by S W Vaughn
The lines of his body relaxed, but the alarm stayed in his eyes for another brief moment. “No,” he said almost wearily. “I didn’t know that, but … I’m not planning to resign. Maybe I’ll talk to your brother.” His lips twisted into a rueful smirk. “I’d really like to unpack first, though. One big move at a time.”
“I hear that,” she said. And though the lingering suspicion that he’d never planned to stay in Landstaff Junction in the first place refused to dissipate, she didn’t challenge him.
Once they caught this killer, she wouldn’t mind if he left town the way he’d come in — abruptly and quietly, in the middle of the night. Because there was something off about Detective Donovan North, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
She was determined to find out what it was.
Chapter Eleven
Marco
And I thought I was screwed when I found out Nicky Franzella was gunning for me.
The whole Vermont vacation that Donnie told me about was a lie, on several levels. He hadn’t just planned the trip here to consult with the police. He’d transferred here. He was moving. To Vermont. Permanently.
Now would be the time to run, before I got any further than neck-deep in this pool of shit that I’d jumped into without looking.
Only I wasn’t so sure that I could climb out of it … or even if I really wanted to.
But my exhausted brain wouldn’t process anything more until I gave it a few things. I hadn’t eaten anything since last night’s beef jerky and Zingers. That combined with the lack of sleep meant I was basically running on the memory of caffeine from the coffee I’d finished hours ago. So first I needed food, then coffee, then sleep, then more coffee, in that order.
Detective Preston Clarke had stopped on the way back at a place on the main drag of town called the Junction Sandwich Company, where I’d bought two ‘grinders’ — which seemed to be what they called sub sandwiches around here — along with a bottle of Pepsi and two large coffees. She’d barely said anything to me after the housing discussion. I guessed that was probably because I’d sounded like an idiot who somehow wasn’t aware that I was moving here, and now she was very likely suspicious.
Unlike me, she was a real detective. And I had no doubt that at this moment, she was trying to solve the mystery of me.
Back at my room in the Whispering Pines, I’d wolfed down a grinder, chugged one of the coffees, and fallen into bed after I set the alarm clock on the nightstand for thirty minutes. I couldn’t really afford to take a nap, but I knew if I didn’t get at least a little sleep, I’d be non-functional for the rest of the day. Besides, I’d heard that if you drank coffee before a nap and slept for twenty to thirty minutes, you’d wake up refreshed and energized.
I woke up groggy and with a vague sense of dread, but at least I woke up.
A long shower and a microwaved second cup of coffee later, and I’d started the trudge up and down two flights of stairs to bring all the crap from the SUV into the suite.
It took me almost an hour. The older woman working the day shift behind the reception desk downstairs had started giving me the stink-eye long before I finished.
Finally, I had everything in place, and I could get started on my real job.
Figuring out how the hell I was going to survive this.
I looked around at the disaster I’d created in the suite’s main room, the boxes and suitcases deposited randomly wherever I felt like dropping them, and I suddenly decided to have a seat in the only chair I hadn’t thrown stuff on before I ended up collapsed on the floor. It wasn’t the exhaustion this time, though I was still tired enough that if I went to bed right now, I’d easily sleep until tomorrow morning.
It was the realization that no matter what I chose to do from this point forward, my life — Marco Lumachi’s life — was over.
I hadn’t planned on this. Sure, I was going to get out of the city for a while. I figured I’d give Nicky a few weeks to cool off, and then try to reason with the man. And if he didn’t listen, I’d probably kill him. That was how it worked when you made an enemy in the business: You try to kill me, I try to kill you. Eventually, one of us succeeds.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have lost much sleep over Nicky Franzella. He was fairly low on the ladder of scum, even among mobsters.
The problem was that Nicky thought I was dead. So now if I went back, I’d have to somehow explain my apparent demise and talk him out of murdering me in cold blood for something I didn’t do.
I wouldn’t even get past ‘you’ll never guess who I ran into at the gas station’ before I was pumped with enough lead to plate a tank.
Going back to my life was no longer an option. My swank penthouse apartment, my high-end clothes, my two-million-plus in the bank, my gentleman’s lifestyle — all completely out of my reach. I’d never eat at Rao’s or Sparks Steakhouse again, never take another fat envelope from a capo with a rat problem, never hit a Broadway show on a consigliere’s dime to stake out a target.
But did I really want all that?
Yes, I did. Absolutely. The life was all I’d known, all I really had in the world. I was good at my job.
And yet, I had to admit that I’d been feeling off toward what turned out to be the end. Maybe even a little bit empty. My last job in particular, the hard-bitten middle-aged guy I’d ended up wasting in an alley, had felt hollow — even wrong, somehow. That might’ve been because it was a rush job. I’d been paid triple my already exorbitant fee to take the man down quickly, when normally I would have taken at least a few weeks, and sometimes up to a month, to research my target and determine the best course of action for each hit.
That one, though. I never should’ve taken the job.
All of that combined with the empty feeling that had been creeping up on me for months, maybe even years before I dared to acknowledge it, factored into my decision now. But more than that, I felt indebted to the dead girls. Ten of them now. They’d been counting on Donovan North to get justice for them, and it was my fault he was dead. So no matter how hard or dangerous it was for me, I had to step up and do the job. I had to stop this killer.
Hell, I wanted to stop him — the old-school way, involving a baseball bat and cement shoes. But if I was going to play detective, then for the first time in my life, I had to work inside the law.
Sadly, that meant baseball bats were not an option.
My mind made up, I pushed off the chair and got to work.
It didn’t take long to develop a system. Anything that contained clothes, I hauled into the bedroom, out of the way. No need to worry about that stuff yet. There was a box of paperback novels that I could also ignore for now, though I did wonder if there was a copy of the book in there, the one that Donnie apparently wrote. I’d check for it later.
Once I’d weeded out everything that didn’t seem immediately important, I was left with one document box of folders and paperwork, a backpack, and a medium-sized wheeled suitcase to go through.
I was about to start with the backpack when the room phone rang.
Most of me wanted to ignore it, but if it was someone from the police station — and by someone, I meant the chief — there would be problems if I didn’t answer. I had to admit, that woman was intimidating. And for me that was saying something. I got up reluctantly, padded into the bedroom, and picked up the call.
“Mr. North, this is Mrs. Muldoon at the reception desk,” a woman’s voice said when I answered. “A package has just arrived for you in the lobby.”
“Great,” I said, poorly attempting to turn my sarcasm into enthusiasm. I assumed it was the files Chief Palmer said she’d send over. “Could you have a porter bring it up?”
Mrs. Muldoon gave a perfunctory laugh, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Aren’t you a real crackerjack,” she said. “Shall I expect you down directly to pick up your package?”
“So … you don’t have any porters, then?”
“Ayuh, that’s right. Fine detecting s
kills you just showed there, Mr. North,” she drawled. “Now, kindly come down and remove your box from my lobby.”
She hung up without waiting to see if I had any more crackerjack remarks.
I let out a deep sigh and goaded myself into heading out of the room, and then back down those stairs for what felt like the hundredth time today. Why the hell didn’t the good people of Landstaff Junction believe in elevators? Whatever Donnie had paid for this place, it was too much.
When I hit the lobby level, Mrs. Muldoon swiveled her head in my direction from behind the desk and gave me a shockingly false smile. “Well, if it isn’t the porter,” she said, her broad New England accent turning the word into something like poe-dah. She pointed to a document box similar to the one I’d brought upstairs earlier, resting on the floor beside the desk. “I believe Mr. North would like this package delivered to the Vista Suite.”
I held back a groan as I trudged over and hefted the thing. “Mrs. Muldoon,” I said. “Are you, by any chance, related to Oren Beauford?”
She laughed, but it was genuine this time. “Give you guff already, did he?” she said. “Don’t you pay him no mind. He’s still soused that the Yankees beat the Sox back in ’51.”
At least I knew enough to laugh along with her. Baseball wasn’t my thing, but what New Yorker didn’t love the Yankees — and, conversely, hate the Red Sox? “Too bad,” I said. “And here I was, ready to give him my autographed Luis Severino ball as a peace offering.”
The woman laughed a little harder. “You’ll do, Detective North,” she said. “Might be the next time you have a package, I could get Karl to bring it up for you. He’s maintenance, but he doesn’t much mind running errands. Particularly if there’s a five-spot in it for him.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Muldoon,” I said, and tipped her a wink. “Maybe I should give you my Severino ball.”
She flapped a hand in my direction. “Go on with you, now.”
I headed back up the two damned flights of stairs feeling a little more confident about my ability to play the role of Donovan North, big city detective. At least for as long as it took to find the killer. After that, I’d probably have to play it by ear.
When I returned to my room, the heavy, lidded cardboard box stamped PROPERTY OF LJCPD joined the unmarked carton at one end of the living room couch. I crossed to the kitchenette, grabbed the Pepsi from the fridge where I’d stashed it before my nap, and circled back to plunk in the center of the couch.
Backpack first. I opened it up and started pulling things out: a laptop and charger, two bottled waters, a box of chocolate chip granola bars, and two spiral-bound notebooks with black covers, brand-new and empty. There was also a package of Pilot G2 gel roller pens, bold point, black ink. Finally, scrunched down in the bottom of the backpack, I discovered two phone charging cords and a USB outlet converter.
I found places to plug in both the laptop and Donnie’s cell phone, and then returned to the couch and grabbed the suitcase — the only one that didn’t contain clothes. I hadn’t looked inside it yet, but it was far too heavy and bulky for jeans and t-shirts.
Inside was a clear plastic, lidded container, slightly bigger than a shoe box, and a larger metal box that was closed with a padlock. The plastic container held toiletries: shampoo and conditioner, bar soap, deodorant, razors, shaving cream and aftershave, Brut Classic cologne, and a nail care set.
I got up to stow the box in the bathroom, especially grateful for the deodorant. On the way back through the bedroom, I grabbed the car keys from the table where I’d tossed them earlier, remembering that I’d seen a smaller key on the ring that might fit the padlock on the metal box.
It did. And what was inside gave me pause, as much as the gun I’d found in Donnie’s glove compartment — though that at least made more sense, now that I knew he’d been a cop.
But this was a bit harder to explain, because the locked box contained five stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills. Fifty thousand in cash.
Not the typical kind of thing you’d expect a cop to have.
The money wasn’t the only thing in there. I left it alone for the moment and picked up a thick, glossy folder emblazoned with a blue-sky picture of a bank building and a logo for Northstar Savings Bank, an institution that I’d never heard of before. And inside the folder was evidence that my doppelganger had indeed been making this trip a permanent vacation. There was a starter pack of personal checks listing a post office box address, a debit card that hadn’t been activated yet, and a welcome letter thanking him for opening an account with a starting balance of fifteen thousand dollars.
Sixty-five thousand total. Saving up that kind of money wasn’t an easy feat when you considered the cost of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Especially on a cop’s salary, which couldn’t be much. And even if this did represent his life’s savings, why hadn’t he just left it all in the bank, instead of carrying around fifty grand in cash?
Maybe he’d owned a house in the Bronx and sold it before he left.
But again, why the cash?
I kept the debit card out so I could activate it, and then locked the box and put it back in the suitcase. This mystery would have to wait. It was already two o’clock, and I was supposed to report to the police station — wherever the hell that was — in the ‘afternoon,’ a nebulous time frame that I was approaching the end of quickly.
Before I faced my co-workers again, I needed to know more about the murders. So, it was on to the document boxes.
I checked out the files from the previous town murder first. It was hard stuff to look at, especially the big, glossy photos of the victim and the crime scene. Another young blonde, tied down, sexually assaulted, and brutally butchered.
I’d gotten lucky with my earlier observation about the sexual assault. The only reason I knew that hadn’t happened to the New York victims was through some crude talk I’d overheard from a bunch of good guys at Umberto’s, better than a year ago. They were talking about the Kid Glove Killer over a lunch of clams and fries, and one of them had remarked that the guy was wasting perfectly good pussy by not fucking his victims first. This incredible wit had further postulated that maybe the killer was impotent, or possibly a lesbo, and that was why the cops couldn’t find him because he was really a she.
If I hadn’t been on a job at that moment, I’d have removed that asshole from the world for being a waste of space. It was the polite thing to do. Luckily, his capo had obliged by breaking his nose and warning him that if he ever heard that shit again, the grunt would lose his tongue, right before he found himself trying to breathe water in the East River while his new cement shoes weighed him down.
As a general rule, mobsters did not disrespect women.
The rest of the paperwork on Lynn Reynolds didn’t have much to go on. There were no witnesses, no physical evidence of the killer, no signs of forced entry or disturbances in the house other than the bedroom. Just like Detective Clarke had said. Everything was the same as the second victim, including the X carved into her shoulder.
Like a belt notch.
Feeling queasy at the idea that the killer was tallying up his victims by using their flesh as a score sheet, I put the Reynolds box aside and dragged over the box that Donnie had brought with him. There were folders inside — eight of them, for eight victims. Each one contained what looked like police reports and interview transcripts, a few pages of handwritten notes, and a handful of Polaroid crime scene photos.
I tried to read through the paperwork, but a lot of it was Greek to me. The pictures told me more. All the victims were blondes, all had blue eyes as far as I could tell. The savagery was consistent. The pictures weren’t the best quality, but it looked like the women hadn’t been sexually assaulted, as that fabled wit of Umberto’s had so crudely pointed out. Of course, that didn’t make the assaults they had endured any less horrific.
All the New York victims had the same X carved into the shoulder, too. Always on the right side
of the body.
Near as I could tell, the crimes were the same, except for the added sexual aspect with the victims in Landstaff Junction.
Seeing as how I wasn’t a detective, I had no idea whether that indicated a copycat killer or not.
Beyond the papers and photos, each of the folders contained one more thing: a small item placed in an evidence bag, like the ones Detective Clarke had used at Chelsea Mathers’ house, and labeled with the victims’ names along with a date. The items were different for each woman. One held a charm bracelet with alternating ladybugs and frogs, another a pair of sparkling teardrop earrings. There was a Chinese coin, a thick neon-rainbow guitar pick, a pewter cat figurine. A single, glittering rhinestone barrette edged with black lace. A pair of cheap, hot pink sunglasses. And finally, a Day of the Dead sugar skull keychain fob.
The items probably meant something, but I didn’t know what. Maybe there were explanations in Donnie’s notes. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to read everything. I had to go — before they sent Clarke back here to fetch me.
She already resented me enough.
I stood and stretched, and then ducked into the bathroom to make use of that deodorant. When I came back out, I made sure I had keys, wallet, and new debit card, and then grabbed the phone, hoping it was charged enough to use for a while.
I tapped the phone to life, unlocked the screen. It was at fifty-two percent charge. And there were two missed calls and two unread text messages.
Being able to access Donnie’s phone could be useful. I might be able to find out more about him. The more I knew, the better I could impersonate the man.
So I tapped through to the missed calls first. He’d put the number in his address book, and it showed up as Chief Palmer. There were two calls, just before ten this morning and spaced about fifteen minutes apart.