Текст книги "Slaughter"

Автор книги: John Lutz

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

25

The killer slept late but still got up to sit in on the news on television. Some of the news, anyway. Most of it was just above the level of gossip related by beautiful blondes who for the most part were smarter than he was. Certainly more well-informed.

He had to admit he admired Minnie Miner ASAP. Minnie, a small and dynamic African American woman, was more interested in the story than the news. Not that she was the only journalist/entertainer who worked that way. But she was the best at fitting things together so everything seemed newsworthy. She skillfully blended mayhem and murder with fashion and gossip. She was obviously fascinated by the Gremlin. She’d heard the survivor of what she called “The Elevator Nightmare” mention on another talk/news show that a police sketch artist was going to use what evidence the law possessed to create the Gremlin’s likeness. Though small, he was also distinctive. If the sketch was close, chances are someone would recognize him.

If it wasn’t close enough, it might send the investigation off in the wrong direction.

The Gremlin laughed out loud. He was sure no one had gotten a good enough look at him—or indeed any look at all—so far in his New York adventures.

He didn’t think it unlikely that Minnie Miner would cooperate with the police in trying to manipulate the public, but she was in over her head with this one. He not only wasn’t worried, but he was anxious to see this “likeness” of him. It should help to put a picture in people’s minds that looked little like him. It should be a help to him, having all those wannabes swarming the police with their worthless confessions.

He settled back in his tan leather sofa to watch the rest of Minnie Miner ASAP. It was a phone-call or tweet-in program. Maybe someday he’d give Minnie a call or a tweet. Or maybe he’d even surprise her and meet her personally. People still did that, didn’t they?

When he tired of watching television, the killer removed robe and slippers and ran a hot bath. He shampooed his hair with a product that gave it body, then pleasured himself with images of Margaret Evans.

After a while, the images were replaced by mental snapshots of an elevator packed with dark blood, red meat, glistening white bone, and expressions of horror. It was something that the great painter of Hades, Hieronymus Bosch, would be proud of, and see as among his best work.

Wouldn’t it be something, the killer thought, standing up and showering down, if that was what people saw when they opened their doors on Halloween?

Better stock up on those treats.

After dressing in designer jeans, a Yankees T-shirt, and soft-soled leather moccasins, the Gremlin unpacked the blue gym bag in which he kept his knives, tape, and various other instruments of his obsession, and replaced them with half a dozen books on the subject of elevators. Their history, variations, uses, and safety features. He’d bought the books at the Strand bookstore, where aisle after aisle was packed with used books covering everything fictional or factual. He paid cash so there would be no charge record of the purchase.

He had learned virtually everything about elevators, from their invention to their present state. They got progressively safer, but still, there were occasional accidents. And there was human error in construction, installation, usage, performance.

When the bag contained the books, along with a few other contents, he saturated them with bleach. Then he carried the bag out to the deserted hall and to the chute to the building’s basement compactor.

He fancied that he heard it hit bottom. Even heard the sound of the compactor’s harsh welcome. Trash pickup was scheduled for tomorrow.

So much for incriminating books, or bag. Other evidence the killer wiped clean and placed in cabinets, drawers, or toolbox.

Soon everything was where it might reasonably be found, or not found at all because it could be easily replaced. The killer could always buy another, different color bag, different rope, cigarettes of another brand. Different knives.

Helen the profiler could have taken the elevator up eleven floors to the rehab-center gym, but decided instead to take the stairs. She told herself it was because the building was cool and she needed the exercise. Sure.

Charlie Vinson was using an aluminum walker to get around, but his therapist said he’d soon be graduating to a cane. He’d come through the operations better than anyone would have thought, since what looked like serious injury in the MRI images turned out to be congested blood.

He was on a treadmill, wearing knee-length shorts, an untucked sleeveless shirt, and worn-out-looking jogging shoes. The outpatient rehab center was in a brick and stone building that also housed apartments and a corner deli. The exercise room was on the eleventh floor. On the tenth was a rooftop garden area with small, decorative Japanese maples in huge concrete pots. Beyond the pots, bright red geraniums lined the roof. There were a few webbed chairs. Sometimes, when it wasn’t so hot and the roof garden was in the shade of taller buildings, it was pleasant to sit outside.

It was ninety in the shade this afternoon, and no one at rehab was sitting in the garden. In the bright light streaming through the window, a shapely woman in tights was bicycling to nowhere. Helen was pretty sure it was Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife. An attractive Asian woman was on a nearby stationary bike, pedaling almost as fast as Emma Vinson but seemingly with less effort. She looked over now and then at Emma, as if she’d like to challenge her to a race.

Emma didn’t look up as Helen walked over to Charlie Vinson. She might have been taken for an instructor, with her six-foot-plus frame and muscular legs. She was wearing a lightweight green dress today that somehow made her look even taller.

Helen got closer and could hear the rasping breathing emitted by Vinson. They had an appointment to meet with a police sketch artist today. She hoped he hadn’t forgotten.

When she was only a few feet away she glanced at the complex instrument cluster on the treadmill, and saw that several wires ran to Charlie Vinson’s ears, and to what looked like a blood pressure cuff on his left arm. What appeared to be the treadmill’s odometer read 1,055 miles.

Pointing to it, Helen, who wasn’t the athlete she appeared to be, said “If I’m going that far, I’m taking the bus.”

“That’s the past week,” Vinson said.

“Impressive,” Helen said. “All your miles?”

“Well, no.”

Vinson smiled and pressed a button on the treadmill, and the thing slowed down. He slowed with it, and didn’t step off until it had come to a complete stop.

“I didn’t forget,” he said breathlessly, “about our appointment with the sketch guy.”

“He’s on his way. I thought he’d already be here.”

The elevator door opened and Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, stepped out. He was a small man holding a cardboard contraption with three steaming paper cups. A broad strap across his right shoulder supported a leather attaché case. It was the scent of doughnuts that commanded attention.

“Since I was taking the elevator up,” he said, “I thought I’d stop and get us something from that place around the corner.”

Vinson looked at Helen with a superior half smile. “You took the stairs.”

“You know me,” Helen said, though he didn’t. “An athlete.”

“You certainly look like one,” a woman’s voice said.

Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife, had dismounted her bicycle and come over to them.

“How have you been, Mrs. Vinson?”

“Okay. Compared to how I could be.”

“Charlie looks like he’s well on the road to recovery.”

“The road’s a steep hill sometimes,” Vinson said. “The leg’s not all the way back. Arm’s almost there, though. I’m a tough guy, except for when I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Helen’s taking me to see the sketch artist,” he said.

“You don’t have to go far to see him,” Helen said. She put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. She looked as if she might dribble him. “This is Richard Warfield, our best sketch artist.”

“She’s being polite,” Richard said. Helen thought that in the bright light he looked about twelve years old.

She said, “Richard’s modest.”

“Well, I am that.”

Everyone took a cup of coffee except for Emma, who said water wasn’t on her diet, and coffee was almost a hundred percent water.

Helen said, “What do you do for . . . liquid?”

Emma smiled. “It’s everywhere, in everything we eat. We’re even mostly composed of liquids.”

“So I’ve heard,” Helen said. Somehow without burning her tongue, she finished her coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and tossed it halfway across the room into a wastebasket.

“I thought so,” Emma said. “Basketball.”

“I could have kicked it in, too,” Helen said, hoping she hadn’t used up the next six months of good luck.

“I’d like to be there,” Emma said.

Helen looked at her. “In the wastebasket?”

“No. To see Richard do his work.”

“Your husband will be doing most of the work,” Richard said.

Half a dozen women entered the room and dispersed to various exercise machines. Seeing who could laugh the loudest seemed to be part of their regimen. They wore exercise outfits of various colors and fashion, all of it designed to make them look thinner.

“They look like starving cheerleaders,” Emma Vinson said, in a tone somewhere between jeering and jealous. “’Specially the ones with those boobs.”

Her husband, Charlie, seemed to view the exercisers in a different light altogether. He was leaning forward on his aluminum walker, and the expression on his face was so fixated it was almost comical. Helen wondered if there had been breast augmentation going on here.

Helen and company had come here to observe Charlie Vinson and hear what he had to say. They wanted to know how certain he seemed, or if there were any contradictions in whatever he said in conversation. While he was searching his memory to recall how someone looked, something he heard might bob to the surface of his thoughts.

“I have a department car in front of the building,” Helen said. “We can drive over to Q&A and get Richard set up. The air-conditioning’s been repaired, so it will be cooler there, and Quinn might have something to add.”

“Quinn has been wonderful through all this,” Emma said.

“Black Chevy,” Helen said, “parked near the corner.”

Everyone filed into the elevator, including Charlie Vinson. Excluding Helen. Vinson used his aluminum walker to help create standing room.

Helen stayed back.

“Are you taking the stairs?” Emma asked in disbelief.

“I’d prefer it,” Helen said. “That athlete thing. Builds endurance in the legs.”

Charlie Vinson, leaning on his walker, smiled at her. “We’ve got to learn to face our fears, Helen.”

Helen said, “Why?”

26

After the brief drive to Q&A it didn’t take Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, long to get set up. Quinn sat back and watched.

Warfield borrowed a small card table and two chairs. He placed the chairs so two people sitting in them would be directly across from each other. Then he removed two small laptop computers from his leather attaché case. He placed the two computers in the center of the table, their screens facing away from each other.

The two people in the chairs would be facing each other. Warfield and Charlie Vinson would be looking at identical screens.

“So this is what sketch artists have come to,” Vinson said, understanding how this process was going to work. Warfield could not only get information from Vinson about what the perpetrator looked like; he could also watch Vinson on PIP react as the likeness on the screen before him took shape and went from pixel to person.

“This and a stylus are much more effective than a sketch pad and pencil, or a lot of false mustaches,” Helen said.

“It takes the same sort of talent and expertise,” Warfield said.

Helen could see that it would. She’d observed Warfield work several times and been impressed.

“I’ll use the stylus directly on my screen,” Warfield said. “And I’ll use it much as I’d use charcoal or pencil on a sketch pad.” He peered around his up tilted laptop screen. “I might ask you to do some basic drawing to get across what you’re trying to describe.”

“I can’t draw anything but water,” Vinson said.

“That’s okay. The process will concern your memory rather than any artistic talent. And mostly, I’ll be responding to your descriptions. I’ll fill in when I think you’ve been too light, but other than that, it’s your show. Then we’ll discuss what we have and hone and sharpen the likenesses.” He glanced around. “Is everybody comfortable?”

Everyone said that they were. No one switched chairs or positions. The only change was that two people asked for bottled water, which was supplied.

Warfield booted up and adjusted both computers. Their monitors showed blank backgrounds.

Warfield picked up his stylus and held it lightly, as he would a piece of chalk, or a flute he was about to play.

“Remember,” he said to Vinson, “what will be happening on my screen will be happening on yours. Much of what I say will be determined by the software. Don’t use your stylus unless I tell you.” He touched stylus to screen. “Ready?”

Vinson said that he was.

Warfield said, “We’ll begin with a perfect oval.”

Vinson watched a black line appear on his TV screen.

“Now I’m going to make it more egg-shaped.”

Before Warfield, the oval on the monitor became slightly smaller at the bottom. More like a real egg. But a perfect egg.

“That about right?” Warfield asked.

Vinson, knowing the figure was to be the basic shape of the killer’s head, said, “Maybe a little smaller at the base.”

“Okay. Pointed chin?”

“Yes!” Vinson said. “Now that you mention it. Definitely pointed. One of his ears was pointed, too.”

“One of his ears?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. The right one, I think. It looked like he’d done some boxing. Or he mighta been injured or something when he was a kid. Like some bigger kid had him in a headlock and messed up the ear. Broke the cartilage.

“What about his left ear?”

“Nothing. I don’t recall exactly, though. He did have hair long on the sides, so maybe it was covered.”

“Show us.”

Vinson did some crude sketching, then Warfield neatened it up.

“Somebody said he was wearing a baseball cap.” Quinn said.

“Might have been, but I don’t recall it. He was just some little guy in a hurry to get downstairs, trying to get on the elevator.”

Warfield played with the keyboard, mouse, and stylus. The shape on Vinson’s monitor changed slightly. Then he gave the subject longer hair on the sides, and a pointed cauliflower ear, and it underwent a definite alteration.

“That it?” Warfield asked Vinson.

“We’re getting there. The hair on the sides was still a little longer, like wings.”

The digital image on Warfield’s computer changed again. The face on the monitor was looking more familiar. Still, there should be a definite click of recognition. That hadn’t happened yet.

Vinson was getting a better idea of how this was going to work. It was going to be a grueling job. Already his back was getting sore from sitting leaning forward in concentration.

“I do feel like there are things swimming just beyond my thoughts, but I can’t get to them,” Vinson said, looking at Quinn.

“That’s okay. Memory’s like that.”

“What about his nose?” Warfield asked Vinson.

“Long and pointed.” No hesitation there.

“Like Pinocchio’s?”

“Good Lord, no. The guy wasn’t a freak.”

Quinn thought, Not on the outside.

Warfield sketched in a smaller nose. “That it?”

“Not quite. There was a little hump in his nose. Know what I mean?”

Warfield brandished his stylus. “Like so?”

“No. Not quite that big.”

Warfield made minor adjustments.

“No, no, no, better, better, too much—that’s it! Now, can you make the eyes closer together?”

“Sure.” Warfield accommodated. He seemed to be having fun now.

“Perfecto!” Vinson said.

“Eye color?” Quinn asked.

Vinson shook his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Captain.”

“Sure.”

Quinn smiled. Civilian, actually.

“Did he have any facial hair?” Warfield asked.

“Like a mustache or beard?” Vinson asked.

“Or anything else,” Quinn said.

“Not as I can recall, Cap’n.”

Cap’n.

Was Vinson messing with him? Quinn stared at the man, detecting no irony. So Vinson wasn’t another Harold.

“Tattoos, warts, scars, anything noticeable?” Warfield asked Vinson.

“He had a chin with a line in it.”

“Vertical?”

“Up and down.”

“Cleft chin?” Helen asked.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“What was he wearing?” Quinn asked.

“Like I said a couple dozen times, he mighta had on some sort of work outfit. Green, gray, blue. One of those colors that changes a little according to what color room they’re in.”

“What color are the forty-third-floor walls and carpet?”

“By the elevators?”

“Yes.”

“Tell you the truth, I’d be guessing,” Vinson said.

That, Quinn thought, probably was the truth.

Warfield did a little touching up. Then he stood and finished with a flourish. Quinn thought he might kick his chair away like a rock star to share and express his enthusiasm, but he merely stepped back.

“Not a spittin’ image,” Vinson said, “but I don’t think anybody could do it better. It captures the essence.”

“You an art critic?” Harold asked seriously.

Quinn knew it was one of those seemingly unrelated questions that Harold sometimes asked, and sometimes led somewhere the other detectives hadn’t known existed. Harold’s World.

“In my spare time,” Vinson said.

It turned out that Vinson had a blog, Splatter Chatter, that specialized in cubism and the impressionist masters. He gave everyone his card, on which was his blog’s web address and a tiny portrait of van Gogh with his ear bandaged.

All of this, Quinn thought, was apropos of nothing.

Maybe.

27

A slightly hungover Lido arrived the next morning at Q&A and situated himself at the main computer. He had the air of a man who was at home and alone—his world, his house, his investigation.

Quinn walked over and Lido acknowledged his presence with a languid wave. Two of the computer’s monitors were flashing head shots of males, one of which might be a match with the digital likeness of the suspect. It could happen any moment, suddenly. Or not at all. It was asking a lot of facial recognition software to match a photograph with a police artist’s sketch.

“Any luck?” Quinn asked.

Lido shot him a glance. “Not so far. It would be nice if we had a photo to match with a photo. Or, better yet, fingerprints.”

“In a dreamworld,” Quinn said.

Lido said, “Isn’t that where we are?”

“Sounds like a question that could lead to one of those existentialist arguments heard in dorm rooms around the world.”

“Dorm rooms, did you say?”

“Around the world,” Quinn affirmed.

“I been there,” Lido said, “and it’s not so great.”

The shrill first ten notes of “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” suddenly sounded from the computer

The frenetic movement on the monitor adjacent to the one that displayed only the artist’s and witness’s still, digital image of the suspect suddenly became motionless. It was as if that entire wall had ceased swaying.

Lido leaned forward. Quinn stepped forward. Attentions were riveted on the monitor.

Lido went to a split screen. The sketch of the suspect was next to a black-and-white newspaper photo of a scrawny teenage boy. Quinn wouldn’t say the sketch and photo were like a young and older image of the same person. Still, there was a strong resemblance. Even the cleft chins.

“This isn’t a mug shot,” Quinn said. “That’s what I was expecting.”

“If we had that,” Lido said, “we’d probably also have fingerprints we might match.”

Both men stared hard at the photos.

“What’s that behind him?” Lido asked, motioning toward the near image.

“Where the height chart should be?” Quinn moved closer. “Looks like a stairway. Inside somewhere, judging by the light and shadow.”

“No, that. It looks like a double exposure, or a shot taken with a cheap camera in incredibly bad light.”

Quinn saw what he meant. On the broad landing before the stairs, several people showed as shadowy forms in the background. A woman in a long dress. Two men, one of whom had his arm around the shoulders of the other. One of them was wearing a white shirt and dark tie. The upper body of another man, without a tie, was visible descending the steps. They were like ghosts.

“Could be the inside of a public building,” Lido said.

“Courthouse?”

“That would be nice. If our gremlin was messed up with the law, there should be an ID and photo of him somewhere. An account of the case—if there was a case.”

“I’ll narrow the parameters,” Lido said.

“What will that do?”

“We’ll be looking for a bigger needle in a smaller haystack.”

Pearl and Helen entered the office, letting in warm air with the hiss of the street door. Both women slowed down when they saw Quinn and Lido in the rear of the office, at Lido’s computer setup.

“We got something?” Pearl asked.

“Maybe,” Quinn said.

Helen moved closer, then bent at the waist to get a clearer view.

“Tell you the truth,” she said, “they don’t look all that much alike. I know Mr. Sketch, but who’s the other guy?”

“Maybe the Gremlin.”

“No, I mean who is he?”

“We were hoping he’d be a match with Mr. Sketch,” Quinn said.

Pearl said, “Good luck with that.”

“If we get him ID’d we might find a long sheet on him.”

“If the images match closely enough,” Pearl said.

Helen had moved very close to one of the monitors. “Can you zoom in on the other guy?”

“Other guy?”

“The one most obviously not Mr. Sketch.”

“Sure,” Lido said.

As Lido worked the computer like a mad scientist, the figure in the photo became larger and lost more definition. “All I can tell is he looks young,” Lido said.

“That’s lettering, there in the lower right,” Helen said. She pointed. “I think it’s a name.”

“I’ll zoom in on it,” Lido said, “but it’s gonna break up pretty soon.”

Helen reached into her purse and put on a pink pair of glasses. No one had seen her in glasses before.

She removed the glasses and stood up straight. “That’s okay, I got it.”

“The photographer’s name?” Lido asked.

“No, it’s not a photo credit. It’s the kid’s name in newspaper print: Jordan Kray.”

Lido pressed save and then ran printouts of what was on the monitor. Then he went to work with his computer, immersing himself again in his private digital world. Someday Lido might stay there, Quinn thought. Might even be trapped there in geek land, with all the other brilliant geeks who wear mismatched socks but can work complex equations in their heads.

“There’s no Jordan Kray that fits the characteristics we’re looking for,” Lido said, after a while.

“He doesn’t even have a Web page?” Fedderman asked. He had come in with Harold’s partner, Sal. They’d held their silence while Lido was working.

Fedderman’s wife, Penny, had been coaching him on the computer while trying to create a Web site. She had convinced him that everyone other than the Fedder-mans had a Web site, and that he was a natural. Already he had a tendency to store information on a cloud someplace that he could never access.

“The guy’s a troglodyte,” Fedderman said.

“Something like that,” Lido said.

They stared again at the blown-up digital image. Under Lido’s coaxing it was larger now, in sharper definition. The photo was obviously one of a young male teenager. Or maybe he wasn’t even in his teens.

“That’s a newspaper photo, so let’s find out which paper,” Quinn said.

“Small-town rag,” Fedderman said. “Maybe a giveaway. And not recent. You can tell by the print under the photo.”

“You mean the font,” Harold said knowledgeably. “That’s how they started calling front-page news in the early twenties. In newspaper slang, ‘big font’ meant big news. Since it was always on the first page, ‘font-page news’ gradually became front-page news.”

“Is any of that true, Harold?” Sal asked.

“Should be.”

“Get the enhanced sketch in circulation,” Quinn said, marveling as he often did that his bickering team of detectives could solve anything. What accounted for their success? Unconventional thinking, maybe. “Let’s follow it up with the photograph of the kid. Send both images out to the media, then hit the neighborhoods and shops where the victims lived or worked. Do it on foot, face-to-face, so you can see what reaction you get when they first lay eyes on the photo.”

“We need to find out more on that photo,” Sal said.

“More on the kid,” Harold said.

“It amounts to the same thing, Harold,” Sal rasped in his annoyed tone. Sometimes Harold could be intolerable.

“Don’t be negative,” Harold said.

There! Negative. Photography. Was Harold joking, or making fun of Sal? Or making Sal the joke? Or was Harold just plain dumb? Or so dumb he was smart?

“I’ll drive the unmarked,” Sal rasped, “and I’ll control the air conditioner. Think of me as the captain of the ship.”

Harold said, “Font news.”