Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

  “Female student?” Beam asked.

  “Yeah. The victims are three females and two males. Females are the dead wife and dead student. And of the three victims in the diner shooting, one was a woman.”

  “So by way of defendants who got lucky and walked,” Nell said, “we got a jealous husband killed his wife, a gangbanger trying to impress his peers, and a sex maniac who liked college girls. Not much in common among defendants.”

  “Except that they went free,” Beam said.

  “Not for the same reasons. The gangbanger had a phony alibi that couldn’t be disproved, the sex maniac hadn’t been sufficiently informed of his rights, the wife killer simply got off even though the evidence against him was overwhelming.”

  “So they all should have been convicted,” Beam said.

  Nell took another swig of bottled water. “Read the court transcripts and you’d have to say that.”

  Beam unlaced his fingers and sat forward, causing his swivel chair to squeak. “What we’re gonna do,” he said, “is pore over these murder files again-I haven’t had a chance to read them yet. Then we’ll revisit the crime scenes, talk again to witnesses, go over ground already covered, see if anybody’s memory can be jogged.” He looked at Looper. “You say it was the same gun used in all three murders, so what do we know about it?”

  “Thirty-two caliber. That’s about all they can tell about it so far, with just the slugs to work from. No ejected cartridges were found.”

  “So he cleans up after himself. What about the possibility of him being a professional?”

  “Maybe,” Nell said, “except for his choice of victims and that red letter J he always leaves at the scene. That’s not very professional.”

  “J for justice?” Beam asked.

  “That’s what we both figure. Or maybe Judgment.”

  “Most logical thing,” Looper said. “We figure it’s Justice.”

  “Our guy hates the justice system,” Nell said, “but loves justice too much.”

  “Yet he doesn’t hit the obviously guilty defendants who got off,” Looper said, playing with his shirt pocket again in search of phantom cigarettes.

  “That would be the prosecutor’s job,” Beam said. “Retry them if possible. Nail them on a different charge. Don’t let them walk.”

  “But they do walk. The cops, the prosecutors have moved on and are too busy worrying about the present and future to be able to reconstruct and repair the past. Crimes keep getting committed. Other assholes are moving through the system.”

  “It’s the system that he hates,” Nell reiterated.

  “So?” Beam stared at her, smiling, waiting.

  She began to squirm, then suddenly sat still and gave him a level, appraising look, appreciative of the fact that he’d gotten there ahead of her. “He’s trying to change the system.”

  Nobody spoke for a few moments.

  “Could be,” Looper said finally. “Could very well be.”

  “We can’t assume it yet,” Beam said, “but-”

  He was interrupted by the phone chirping on his desk.

  When he lifted the receiver and identified himself, he was surprised to hear da Vinci’s voice:

  “Corey and Looper there yet?”

  “Yeah. We were just discussing things.”

  “You’ve got another one to discuss, Beam. Upper West Side, not far from your place. The letter J is written in lipstick on a mirror this time.”

  “Shot to death?”

  “That’s the preliminary.

  “Got an address?”

  Da Vinci gave it to him, in an area of apartment buildings and townhouses about five blocks away. “Uniforms have got the scene frozen. CSI unit is on the way.”

  “So are we,” Beam said.

  9

  “The victim, Beverly Baker, worked as sales manager at Light and Shade Lamp Emporium on the West Side, not far from her apartment on West Eighty-ninth Street. Hubby Floyd returned from a golf outing with his buddies about five thirty-forty-five minutes ago-and found her dead body.”

  So said the uniform guarding the Bakers’ apartment door, a young guy named Mansolaro. He had an improbably long chin, would always need a shave, and looked vaguely familiar to Beam. Looper seemed to know him.

  “That hubby in the living room?” Beam asked, noticing beyond Mansolaro, in the apartment, a smallish, plump man in plaid slacks and a white golf shirt, seated slumped forward on a maroon sofa.

  Mansolaro nodded. “One Floyd Baker.”

  As if there were a two Floyd Baker, Beam thought. He’d been away from cop talk long enough that some of it struck his ear wrong.

  “Floyd was gone all day,” Mansolaro continued, “out on the links with his fellow hackers.”

  “With his alibi,” Looper said.

  “And not a bad one,” Mansolaro said. “He came back, found his wife’s body, and called 911. Me and my partner Al caught the complaint and got here almost immediately after the call.”

  “You go right in?” Beam asked.

  “Floyd Baker met us at the door, looked like he’d been crying, and led us to the body. Swore he never touched anything, just like he learned on Law and Order. I saw the big letter J on the mirror near where the victim must have been sitting, so me and Al froze the scene immediately and called it in as an obvious homicide.”

  “Where’s Al?”

  “Downstairs manning the lobby. He told the doorman to stick around, we were gonna talk to him.”

  “Excellent,” Beam said, and Mansolaro sort of puffed up. It impressed Nell, what some of her fellow cops obviously thought of Beam. Maybe this odd-ends investigative team would work out. Maybe something positive would come of it beyond capturing or killing whoever was murdering these people.

  “Crime scene unit’s inside, along with an assistant ME,” Mansolaro said. He glanced at his watch, anticipating Beam’s next question. “They been here about twenty minutes.”

  “Get the neighbors’ statements,” Beam said to Nell and Looper. “Somebody probably heard the shot, even if they thought the noise was something else. We might be able to determine time of death.”

  He patted Mansolaro gently on the shoulder in passing, a gesture of approval, as he moved into the apartment.

  Another uniform was standing near a fake fireplace-the kind that had a red light in it that was supposed to look like glowing embers-with his arms crossed. Beam nodded to him, and nodded to the distraught man on the sofa. The man on the sofa didn’t nod back, merely gave Beam a distracted, agonized glance.

  Beam went into the bedroom, where most of the action was taking place. Crime Scene personnel wearing plastic gloves were standing, bending, reaching, down on hands and knees, searching. They were examining, luminoling, placing minute objects in evidence bags as if they’d found rare and extravagantly expensive gems. And what they found could be extravagantly expensive. It could be life and death.

  Beam noticed a high-heeled shoe, a woman’s foot and ankle, and beyond it the open door to a tiled bathroom. When he moved forward a few careful steps, he saw that the victim’s body was in an alcove between bedroom and bathroom.

  There was a lot of blood on the carpeted floor. Beverly Baker was sprawled awkwardly on her back, and had apparently fallen from a small upholstered chair that had tipped over. The chair was covered with a cheery floral design that was a mismatch with the ugliness of the event, except for the hole in the material that was stretched across the curved back support.

  A little man in a black suit was bending over the dead woman with an intensity that suggested he was making love to her. As soon as Beam saw his balding head, with the thatch of gray hair that stood almost straight up in front, he knew who he was. Assistant ME Irv Minskoff, one of the best at his job.

  Minskoff sensed his presence and glanced up. His face had a fiercely gnarled look to it, softened somewhat by thick lensed glasses. “Ah, Beam. I heard you were on this one.”

  “Good to see you, Irv. What’ve we
got so far?”

  “Dead since morning, done sometime between seven and ten o’clock. Shot once. Bullet went in the right side of her back, probably angled in and caught her heart. I’ll know a lot more when I get in there.”

  “Looks like a thirty-two caliber.”

  “Be my guess, too. Can’t say for sure, since the slug they dug out of the wall’s so misshapen. But before it went through the victim, the bullet went through the back of the chair, and the hole in the underlying wood looks like it was made by a thirty-two.”

  “Slug must have been misshapen before it hit her,” Beam said, looking at the vast and ugly exit wound. He could imagine the kinetic force of the distorted bullet slamming through the woman’s slender body. His gaze took in her exposed shapely legs, slender waist, strong features. She must have been vital and attractive before the bullet. He noticed her mouth was smeared red in an obscenely crooked grin despite her horrified eyes. The smear wasn’t quite blood red. It was the same color as the letter J scrawled on the mirror of a small vanity cluttered with cosmetics.

  “Nice legs,” Minskoff said.

  “Gonna mention that in the post-mortem?”

  Minskoff gave him a gnarly look.

  “Shot while putting on her lipstick?” Beam asked.

  “Or surprised by whoever she must have seen in the mirror. Caused her hand to jerk, then she was shot.”

  And almost immediately, Beam thought. It appeared that Beverly Baker hadn’t had time to stand up.

  Minskoff must have known what he was thinking. “Entry wound is about where it would have been if she’d been sitting all the way down on her little tush in her little chair, so maybe she did die while applying her lipstick. Could be she was so shocked by seeing her assailant in the mirror, her body gave a little start, then she was paralyzed.”

  “As if maybe she saw somebody she trusted standing there with a gun pointed at her,” Beam said. “Somebody like hubby.”

  “Hubby’s always enticing in these kinds of cases,” Minskoff agreed. “But then there’s that letter lipsticked on the mirror. My guess is the lipstick tube won’t reveal the fingerprints of the victim-or the killer, though I’m sure the killer wrote with it. This woman died instantly, but even if she had time to leave or begin a dying message, if it meant anything incriminating, the killer would have simply made it illegible or removed it from the mirror.”

  “So Detective Minskoff is sure it was the killer who wrote on the mirror.”

  Minskoff grinned, embarrassed. “Just trying to help, not play detective. But, yes, I am sure.”

  “Always the possibility of a copycat killer.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for hairballs,” Minskoff said.

  Beam figured it was time to stop speculating and talk to Floyd Baker.

  10

  While Nell and Looper made the rounds of neighbors and doorman, Beam sat on the living room sofa with Floyd.

  At both ends of the sofa were low tables supporting ornate brass lamps with long, cream-colored fringed shades. While the rest of the furniture was unremarkable, the lamps looked like collectors’ pieces.

  “I know it’s an awkward time to talk,” Beam said to the slumping new widower who looked about to sob, “but the sooner we know some things, the better.”

  “I want the bastard who shot her caught,” Floyd said. “I want you to give him to me.”

  “If only the law allowed.”

  Floyd gave Beam a slightly surprised look.

  “Any idea who the bastard might be?” Beam asked.

  “None whatsoever. We had the perfect marriage. I know that sounds corny, but you can ask anybody who knows-knew-either one of us. Everybody liked Bev. She was outgoing.”

  “I don’t mean to be indelicate,” Beam said, “but keep in mind these questions are standard ones that have to be asked. And answered. Is it possible your wife was seeing someone else?”

  Floyd raised his head and looked over at Beam with a combination of grief and rage. “There was none of that shit in our marriage. We were happy together.”

  “Did you spend a lot of time together?”

  “Not as much as we would’ve liked, and that was my fault. Bev was a kind of golf widow. I mean, I retired and got interested in the game. Golf’s like a drug to some people. I could cut my wrists for it now, but I spent too much time on golf courses and not enough with my wife.”

  “And you were golfing today?”

  “Yesterday and today. Spent the night in Connecticut, in a motel near the Rolling Acres course. It’s a terrific course, got these big lakes and tricky greens. You gotta watch for the water and sand on damn near every hole. Three of my golfing buddies were with me.”

  “All the time?”

  “I don’t need a damned alibi!”

  “I’m sorry, but you do.”

  “Then I have one-them. We were on the course together, had our meals together.”

  “Separate motel rooms?”

  “No. There were only three rooms available. I doubled up with Alan Jones. Glad I did now.”

  “This Jones would know if you slipped out at night?”

  “And what? Drove or took a train into the city, killed my wife, then returned to bed at the Drowsy Ace motel?”

  “Doesn’t sound likely,” Beam admitted with a smile.

  “Way I snore, anyway, ask Alan Jones and he’ll tell you I was there all night. Poor bastard probably didn’t get a straight hour’s sleep. Upset his game, too.”

  “At this point you’re not really a suspect,” Beam assured Floyd.

  “Bullshit. Husband’s always a suspect. Should be.”

  “Would be,” Beam said honestly. “But I’m sure your alibi will check out. And lucky for you, the times don’t work out. Of course, you could always have hired someone to kill your wife.” No smile with the words.

  Floyd practically levitated with indignation, then he looked almost amused, so improbable was the notion. “Not my style, or my desire.”

  Beam believed him.

  “I wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with a hit man.”

  “Or hit woman. I asked about whether your wife might be having an extramarital affair. What about you, Mr. Baker?”

  Floyd glared at him with a kind of hopeless rage. Beam, so nice for a while, had turned on him. “You’re a cop I could learn to dislike.”

  “That’d be okay, if it would help me find your wife’s killer.”

  Floyd’s features danced with his inner conflict.

  Bull’s eye, Beam thought. “Time for the curtain to drop and all secrets to be revealed,” he told Floyd.

  “Poetic.”

  “Because it rings true. This is a homicide investigation, Mr. Baker. It’s all going to be known in the end. That’s my solemn pledge to you.”

  “Pledge?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Floyd let out a long breath. “A couple of times when we were on golf outings, there were some women. Two of them. We paid for it.”

  “Happen this time in Connecticut?”

  “No! Hasn’t happened for over a year. And none if meant anything, not to us, or to the women. Hell they were just…”

  “Prostitutes.”

  “I guess you’d have to say that. We showed our gratitude with gifts or cash.”

  Beam, during his years in the NYPD, had become something of a human polygraph. He felt sure Floyd was telling the truth. He also was sure the man had loved and trusted his wife and was genuinely grief stricken. Add what would also doubtless turn out to be a tight alibi, and Floyd was pretty much out of the picture as a suspect.

  “It appears your wife was dressing up when she was killed, putting on her lipstick, in fact.”

  “She had a responsible job. She couldn’t go to work like some of these women do these days, no makeup, stringy hair. She was in sales, for Chrissakes!”

  “Just one more question, Mr. Baker. Did your wife ever serve on a jury in New York?”

  Floyd leaned far back
as if to stare at the ceiling, but his eyes were closed.

  “She sure did.”

  “The Adele Janson case,” Beam told Nell and Looper, when they were seated in his Lincoln parked at the curb in front of a fire hydrant. He had his NYPD placard on the dash so no one would bother the car.

  “About four years ago?” Nell said. “The woman who poisoned her husband with antifreeze?”

  “Right,” Beam said. “She got off because her expert witness convinced the jury there was a natural disease that showed the same symptoms as ethylene glycol poisoning.”

  “I remember now. The defendant had motive and opportunity, not to mention what was left in a gallon jug of antifreeze, but her lawyer maintained hubby just sickened and died.”

  “And two years later she was convicted of poisoning her daughter,” Looper said. “After the trial, she confessed to both murders.”

  Beam lowered the power window on his side to cool down the big black car; the gleaming dark finish was starting to soak up more sun than it reflected. “Beverly Baker was foreperson on the first jury, the one that turned Janson loose after she’d done her husband.”

  “Which made the late Beverly a prime target for our guy,” Nell said. “This one was his work without a doubt.”

  “So what have we got besides mutual certainty?” Beam said. “I mean, beyond the red letter J?”

  Nell and Looper tried. They’d gotten nothing of significance from the Bakers’ neighbors, or from the doorman. It wasn’t the kind of building where security was tight, so it was no shock that a killer might have come and gone without being noticed. No one heard anything remotely like a gunshot, so a silencer was probably used to shoot Beverly Baker. No one had a word other than kind to say about the deceased: She was outgoing and friendly and a generous tipper. She gave neighbors discounts on lamps. The way she obviously enjoyed life, it was a shame-it was a crime-she was dead. It seemed the only notable thing about her was that she’d been foreperson on the Janson murder trial jury, though it had been long enough ago that none of the neighbors had mentioned it.

  “What did they say about her husband?” Beam asked.