“Kerri?” she said. “I just got a weird call. Some super’s wife named Nina Cortez on East Fourth called the hospital insisting on talking to me or David. Said there’s something in one of her tenants’ apartments we gotta see. Something that scared her.”
“Why didn’t she call the police?” Kerri asked.
“Said she’s afraid of cops. I don’t know why.”
“Address?”
“451 East Fourth, but she just wants… She’s seen us in the news, knows our faces.”
“I’ll meet you there. Say I’m a friend. I’m sending a patrol car for you.”
“On our way.”
Oh, tension time again.
“What?” David said when Jill hung up. “I’m still on call till five. Then you’re on call. Let the cops do this, tell Nina Cortez they don’t care about anything else. Maybe she’s housing a bordello or something.”
Jill was headed for the lockers and he followed her. “It gives us forty minutes,” she protested. “There’s time and she’s insisting.”
“It’s late afternoon, almost when Beth was attacked-”
“It’s not Central Park, Kerri will be there, and the squad car’s on its way.” Jill got her jacket out of her locker, looked at David imploringly. “Please? Grab your jacket and let’s just-”
His phone rang in his hand. He listened, mumbled, hung up shaking his head.
“Woman just brought in, six months pregnant going into premature labor. Woody’s already there, I gotta go.”
“Me too. To East Fourth Street.”
“Jill.” He dashed out after her to the corridor.
“I’ll be back by five.”
He looked so fretful. She reached and hugged him. “Ask Tricia to cover for me if I’m a few minutes late. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Minutes later she was zooming down Second Avenue in a patrol car, lights and siren blazing. “Gonna drop you on the corner,” said the uniformed cop driving. “Don’t want to scare this lady.”
“Sounds good.”
The brownstone was decrepit with bars on the first floor front windows. On the stoop, Kerri Blasco waited with a stressed-looking, heavyset woman. Her features relaxed when she saw Jill come racing up in her running shoes and green scrub bottoms. Quick introductions were made. The woman’s son who lived on two was being investigated for drug distribution.
“Ees not true,” Nina Cortez said, her eyes frightened, dark and hollow.
“We’re here about the other thing,” Jill said, thanking her for having called. “You’ve met my friend Kerri?”
“Just,” Kerri said, smiling. She wore jeans, a blazer and her blond hair in a ponytail. No sign of her gun.
The small foyer smelled musty and the stairway sagged. They climbed to the fourth floor, walked the hall toward the front where Mrs. Cortez stopped before a door marred with peeling gray paint. Her breath was coming in wheezes, and she walked as if her knees ached badly.
“I’m no busybody,” she said contritely. “An’ I never come up here, but he set off da smoke alarm! Crumbs under his broiler burning, made da whole house smell on fire. He musta run out.”
She used her key to unlock the door.
The dingy room looked out over the street. It had a metal-frame bed with a thin mattress, a plasma TV, a printer and computer on a desk. Next to it was a dressing table, its surface lined with makeup, wigs, a beard, fake teeth and hair dye. A chair piled with men’s and women’s clothes spilled to the floor, which was littered with cut-up newspapers.
“Over here,” Nina said, moving across the room. “I was scared enough wid dat makeup and women’s clothes, then I opened his closet an’ – look.”
Jill and Kerri drew close.
The closet was empty, except for two orange crates at either end and the closet shelf pulled down to span them. On the improvised table, glue, tape, scissors and red color marker. And tacked to the wall, photos of every murder victim and Jill and David, computer-printed or cut from newspapers. David shooting a killer on the fifteen-months-ago museum roof. Jill and David carrying Jesse to their apartment. David with his face near Jill’s as they walked through Emergency.
“Oh boy,” Kerri said. “You can still smell the glue. He must have just been working on this.”
Red marker circled Jill’s and David’s faces. Heavier, obsessive red cyclones around David’s face.
Jill’s body went numb. Her heart felt as if someone had reached inside her chest and squeezed it cruelly. Somehow she got her phone out and started taking pictures. Her hands trembled violently. This was the guy. This was Catch Me. He lived in this room. She was breathing the air that he’d breathed.
Shaking, she sent the photos to David.
Kerri was meanwhile talking to Nina Cortez, quietly reassuring her, explaining that she was a cop, and they weren’t here about drugs or Nina’s son. “This tenant may be a murderer,” she said. “The police will have to go over this room.”
“Aye, Dios mio!” cried the woman. “I knew it, da killer in the news, das why I called! You get him, please? I’m scared he’s coming back!”
21
He watched from a rooftop across the street. Hunched against a low brick wall and peered through the rails above it.
Patrol cars arriving, an unmarked car, people carrying in what had to be CSU cases. Instant bedlam crowding the street, a uniformed cop directing traffic around the patrol cars.
There! Jill Raney, standing by his front window talking to someone. He got out his binoculars and raised himself for a better look. That brought her close to him. Hell, she was pretty, her pallid face intense as she gestured to someone. He remembered the feeling of brushing her skin in the cafeteria. It was electric – and infuriating, how she ignored him and trailed after Levine and went straight to their snotty friends’ table.
She moved away from the window, and was lost to him. Bitch. A blond in a ponytail came into view talking to some guy in a sports jacket. Plainclothes cops. He lowered his binoculars and spat.
Then reached into his unzipped black sports bag, and carefully removed the parts of his PSG1 sniper rifle.
Only one shot needed with this baby.
As more cop cars arrived below, he screwed the rifle’s long barrel to the shaft and locked it in place. He had done this so many times. Could do it with his eyes closed.
He poked the barrel through two rails and squinted through its sight. Ah, there they were, close up again, moving past the window, so busy in his room.
His former room, the bastards. Like everyone else, they just loved to take everything from him. Well, he was getting back. The final outrage had done its job, and he was enjoying his revenge.
His breathing slowed as he aimed, watched the wrong people move about. He licked his lips and watched through the sight, his finger on the trigger…
“He used a fake name and paid in cash,” Kerri said, as CSU techs combed and dusted. She was standing with Jill and Alex near the front wall, at the edge of the crime scene activity and away from the window. Alex listened to more as Jill watched the forensics team.
They were finding fingerprints everywhere, seizing a toothbrush, emptying the contents of waste paper baskets, gathering the closet photos and every bit of cut-up newspaper. Evidence bags filled. Two people pulled the sheets and pillowcase off the bed and stuffed them into a large bag.
Nina Cortez had been upset, but filled them in as much as she could on the suspect’s description. Caucasian and as tall as Alex, which made him just under six feet. Great, the cops’ expressions said. Like a million other guys. Mrs. Cortez was at a loss for more because “he kept his head down, sometimes a beard, sometimes not a beard. Didn’t see him much, thought he had a night job.” She left with her hand to her heart, saying she needed to lie down. A female officer had accompanied her, holding her arm.
“They’re turning the place upside down,” Jill said, watching the CSU activity.
Alex was talking to another detective but Ker
ri nodded. She and Alex had already thanked her profusely. “We’ve got him,” Kerri said. “His prints and DNA anyway. Did you tell David?”
“Yes, just texted him.” Jill frowned suddenly. “What if this creep’s prints and DNA aren’t in the system? Or what if they are and you can’t find him?”
Kerri’s expression said she’d been worrying about the same thing.
“We’ll interview others in the building,” she said. “Have a sketch artist draw him and canvas the neighborhood. This is our big lead.”
Jill shrugged and checked the time. It was 4:45. “I have to get back,” she said.
Kerri hugged her and Alex turned to smile tensely as she made her way around the room’s periphery, careful to avoid the evidence gathering.
By the door, she blinked and looked back. The room was already starting to look like a soot storm had hit it, and they weren’t half done. Her gaze fell to the bag she’d seen the bed sheets go into…then went to something stuck in the naked bedsprings.
“Can I take something?” she called to the two detectives. “A little forensic souvenir? Hate to leave empty-handed.”
Kerri was talking to a CSU guy but Alex nodded. Jill and David had done invaluable forensic work for them. “We’ve got more than we need,” Alex said. He leaned and glanced out the window. “Your patrol car’s here.”
A woman wearing a CSU jacket handed Jill latex gloves and a small plastic bag. She knelt by the stripped bed, tilted her head for a closer look under the mattress hanging half off, and carefully pried some tissue from a spring. Wadded Kleenex or toilet paper, it looked like.
She put the tissue into the baggie and then into her scrub pocket, straightened, and waved ‘bye. Kerri caught her eye but was on her phone, and Alex had crossed to someone asking about the toaster oven. They were collecting Creep’s crumbs?
She descended the stairs and went out, pulling off her latex gloves. A young uniformed officer leaning against the hood of his blue-and-white saw her approach. He straightened and opened his rear door for her, smiling.
She’s out! The killer saw her exit, squinted at her through his rifle sight.
She was so close, moving toward him inside his visual bubble…and then his gaze shifted to her hands pulling off her latex gloves. Crime scene gloves - she was helping them, trying to get him, of course. The hairs on his arms stood up in fury. His finger squeezed the trigger and he lined her up in his crosshairs. Ka-pow, he thought triumphantly, gritting his teeth. He moved the rifle a bit, saw now the young cop in his sight. What a gentleman, opening the door for her. Ka-pow, ka-pow!
His heart whammed like a jackhammer with the fury and power he felt, knowing that he could obliterate these two lives with a flick of his finger. He was so addicted to this feeling. The…best…ever…rush!
He struggled with it. Though his pulse still throbbed, he pulled his rifle back and watched the patrol car leave. Turned and slumped against the low wall, exhaling with relief at seeing them go. He’d trained to control himself like this.
Doing her now would have them all after him, spoil his fun, his euphoric new sense of control.
Which he wanted to last. He had more game he wanted to play, oh yes.
Smirking with anticipation, he took his rifle apart and put it back in his sports bag.
22
“Where ya been, all hell’s breaking loose,” Tricia griped, helping to wheel in a gurney from an EMS truck.
Jill had come running across the ambulance bay from where the cop had dropped her. “Nine minutes late! What’s happening?” She helped Trish and two EMTs get the gurney through the ER double sliding doors.
“What’s happening,” Trish said, huffing, “in addition to two regular deliveries, is one car accident involving a pregnant woman, another pregnant woman beaten by her boyfriend, and a pregnant fourteen-year-old who jumped from her third floor fire escape.” Trish peered ahead through ER bedlam. “Those three cases are still down here. Sam, Holloway, and Ramu need help. That’s you, me and Woody who’s running down too. He’s finished helping David.”
They helped maneuver the gurney past others. “Where is David?” Jill asked. “I texted him.”
“Caught another case.”
“He’s off duty.”
“Was almost off duty. Finished what he thought was his last case, then thirty minutes ago a woman was brought in, seven months pregnant with acute appendicitis. They’ve got a crowded OR table up there. He’s gotta stay with it. General surgeons don’t know what they’re doing, can’t let ‘em near the baby.”
Tricia turned to the EMTs. “Looks like cubicle eight is free.”
Jill showered fast, got into new scrubs, and transferred the CSU baggie into one of her pockets. Minutes later she was in cubicle eight with Tricia, Jim Holloway and a neurosurgeon, already treating the fourteen-year-old. “Her name’s Mindy,” Holloway said grimly.
Instant heartbreak, coming back to the hospital. There was no ease-in, no emotional airlock to pass through before it hit like a stab. As Jill worked, she forgot East Fourth Street for long, incredibly stressful minutes.
The pregnancy was lost, and in her fall Mindy had bashed her head horribly on the fire escape. The neurosurgeon feared brain damage and ordered an MRI.
Jill helped Tricia wheel Mindy out to be taken upstairs. They passed other rushing doctors and nurses, more bedlam, and then the noisy cubicle where Woody was helping frantic Sam MacIntyre and Ramu Chitkara tend the heavily bleeding car crash victim. Sam was again yelling “more whole blood!” as a nurse ran out.
Woody glanced up and saw Jill.
“David’s almost done up there,” he called through his surgical mask.
“Thanks,” Jill called back.
They got Mindy to the fourth floor for her Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Radiology residents took over and they left, drained and depressed.
At the elevators, Tricia suddenly noticed that Jill had pressed the ninth floor button.
“Where’re you going?”
“Pathology.”
“Huh?”
“It’s about the Couples Killer. Urgent.”
Trish opened her mouth to answer, but Jill’s hospital phone beeped. She picked up, muttered, and looked suddenly as if her brain had gone into a tailspin.
“They want me to scrub in for Sam’s case,” she murmured. “OR 4. Woman’s being brought up now.”
“I’ll take it”, Trish said, watching Jill eye a baggie she’d pulled halfway out of her pocket. “You go to Pathology. What’s in the bag?”
“Cops found the killer’s apartment. CSU swept it but I think I found something too.”
The Up elevator arrived with a ding and Tricia’s eyes widened. “Fer God’s sake go,” she said, stepping to another elevator and pressing a button. “See? I’m already headed to OR 4.”
It was 5:35. The large room was nearly empty except for Evan Wu, working a counter away from another resident Jill didn’t know.
Evan looked up from his work and grinned.
“Hey!” he said as she approached. “Whatcha got for me?”
“Something I think is a sperm sample only it looks funny,” she said. “Take a look?”
He pushed away the slides he’d been staining. “Have a seat,” he said, latex-gloved and indicating the stool next to him. “Funny sperm,” he repeated, shaking his head and smiling. “That’s funny.”
She gave him the snapped-tight baggie. He held it up to his lab light and peered through his glasses to the tissue wad. “Sure it’s sperm?”
“No.” Evan liked to play guessing games. Guess what it is before we look under the scope. He’d helped before, including one of the cases of statutory rape and child abuse. The assailant had used motor oil and no condom.
“It is a funny color,” Evan said, squinting into the baggie. “Kinda brownish, which suggests the presence of blood. Although this guy used a tissue so it could be…mucous and he had a nosebleed?”
“Well, it was stuck in a bed
spring halfway down the bed – and for a nosebleed, wouldn’t there be more blood?”
“Ah, right. So…blood in the semen.” Evan pried open the baggie, pulled out the dried tissue and laid it on a plate. “That could suggest urethritis. The guy has an infection of his urethra…”
Jill tensed on her stool. “This is from under the Couples Killer’s bed and I’m on call. No time-”
“Oh! Sorry, okay here we go.” Using an eyedropper, Evan dropped sterile saline onto the tissue’s brown streak and watched it liquefy. Into the same eyedropper he pulled up some of the solution, put it on a glass slide, slid it under his microscope. Fiddled with the scope a little, muttering “higher power.”
Then became silent. “Wow,” he said, looking in.
He pushed himself away on his stool’s wheels and gestured. “Take a look.”
Jill pulled closer and peered into the scope. Swallowed. Blinked at the teeming, coiling corkscrews, larger at one end like uncountable, tangled worms.
She leaned back on her stool, kept staring at the microscope.
“They’re still alive,” she breathed.
“You’ve had them in your pocket?”
“Yeah.”
“Syphilis spirochetes love body temperature.”
“Syphilis,” Jill repeated incredulously.
Evan nodded. “Like other venereal infections, it can cause inflammation of the urethra. Painful peeing, too. Gets really painful. The Couples Killer’s gonna be wanting medical attention.”
An even bigger picture came to Jill. She fisted a hand and kept blinking, realizing.
Evan said, “Syphilis starts, as you know, with a painless sore on the outside of the penis. Recognizable, or the killer may have searched online what his sore was.”
“This set him off too,” Jill said almost under her breath.
“Too?”
“He had a bad week. I gotta go, Evan. Thanks.”
23
“He has syphilis, I just came from our lab,” Jill told Kerri, hurrying through the halls. “He’ll be needing antibiotics so his next stop will be medical. Alert every ER and clinic in the city.”
CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4) Page 10