by John Lutz
No one sat on the steps of this stoop. And no one was in the small vestibule that reeked of stale urine. There were more crushed crack vials on the stained tile floor.
A faded card slipped into the slot above one of the mailboxes confirmed that Lenny was in 2D. There was an intercom that probably didn’t work. Didn’t matter to Beam or Nell, anyway, as they quickly climbed the wooden stairs to the second floor, located apartment 2D, and stood on either side of the door.
Beam rapped on the age-checkered door with his knuckles.
He and Nell were both surprised when a voice promptly said, “Who is it?”
Beam told himself to be careful. “Police. We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Rodman.”
“Sure. Be right there.” Rodman’s voice exuded cheer and cooperation.
Beam knew what that meant. He motioned for Nell to go back downstairs and check around back. Rodman might at that moment be descending the fire escape, if there was one.
Nell ran down the stairs and outside, then headed for one of the narrow passageways that separated the buildings. It seemed there were more people on the sidewalks now or sitting outside their buildings, watching expectantly, as if there might be some entertainment in the offing.
Something’s up, she thought, rounding the corner of the building.
Something-
The man running full tilt down the passageway slammed into her, but it was a glancing blow and he barely slowed down. She caught the reek of cheap cologne, a whiff of foul breath, and a lot of pain as the impact spun her and her shoulder bounced hard off a brick wall.
Reeling like a drunk, she almost fell, then managed to fix her gaze on a running man in tight, faded jeans and a black T-shirt. He was picking up speed, swinging his long arms wide. Not a trained runner, but he could outdistance her, Nell was sure.
Still disoriented, she tried to yell halt. Tried to yell police. But she couldn’t find her breath as she staggered after the man.
Fumbling, she drew her weapon from its belt holster.
Warning shot?
What the hell was procedure?
She couldn’t get her mind to work. Couldn’t get her legs to work.
Tires screamed on concrete. At the corner she saw a small van skid past at an angle and bang over a mailbox. In the shadow beneath the van was a darker shadow shaped like a person tumbling, tumbling, arms and legs flailing in limited, crushing space. Nell caught a glimpse of light flesh for a moment before it was claimed again by the shadows beneath the van.
Barefoot!
He’s barefoot. How he must have wanted to get away!
The van came to a rocking stop. Nothing in the shadow beneath it moved. People started to drift closer, then crowded in on the vehicle.
Nell began walking fast toward the corner. She realized she was carrying her gun at her side and slid it back into its holster, then made sure her blazer was buttoned to cover it.
“He broke out through a window and down the fire escape,” a calm voice said beside her. Beam.
The nearness of him calmed her somewhat, but her heart was still pounding in her ears. “He decided to run. That van got him.”
“I know, I know…”
They reached the corner and flashed their shields, telling people to stand back. Beam kneeled down to look under the van, then quickly stood up.
“There’s a woman under there.”
Nell saw that there were smears of blood on the pavement between the skid marks left by the tires and looked away. The van’s driver must have been distracted by Rodman and struck the woman.
Knocked her out of her shoes.
Nell’s stomach kicked and she swallowed brass.
A radio car arrived and blocked the street. Sirens whooped, and another car came in from the opposite direction, then braked and parked angled sideways. The uniforms piled out and hurried toward the van, moving swiftly, looking this way and that, sizing up the situation.
Beam identified himself and Nell to the nearest two uniforms and explained what must have happened. They all gazed up and down the street, as if Rodman might still be somewhere in sight.
The van driver was out of the vehicle now, leaning on a fender and yammering to one of the uniforms. He was a short, dark-complected man wearing gray work pants and a darker gray shirt. He looked as if he might vomit any second. He’d killed someone; one day it had been work as usual delivering packages, necessary and monotonous, the world in its revolutions, then he’d killed someone and everything was changed.
“Rodman didn’t have a record, so why’d he run?” Beam asked.
Nell looked at him, rubbing her shoulder. “Because he’s who we’re looking for?”
Beam gave her a level, unreadable look. “You really think this guy’s the killer?”
She shook her head no. “Not unless our guy establishes a romance with his victims before killing them.”
Beam studied her as if wondering if she’d bumped her head as well as her shoulder on the bricks, then turned away, maybe giving her more time to recover. He spoke briefly to one of the uniforms, making sure the scene was secured, then returned to Nell. “Let’s go back up to his apartment, see why he might have bolted.”
“Drugs would be my bet,” Nell said.
“Always the favorite,” Beam said, walking beside her. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Still attached.”
“Wanna have it looked at?”
“Later, if it needs it.”
In the corner of her vision, she might have seen Beam smile.
No one stopped them or spoke to them as they made their way to Lenny Rodman’s building and up the stairs to his second floor apartment.
Beam must have realized along with Nell that Rodman had rabbitted, because the door was hanging open. Nell saw that the wooden frame was splintered around the latch from Beam kicking his way in.
They entered the apartment carefully, though they figured if anyone had been in there besides Rodman, he or she surely would have taken the opportunity to leave.
Nell said, “He must have had reason to want out of here fast.”
She looked around. The place was a mess. It was an efficiency, and from where they stood just inside the door they could see all of it except into the closets and bathroom. There were heaps of clothes on the painted hardwood floor, and a sofa bed was open and unmade. Furniture had obviously been shifted around, and along one wall were stacks of large cardboard boxes.
Beam and Nell went to the apartment’s two closets and made sure they concealed nothing human or dangerous. The first closet contained half a dozen dress shirts, a gray suit, and two blazers. There was a pair of black shoes on the floor, and a stack of yellowed pornographic magazines on the wooden shelf. The second closet contained nothing other than wire hangers on the rod and in a tangle on the floor, and two roaches that scurried beneath the baseboard to escape the sudden light. Nobody in the bathroom. The torn plastic shower curtain dangled from its rod on two hooks. The window near the tub was wide open. Rodman’s access to the fire escape.
Beam opened the medicine cabinet. Arranged on sagging shelves were a disposable razor and aerosol can of shaving cream, toothpaste, a toothbrush, comb, deodorant, lemon-scented cologne. Nell remembered the sickening sweet scent of cologne when Rodman had shouldered her aside in his desperate flight.
“You think he lived here,” she asked, “or used the place as a kind of combination office and hideout?”
“Maybe all of the above,” Beam said. “Let’s look into those cardboard boxes.”
“If they contain drugs,” Nell said, “we got us the mother lode.”
Kane removed a small bone-handled folding knife from his pocket and began slicing the tape holding the boxes’ flaps down. But the tape was so flimsy there was no need for the knife, and he and Nell began opening the boxes eagerly with only their hands, examining contents then pushing down the flaps and shoving the boxes aside.
They learned soon enough that the boxes contained s
ea shells.
“Conch shells,” Beam said.
“They look like the kind of sea shell you might be able to blow like a horn,” Nell said. “Or put to your ear and hear the ocean.”
“They are,” Beam said. “Down in Key West and other places they fry and eat what lives inside. Conch fritters.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Nell said. “I haven’t spent my whole life in New York.”
“There are plenty of these shells down there, but not a lot as perfect as these are. Notice they’re all unbroken?”
“I did,” Nell said. “What on earth was Rodman doing with sea shells?”
“He stole ’em,” a voice said.
Beam and Nell turned to see a skinny African American girl about sixteen standing in the doorway. She was wearing baggy red shorts, rubber sandals, and a sleeveless white T-shirt lettered JUST VOTE. She would have been pretty if it weren’t for severely crooked yellowed teeth.
“He tol’ me he stole them shells,” she said. “What you gonna do to him?”
“Try to catch him and find out why he stole them,” Beam said.
“Oh, I know why. Lenny’s kinda man like to brag on hisself. Like to play the lead role in his own movie. Need the audience. Need a leading lady. We close. He tol’ me lotsa things. You know what I mean?”
Beam and Nell glanced at each other. They could imagine.
“We know,” Beam said. “We don’t want to hurt Lenny, but we do need to find him. You understand that?”
“Sure. I warned him more’n once. He jus’ laugh the way he do.”
“Where would he steal sea shells from?” Nell asked.
“Place in New Jersey buys shells and ships ’em up here from Florida, uses ’em to crush and pave things like driveways an’ such for rich folks here an’ down south. But the good shells that ain’t broke, they set aside and sell ’em to souvenir shops and the like.”
“Lenny told you this?”
“Sure. He trust me. Got his reasons.”
“But now you’re telling us about him,” Nell said.
“Don’ make me no difference now. He ain’t comin’ back, not ever. Ain’t nobody standin’ here don’t know that.”
“So Lenny just stole the unbroken shells,” Beam said. “But why?”
“Telephones. He tol’ me he’s gon’ make phones outta them shells-designer phones, he called ’em-an’ sell ’em all over the place. Make hisself some cash.” The girl looked from Beam to Nell. “You know how people likes to hold them shells to their ears an’ all.”
“Mind telling us your name?” Beam asked.
The girl smiled with her horrible teeth. “Candy Ann.”
“Last name?”
“Kane, thas’ with a K. I lives right downstairs in 1D, me an’ my kids. I knowed the kinda things goin’ on up here even before Lenny tol’ me. Man don’t know how to keep a secret no how. Got hisself a tongue too big for his mouth.”
“How old are you, Candy Ann?” Beam asked.
“Eighteen next month. Lenny was gonna give me one of them shell phones for my birthday. Promised me. I didn’t pay him no mind.”
“Got any idea where Lenny might have run to?” Nell asked.
“Not nothin’ like an idea. Lenny the kinda man know how to hide.”
Beam and Nell didn’t doubt it.
“I’m going to have an officer come up here and seal this apartment,” Beam said to Candy Ann. “It’s going to be examined closer by the police. You’ll stay out of it, won’t you?”
“Sure. You got no worry over me. You wanna talk to me some more, I be right downstairs from here. I stay clean. Outta trouble with no law.”
“Good.” Beam smiled at her. Nell sensed that he genuinely liked the hapless young woman.
“You think it woulda worked?” Candy Ann asked as they were leaving and closing the damaged door.
“What’s that?” Beam asked.
“Them designer shell phones. You think people really woulda bought ’em?”
“No,” Beam said.
Candy Ann smiled. “Tha’s what I been thinkin’.”
13
Nell sat hunched over her notebook computer at her kitchen table, scouring various data bases from around the country. Wind-driven rain peppered the window. At her right elbow was half a glass of diet root beer with ice in it. She’d gulped down the other half. Her upper lip, which she now and then unconsciously licked, was rimmed with foam from the root beer.
The tiny apartment was still warm from the heat of the day, and all the more humid from the rain. The window air conditioner in the living room had stopped working. She had a call in to a guy whose name a Manhattan South detective had given her, a repairman and sometimes actor who’d done work for some other cops and given them a break. The problem was, the guy-Terry Adams-was seemingly impossible to contact. No doubt he was enjoying his season of being much in demand, the man with a corner on cold air. The thought kind of pissed off Nell. After half a dozen calls, she’d left a curt message telling him she was about to perish and would he please call back, and soon.
On the floor next to her was a folded New York Post. The headline read JUSTICE KILLER JOLTS CITY. The Times and Daily News had similar headlines. Nell thought the killer would probably approve of the title the media had bestowed on him. It was probably exactly what he was seeking with his letter J calling cards.
She huddled closer to her glowing laptop. Though it was slightly cooler in the kitchen than the rest of the apartment, this was still painstaking work. She’d exhausted NYPD data bases, the federal National Crime Information Center bank, and was reduced to hooking into various obscure sites with no, or unofficial, affiliations with investigative agencies. These websites were mostly the work of skilled amateurs, and not all of them were reliable. But in conjunction with established data banks, they might prove useful. One didn’t need to be a computer genius to do this, but one did need to be obsessive, relentless, and tireless. Right now, Nell was having difficulty with tireless.
It was almost midnight, and the summer storm blew more rain against the window and rattled the glass. Beneath the bottom of the old wooden frame, Nell saw moisture appear, build to form a small drop, then track down an ancient stain toward the baseboard. It made it about halfway before spending itself and disappearing. Another drop formed, wavered, then began its unsteady downward course. Nell watched it, hypnotized, her fingers stilled on the keyboard. Would it make it farther than the last drop?
Would it…
What the hell?
She was awake with a start, staring at the computer’s small screen.
She realized she’d fallen asleep and her hand had slid from the keyboard into her lap.
Shoulda gone to bed a long time ago.
Nell tightened her hands into fists, threw her shoulders back, and stretched her aching spine. Her right shoulder was still sore from bumping the brick wall when Lenny Rodman brushed her aside in his flight to freedom. Though the shoulder was badly bruised and taking on a nasty purple and green coloration, she was sure it wasn’t seriously injured. Nell had experienced debilitating damage and knew the difference.
The apartment was still a sauna. Perspiration was stinging the corners of her eyes. She rubbed them and looked more closely at the computer screen. The website that had been slowly loading when she fell asleep was now up all the way. Dark Nor’easters. vis was the name of the site, and it seemed to be made up of notable unsolved crimes committed in northeastern states.
Awake again, even feeling somewhat refreshed, Nell went through her search routine, specifying deliberate clues, single victims (in number, not marital status), shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings, strangulations, indoors, outdoors, men, women, days, nights, in vehicles, urban, suburban, exurban settings.
She was astounded when the screen flickered and came up with more than a dozen shootings, nights, indoors, deliberate clues left by killer.
She specified New York City.
No problem.
/> It didn’t take her long to scan back year by year and find what she wanted. Four years ago a woman named Rachel Cohen had been discovered shot to death in her Village apartment. A red letter J had been drawn with red marking pen on her forehead.
Only two years ago a wealthy woman on the Upper East Side, Iris Selig, was discovered dead in the elevator to her penthouse suite, also shot to death. A red J was scrawled with her lipstick on the elevator mirror.
A further search of the victims list wasn’t productive. It was then Nell realized that when she’d fallen asleep she’d accidentally clicked on the “Hate Crimes” section of the website.
It was assumed then, as it had been now, that the two victims were killed because they were Jewish. Nell even managed to call up some old Village Voice and Times articles decrying the rise in hate crimes and anti-Semitism in the city, after the Iris Selig murder.
Nell didn’t think this changed anything. New York simply had a large Jewish population. In light of the later victims, there was still no consistent hate crime pattern. The killer seemed to be eclectic in his choices of victims.
Still, Selig and Cohen were Jewish names.
She bookmarked the website then returned to her more traditional data bases.
Nell was wide awake now.
The more pertinent question was…
She soon discovered that Selig and Cohen had served as forepersons on juries in New York criminal cases.
Hot damn!
Nell could hear her breath hissing as she worked her computer, wishing she had faster internet service.
But within half an hour she had the information she sought: both jury trials had been for charges of first degree homicide-and both defendants had gone free.
That did it-the letter Js in the Selig and Cohen murders really did stand for Justice-unless somebody came up with a more likely possibility.
Two additional victims. Jury forepersons. Trials gone sour. Consistency. Confirmation.
Nell braced herself with both palms on the table and stood up. Her body was stiff from sitting for hours, but she was so nervous she started to pace. Her blood might be half adrenaline. She was eager for action, any kind of action. She felt great. She’d never been more than merely competent with a computer, and now look what she’d done. You could never tell about yourself. This was something. She was a geek!