She stood motionless for a moment, tempted to turn her back on the bold man. But she worried that would turn him off, and she wanted to turn him on the same way he turned her on. Ignoring the chair, she approached his table. She stood before him, caressing her drink’s swizzle stick with her small pink tongue. His eyes bored into hers, his tight smile playful and arrogant. She waited for him to get her another chair, and when he remained in his seat, she moved closer to him, swaying to the music, and sat on his lap.
Mandy brought him home an hour later. Not her first one-night stand, to be sure, but she usually moved slower than this. She couldn’t help it: Jerry was magnetic, and she wanted him more than she could remember wanting anyone before. They had made out at the club, and he had slid his fingers inside her, probing her, teasing her, then withdrew them before she could come. They took a cab to her place, and she had practically dragged him into her bedroom.
They peeled away each other’s clothes like the layers of an onion, and she ran her fingers over his taut muscles with hungry appreciation. Crawling into bed together, she fastened her fingers around his erect penis and stroked it. He climbed on top of her, prodding her clitoris, and a low moan escaped her lips. He entered her then, driving himself deep inside her. She uttered a startled cry, and he thrust himself deeper.
“God,” Mandy said in a high pitch as he found his rhythm. “Oh … God!”
She clawed at his back, gyrated her hips, and thrashed her head from side to side so he would not see the tears in her eyes and laugh ather. The streetlight shining through her window cast their shadows on the wall beside them. As she pressed her fists against her cheeks, she saw his shadow arch its back.
That’s so fucking good!
Above her, Jerry grunted like an animal, and she squealed in delight, body shuddering in orgasm after orgasm as he filled her body. On the wall, his shadow elongated, and she thought the streetlight must have grown brighter to cause this to happen. Then she discerned an angular head with what resembled a sharp snout, and she felt long hair tickling her belly. She turned her head back, looking up at her lover, and her heart jumped in her chest. Fierce animal eyes stared down at her. She felt confused more than frightened.
Then the great beast buried its muzzle in her midsection, and her arms shot straight up, her fingers quivering as she screamed in agony.
“All available units in the Oh-Five Precinct report to 517 Eldridge,” said a voice over the police band radio. “A 10-34 in progress, code name Alpha. Repeat, all available units in Oh-Five Precinct report to 517 Eldridge, 10-34 in progress. Over.”
Stalk sat up in the Wrangler’s front seat, started the engine, and shifted into gear. He didn’t know NYPD jargon, but this sounded urgent. As he peeled out of the parking lot, he sketched a map of the Lower East Side in his mind and sped down Grand Street in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, passing Allen. Hearing sirens behind him, he stepped on the gas and lurched toward a congested stretch of small shops, where scores of Chinese carried their bags from the Grand Street subway station on the B and D line. A dozen people clustered on the corner ahead on his right peered up at a granite building across the street with stones blackened by soot.
Stalk twisted the steering wheel to his left, cutting across theoncoming traffic. Horns blared, and he squinted in the glare of scores of headlights. He saw the number 517 posted above the dark building’s entrance, and he steered the Jeep straight onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians scampering in all directions. Jerking his keys from the ignition, he snatched the Winchester Model 70 rifle from the seat beside him, bolted from the Jeep, and dashed up four concrete steps.
“Oh, shit!” someone on the sidewalk across the street said.
A female scream escaped from a window above Stalk as well as a sound that made him shudder even more: the snarling of a wild animal.
Opening the glass-paned front door, he leapt over the two steps in the vestibule to a landing before the inner door. Beyond the door he saw half a dozen people standing in front of tarnished mailboxes in the lobby and on the stairs, gaping at the floors above. Stalk tugged on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. He pounded on the frame and a few heads turned in his direction, but no one moved to admit him. He couldn’t blame them; after all, he was holding a scoped hunting rifle.
Shoving his hand deep into one pocket of his army jacket, he pulled out the fringed and beaded handmade leather case that held his tribal police badge. “Police! Let me in!”
A heavyset Hispanic boy rushed over to the door and opened it.
Stalk ran past him and headed up the stairs. Aiming the barrel of his Winchester straight up, he shouted to no one in particular, “Which floor?”
“Third!” someone said.
Great. The footfalls of his leather boots echoed on the stairway while outside the sound of sirens grew deafening, and he heard the first squad car screech to a stop. Tenants crowded the second floor: young ethnic couples, bohemian artists, and seniors who refused to abandon their rent-controlled apartments. Stalk waved his weapon for everyone to see. “Police!”
Tenants scattered out of his way, and he charged up the second flight of stairs. Above him, the screams stopped and the snarling grew louder. He heard several sets of footsteps below. As he reached thethird floor, he saw a heroin chic punk rocker with spiked hair, dressed only in torn jeans, pounding on a green door at the far end of the hall.
“For God’s sake, open up!” the young man said.
Stalk heard a window shatter behind the door. “Get out of the way!”
The punk turned around, a startled expression on his already horrified face. Seeing the Winchester in Stalk’s hands, he flattened his back against the wall perpendicular to the door.
Raising his right knee almost to his chest, Stalk kicked the door just above its knob, and the door burst open with the sound of splintering wood. He staggered into the dark apartment with both hands clutching his rifle. Flashing strobes outside the building reflected red and blue off the two living room windows. He flicked on an overhead light and stepped to the open bedroom door.
The bedroom window faced sideways from the living room windows, reducing the strobes to a dull pulsing that outlined the jagged glass remaining in the shattered window. Feeling cool air on his face, he discerned something glistening on the bed. He flicked a second light switch and gasped. The entire bedroom dripped crimson. For years he had wondered what fate might have befallen him had he chosen to remain in Manhattan, and now he saw it with his own eyes. The remains of a woman’s bottom half remained on the bed, legs spread open and covered in blood, semen dribbling from her vagina. From the waist up, she had ceased to exist. Violent slashes of blood crisscrossed the walls, as if her killer had swung her torso around the room like a mad painter before tearing off her arms. In one corner he saw her trunk, missing its head.
Hearing another window crash outside, he sprinted across the blood-slicked floor, sliding through the gore. He slapped his left hand against the wall—careful not to smear the blood on the sill—and aimed his rifle outside. The faint strobe lights illuminated the roof of a two-story building below, where a ruptured skylight winked at him. The skinwalker had broken through the window, run acrossthe rooftop below, then jumped through the skylight. Turning from the window he saw letters written in blood on the wall above a narrow dresser: ulfheonar.
Footsteps thundered in the living room, and a gaggle of uniformed police officers crowded the doorway, their blockish Glocks aimed at him.
“Drop it!” one of the officers said.
Stalk raised his arms, holding the Winchester horizontally over his head with one hand. “I’m a cop. I’d rather not drop my weapon on this floor.” His gaze moved to the dresser. “How about I put it over there?”
The officer who had ordered him to drop the gun tightened his grip on his semiautomatic. “Move slowly. You’ve got four weapons aimed at you, and I’m the only one with a clear view of what you’re doing.”
With great ca
re, Stalk moved through the blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mace ducked beneath the yellow crime scene tape that cordoned off the building from the crowd. He saw a Jeep Wrangler parked on the sidewalk and counted five different news vans double-parked along Eldridge Street.
“Captain Mace!”
“Tony!”
Ignoring the reporters, he scanned the crowd of onlookers. The excitement in their eyes failed to mask the fear he saw in them as well. Looking up, he saw the windows of the housing project across the street filled with pensive silhouettes.
Don Gibbons joined him. Mace had never seen the night watch commander at a crime scene before. “I guess the gypsy wasn’t our man—or monster. Looks like that crazy bitch in Queens killed her husband for nothing.”
Mace grunted in agreement. He had suspected as much.
“Far as I can tell, everything’s identical to the last one,” Gibbons said. “Young woman torn to shreds in her own apartment, window broken from the inside, message written on one wall in blood. Get this:the perp jumped out a third-story window and then through a skylight on the roof of that art supplies store. Looks like he escaped through a door facing an alley on the other side of the block.”
Mace studied the space above the second-story roof. The full moon shone brightly on the side of the four-story apartment building. “Witnesses?”
“Over here.” Gibbons pointed at four Hispanic teenagers, three boys and a girl, contained near the corner of the crime scene tape. “You’re going to love this.”
Approaching the teenagers, Mace placed their ages at sixteen. “Who saw something?”
“We all did,” a boy with a shaved head said in a defiant tone. “But I saw the most.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We were standing over there”—he pointed at a communal area behind the project with bolted down picnic tables and bike racks—“when we heard this woman screaming. Not two minutes later, we saw Tonto drive that Jeep right onto the sidewalk and run inside. Everyone ran over to this side of the street for an up close look, but we held back.”
“Why’s that?”
The boy shrugged in an exaggerated manner. “We wanted to finish our beer and our reefer, yo.”
His companions laughed.
“Who’s gonna be dumb enough to take their shit over to a spot that’s about to be crawling with five-oh? And who’s gonna be dumber still to leave their shit behind in this neighborhood? You see some of the shifty motherfuckers around here? They wanna roll the chinos on their way home from the gambling parlors, and they take anything ain’t nailed down.”
Mace had seen this tough-guy bravado from countless kids. “What’s your name?”
“Jesus.”
“What are you and your friends doing out so late?”
“I told you—we were drinking our forties and smoking reefer.”
“You want to tell me what you saw?”
Jesus pointed at the apartment building. “We heard a window break, and I saw a big black shape jump out of that building and land on top of the art supplies store.”
“What do you mean, ‘a big black shape’?”
“You want me to spell it out for you?”
“That would be nice. I’m a little slow.”
“I can tell. I saw a motherfucking wolf jump from one building to the other.”
“You ever see a wolf before?”
“I seen pictures. Only this was different.”
“How so?”“It was big and black. But it was no motherfucking man and it was no motherfucking dog, so it had to be a motherfucking wolf. I saw it silhouetted against the moon, just like E.T.”
Mace looked at Jesus’s companions. “That what you all saw?”
“I didn’t see shit,” another boy said, and the remaining boy and the girl muttered their agreement.
“I guess you’re my star witness,” Mace said to Jesus. “How high are you?”
“I was drinking and I was smoking, but I can see straight.”
“Anyone take your statement?”
“Yeah.”
Mace looked at the PO standing on the other side of the crime scene tape, who nodded to him. “Then I guess you’re free to go home.”
“Yeah, right.” Jesus turned to his friends. “Come on, y’all.” Ducking under the tape, they strutted across the street to the project’s communal area and reassembled on a picnic table.
“One stoned sixteen-year-old isn’t exactly a reliable witness,” Mace said to Gibbons.
“Lane and Diega are inside getting statements,” Gibbons said. “Looks like a full house in there.”
“That should save us some legwork tomorrow. What have you got on the vic?”
Gibbons consulted his notebook. “Mandy Lee, twenty years old. Father owns the building. Guess our boy was in the mood for Chinese takeout tonight.”
Mace ignored the comment. “What’s the story with this Jeep?”
“Come on. There’s someone else I want you to meet. I saved the best for last.”
Gibbons walked Mace around to the far side of the Jeep. A man with long black hair tied in a ponytail leaned against the vehicle with his arms folded across his chest. He wore a green army jacket, faded blue jeans, and boots. His features did not appear ethnic, and his skin was no darker than Mace’s.
“Meet John Stalk, a member of the tribal police on the Chautauqua Indian Reservation upstate near Buffalo. As per witness statements, he drove his Jeep onto the sidewalk and ran into the building armed with a hunting rifle just ahead of our uniforms, who caught him standing in the vic’s bedroom moments after the perp went out the window. A junkie who lives on the same floor as the vic saw Mr. Stalk kick in the vic’s door after hearing the window break. He was holding this.”
Gibbons removed a black rifle from the squad car and handed it to Mace. “Mr. Stalk, meet Captain Mace, Manhattan Homicide South.”
Mace and Stalk measured each other with suspicious eyes.
“Pleasure,” Stalk said.
“You’re a long way from home. Would you mind explaining what you were doing in that apartment?”
Stalk nodded at a punk rocker, who sat on a stoop next door with his head bowed between his knees. “Your strung out witness over there will tell you I arrived after the murder.”
“That isn’t what I asked you. What’s a tribal policeman from upstate doing at a Lower Manhattan crime scene?”
“Just trying to lend a helping hand.”
“Are you here on tribal police business?” “No.”
“You haven’t been in touch with Sarah Harper’s family or anyone who knew Terrence Glenzer?”
Stalk grunted. “No, I haven’t. I’m no hired killer, Captain. I’m a lawman, just like you.”
Mace examined the rifle, a sleek black Winchester with a mounted scope. “What kind of ammunition do you use in this thing?” “The regular kind. What do you expect?”
“These days you can’t be too sure. What exactly are you hunting in our fair city?”
“The same thing you are.”
“That’s no answer.” Mace offered Stalk a tight smile. “How is it you arrived here before we did?”
“I was already in the neighborhood.”
“Just cruising the Village?” “You don’t go to the beach to hunt deer.”
“How did you know what was going down?” Stalk gestured at his truck. “Police band radio. The call wasn’t specific, but I took a chance.”
“When did you arrive in town?”
“Just a few hours ago.”
“That’s some timing.”
Stalk shrugged. “I have good instincts.”
“How long do you plan on staying?”
“That depends on how long it takes me to catch what I’m after.”
“You mind telling me how you intend to do that?” “By thinking like your killer.”
Mace nodded at the Jeep. “You’re out of your jurisdiction, and right now you’re interfering with
police business—official police business.”
“Can I have my gun back?”
“No, I think we’ll have our ballistics department run some tests on it.”
“Suit yourself.” Stalk reached into his pocket, removed a beaded badge holder, and took out a business card. “My police information, including my chief’s contact info. You should be able to reach me at this address.” He handed the card to Mace, who read the handwriting on the back. “As soon as you allow me to, I’ll get my Jeep off the sidewalk.”
“Did you get all his information?” Mace said to Gibbons.
“Everything but the day he lost his virginity.”
“Let him go, then. We need to start clearing this street.”
Gibbons leaned close to Mace and whispered into his ear, “He saw the message on the wall.”
Damn it, Mace thought. “Mr. Stalk, I hope we can rely on you not to share any details pertaining to our investigation with the media or anyone else.”
“You mean as a professional courtesy between brothers-in-arms? No problem, Captain. I understand your need to keep a lid on this. No one will hear anything from me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Mace considered locking Stalk up for twenty-four hours just to keep him quiet. But what then? It was one thing to hide details from the media, another to lock up citizens to keep them from talking to that same media. “I look forward to speaking to you again soon.”
“Same here.”
Gibbons motioned to the closest PO. Stalk climbed into the Jeep and waited for the tape to come down before starting the engine. As he backed into the street, someone in the crowd called out, “Geronimo!”
The reporters rushed forward, and the PO reattached the tape, holding them back.
“Cocky son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Gibbons said.
The Frenzy Way Page 12