Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

  Of course, there were women other than fortune hunters who might be interested in him. Wealthy widows who frequented the same yacht club.

  Nell stood up.

  “Will there be more questions later?”

  “I’m sure there will be,” Nell said, though she could find no reason for more questions.

  “Good,” Selig said, smiling as he ushered her back to the elevator. He watched over her as if the thing might explode before it began its descent.

  “Good,” she heard him say again, as she dropped.

  When Nell was gone, Selig went to his desk in the penthouse’s den that had been converted to his office. He opened a drawer and withdrew several framed photographs and laid them out on the desk.

  He hadn’t looked at them in months. He’d tried, in fact, to forget they existed. But he could never have thrown them away.

  For the next five minutes, in the hushed, lonely silence, he studied the photos.

  It was amazing how much Nell the detective resembled the younger Iris Selig.

  Tina left the car in short-term parking and went into the terminal with Martin. If it were possible, she would have accompanied him down the concourse and watched him board. She was becoming more and more uneasy about his safety and wanted him free and clear of the city as soon as possible. She needed reassurance.

  Martin had forty minutes before his flight left, so he bought a Newsweek to read on the plane, and he and Tina sat and watched people stream past, some of whom would be Martin’s fellow passengers. It was slight comfort for Tina to know that none of JK’s victims had been killed on a plane. Silly, she knew, but she wondered if Martin also had considered it. Serial killers were supposedly programmed to follow certain patterns, so maybe you were safe on a plane.

  “Once you’re on board, we can breath easier,” she said.

  He glanced over at her and smiled. “I suppose you’re right, but I still have my doubts about running away from what might only be my imagination.”

  Tina was a little irritated, especially since, as he spoke, Martin couldn’t resist eyeing a long-legged blonde with exceptionally large breasts flounce past. Machismo kicking in, now that fear had partially retreated. “That’s not how you were talking earlier.”

  “This is later,” Martin said. “And I’m boarding the plane anyway, so relax.”

  “I’ll relax when you’re up, up, and away.” She watched every male head along the concourse turn to observe the tall blonde. Pathetic, thought tiny Tina, then wondered if the tall blonde would be on Martin’s flight.

  “I much prefer you,” Martin said, guessing what she was thinking.

  Tina leaned toward him and pecked his cheek. “Bastard.”

  Grinning, he stood up and slung the strap of his carry-on over his shoulder. “They’ll be boarding pretty soon.”

  Tina also stood. “I’ll walk with you to security.”

  “You want to sit on my lap on the plane?”

  “If I didn’t have such a workload, maybe I would.”

  “You make me feel as if I don’t have life insurance.”

  “Bad joke, baby.”

  He shrugged with his unburdened shoulder. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” As they began walking toward the security check point, he said, “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be turning tail if I didn’t share your premonition of doom.”

  “You’re not turning tail.”

  “Showing the white feather.”

  “You’re showing good sense,” Tina insisted.

  As he joined the end of the security line, Martin kissed her goodbye on the lips. “That’s what all us cowards say.”

  “Live cowards,” Tina corrected.

  She stood and watched the line move along. Martin had to remove his wristwatch and go through the metal detector twice. Good, Tina thought, Security has the device fine-tuned. Maybe there was some sort of terror alert. That would be ironic, if she talked Martin into leaving town so he’d be safe, and he boarded a plane that was commandeered by terrorists. Martin’s black carry-on made its way along the conveyor belt and through the fluoroscope. No one opened it or had him remove his shoes.

  He glanced back at her, smiled, and waved as he blended in with the other passengers beyond Security and moved along the concourse. What if I’m seeing him for the last time?

  When he was out of sight, Tina felt unaccountably lonely as well as relieved. She was sure that, later, relief would win out. They were doing the right thing, whatever Martin’s inner conflict. Men were bullheaded and carefully nurtured their egos, and he was no exception.

  She returned to short-term parking and got into the Saab.

  As she was about to fit the key into the ignition, the light seemed to flicker, for less than a second, almost beyond her notice. Though she did notice, she thought nothing of it. She didn’t know the brief interference with her vision was the passing of an extremely fine, extremely strong wire before her face.

  At each end of the wire were affixed four-inch wooden handles fashioned from a sawed-off broomstick, so the Justice Killer would have a firm grip with each and wouldn’t suffer any cuts or scrapes. As he straightened up in the back seat of the Saab, he yanked hard on the wire then crossed and twisted it at the back of the front seat’s headrest. Tina’s head and neck were immediately pinned to the headrest. As the Justice Killer applied more strength, Tina’s hands rose and flailed briefly. She tried to cry out but managed only a high, choking screech, almost exactly like the alarmed caw of a crow, before the wire sliced into her larynx, then her carotid arteries, and blood spurted forward onto the dash and windshield.

  The Justice Killer left the wire embedded in Tina’s neck-he wore gloves and didn’t worry about fingerprints-then reached forward between the front seats and ran the tip of his forefinger in small circles through the blood covering Tina’s right nipple. He glanced around to be sure no one was nearby, then he scrawled a red capital J on the inside of the car’s left rear window. He opened the door, climbed out, and closed the door without slamming it.

  Strolling away from the car, he quickly peeled off the gloves, leaving them inside out, and slipped them into a pocket. It took less than a minute for him to walk along the row of cars to where his own was parked, get in, and drive away.

  He drove slowly, satisfied. More than just an erection this time.

  Half an hour passed before a family with vacation tickets for Florida noticed the pale, horrified looking woman seated bolt upright behind the steering wheel of her parked car and gaping wide-eyed at nothing.

  23

  Beam, Nell, and Looper watched as Tina Flitt’s body was removed from behind the steering wheel of the Saab. The medical examiner and crime scene unit had done their preliminary work, so Tina was no longer needed. One of the techs used tiny snips to sever the wire on both sides of her neck. They’d wait until the autopsy to remove the length of wire deeply imbedded in her throat. The ends of the wire, with their small wooden handles, were bagged as evidence. It had already been determined that there were no fingerprints on the handles.

  “Our guy wore gloves again,” Nell said. “There won’t be any usable prints anywhere on or in the car, either.”

  “If he’s our guy,” Looper said. “Jeez, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “This is the airport,” Nell said. “They shoot you if you light a cigarette at the airport.”

  “The J written on the rear side window looks exactly like the others left by JK,” Beam said.

  “They’ve been all over the papers and TV,” Nell pointed out. “Could be a copycat.”

  “Could be,” Beam agreed, but didn’t believe it. It wasn’t what his gut was telling him.

  Nell’s cell phone chirped, and she walked away about twenty feet. Beam and Looper watched as she had a brief conversation, then returned, stuffing the phone back in her blazer pocket. “Computer check showed no Tina Flitt on our jury foreperson list,” Nell said. “But a letter in her purse indicates she’s an attorney.�
�

  “Part of the system,” Looper said.

  Beam rubbed his chin. “Different part, though. Different weapon, too.”

  “Same red letter J, though.”

  “Address on her driver’s license has her on the Upper East Side,” Nell said.

  Beam made it a point not to look at Tina Flitt’s small, still form as it was loaded into the ambulance. Her head had been almost severed, and he’d seen enough of death lately.

  Irv Minskoff from the ME’s office walked over. Beam saw that since the last murder he’d been attempting to grow a mustache. It was coming in gray and bushy, and along with his gnarly features and thick-lensed glasses, made him look like a country-town general practitioner who mostly gave flu shots and birthed babies. Didn’t talk that way, though. “Poor bitch was damn near decapitated.”

  “What kind of wire was it?” Beam asked.

  “Hard to say. Very thin but with lots of tensile strength, like dental floss or fishing line leader.”

  “But it wasn’t either of those?”

  “No, it was wire. Maybe piano wire. She died quickly, probably didn’t make much noise.” Minskoff used a forefinger to smooth both sides of his mustache. “Nice car, but it’s not gonna be worth anything after this, what with all the blood and what came out when her sphincter relaxed. Smell just about knocks you out when you stick your head in there.” He turned to watch the silent ambulance pull away. “Probably a looker when she was alive. Slender body, good enough rack. Not much tit but terrific nipples. Killer noticed that, too. Looks like he ran whatever he wrote with-his finger, probably-over her right nipple to get his blood ink.” He shook his head. “I see a waste like that, it saddens me. Know anything about her?”

  “I thought you might tell me,” Beam said.

  “I make her out to be in her mid-forties. Fashion label clothes to go with the new car. Married.”

  “How do you know she was married?” Beam asked, almost dreading the answer from the callous little medical examiner.

  “Wedding ring,” Minskoff said with a smile. “Looks reasonably expensive. More to the point, she’s been dead less than an hour. So if she came here to catch a plane, it either left not long ago or it’s still here. You might wanna hurry.”

  “Maybe she just flew in and was about to drive away when she was killed.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s possible.”

  “She didn’t come here to catch a plane,” Beam said, “and she didn’t just arrive. No luggage in the car. No airline ticket. And she’s in short term parking.”

  Minskoff looked slightly embarrassed. “I guess that’s why I do my job and you do yours. Need anything else on prelim? Like cause of death?”

  Beam thought Minskoff was probably joking, but he simply shook his head no. About ten years ago he’d investigated to see if someone had been pushed out a high window, and an autopsy revealed a bullet in the mess the victim had become.

  “Safety belt wouldn’t have saved her,” Minskoff said, with a glance at the Saab behind the yellow tape. He gave Beam a little half salute, then walked away toward the city car he drove.

  Beam figured the last word must be important to Minskoff in crime scene humor, so he let him have it.

  Beam beckoned Nell and Looper over. He told Looper to go into the terminal and start a check on passenger lists to see if anyone named Flitt was booked out of the airport for that evening.

  Then he walked over to the car that was surrounded by crime scene tape. Three techs from the crime scene unit remained. “Check the car out all the way,” Beam said. “Photograph it, check for prints, black light it, vacuum it, then have it towed in so it can be gone over again. The bastard we’re looking for was in the backseat, probably waiting for the victim to get in. He must have left something. A bloody footprint, maybe a hair. We get a hair, we got a DNA sample.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” the tech said, sounding miffed. Beam didn’t care.

  “You want the whole purse bagged for evidence?” one of the other techs asked.

  “The purse and everything in it. And make sure you bag the set of keys on the floor by the accelerator.”

  Tina Flitt not only hadn’t had time to fasten her safety belt, she hadn’t even gotten the car key in the ignition before the killer had struck. He’d been ready for her. Eager for her.

  Beam glanced around, noticed a small object affixed to a nearby post, and smiled.

  Security camera.

  24

  The next morning, da Vinci’s office: Hot. Stuffy. It smelled as if someone had recently smoked a cigar in there.

  The scene on the TV looked like one of those slow dissolves that French directors love to use.

  “He stood out of sight and squirted wasp killer on the security camera,” Beam said. “Stuff sprays a stream about twenty feet so you can get outta the way and not get stung when the wasps get pissed off.”

  “Hell of a way to take out a camera,” da Vinci said.

  “Attracts less attention than shinning up a pole with a can of spray paint. It messed up the lens, but not all the way, so we got some images on tape.”

  “Anything that’ll help?”

  “It’s doubtful,” Beam said. “Security guy inside the terminal didn’t notice right away that the picture was blurred on his monitor, and when he did, he assumed it was equipment failure.”

  “Naturally,” da Vinci said. “Much easier to deal with than vandals or serial killers.”

  Both men were silent, staring at the screen.

  As Beam had said, the insecticide didn’t do a perfect job. Blurred human figures came and went on the black and white tape, but not many. The light was dim in the parking garage, and the airport hadn’t been busy at that time, so traffic was at a minimum. The upper right part of the screen was where things were less blurred.

  “What was that?” da Vinci asked, pointing as a dark, uniformed figure briefly appeared on the screen.

  “Airport security,” Beam said. “They patrol the area. Unfortunately, they weren’t at the right place at the right time. Fact is, there aren’t enough of them.” Beam fast forwarded the tape, then slowed it to normal speed. “This is the approximate time of the murder.”

  Da Vinci sat forward. “Hell, you can’t even see the car.”

  “There!” Beam said. He stopped the tape, backed it up, slow motioned forward, stopped it again. “That’s it.” Beam pointed to a light-colored sedan halfway down a row of parked cars. A figure behind the steering wheel was definitely visible, and so was a dark form in the back seat. The picture blurred again into meaningless patterns like paint splashed on a window.

  “That was him?” da Vinci asked. He sounded awed, but also disappointed.

  “We think so. He was visible, so he musta been raising up from where he was crouched behind the driver’s seat. And the victim was in the car. This had to be seconds before he looped the wire around her neck. As you can see, the time marked on the tape is eight sixteen. Her ticket’s got her in the lot at seven forty.”

  “Thirty-six minutes in the airport,” da Vinci said. “She musta been dropping off someone. Or picking them up.”

  “What we managed to piece together, from witnesses and airline records, is she dropped off her husband for a flight to Chicago. Flitt used her maiden name. He’s Martin Portelle.”

  “And she musta gone inside the terminal with him,” da Vinci said, “since she was in the short-term garage.” Da Vinci looked thoughtful. “Wait a minute!”

  He moved aside the scale model sculpture of the motorcycle he’d ridden as a young cop, then rooted through some papers on his desk. Beam saw on the wall behind the desk a framed photo of an even more youthful da Vinci posed seated in full uniform on an identical cycle.

  “Ah!” Da Vinci had found a computer printout. “These are the jury forepersons from ten years of the trials we think might get the killer’s blood up.” He ran down the page with his forefinger, then slapped the desk with the flat of his hand.
“I thought it sounded familiar. Here it is-Martin Portelle was the foreman of the jury that let Dan Maddox, the subway killer, walk six years ago.” Da Vinci flipped the paper in reverse across the desk so Beam could read it. “We were concentrating on the victim, not her husband.”

  “It looks like our sicko’s changed tactics and is killing family members of forepersons,” Beam said. He not only didn’t like this development, it didn’t make any kind of sense to him, not even twisted sense.

  “Not exactly,” da Vinci said. “Read on and you’ll find that Tina Flitt was one of the jurors in the Maddox trial. That’s where she and her future hubby met.”

  “So she was an ordinary juror?”

  “Uh-huh. Which means our killer’s broken the mold.”

  “Only cracked it,” Beam said. “He’s still killing within the justice system. But he’s changed his pattern. It’s happened before. Some serial killers are damned smart, and they read the literature. They know their vulnerabilities, and what the police are looking for, so they deliberately vary their behavior.”

  “They can’t vary everything,” da Vinci said. “Not according to our police profiler and psychiatrists.”

  “They’re right, generally,” Beam said, “but sometimes picking up the thread isn’t so easy if the killer’s a smart one. And this one is.”

  “I don’t wanna make you blush,” da Vinci said, “but you’re smart, too. That’s why I wanted you for the job.”

  “There’s something else about the Flitt murder I don’t like,” Beam said, not blushing. “Another reason JK might have varied his method. It seems to me he’s beginning to enjoy what he’s doing.”

  “Like he never did.”

  “I mean, whatever his original motive is or was, killing’s providing sexual pleasure for him. He took the time to diddle with Flitt’s nipple while dipping for blood to write with.”