The Assailant

by James Patrick Hunt

  “Was she married?”

  “No. We’ve checked to see if she had an estranged boyfriend. Someone outside of her work. But, again, it’s early.”

  Early. They were nearing the end of the first forty-eight hours and they hadn’t yet chased down all their leads. In fact, if someone wanted to be blunt, they could argue that they hadn’t really started. A sixty-year-old man whom they cleared and allowed to get on a plane. Well, at least they knew he hadn’t killed this one.

  Yeah, it was still in the early stages, and now another woman had been murdered. A city with a greater population of around two million, yet both detectives were beginning to believe that there was one killer involved. And if that was true, the killer had something of an advantage over them, because he was not waiting around for them to find him. He wasn’t staying still. He was looking for his next victim.

  Escobar said, “What else you got?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. She worked for Tia’s Flower Shop. That’s an outfit run by Bobbie Cafaza. You know of her?”

  “No. I never worked vice. Is she located in the city?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We believe this girl works for an agency called Treasures. You heard of that?”

  “No. You?”

  “We’re aware of it. It’s run out of North County. Spanish Lake, to be specific. Not a madam, but a guy named Roland Gent. Ever hear of him?”

  “Nope.”

  “He’s a sweetheart. Small-timer. But smart, though.”

  “Anyone talked to him yet?”

  “No. Not yet. Listen, George, there may be different killers here. But if not, they may want to create a joint task force. Hell, they might even want to bring the feds in, give ’em an excuse to send their behavioral-science guys out here, tell us country boys about astrology and mama complexes and that sort of shit. Why don’t I call the chief deputy and you call your chief of detectives and let them decide how to proceed?”

  “I’m good with that,” Hastings said. “It’s your county, but would you mind if I spoke with the cleaning lady and the manager?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  •

  Hastings corralled the manager and the cleaning woman in the motel’s front office. Once he was satisfied that they weren’t going to run off, he asked them to sit still while he made a call that he told them would take only a minute.

  Ronnie Wulf answered his cell phone on the fourth ring. Hastings exhaled with relief. At least half the police officers would be in church at this hour.

  “Chief, this is George Hastings. We got another dead prostitute out here on West Manchester. It’s technically county’s jurisdiction, but they called me because it’s similar to the strangulation I handled yesterday.”

  “Oh, shit. It wasn’t the guy you let go, was it?”

  “No. That guy got on a plane yesterday, and I think this happened late last night.”

  Hastings heard Wulf breathe a sigh of relief. A police officer high up in the chain of command worried about being responsible for another murder. The anxiety that comes with rank.

  Wulf said, “You think it’s the same guy?”

  “It’s too soon to tell. But if I had to say one way or another now, I’d say it was. Same sort of victim. Same sort of murder.”

  “She was strangled?”

  “Yes. With an extension cord. In her car. The way the body’s positioned, it looks like the guy did it from behind.”

  “Her car?”

  “Yeah. That’s where she was found. Maybe he forced her into the car, or maybe he was waiting for her there.”

  “Waiting for her . . . Shit. This guy’s hunting them?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “There’s no press there, is there?”

  “No. I asked them to keep them away.”

  “Good. The last thing we need is to have SERIAL KILLER splashed across the local news. County accommodating you?”

  “So far. Detective Escobar, you know him?”

  “No.”

  “He suggested that we call our respective superiors and—”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll call the deputy chief and we’ll see where to go from there. In fact, I should probably come down there now.”

  “If you want, sir.”

  “Yeah,” Wulf said, “that’s what I want,” and then he was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  As he questioned the cleaning woman and then the hotel manager, Hastings saw more and more police vehicles pulling into the parking lot. The M.E., the county evidence van with the crime-scene technicians, the navy Crown Victoria with no lights that he was fairly certain was the sheriff’s, and then the unmarked Impala that was Ronnie Wulf’s take-home vehicle. A yellow tape line was put up and men and women stood and talked and questioned, and Hastings was hoping it would hold out, prevent the horde from spilling into the motel lobby and overwhelming the witnesses.

  The cleaning woman said that she had come to work at eight A.M. and was walking from room 4 to room 11, and that was when she walked by the Camaro and saw the woman inside. The cleaning woman was around fifty and had an accent that Hastings thought was probably Polish or Ukrainian, but then he realized that she was one of the Bosnian refugees who had come into the city ten years earlier.

  “At first,” she said, “I thought the lady was asleep. Too much drinking. I go past car, I go into room and clean.”

  “How long?”

  “Thirty, maybe forty minutes. I come out, and the woman still sleeping. Only, it seemed . . . not right. I walked over to the window and knock on it. I know what she is, I want her to move on.”

  “You know what she is—you mean a prostitute?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Never mind me, mama,” Hastings said. “How did you know?”

  “You can tell. Is obvious. And I’ve seen her here before.”

  “Yeah? How many times before?”

  “She come, what, every two weeks. Maybe every week. Sometimes with different man. Sometimes same man.”

  Hastings thought about that one for a moment. Then he said, “Would you recognize these men if you saw them again?”

  “I don’t see them all. Just some. I come here in the morning, not at night. I not here last night. Only this morning. This morning—”

  “Okay, I got it. You’ve seen her before in the morning?”

  She seemed to think about that one. “Yes. Maybe twice.”

  “Twice in the morning. But what about at night?”

  “I don’t work nights.”

  “Then how do you know she comes here at night.”

  “I don’t know . . . I hear things.”

  Hastings sighed. He turned to the hotel manager, who raised his hands in submission. “There’s a night man. We don’t look to see what’s going on in the rooms. It’s not our business.”

  “Right,” Hastings said. “Have you seen her before?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So you knew.”

  “Yeah, I knew. Look—”

  Hastings said, “Sir, I don’t care. I’m just asking if you know her.”

  “I suspected what she was, but I don’t know her. We don’t get a piece of it, if that’s what you mean.”

  Hastings had not. But he kept that to himself. He said, “Well, then she was here to meet someone, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t specifically know who she was meeting here. It doesn’t go through me.”

  Hastings said, “It’s illegal. You know that. We’re going to be questioning Mr. Roland Gent. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “What if he says you do?”

  “I swear, I don’t know him.”

  After a moment, Hastings said, “Well, let me see your register for last night. After that, I’ll decide whether or not I believe you.”

  The
re were four names for the previous night. Two of them were still here and were being questioned by the county police. A couple on their way back to Terre Haute, Indiana, and a truck driver from Detroit. The third one was a man going west, who had listed an address in Winfield, Kansas; he had checked out through the desk at seven A.M. The fourth was a man who lived in St. Louis. He had paid with cash and left a bogus telephone number and name, but for some reason he had written in his license tag on the form.

  Hastings called Klosterman and gave him the tag and asked him to check it out. Klosterman said he’d get back to him, and that was when Ronnie Wulf saw Hastings through the lobby window and waved him out.

  •

  The technicians and the detectives formed a semicircle around the Camaro. A contrast of civilians and uniforms, county and metropolitan. Ronnie Wulf chewing his nicotine gum, as he had been for several years, looking at the car and the dead woman, keeping the chewing to a certain rhythm, and eventually he turned to Hastings and said, “What do you think, Ace?”

  Hastings said, “I think he was waiting for her in the car, hiding in the backseat. He waited for her to get in and looped the extension cord around her neck and strangled her. I believe it was premeditated. And then,” Hastings pointed at her mangled ear, the bloodstain beneath it, “I think he pulled one of her earrings off.”

  “You think he did it after?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not in the struggle?”

  Hastings turned to the medical examiner.

  The examiner said, “It doesn’t appear that it happened that way. If it had happened during the struggle, she would have been twisting her head.” The M.E. twisted his head, swiveling it, in case they didn’t understand him. He said, “But the tear is straight down. Like if you were ringing a church bell.”

  Ronnie Wulf said, “After?”

  “Yeah, after.” Hastings shrugged. “Who can explain why? He’s a sadistic killer. But . . . some killers, killers who are sadists, they’re known for wanting trinkets. Mementos of their work. I say this because her purse wasn’t taken. And the remaining earring, which I presume matches the one that was taken, is pretty much worthless. Costume jewelry.”

  Wulf said, “The girl down by the river, was anything taken from her?”

  “Her life.”

  Ronnie Wulf frowned. “Anything else?”

  “No, sir. I mean, I’m not aware of anything.”

  “But you think we’re dealing with the same guy?”

  Hastings was aware of all the other law enforcement personnel around him. He wished Wulf had asked him this privately. As it was, he was onstage. He said, “I think so. But I don’t have enough proof of that as of now.” Hastings had already expressed this opinion to Wulf.

  Wulf stopped chewing. “All right, so what do you have?” he said.

  “I’ve got two high-dollar prostitutes who were both strangled within the same forty-eight-hour period. No evidence of theft. I think the man that did it—and I think it was a man—I think he was hunting them. Stalking them. And I think he did this because he likes doing it.”

  “And you think he’s going to keep on doing it?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Shit. Well, I hope you’re wrong.”

  Hastings looked at the woman’s torn ear once more. “I hope so too.”

  FIFTEEN

  There was a bit of a thunk as the Ford Explorer’s automatic transmission went from second to third. Not loud, but noticeable if you were listening for it. There, but then it was gone and the car went on just fine. The Explorer was coming up on twelve years old now and showed almost two hundred thousand miles on the odometer, but Tim Murphy had held extensive negotiations with his wife to get her to keep it for another two years. He swore that if it held till then, they would trade it in for whatever she liked.

  She was in the car now, next to him. Murph kept looking straight ahead when the transmission made the noise. He didn’t want to give anything away.

  When the transmission had first gone out, Murph’s wife spent the better part of two weeks hounding him to buy something new. “I told you,” she’d say. And she’d say other things, like, What if we’d been in the middle of the interstate, Tim? What then? And so forth. He’d come back at her, fighting dirty, pointing to their two boys, ages six and eight, and say, “We can send them to Catholic school or we can drive a new SUV, but we can’t do both.” And she had said, But the damn Ford doesn’t even run, so Murph had to get the thing towed to a place in Belleville where they agreed to give him a rebuilt transmission for around eight hundred dollars.

  Brought it back a week later. See? Running just fine. Just remember to keep the radio turned up loud between second and third.

  He was driving it now, ignoring his wife’s glare, as they left Mass and he returned Klosterman’s call and Klosterman asked him if he could go with Rhodes to interview a guy who had been at the Thunderbird Motel in Creve Coeur. They had found another prostitute who had been choked to death.

  Murph said, “Just a minute,” and put his hand over the phone. He didn’t want anyone to hear him seeking permission from his wife for anything, least of all Klosterman. Klosterman was a pretty talented mimic, and Murph did not want to hear himself imitated in front of a hall full of detectives: Huh-huh honey, ca-ca-can I go to work?

  Murph said to his wife, “I have to work. Will you be all right without me?”

  Mass was over and she had nothing planned for them the rest of the day. An agreement was reached and Murph told Klosterman to have Rhodes pick him up in front of the main gate at the zoo.

  They passed the St. Louis Arena, going west on Clayton Road, parallel to the interstate. Murph pulled the Explorer into the drive-through at Rico’s snack shack and asked for a steak-and-cheese sandwich, fries, and a Coke. The kids carped about what they wanted, and Murph’s wife scowled as Murph told them that they would eat at home and that he was picking up something because he had to go to work and eat in the car.

  Murph’s wife sighed “You’re going to be late.”

  “No, no,” Murph said. “I’m timing this just right.”

  They handed him the order through the window, and he pulled out onto Clayton Road, made the first right turn onto Hampton Avenue, and crossed over the interstate. As he made the next left and the Explorer descended the hill, he saw the Chevy Impala coming from the other direction.

  “Perfect.”

  “Okay,” his wife said. “Okay.” She could give him his silly little victory. Or backhand him.

  They stopped at the front gate of the zoo. Murph got out of the car with his bag of food and soda, and his wife switched over to the driver’s side. She rolled down the window, leaned out, and kissed him. Closer now, she said, “Be careful, okay?” She hoped the children hadn’t heard the concern in her voice. He had been shot on a case before, going to interview a witness who should’ve been harmless. The other detective had been killed.

  “I’ll call you.”

  •

  Rhodes said, “Can you crack your window?”

  “What?”

  “The smell, man.”

  Murph said, “You want some of these fries?”

  “No, I’ll just smell the grease.”

  “Good stuff.”

  “How is it you can eat that sort of food and not get fat?”

  “Genes, baby. I got the right genes.”

  Tim Murphy was a short, almost slight man who maintained the build of a bantamweight fighter. Which he had never been, but he was gifted with that air of menace and fearlessness that non-Irish cops tend to envy. People had thought that getting shot would take some of the bite out of him. It hadn’t.

  After he was shot, Murph’s brother came down from Chicago and visited him in the hospital. His brother was a dentist. He was younger and more successful financially, and he told Murph that he was going to survive and that maybe now it was time to take a partial disability retirement and get out of this line of work. Murph said, “And do
what? Go to dental school?” The brother said no, not that necessarily. But something safer and more profitable. Something with a better future. Murph told him to forget it.

  Tim Murphy was not a man given to self-examination. He and his brother had grown up in a working-class, pro-union environment. And though it was the younger brother who had gone on to become affluent, it could be argued that Murph was the one who had become a snob. His identity was strongly rooted in being a policeman. Perhaps even in being an Irish policeman. It was not so much that he believed he was doing something good. He did believe that, but he knew himself well enough to know that this was not his motivation. In law enforcement, he felt a pride and a belonging and a purpose he knew he could not feel anywhere else. If that sentiment trapped him in a life that brought him the risk of being shot, so be it. He knew this was something his brother would probably never understand. He was grateful that his wife had never asked him to explain it.

  Rhodes said, “What did Joe tell you?”

  “He said there was another strangulation. You went to the first one, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, a hooker, like this one. We don’t have any leads on the first. And then they found a second one this morning at the Thunderbird Motel on Manchester. The guy we’re going to see was checked in at the hotel last night. He left sometime. He used a false name and address.”

  “Oh?”

  “But he wrote down his real tag number on the register.”

  “Clever.”

  “Yeah, a rocket scientist. Joe called the DMV and found out his real name and address. So we’re going to see if he knew her. Find out what he was doing there.”

  “Does he know we’re coming?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  •

  Mickey said, “We’ll go the over on the Patriots. . . . Yeah, guy . . . Is Dallas giving points or getting points? . . . Huh? Romo? No, he seems to be working out. . . . Yeah, we’ll see how long it lasts. . . .”

  He was on the phone with his bookie. Wearing sweatpants and a ball cap at around noon, Sunday. There was an empty McDonald’s bag on the living-room table, Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long muted on the television, Bradshaw waving his arms about, Howie looking askance. Mickey’s wife and kid would not return from Kansas City for hours. Sunday and he was free.