Stephanie stepped back, held the door open, and gestured for him and Daniela to enter. She then led them up a curving staircase with wrought-iron railing, passing staid family portraits in aged black and white and faded color. None of them looked any later than the 1980s. At the top of the stairs, they walked down a short hall and entered a large, floor-to-ceiling wood-paneled room. Large windows on the north and west sides interrupted the wood paneling. A French door opened to a balcony above the ground-floor entrance. Heavy curtains were pulled back and held secure by thick, silver tiebacks with large tassels. Dark hardwood floors. A damask, expensive-looking rug occupied much of the floor space. A black lacquered, large, low-sitting table was framed by a sofa and four chairs around it. Behind it, a taller, round table surrounded by four more chairs. A half-finished puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle covered a section near one chair. A black grand piano sat in the remaining corner of the room. Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues sheet music unopened on the easel. The plaster ceiling featured a motif of circles and squares filled with relief roses. An ornate bronze chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling.
Drexel and Daniela wandered around the room. Drexel spent some time looking at the oil portrait of an older man in a suit and red tie. His hair was balding, and he had thick-rimmed glasses.
“That’s Teddy, God rest his soul.”
Drexel turned to see an elderly woman shuffle in. A heap of short, gray hair framed by diamond stud earrings. She was dressed in light gray slacks and a loose, pinkish blouse with a large bow just below the neck. “Mrs. Darlington?”
“Please. Lucy. I don’t know why Stephanie insists on bringing visitors here. It’s such a beautiful day, the terrace would have been better.”
“If you’d prefer, we can sit out there.”
Lucy waved her hand in the air. “Too late now. And I’m too old and slow.” She eased herself toward a chair at the large table, a small limp with every right-footed step. “How can I help you?”
Drexel introduced themselves. “We’d like to speak to Kevin Blair.”
“I see. Why?”
“It’s about a house in Wrigleyville.”
“Are they sending police now to collect debts?”
“Excuse me?” asked Daniela.
“Don’t play stupid with me.”
“We’re not. We’re not here about debts.”
“Thank goodness my tax money isn’t being wasted. Kevin explained everything to me.”
“And what was that?” asked Daniela.
“How he bought that house—a two-flat—in Wrigleyville. I told him I didn’t think it wise, but he’s a grown man. He can make his own decisions. Anyways, the contractor, he’s not doing the work he’s being paid for. Oh, thanks Stephanie.”
Stephanie set a tray on the table. A white porcelain teapot of hot water, matching cups and saucers and containers of creamer and sugar, a box containing a variety of teas, and a glass French coffee press, which the housekeeper pressed down on the plunger. “May I bring out anything else?”
Lucy said, “No, no, my dear. Thank you very much.”
Stephanie turned and walked slowly out. She glanced back at Drexel and Daniela, but when he studied her, she turned quickly away.
“So the contractor is threatening all sorts of holy hell on Kevin. I told him to stand firm. He’s in the right.” She smiled. “And dear old Teddy always told me, even if you’re not in the right, pretend like you are with every atom in your body.”
“Have you spoken to the contractor?” asked Daniela.
“Good god, no.” She shook her head. “The contractor has already taken forty-thousand dollars.”
Drexel leaned over and touched the teapot while looking at Lucy. She nodded, and he poured a cup full. He handed her the cup in its saucer and held out the box of tea for her. She smiled and quickly pulled out a bag of Earl Grey. She shook her head at his offers of cream or sugar. “Well, regardless, we’re not here about the debt or the contractor issues.”
“Then whatever are you here for?”
“Two days ago, the body of a woman was found in the basement of that two-flat.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. We found the body of a woman—she’d been murdered—in the house. So I’m sure you can understand why we’d like to speak to Kevin.”
“But he had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m sure he didn’t.” He said it without regard to the truth. He did not want her distracted by defending Kevin. And it might have been true. “But he may have information—information he may not even realize—that could help us find out who did this.”
She blew on the tea. “Perhaps. But I doubt it. The contractors and all the workers are far more likely to have that kind of information. Probably one of them did it.”
Drexel smiled. “We’re certainly exploring the idea. But we’d still like to speak to Kevin. By the way, what relation is he?”
“You’re no fool, detective, so I won’t answer that question. You know perfectly well what Kevin is to me.” She set her cup on the table. “If that’s all, I believe I have some calls to make.”
Stephanie rounded the corner from the hall. “You certainly do, Mrs. Darlington.”
“I’ll make sure Kevin calls you when he returns.”
“Well, thank you for your time,” said Daniela as she stood up.
Drexel stood as well.
They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before Stephanie escorted them down the stairs and out the front door. Daniela and Drexel walked silently down the path to the sidewalk. They did not speak until they were a half block from the mansion and in the car.
“Well, at the very least, there’s a con going on,” said Daniela.
“And I’m not so sure the old lady isn’t aware of it.” He looked back at the house as he put his hand on their car’s door handle. “But running a con to being a serial killer is a bit of a stretch.”
“And Stephanie?”
“Oh, you noticed that as well. She seemed awfully curious. Let’s see if we can dig anything up on her, and let’s give Kevin a couple of days to return our call. If we don’t hear from him by Monday mid-morning, we drop by again.” He backed up to give himself some space from the car in front of him and pulled into a space in traffic.
* * *
Drexel set his small plastic container of sushi—tuna, salmon, and shrimp nigiri with brownish-green wasabi and dull yellow ginger—on the desk. The manila envelope caught his eye immediately. Daniela looked at it. “Shit.”
Drexel called the forensics team. This time the photographs showed a couple. A photo of them together chained and looking down at the floor. The pre-murder picture had the man kneeling on the floor, both his hands behind his back, a scream or cry emanating from his mouth. The neck muscles taut, a bit of spittle arching between his upper and lower lips. The woman plunged her outstretched arm forward, but in her eyes, Drexel could see it, and he was amazed a picture had captured it. Through her eyes, he could see that she had registered what was happening, that there would be no escape. The third photograph showed them in the now familiar triangle, on their sides and embracing. They had not been dismembered.
A congregation of detectives had surrounded, though safely distant from the evidence itself, Drexel and Daniela as they looked at the photos with nitrile gloves. Drexel thought he heard Doggett mutter, “Sick motherfucker.” Drexel read the letter—printed by an ink-jet on standard white printer paper, using a Gothic font:
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
“You must hate this world, its works and all things of this world.”
Simon
“Fuck me,” said Doggett. “Did you see this?” He held the envelope contained in plastic.
Drexel looked at it. “No postmark but stamped.”
“Look at the goddamned address.”
“What?” But Drexel saw it then. All the others were addressed to simply Homicide and the street address of the station. This one was different. Above Homicide, Drexel’s name appeared. “Fuck me.”
Chapter 16
The bodies were, again, in Wrigleyville but in a gas station that had closed down the year before and remained unsold and unused. The developer, Gene Rodario, who stood on the sidewalk in a long-sleeve, forest green sweatshirt, dark-blue running pants, and gym shoes, had not visited the property in several months. In the store that formerly sold cold pop, bags of chips, bad pre-packaged sandwiches, and pints of motor oil in addition to gallons of gas, several of the empty shelves had been pushed out of the way to leave an opening in the center of the floor. Large black plastic trash bags had been taped with blue painter’s tape over the large windows facing out to the street.
The killer had oriented the bodies in a triangle, but this time with the single point at their heads and an edge at their feet. Despite not being dismembered, both bodies were frozen. The ouroboros coins were glued to the closed eyelids. Just outside the right edge of the triangle, at the man’s back, was a photo of the couple. It showed them together in front of the Eiffel Tower on a sunny day. They were embracing and smiling. When they separated the bodies, they discovered another photo of the couple glued to the man’s back. Another Eiffel Tower shot and the couple, but this one was more candid. He was laughing, his head arched back. She was between a laugh and a large smile, looking up at him. The detective and forensic team found no identification. CSIs spent six hours combing the building and lot for any clues. The few fingerprints found were prioritized, and Drexel requested—though he did not need to—they be compared against Brandon Marshall’s prints.
Drexel leaned against a squad car and smoked a cigarette. Daniela stopped in front of him. “Can I have one?”
He pointed to the officer at the front of the car, watching for traffic or potential intruders to the scene. “I bummed it from him.”
She walked over to the officer and had a brief conversation Drexel could not hear before she walked back with a lit cigarette. She sat down next to Drexel.
At the edges of the police barrier, groups of people stood about. Many engaged in conversations and pointing to the station. Coming from the east, Drexel noticed two news vans approaching, their satellite dishes on the hoods and call signs on the sides giving them away. Now that the media had sniffed out the ratings possibility for this series of murders, there would be no stopping them. Even amongst the killing spree in Chicago, a brutal series of homicides was a leading story.
“I think you should talk to them.” Drexel pointed at the vans, which were disgorging their camera operators and reporters.
“Me?” Daniela raised her eyebrows.
“You’re more photogenic.”
She nodded as if that were not a debatable fact. “Yeah, but the cap would kill me after he killed you.”
He smiled. “I guess then, we should let the commander do what he loves best.”
“Right on, boss. He’ll want all the glory.”
Drexel rubbed his chin. “I don’t understand what the chalk markings mean or any of the—the things he leaves there. Jars with bits of brain matter. Personal photos of these two in Paris. I can’t make sense of it.” He carved the air with his hand. “I put myself as best I can in his shoes. In his mind. I know he means something by it, but damned if I know.”
“Well, good thing is we can still catch him without knowing. There’s that at least.”
Drexel called Vivaldi to let her know about the latest victim. She agreed to head down to the scene immediately, commenting in passing that her profile was nearly ready.
Drexel stood and walked down to the crowd across the street from the gas station, waving and shaking his head when asked to comment. A couple of patrol officers forced the reporters and cameramen to retreat a block away. Drexel waited in the flashing blue lights of the patrol cars before talking to anyone in the crowd. The first three people said they had heard and seen nothing that night or any time previously. The fourth person, a man in his mid-sixties with a sweeping full head of silver hair, lived two houses down.
“What’s you’re name sir?” asked Drexel.
“Mark Spiegel.” He pushed his silver wire-frame glasses up on his nose.
“Did you see anything you think we should know?”
“Yeah, I did.”
Drexel waited for him to continue, but when he did not, he asked, “What did you see?”
“I did. I did in fact. Not last night, but the night before. I heard something outside. Woke my dog up. Buddy’s his name. Had him now six years. He’s a mutt. Saved him from the shelter. Anyways, Buddy starts growling, and I’m a light sleeper as it is, so I think he’s got to go outside to piss or shit. He’s always needing to do it in the middle of the night. Can’t hardly get a full night’s sleep. But there you have it. So I get up. Buddy’s at the window, paws on the edge and looking out. My bedroom’s on the second floor. And he’s growling. So I know he doesn’t need to piss or anything, so I look out.”
Mark paused, and it took Drexel a couple of seconds to notice the man was waiting for a prompt. “What did you see?”
“I saw a car. I mean it’s pitch black and in the middle of the night, and I saw a van or something’s door open. The interior light clicked on. Then the car drove away.”
“Van or car?”
“Van. Yes, a van.”
“What time was this?”
“It was 3:17 in the morning. I looked at the clock when Buddy woke me up thinking I must be crazy that it wasn’t that early, but it was.”
“What kind of van?”
“A regular van. Maybe a minivan, but it looked more like a van.”
“Color? Markings?”
“It was dark out. And not under a streetlight or anything, and when it left, it went in the opposite direction.” Mark pointed westward, away from his house.
“Light? Dark?”
“Don’t hold me to it, but I’d say it was lighter in color.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Just shadows. Definitely a man.” Mark nodded. “Yeah. Sorry I can’t help out more with those details. I’m retired, I don’t have to pay that much attention anymore.”
“You’ve been very helpful.” Drexel gave him one of his cards and asked him to call if he remembered anything else.
He worked the crowd and knocked on the neighbors’ doors, passing out or leaving cards in his wake. Some mentioned seeing a van or truck or car at the station. They assumed it was the developer or a new owner coming to fix up or evaluate the property. Vivaldi had already come and gone by then, leaving a message for Drexel to send along the evidence from the envelope delivered to the police as soon as possible.
Drexel and Daniela returned to the police station, packaged up copies of the evidence and sent it to Vivaldi, and added what they knew to the whiteboard. Drexel tapped a blue pen against the table and finished off the last of his third cup of coffee. “I get the sense he’s heading for something. That this is all building up to mean something in his head. He kidnaps them. He holds them. He photographs them before killing them. He dismembers them and freezes them before displaying them in abandoned buildings with chalk markings and—and—whatever the hell you call the pieces of the brain, and stuff. I assume he didn’t chop up the couple for a reason.”
“He has to have a place he can store the bodies in a freezer.”
“Where would it be safe to do that? Where? His own home? But Marshall lives in an apartment.”
“Not an apartment. I just don’t see it. Not this many bodies stored in a freezer in the living room. But hell, maybe. I just wish we had been watching Marshall for a few days already.”
Drexel sat back down. “I have.
”
Daniela narrowed her eyes and stared at him. Her lips formed a thin line, and she turned away her look, toward the whiteboard.
He leaned forward. “I should have told you. I’m sorry.” He tried to get her looking back at him by moving his head side-to-side. No luck. “I didn’t watch him all night. So he could have still done this.”
Daniela stood up. “I got to go start my surveillance of him.”
Drexel nodded. “Again, I’m sorry.”
Daniela turned for the door. “Whatever. See you at midnight.” She walked out, closing the door behind her.
* * *
Drexel lost himself in the interview reports from the officers who canvassed the third crime scene. He left a message for the ME to see if she was any closer to doing the cuts—the autopsies—on the first two victims. She told him they had thawed enough to do it the next day. He drank more coffee than he should have, but he was frustrated by the lack of progress except in body count. This perp was more criminally sophisticated than he would have thought.
He went back to the third crime scene photos and then to the photos the killer had sent. He looked at them, and something nagged at him. He was missing it, but what? Disgusted, his stomach in knots from the coffee and lack of sleep, he locked the evidence up and packed his Sammy Sosa signed baseball and digital picture frame away.
Outside, Drexel texted Ton to meet him at midnight for surveillance if he was still interested. He called Ryan while riding the L back to Ukrainian Village to tell him he was grabbing gyros and would pick up some for him if he wanted. Ryan gave him his usual order.
The two brothers sat on the couch, each with a Styrofoam takeout box in front of them and a Honker’s Ale. Drexel had added feta to his side of french fries—something Drexel had seen a former ethnic Greek police officer do years ago when he was still working beats. Kostas was his name. Drexel shook his head when he recalled Kostas had been killed a few years ago when off duty yet still attempting to stop a robbery at a convenience store. Ryan took a large bite out of his spicy gyro. As he chewed, he said, “So I asked about this Marshall guy.”
Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2) Page 13