV.

There was a soft sproing! sound and a spring about an inch long flew out of the toaster and landed on the table. The killer bent over and studied what he could see of the toaster’s mechanism. There was no sign of where the spring had come from, but he wasn’t worried. He could figure it out later. Or maybe the toaster didn’t even need the spring in order to work.

He suspected that more expensive toasters had some kind of thermostat and were controlled by heat rather than time. This one was a cheapy, bought for research rather than jelly or jam. Time now to put it back together.

It didn’t want to go back together. At least, not to its previous form. Not for the killer. The chrome cover wouldn’t go on straight, and he seemed to have broken the Bakelite handle on the lever that depressed the bread.

He picked up a smaller screwdriver and used it to pry the toaster’s cover. He needed only about an eighth of an inch. The sleek chrome body of the toaster still wouldn’t quite fit. He pried with the smaller screwdriver.

Yeow!

The damned thing was still hot!

And there was that damned spring, rolling off the table.

He went to the sink and filled a glass with cold water, then sat on a kitchen counter stool and soaked his left hand.

He found himself facing the TV. Someone, a man or woman, was on fire and crawling away from the burning truck.

The truck exploded. The person crawling away was enveloped in flames.

The killer removed his hand from the glass and dried it on a dish towel. His burned fingers didn’t look serious enough that he’d need ointment and a Band-Aid. He resumed reassembling the toaster.

A man in neatly pressed pajamas, sitting on the edge of a bed, came on the TV screen and began talking about the benefits of a new pill that helped people get to sleep and wasn’t habit-forming. It also sometimes eliminated erectile dysfunction.

The killer remained zeroed in on toaster dysfunction. This time being more careful.

Until he heard a local newscaster’s voice say Lois Graham’s name.

He put down the toaster and sat watching the flat-screen TV. The newscaster, Tad something, was interviewing a detective the killer was familiar with, a man named Frank Quinn. It took the killer only a few seconds to recognize Quinn, but who could forget the imposing figure? He was a big man, too rugged to be a leading man, but with the kind of honest ugliness that attracted some women.

“We’re searching now for whoever killed her,” Quinn was saying. No doubt talking about Lois Graham. “It appears that he panicked, probably scared away by someone or some animal. Unfortunately, no one reached her in time to save her.”

The killer almost laughed out loud; I guess not, with her insides all over the grass, and the rest of her taken apart like a puzzle.

He was proud of his work.

“There’s nothing special about this killer,” Quinn was saying.

The killer smiled. You’re lying!

“But we would like to warn people again about the park,” Quinn continued. “Sometimes such places are scenic and safe during daylight hours, but are much different after dark. Central Park is a great place, but don’t go there unless you have to after sundown.”

“To Central Park?” Tad the newsman seemed incredulous.

“To any park. Cowardly killers like this are friendly with the night.”

Cowardly? The killer’s hands balled into fists.

“Unless he moves on,” Quinn continued, “we’ll catch him. Killers like this are doomed to be apprehended. Experience has taught us that they’re not overly bright.”

You’re lying!

“So entangled in their compulsion that they’re not capable of logical reasoning.”

You’re lying!

“There’s nothing much in them but evil.”

Lying! If God doesn’t want me to do this, why is He letting me? Why is He urging me? Why is He my accomplice?

The camera moved to the handsome newscaster, who absently lifted a hand and smoothed back his hair. “So except for the victim and her family—and our hearts go out to them—would you say there is nothing special about this murder?”

Tell him about the gutting, the disassembly of her parts!

“No,” Quinn said, “it’s just another squalid homicide, probably done on impulse by a maniac.”

Lying! Lying!

Tad the newsman shook his head. “So sad . . .”

Lying!

Quinn was back on camera, looking straight into the lens. “It’s a kind of sickness that can overcome even the best of us.”

“So this kind of killer is a mental case, silently screaming for help?”

“Usually.”

Lie on.

Quinn imagined the killer someplace comfortable, with his feet propped up, watching television.

You’ll be sorry.

6

The trees blocked their view. Or the dusk was dark enough that there were reflections in the windows and the glass had turned to mirrors. Windows of the buildings across the street from the park, overlooking the crime scene, didn’t yield much help. None of the potential witnesses happened to be looking outside at the time of the murder.

That was their story, anyway.

Fedderman, Sal, and Harold knocked on doors much of the day and were dismayed by how no one would claim to have seen Lois Graham’s murder. All three detectives knew that some of them might be withholding evidence. They didn’t want to get involved; it might somehow taint them, lead to some crime they’d committed without knowing, suck them into the system and rightly or wrongly list their names forever

These days more than ever, people didn’t want their names on a list. Any kind of list.

After lunch, Sal and Harold continued canvassing the neighborhood, while Quinn and Fedderman made a second examination of the victim’s apartment. They looked again at a stack of blank paper near the printer. Wouldn’t it be nice if her laptop or pad turned up, full of information that could identify her killer?

They poked and peered but found nothing of use in the apartment. It was fashionably but not lavishly furnished. Eclectic would describe it.

“One thing,” Quinn said. “Wasn’t there a carpet in the bedroom?”

Fedderman cupped his chin in his hand and thought. “Yes,” he said with certainty. “Not very large, though. More like a throw rug.”

They tried to think what else had been here but was now gone. They couldn’t identify anything for sure. It was possible some dishes or glasses were missing from a kitchen cabinet.

“Weren’t there three chairs instead of two at the kitchen table?” Fedderman asked, pointing to the small drop-leaf table and two wooden chairs that looked as if they’d spent years in classrooms.

“Could have been,” Quinn said.

“I remember now because the missing chair didn’t look like the others. It was a little larger and had some guy’s name carved in it.”

“Our killer?” Quinn asked, knowing it wouldn’t be so.

“If his name is Hinkley,” Fedderman said.

They continued their search. Like last time, they found no evidence that the victim had been under duress, or was being stalked, during the time leading up to her murder. Her purse, found near her body, had held the usual items found in women’s purses—wadded tissue, a comb, lipstick, an oversized key ring holding a plastic four-leaf clover that if squeezed became a tiny flashlight, a pair of very dark made-in-Taiwan sunglasses, some old theater and movie ticket stubs. There was a wallet containing two twenty-dollar bills and the usual charge, debit, and ID cards. No driver’s license (no surprise, in New York City). A plasticized card proclaimed her membership in a gym. (They all belong to gyms, Quinn thought.) Her keys were missing. The supposition was that after killing Lois, the murderer let himself into her apartment and stole her computer. Obviously, he was afraid something on it might lead to him.

Maybe, Quinn thought, he’d also stolen a throw rug and a wooden chair.

A phone call to a local antique dealer shed some light. The dealer said on the phone he’d have to see the rug in order to give an estimate of its worth. The missing wooden chair, he said, after hearing Quinn’s description, if genuine and in good condition, might be worth several thousand dollars.

So the killer had taken the victim’s computer and then come back later to move what was valuable and more noticeable. Quinn assumed the killer would have dressed like some sort of workman and simply walked out of the building and to his car or truck with the chair and rolled rug.

But what amazed and angered the detectives was the strong possibility that he had returned and taken away what was valuable in the apartment while they were eating lunch.

After work at Coaxly and Simms, writing ad copy, Rose Darling entered her apartment, closed the door behind her, and fastened all her locks. Since finding that girl the way she was in Central Park, Rose hadn’t felt safe. She read everything she could find on the murder. Watched the news.

How could something have happened so close to her? She had passed right by where and when that poor woman was murdered. The fear had pushed her into a run.

She recalled the curious sense of dread she’d felt while jogging there. Some part of her mind must have realized something. Her anxiety had been so real!

She decided she wasn’t going to run this evening in the unrelenting heat. And certainly not in the park. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel comfortable again while jogging. The thing to do, she decided, was wait until the sicko killer was caught. And killed. (She hoped.) Then she could run again, but on the sidewalks, where people were walking. Then she realized that might be unwise, being the fastest one and drawing everyone’s stares.

Everyone’s.

She cranked up the air-conditioning, sat down on the sofa, and, using one foot, then the other, worked off her high heels. She could recall her father’s cautioning voice from her youth: Don’t stick your neck out. Don’t make it easier for the bastards.

Never had she believed more in her father’s simple wisdom.

She let herself sink back into fatherly philosophy and the welcoming embrace of the sofa cushions.

7

“Lennon was shot there,” Sal Vitali said to Harold Mishkin, as they walked along Central Park West toward where they’d parked the unmarked car.

Before them loomed the ornate stone building that occupied an entire block.

“The Russian or the singer?” Harold asked.

Not sure whether Harold was playing dumb, Sal growled simply, “The singer.”

Harold’s expression of detached mildness didn’t change as he made a slight sound that might have meant anything.

They’d finished interviewing Lois Graham’s pertinent neighbors, catching some of them after work hours but before dinner. People didn’t like to have their meals delayed or interrupted.

The two detectives thought it might be worth talking to the victim’s upstairs neighbor again, a guy named Masterson, who had seemed more than a little nervous the first time. But maybe that was because his apartment smelled strongly of weed. He and a busty twenty-three-year-old girl named Mitzy, who’d spent the night with him, swore they’d been in bed all evening the night of the murder. They’d been listening to CDs of Harry Connick Jr. songs. Harold thought that was unlikely, though he himself liked Connick Jr.

Tonight when Masterson (“call me Bat—everyone does”) opened his door to them, Mitzy was nowhere to be found.

Bat motioned for Sal and Harold to sit on the sofa, and sat down across from them in a ratty old recliner that creaked beneath his weight. Harold noted that Masterson was a larger man than he’d first thought. Broad and muscular.

“Where’s Mitzy this evening?” Sal asked.

Masterson shrugged. Not easy to do in a recliner, but he managed. “At her quilting bee. She belongs to this gang of women who sit around and gossip and make quilts. Give them to people they like or love. I’ve got so many I don’t know what to do with the damned things.” He shrugged again, exactly like the first time. “I’d be happy to see a Christmas tie this year.”

“You mean between two of the women in the quilting bee?” Harold said.

Masterson looked at Harold the way Sal had. Harold seemed not to notice.

Sal thought Masterson was going to shrug a third time, but he just sat there, as if the brief conversation and two sitting shrugs had been enough to exhaust him. Harold could do that to people.

“Would you like to amend your account of last night in any way?” Harold asked.

Masterson raised his eyebrows in a practiced way, as if he’d had enough of shrugs. “You mean have I thought of anything else?”

Sal and Harold sat still, waiting.

“I remember riding down in the elevator with Lois Graham. She had a bag of popcorn with her. She is—was—an attractive lady. The sort anybody would remember.”

“She and you were alone in the elevator?” Sal asked.

“Yes, just the two of us. We both got out at lobby level. I went to pick up my mail at the boxes. She started walking off as soon as she stepped on the sidewalk.”

“Did she know Mitzy?” Sal asked, not knowing quite why.

Masterson wasn’t thrown by the question. “The two never met that I can remember. I mean, Lois Graham and I didn’t really know each other. We were what you’d call nodding acquaintances.”

“Then the two of you never dated?”

“Never anything like that. I mean, you saw Mitzy.”

“She has a certain glint in her eye,” Harold said.

“Well,” Sal said, closing his notepad, “we won’t arrest her just now as a suspect, but she should see a doctor about that glint.”

Bat Masterson and Harold both looked momentarily startled, then relaxed, realizing Sal was joking. Fedderman wandered in from his interview in another unit, saw the smiles and joined in.

The detectives thanked Masterson for his cooperation, then left the building and walked toward their unmarked car, finished after a long day.

As they passed where John Lennon had been shot, two young girls were standing and gawking. One kept snapping photos with her cell phone. The other stared at the sidewalk approximately where Lennon had fallen and seemed about to cry.

“Where the Russian was shot,” Sal said dryly.

Harold said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

A ragged figure stepped out from the narrow dark space between two buildings and limped toward them. Fedderman moved his unbuttoned white shirt cuff and rested the heel of his hand on his gun in its belt holster.

The man was one of the homeless, in a stained and ripped ancient gray sport coat and incredibly wrinkled baggy jeans. He had a lean face with a long, oft-broken nose, and a deep scar on the side of his jaw. He might have been forty or ninety. The street did that to people. Once they gave up, the street was in charge of time.

He stopped a yard in front of Sal and Harold, so that they had to stop.

“I seen what happened,” he said in a voice almost as gravel pan as Sal’s. “All of it. Whole thing started with the popcorn.”

The two detectives looked at each other.

“What’s your name?” Harold asked.

Sal rolled his eyes. He was tired and his feet hurt. He didn’t feel like dealing with a nutcase.

“I just go by Spud.”

Harold made a show of writing the name in his leather-covered notepad as if it were vitally important. “You understand we’re with the police?”

“I knew he was a cop,” Spud said, pointing at Sal. “I wasn’t so sure about you.” Spud used the back of his hand to wipe his nose. “You look like the kind that never played sports as a kid.”

“Looks can fool you,” Harold said, obviously hurt by Spud’s analysis.

“He was a star quarterback at Notre Dame,” Sal lied.

Spud looked dubiously at Harold. “That true?”

“I don’t give away the plays,” Harold said. He hitched his thumbs in his belt so his holstered gun was visible. With his bushy gray mustache and hipshot, slender frame, he was magically changed into an old West gunslinger. “Now what’s all this about popcorn?” he asked.

Spud seemed unimpressed. “The woman was sitting on a bench, and for some reason the pigeons didn’t like the popcorn she was trying to feed them.”

“Maybe it was stale,” Harold said. “Some pigeons are particular.”

Spud rubbed his bristly chin. It made a lot of noise. “Now, that’s how I see it, too. You and me, we think alike.”

“Who was the woman feeding popcorn to the pigeons?” Sal asked.

“Don’t know her name. Never seen her before. Then this guy came along, and they started talking.”

“The girl and the new arrival?”

“The girl and the pigeons,” Sal said. Harold could be excruciating.

“Describe him.”

“Kinda little guy, wearing faded designer jeans, a pullover shirt with the collar turned up in back. Had on a Mets baseball cap, had one ear inside it, another outside it. That ear stuck straight out and was kinda funny looking.”

“Funny looking how?”

“Pointed, it was.” He looked thoughtful. “I was drunk once and seen a leprechaun had ears like that.”

“Right ear? Left ear?”

“Right one, I’d say. Maybe both of ’em. Hard to know, the way he had his cap tilted.”

“Where did the popcorn come from?” Harold asked.

“Hell, I don’t know. Woman had it but the pigeons wouldn’t touch the popcorn till she stood up to leave. Then a couple of them got close and pecked at it.”

“The man?” Sal asked.

Spud wiped his jutting chin again. Harold couldn’t decide whether Spud smelled like gin or diesel fuel. “Oh, they musta known each other, or else he was an awful good talker, ’cause they left together. He picked up his bag and off they went.”

“Bag?” Sal asked.

“Sure. Big blue bag with a lotta straps.”

“Did it look heavy?”

“Not at all.”

“Where did they go? Did they leave the park?”

“No. I’m sure of that. I kinda followed them, for some reason.”

Sal could guess the reason. If the opportunity arose, Spud could throw a sucker punch, snatch the man’s wallet, and run. The man might not be in any position to follow.

“This woman,” Sal said. “Do you think you could identify her?”

Spud went into his chin rub again. Smiled the ugliest smile Sal and Harold had ever seen. “You mean her head?”

Spud objected, but Sal and Harold drove him to Q&A and he signed a statement. He wasn’t too worried, because he didn’t see Sal or Harold or any of these people as real cops. If they were, they wouldn’t have been so nice to him. He might even be up on a vagrancy charge.

To Spud, these were play cops, but not cops playing games.

Sal and Harold wrote their own reports, while Quinn and Fedderman drove Spud to the morgue in Quinn’s old black Lincoln.

Quinn figured maybe they had something here, but probably not.

“I feel like the mayor,” Spud said, leaning back in his plush seat and crossing his arms. “My kingdom’s right on the other side of this window.”

Quinn wondered what the real mayor would think of that. He drove faster.

Fedderman figured the entire car might have to be fumigated. Quinn didn’t seem to mind. The man could prioritize.

Spud, it turned out, was an ex-marine who’d seen the worst of it in Desert Storm. He didn’t react when they showed him the morgue photos of Lois Graham. Simply said, “Uh-huh. Same woman. Damned shame.”

Quinn said, “You might have seen her with her killer.”

Spud raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “Mr. Popcorn?”

“The same.”

“Maybe. Didn’t get a clear look at him, though. Told you he looked like a gremlin.”

“Leprechaun.”

“Did I say that? Shoulda said gremlin. Leprechauns ain’t always bad. Gremlins are the worst. Too curious and up to mischief all the time. No pot of gold involved.”

“Some mischief,” Quinn said.

“There a reward?”

Quinn stared at his raggedy witness in the backseat where Feds could keep an eye on him. “If you throw a net over him, I’ll pay you something out of my own pocket.”

“How much?”

“Negotiable. And remember, your testimony wouldn’t be much good if we paid you for it.”

“Wouldn’t make me no difference what brand it was.”

Quinn realized they were talking about bottles, not dollars. He gave a half smile. Spud didn’t have the ambition and balls to be mayor of what was outside the car. Good for him. “You net this gremlin and we’ll talk.” He handed Spud his card. “Give me a call and let me know if you learn anything important.”

Spud accepted the card and gave a sloppy salute.

They left the morgue and drove him back to the park where he’d first been accosted by Sal and Harold. A street vendor was set up near the 81st Street entrance. Quinn treated Spud to a knish and orange soda. He noticed that the vendor also sold popcorn.

Quinn thought of warning Spud to be careful, especially where he slept.

Then he figured Spud was careful all the time anyway. On the streets, being careful was his life.

The package Quinn found in the mail at Q&A hadn’t been delivered by the post office. There was no stamp on it, and Quinn’s name and address were printed neatly in black felt tip pen. Oddly, there was a return address, also neatly printed, in the package’s upper left hand corner: Return to Jack Kerouac. There was no actual address.

“This Kerouac the writer?” Renz asked, when Quinn called him and described the package.

“Must be,” Quinn said. “It was obviously hand delivered.”

“So why are you calling me?” Renz said. “Why aren’t you out there trying to find whoever put the damned thing in your mail?”

“Three reasons. I wanted you to know about the package before I opened it.”

“And?”

“I want you on the phone while I’m opening the package.”

“And . . .”

“I want to tell you what I think about in my few seconds left before a bomb goes off.”

There was silence on the phone.

Finally Renz spoke. “You really think there might be a small bomb in that package?”

“Could be.”

“The department does have a bomb squad. Why don’t we let them open the package?”

“I’m not sure the risk justifies all that,” Quinn said. “I can examine the package carefully, see what we got, then if need be we can call in the experts.”

“That’s insane. If that is a bomb, or something that shoots white powder, we have people who know how to—Just a minute, Quinn.”

Within about two minutes, Renz was back. “Stay put, Quinn. And don’t touch that package. The bomb squad is on the way.”

“What’s going on, Harley?”

“I just got my mail put on my desk. It contains a package just like the one you described.”

Quinn sighed. “Okay, Harley. I guess we’d better treat this for what it is.”

“Considering who must have sent the packages. Or maybe hand delivered them himself.”

“Probably paid some poor dumb schmuck to deliver them,” Quinn said.

“Yeah. Well, you better get outta your building, make sure everybody else does the same. They’ll think it’s a drill.”

“You doing the same?”

“Not right away. If you get anthraxed or blown up, I’ll know what to do. One thing, Quinn, in case we don’t see each other again. You think the phony return address name on the packages means the real Jack Kerouac? The author?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know what that means.”

“He wrote Peyton Place, didn’t he?”

Quinn said, “Good luck, Harley,” and hung up.

Half an hour later, the packages were declared safe. Quinn and Renz had each been the recipient of a jigsaw with a charred wooden handle. As they suspected, there was no clue as to who had placed the packages in the mail. Not a very direct clue, anyway.