Two Bare Arms

by Blake Banner

  “Mr. Smith, our investigation is turning up quite a lot of disturbing evidence. There has been a fresh murder, and a number of notes have been received threatening further killings. We have reason to believe that you and your wife may be at risk, and we would like you to come in to the station for a talk. If possible, this afternoon.”

  “Both of us?”

  “No, for now just you, Mr. Smith. But we will have a car keeping an eye on your house to make sure your wife is safe.”

  “I see…” He hesitated. “Very well, I can be there in an hour.”

  “That would be fine. We’d be very grateful. Are you at home now?”

  “Yes, I work mainly from home. Why?”

  “We’ll have a car there before you leave.”

  I spoke to the desk sergeant and a couple of colleagues, and they agreed to keep him there, supplied with coffee, as long as they could. Dehan arrived and we set out for Revere Avenue.

  We parked up the road, out of sight. We watched him come out with quick, efficient steps, get into his car, and drive away. Then we got out, walked across the wet blacktop, and climbed the steps to the Smiths’ door. Jenny opened the door and looked surprised.

  “Oh! He’s just gone…”

  I smiled. “We’ll catch up with him. There were just a couple of questions we wanted to ask you, in fact. May we come in?”

  She hesitated and Dehan jumped up and down with knock-knees and grinning. “Can I use your toilet? It’s this rain!”

  Jenny got flustered and said, “Yes! Yes of course, come in!”

  And we were in.

  While Dehan skipped up the stairs to the bathroom, I smiled at Jenny in what I hoped was a fatherly way.

  “We are very concerned for your safety, Jenny. And it is extremely important for us to make sure that both you and Peter are eliminated from any suspicion…”

  “Suspicion? Us?”

  I sighed and shrugged. “There are some very unscrupulous defense attorneys out there who will do anything to get their clients off. So I hope you will cooperate fully with us in preempting any ploys they may try.”

  She looked suitably horrified and said, “Why, yes! Of course! How can I help?”

  I thought about it a moment and asked, “What kind of shoes does your husband wear?”

  “Shoes?” She gave a small laugh. “Well, as you ask, he has rather particular taste. He always says that however badly dressed a man is, you can always tell a gentleman by his shoes.”

  “How very true.”

  “So he has his shoes made especially for him in Spain, of all places. I tell him we have very good shoemakers here in the States. But he gets cross. These he says are the best, handmade from Spanish leather. So that’s what he wears.”

  “I imagine he buys them online. What is the name of the company?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Gallardo. But what has this to do…?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I just happened to notice the other day what excellent shoes he had, and thought I’d ask. But surely he doesn’t wear them in this terrible weather?”

  “Oh, they are quite waterproof!”

  “Would you think me an awful bore if I asked to see them? I am thinking of buying some good shoes myself, and…”

  You could tell she was uncomfortable, but she had lived her entire life without ever learning to say no, and she wasn’t about to start now. So she rose and went upstairs and I, quite shamelessly, followed her into their bedroom.

  She stood in the middle of the floor saying, “I really don’t think…” But as she said it, Dehan stepped in from the toilet and I pointed to the wardrobe. “Are they in there?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Thank you, Jenny. We’ll leave it just as it was.”

  There were three pairs of Oxford brogues. They were all clean. I hunkered down and examined them. The tread pattern fit. I put them all back as I had found them. I asked her, “Are any of these the ones he was wearing five nights ago?”

  She stammered. “He rotates them, a new pair every day, from left to right.”

  I did a quick calculation and decided he would have been wearing the ones on the far left. I picked them up and smelled the soles. Then I put them back.

  I stood and closed the wardrobe. “Are you a heavy sleeper, Mrs. Smith?”

  “No, I sleep very badly. That’s why Peter insists that I take a tablet every night.”

  “So six nights ago, if Peter had got up during the night, you would not have noticed?”

  “No, but why on Earth would he have got up?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Smith. You have been very helpful. We had better get after Peter, or we’ll miss him.”

  SIXTEEN

  She watched us leave, with her hands clenched in front of her womb. The sky was turning black, and thunder rolled far off. A few fat drops fell as we climbed into the Jag and pulled away, and Dehan swore extensively in three languages. I paid no attention because my brain was busy putting all the pieces together.

  Finally she looked at me as though she was going to hit me. “Have you any idea what is going on? Does this make any sense to you at all? Are they? Are they accomplices? Are they in this together?”

  I was still ignoring her, but I said, “I’ll get another note this evening or tonight. Probably this evening. It will probably come to the station. It will probably have a date for the next killing, or something close.”

  “How… how can you possibly know that?”

  I glanced at her. “Wait. I’m thinking.”

  I pulled up outside the precinct and ran up the stairs. Frank, who’d been keeping Peter happy for me, grabbed my arm. “He’s in interrogation room three, and he’s pissed.”

  “Thanks.”

  I pushed into the room with Dehan on my tail. Peter looked up. His eyes were bright with indignation. “Do you know how long…?”

  I cut across him. “How long have you been wearing Spanish shoes?”

  “What?”

  “How long, Peter?”

  “I don’t know…” He screwed up his face at me. I waited. “Since I was… About fifteen years. What in the name of heaven…?”

  I closed the door. Dehan was looking at me like I was crazy. They both were. I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “I haven’t got time to fuck around, Peter. So forgive me if I am blunt. You are not a very nice person. There must be a few people at work who really don’t like you. I need to know who they are.”

  “How dare you…!”

  “Deal with it! Now tell me! Who?”

  He went to stand. “I don’t have to…”

  “Who?”

  He looked flustered and a little scared. “Um… Johnson, Cohen, Brown…”

  “Any others?”

  “Not really…”

  “Did any of them travel to California with you in 2005?”

  He frowned. “No. I went alone.”

  I was quiet for a while, thinking. I walked to the door, opened it, and bellowed, “Any messages for me?” A few blank faces looked and shook their heads. I closed the door and looked at Peter. “You know David?”

  “David? What David? I know a couple of Davids.”

  “From the Global Computer Shipping Company. They own the units…”

  “Yes. We’ve exchanged the odd nod. He’s supplied me with my computers over the years. Odd fellow, but helpful.”

  “Over the years?”

  He shrugged and shook his head, “Ten, maybe more… fifteen.”

  “Ever run across him in San Diego?”

  “No…”

  “L.A.?”

  “No…!”

  “You realize we can check, and if we find you’re lying, that will count against you.”

  “In what? For God’s sake, Detective! What in the name of God is going on here?”

  “Let me see your shoes.” He stared at me, and his face flushed. He looked as though he was about to get violent. I said, “Are you refusing to show me your shoes?”r />
  He took a deep breath. “I am going to show you my shoes. Then I am going to go home. If you want to keep me, then charge me with something, but it had better be something more than wearing Spanish shoes or knowing David. Frankly, Detective, your behavior is bordering on the irrational.”

  “Your shoes.”

  He unlaced them, took them off, and slammed them on the table. I looked at them carefully and smelled the soles. I handed them back to him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Smith. I apologize for the inconvenience. You can go.”

  He stared at me in disgust. “You people. No wonder this country is going to the dogs!”

  He put his shoes back on, and as he slammed out, a uniform leaned in. “Note delivered for you…”

  I pushed past her and ran. I took the stairs a landing at a time and shouted at the desk sergeant, “Who delivered the note?”

  He pointed at the door. “Kid—he just left, in a hoodie…”

  I leapt out of the door into the gathering night as Dehan came clattering after me. It was raining. There was a young man, maybe a hundred yards away, hunched in a dark hoodie, passing through a pool of misty light cast by a streetlamp. I heard the sergeant shout, “That’s him!”

  Dehan and I took off at a sprint down the wet road. The guy must have heard us coming because he looked back and started to run. We caught him at the corner and slammed him against the wall of the deli.

  “I ain’t done nothin’! I aint done nothin’, man! Let me go!”

  Dehan snarled, “You ain’t done nothing? Why’d you run?”

  “You was chasin’ me! I ran!”

  Dehan cuffed him, and I turned him around. He was about eighteen, black, and scared.

  “Tell me about the note.”

  He shrugged and glanced from me to Dehan and back again, wondering which one to be scared of. “I don’t know nothin’ about the note. Guy said to deliver it to the desk sergeant. That’s what I done. I never even read it.”

  I wiped water from my eyes. “What’s this guy look like?”

  “Average height. Jeans, dark hoodie. Big shades and a scarf around his mouth. He give me fifty bucks and said he’d be watchin’. If I didn’t deliver it, bad things was gonna happen.”

  I sighed. “Okay, come on. You’re going to make a statement. Then you can go home. Uncuff him, Dehan.”

  I left the kid in the hands of a sergeant who took his statement, and Dehan and I went back to have a look at the note. It was still sitting on the table in the interrogation room. It was a piece of A4 photographic paper, folded in half. On the outside it simply bore my name, but on the inside, taking up half the page, there was a photograph. It looked like a shopping mall at dusk taken from the parking lot. There was a brightly lit door and a woman walking in through that door, toward the shops. In the foreground there were several cars out of focus. There was a time and date stamp on the photograph. It had been taken two hours earlier, while I was on the phone to Peter. On the top half, above the photograph, there was printed, “Tick tock, tick tock…”

  “Where is this place? Who is this woman?”

  Dehan was thinking fast. “It has to be within two hours drive in rush hour traffic.”

  “That could be thirty, forty square miles or more.” I yanked open the door and hollered, “Somebody! Anybody! Now!”

  A sergeant came running, looking alarmed. “I need a list, ten minutes ago, of all the major malls in the Bronx, with photographs.”

  She could have told me to go to hell and do it myself, but she didn’t. She said, “I can do that for you.”

  “No, wait!” I turned to Dehan. “The Bronx is what, seven miles across at its widest. Ten miles long, I am being approximate here. It’s rush hour. He has to select his victim, photograph her, get to a printer, write his message, print the photograph, and then deliver it. For that, he needs to select a suitable messenger who is willing to deliver. All of this is eating considerably into his two hours. So we need malls that are close to the precinct.”

  The sergeant said, “Yes, we have Bruckner Plaza, New Horizon, Webster…”

  “Photographs!” I showed her the picture. “Find this mall. Because that woman is going to be killed.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I ran up the stairs to the captain. I knocked and went in without waiting. He looked up, startled. I showed him the picture. “I need a BOLO on this woman. I need cars to go to every mall in the Bronx and identify this shopping center—and this woman. They need to talk to cashiers, shop assistants. The clock is ticking on this woman’s life.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’ll see to it.”

  He was picking up the phone as I left.

  When I got back down, the sergeant was talking to Dehan. She looked at me as I approached. “Maria thinks it’s the New Horizon. I think so too. I was just there.”

  “I’m pretty sure it is, Detective.”

  “Okay, thanks, Maria. Dehan, get your coat. Let’s go.”

  As we ran down to the car, she said, “Why don’t we just go get Dave?”

  “Because if it’s him, we’ll waste time looking for him and we won’t find him. And if it’s not him, we’ll find him, but it will be a waste of time.”

  “Oh…”

  It took us ten minutes to get there, and another fifteen to run around the parking lot checking every entrance to see if it fit. Then Dehan grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Look.”

  I looked at the photograph, then at the building, at the door, the tree, the letters… I shook my head. “No, the tree is in the wrong place..”

  “No! It’s not. Look at the letters on the wall, up in the corner. You can hardly see them, but look carefully.”

  I frowned. “They should be over there…”

  “Look again, Stone!”

  “They’re back to front! Son of a bitch! He’s inverted the picture!”

  “It’s this mall, this entrance.”

  We ran in. Over on the right there was a Pathmark. I pointed at the nearest checkout. “You start there. I’ll start at the other end.”

  There was a long line, but I barged in waving my badge.

  “’Excuse the interruption, folks.” I said to the guy at the checkout, “Were you here two hours ago?”

  “Sure. Been here since one.”

  “Do you recognize this woman? Her life might be at risk.”

  He looked blank and shook his head. I showed it around to the people in the line and got the same, blank response. I moved to the next checkout. Same thing. Third one I was getting the same, blank stares and shaking heads when I heard my name being called. It was Dehan, waving to me. She was six checkouts down. I ran to her. As I approached, she was saying, “This woman knows her.”

  The woman at the checkout was large and in her fifties. She looked worried. “She comes in three or four times a week. She’s a nice lady. She lives two streets from me on the corner. She in trouble?” The people in line were not sure whether to be restless or curious. There was some sighing and muttering.

  I shook my head. “No, but she could be at risk. We need to find her. It’s really urgent. Where does she live?”

  “I’ll write it down for you, honey.”

  While she was writing it down, a big guy in a vest and a baseball cap started complaining. “Hey, we all got problems. Move it along. The woman’s got a fuckin’ problem, take it somewhere else. This is a goddamn store.”

  Dehan turned to him. “Hey! Mister. You got an attitude?”

  “I ain’t got an attitude, I just wanna do my fuckin’ shopping.”

  “I’m asking you if you’ve got a fucking attitude! I got a fucking attitude, see? I got a bad fucking attitude. If you ain’t got a bad fucking attitude like mine, then shut the fuck up. We clear?”

  I glanced at him. He had gone the color and consistency of a suet dumpling. I thanked the woman at the checkout, and we left at a run. We ran through the dark, wet parking lot, and as we scrambled into the car, I grabbed the radio.

&nbs
p; “Detectives Stone and Dehan requesting backup at 1820B Waterloo Place. Have located woman in APB. Heading there now from New Horizons Shopping Mall.”

  I hit the gas, and as I pulled out of the lot, I glanced at Dehan and said, “You have got a fucking attitude, Dehan.”

  “I have a fucking attitude. You ain’t got a fucking attitude? Have you got a fucking attitude, Stone?”

  “I’ve got a fucking attitude. Have you got a fucking attitude?”

  “I’ve got a fucking attitude.”

  It was less than a two-minute drive. Waterloo Place was a short, quiet street with a mixture of apartment blocks and well-kept houses with gabled roofs and ample porches. I came to 1820B and screeched to a halt. As we made our way onto the porch, I could hear sirens approaching. There was light in the windows, but I couldn’t hear any sounds coming from inside. I pressed the bell.

  Nothing.

  I pressed the bell and hammered on the door. A squad car came wailing into the street and stopped outside the house. I hammered again. Car doors slammed and the two patrolmen were running up to join us.

  A door slammed inside the house. Then there were running feet clattering down the stairs. I stood back and pulled my piece. Dehan did the same. The patrolmen covered us.

  The door was wrenched open and a woman stood there, a look of absolute horror on her face, her hair disheveled and a bath towel wrapped around her. She stared at us and said, “What the hell is going on?”

  SIXTEEN

  Her name was Nancy Pierce. We sat with her in her living room. She had put a bathrobe on and now had a towel wound around her head. Dehan was sitting next to her, and I was opposite. The patrol car was outside awaiting instructions. Nancy Pierce looked like she had just discovered that for the past thirty years she’d been living on the Truman Show. Everything had changed and nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  She kept asking, “Why…?”

  I kept wanting to tell her that wasn’t a helpful question, but I knew that wouldn’t have been a helpful answer, either. Finally, Dehan said to her, “Nancy, you have to stop asking yourself that. The whole point is that there is no motive. He is crazy. If you try to understand him, you’ll drive yourself crazy, too.”