He lit up a cigarette and tossed the match out the window.
So the cops were taking Fisher seriously. Maybe it was time he did, too.
He started up his Camaro and made a U-turn, aiming the car northward to the suburbs where Fisher lived.
There was a message from the medical examiner’s office waiting for the detectives when they got back to the 12th. Thomas returned the call while Frank went to see about getting some coffee.
“The pathologist still wants to do some more on the body,” Jennifer Wilkes told him when his call was put through, “but we’ve already got some data that might help you.”
“We appreciate the call,” Thomas said.
He could feel the ME’s ironic smile through the phone line. “Right. Like the Commissioner’s office hasn’t been on our ass since the moment the body was delivered to us.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I guess you’re feeling the pressure, too.”
“Uncomfortably so,” Thomas told Wilkes. “So what’ve you got?”
“Your perp’s very strong.”
“We knew that.”
“Uh-huh. But maybe we weren’t considering just how strong. This time around, the victim would have died even if the perp hadn’t stabbed her.”
“Meaning?”
“He broke her windpipe. Crushed it. Completely.”
Thomas tried to think of the strength that would take.
“Just by grabbing her?” he asked.
“That’s right. In the previous cases, we assumed he took his victims by the throat just long enough to hold them immobile while he used the knife. But now …” Wilkes cleared her throat. “The thing is, Morningstar, he seems to be getting stronger with each attack. Not just more brutal, but actually physically stronger.”
“How can you tell?”
“Once I noticed where the data on the Wilson girl was leading, I went back and looked over the previous cases. What I found isn’t something you’d necessarily spot unless you were looking for it, but if you go through them, case by case, you’ll find that the bruises on the victims’ throats become progressively more pronounced. The state of the entry wounds in their abdomens also indicates a marked increase in the force he’s using to kill them.”
“He’s getting rougher, is that what you’re saying?”
Wilkes hesitated. “That’s one way of putting it. I … The amount of strength required for these wounds is beyond anything I’ve run across before, Morningstar. What we’re dealing with here is a very strong, probably psychotic individual.”
Thomas zeroed in on the slight emphasis she’d put on the word “psychotic.”
“What makes you say psychotic?” he asked. “Given, the guy’s crazy to be doing what he’s doing, but it sounds to me like you’re saying something else.”
“Between you and me, Morningstar,” Wilkes said, “what I’m seeing here is the same kind of abnormal strength that occurs in cases of extreme duress and stress. You’ve heard of women lifting cars to rescue their children, that kind of thing?”
“Sure.”
“We’re talking that kind of strength.”
Before Thomas could reply, she said good-bye and cut the connection.
“What was all that about?” Frank asked as Thomas cradled the receiver.
He’d returned with their coffees about two-thirds of the way through the conversation.
“More of that stuff you don’t like,” Thomas said. Then he filled Frank in on what the medical examiner had told him.
“Jesus,” Frank said. “This is all just Twilight Zone crap. I mean, really. You’re not buying any of it, are you?”
Thomas smiled. “I’m just passing on what I was told, Frank.”
“Yeah, but—”
The phone rang, cutting him off. Thomas picked it up.
“Detective Morningstar,” he said into the phone. “Sure, put him through.” He cupped the phone’s speaker for a moment and mouthed “Papa Jo-el” to Frank before returning his attention to the call.
“I swear,” Frank muttered as he got up and crossed over to his own desk. “They ought to start filming Loony Toons in here.”
“What can I do for you now, Mr. Pilione?” Thomas asked after the switchboard had connected him to his caller.
“We have to talk,” Papa Jo-el replied.
“I’m listening.”
There was a pause, then Papa Jo-el asked, “Are you recording this conversation?” Before Thomas could reply that he wasn’t, Papa Jo-el went on. “No. I see that you aren’t. Very well. I’d prefer talking to you in person, mon cher, but this will have to do.”
Thomas wondered how he’d known they weren’t recording the call. Just a lucky guess, he decided. Something to add to the hoodoo mystique.
“What was it that you wanted to tell me?” he asked.
“I have done some research on your problem,” Papa Jo-el replied. “Consulted with the loa, if you understand.”
An interesting way to rationalize being an informer, Thomas thought. Just passing on the info from his gods.
He nodded to Frank to pick up the phone.
“Ah,” Papa Jo-el said. “I see that Detective Sarrantonio is now on the line as well. Good afternoon, Detective.”
Frank raised his eyebrows. Thomas shook his head. Not now. But he had to admit the houngan was starting to give him the creeps. Maybe he’d heard a click when the other receiver was picked up, but how could he have known it was Frank? Lucky guesses only went so far.
He turned his attention back to the phone.
“You were saying,” he prompted.
“This baka you seek—it is much stronger than I had considered it to be when first we spoke. My research has shown me that soon it will walk on nights other than its death night.”
Frank caught Thomas’s gaze and made a circular motion with his index finger in the area of his temple. Thomas shrugged.
“What exactly does that mean?” he asked Papa Jo-el.
“A death night is the anniversary of when a spirit’s mortal body has died,” Papa Jo-el explained. “The baka you seek must have died on a Friday, so that is the night on which it can begin its return journey.”
“This isn’t really explaining very—”
“The spirit focuses on some aspect of its former life, mon cher—a place, an event, or a person. It uses that focus as a—what we call a barriere , an entrance way, a crossroads between the worlds. The barriere allows it to return to our world. Blood gives the spirit strength, and the one you seek has drunk deeply. Soon it will no longer be bound to its death night; instead it will walk any night of the week. Given enough blood and it will remain in this world forever, never needing to journey back and forth between Zilet en Bas de l’Eau and our world.”
“Zill-ate what?” Frank asked.
“Zilet en Bas de l’Eau—the island below the sea where the spirits of the dead live.”
Neither detective spoke then. Thomas wasn’t sure what Frank was thinking at that moment, but in his own mind, the ME’s words echoed in an eerie counterpoint to what Papa Jo-el was telling them.
He seems to be getting stronger with each attack. Not just more brutal, but actually physically stronger.
“Why?” Thomas finally asked. “Why does this happen?”
“Why do spirits ever return, mon cher? They are either summoned, or they have unfinished business with the land of the living.”
Again Thomas fell silent.
“You don’t believe me, do you, mon cher?”
“What do you think?” Thomas replied. “You have to admit it all sounds pretty farfetched.”
“I think you would do well to consider what I have told you, rather than simply dismissing it.”
“Right,” Frank said, breaking in. “You’re some hotshot mumbo-jumbo man who’s helping us out just because you’ve got such a big heart.”
“When innocents die, all men must help as they can,” Papa Jo-el said.
�
�Bullshit,” Frank told him. “Let me tell you what kind of philanthropist you are: You’re the kind of guy who sells crack to little kids in a schoolyard. That’s how far your caring for ‘innocents’ goes.”
“To children,” Papa Jo-el agreed. “To whomever will buy. But they are white children.” Thomas knew that what was said next was directed to him: “And is that not justice of a kind? Think about it, mon cher.”
And then he hung up.
Frank slammed down the phone. “Can you believe this guy? Next thing you know, he’ll be calling us back and offering to exorcise our evil fucking spirit—for a price, of course. You ask me, he’s behind this shit.”
“Think of the size of the man,” Thomas said as he cradled his own receiver.
“Okay, so he’s just a little cockroach. But you think of the size of some of those guys he’s got working for him. I’ve seen bears with less beef on them. And this crap about only feeding his shit to white kids—like his dealing dope’s some kind of a political statement. I wish to Christ we’d had a tape running.”
Thomas nodded. He let Frank rant on a little more; then he directed their attention back to the paperwork that seemed, with this case, to double itself every time they looked away from it. But he found it hard to concentrate.
Two phone calls. One based on scientific methodology, the other from what Frank called the Twilight Zone. But they were both passing along what amounted to the same message: What they were dealing with was an impossibly strong individual, one who was growing stronger with each kill.
An uneasy feeling started up in him and wouldn’t go away. He didn’t believe what Papa Jo-el had told them, but he was finding it increasingly hard simply to dismiss it as well.
Billy Ryan pulled his red Camaro up in front of the address of the house that, according to the photocopied files Kelsey had given him, belonged to Mike Fisher. He took in the well-manicured yard and garden that fronted the house. Some toys lay in an abandoned scatter on the wide driveway, along with a bright yellow tricycle. The house itself was an aluminum-sided bungalow with a concrete foundation and a two-car garage. The garage door was open, and he could see only one car inside—one of those station wagons with fake wood paneling on the doors. He didn’t know they still made those things. The other half of the garage looked like it had been converted into a workshop area.
Getting out of his car, Ryan took the time to light up another cigarette, then sauntered across the lawn and rang the bell that was lit up beside the front door. The woman who answered wasn’t exactly a plain Jane, but she wasn’t going to win any beauty contests either. She might have once, but she’d let herself go. The result gave her a kind of plump motherly appearance—the way Ryan remembered the mothers had looked when he was growing up in the Rosses, before they all felt like they had to get careers.
“Yes?” she asked.
Ryan tossed the cigarette onto the lawn behind him and worked up a pleasant smile. With his choirboy looks, it wasn’t hard.
“Hi. Is Mike home?”
“He’s just around back. I’ll go—”
Ryan let his smile widen. “Don’t let me interrupt you. I can go around back myself.”
He tipped a finger against his brow before she could reply and made his way around the house to find Fisher playing ball with his kid in the backyard. They made a perfect picture: father playing catch with his five-year-old son on a Saturday afternoon. Ryan felt like puking.
Jesus, he thought. With a scene like this, no wonder Fisher had to go out and get himself some hot young piece of ass in the Zone from time to time. He had to do something to liven up his life.
Fisher glanced up at his approach, a nervous look on his face.
“Hey, how’re you doing?” Ryan said as he approached.
“Excuse me,” Fisher began, “but do I know you?”
“Not exactly. But I’m hoping we can get to be pals.” He smiled. “Why don’t you send the kid inside?”
Fisher blinked nervously, then gave his son a pat on the behind.
“Go inside and see Mommy,” he told the boy.
When he turned back to Ryan, he tried to bring a little sternness to his features. It didn’t work. He still looked like a weedy little accountant.
“Are you from the police department?” he asked. When Ryan didn’t answer straightaway, he went on, “Because I told the detectives there all I know. And you said my involvement wouldn’t become public knowledge. What am I supposed to tell my wife?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Ryan asked. “Tell her I’m selling raffle tickets.”
Fisher’s nervous twitch went into overtime. “You … you’re not from the police.”
“Bingo.”
“You … Who are you? What do you want with me?”
“Nothing to burn your nuts over,” Ryan told him. “I’ve just got a few questions.”
Fisher stood up straighter. “You can’t just—”
Ryan stepped in close and prodded him in the chest with a stiff finger. Fisher’s eyes went wide and got a scared look.
“I …”
“You know a guy called Capelli?” Ryan asked. “You ever do any work for him?”
Louie Capelli was the wiseguys’ connection with the Allen & Roy Corporation. He didn’t work there. He only showed up on paydays to collect the “paychecks” of the men the wiseguys had decided were on the Allen & Roy payroll if the company wanted to stay in business. It was an old scam, one that Mickey’s boys ran as well wherever they could.
Fisher was shaking his head. “I … I’ve never heard of him.”
“See, the way I see it,” Ryan went on, “is there’s a lot of wops who’d be real happy to see a certain established and well-respected member of the Newford business community have himself some cash-flow problems—you understand what I’m saying?”
Fisher shook his head.
“And I figure a guy like you, who’s maybe helping them out by pointing fingers away from what they’re up to, could stand to make himself a little quick spending money. Grateful guys tend to throw around the cash—am I right?”
“I don’t know what—”
“Right.” Ryan stopped to light a cigarette. “You don’t know a thing.”
“It’s true. I never heard of—”
“So tell me,” Ryan said. “What’s this shit you’re throwing out to the cops about this big fucker just appearing out of nowhere to kill that broad last night?”
Perspiration covered Fisher’s face with a wet sheen. His twitch just wouldn’t let up.
“It’s true,” he said, almost pleading. “One minute there was nobody there and then the … the next, there he was. K-killing her.”
“Like he stepped out of the wall?”
“I don’t know where he came from. I swear I don’t. And I don’t know this man you’re asking me about either. Please believe me.”
Actually, although he wasn’t about to let on, Ryan did believe the little weed. Even Capelli couldn’t be stupid enough to be using him. Fisher couldn’t lie if his life depended on it.
Ryan took a drag of his cigarette and shrugged.
“I’m going to dig a little deeper,” he said, “see just how connected you are. You better hope I don’t find anything.”
“You won’t. I swear.”
“And you better not go running to the man about my coming here, because I know where you live—understand?”
Fisher’s scared look was verging on terror now. “I … I don’t even know who you are.”
Ryan gave one of his beatific smiles. “So let’s just keep it that way. Thanks for your time, Mikey-boy.”
Fisher was almost visibly wilting with relief as Ryan turned and headed back out to his car.
Okay, Ryan thought as he got in behind the wheel. Maybe there’s no connection with the wiseguys. He looked at the Fisher house and tapped the steering wheel, thinking. That only left Papa Jo-el.
Dealing with Papa Jo-el was going to play a little harder, but
Ryan didn’t foresee any real problems. The only real problem would come up if Papa Jo-el wasn’t involved, because that meant the killings had nothing to do with Mickey’s business. It’d just be some psycho running around, getting his jollies. But that wasn’t going to stop Mickey from wanting him to deal with it.
A psycho, he thought. Great.
How the fuck was he supposed to deal with that?
The rest of the day seemed to drag on forever, until it was finally time that the detectives could call it quits. Frank left to keep his date while Thomas went home to eat and change into jeans and a checkered flannel shirt. Angie wasn’t in when he got back. Reading between the lines of the note she’d left, he knew that she wasn’t all that pleased with his going off to the reserve when they’d already had so little time together this past month.
He crumpled the note in his fist and tossed it into the garbage, but by the time he sat down to write her a response, the momentary anger had fled.
It wasn’t his fault that he had no time left, but it wasn’t hers either. Under normal circumstances, he would simply have foregone the trip to the reserve tonight and spent the time with Angie. She deserved it, and God knew, he missed her as much as she was missing him. But he felt he had no choice. Distanced though he was from the concerns of the reserve, it was still hard for him to ignore a summons from Jack Whiteduck.
Past the outriding suburbs that had grown to encircle Newford in ever-thickening clusters over the years, it was another half hour’s drive up Highway 14 to reach the reserve. Thomas was tired when he set out from home, tired and irritated and more than a little frustrated. The Slasher case loomed constantly on his mind. Living with it day in and day out as he had for over a month now was steadily taking its toll.
From a Whisper to a Scream Page 10