Lightning

by Ed McBain

  And then, suddenly, a sharp click.

  “What’s that?” Meyer asked. “Did he turn off the recorder?”

  “No, sir,” Ollie said.

  “I thought I heard…”

  “You did. That’s the girl’s neck breaking.”

  Silence on the tape now. Ten seconds, twenty seconds. Then the sound of footsteps moving quickly. Other footsteps, fading. A car door slamming. Another car door. The sound of an automobile engine starting. Then, over the purr of the engine, McIntyre’s voice.

  MCINTYRE: Hello, boys, it’s me again. This won’t be the last one. But it’s the last you’ll hear of Corey McIntyre. ‘Bye now.

  Silence.

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “That’s it?” Hawes asked.

  “That’s all she wrote,” Ollie said.

  “Wants to get caught, doesn’t he?” Meyer said.

  “Looks that way to me,” Ollie said. “Otherwise why leave us a tape zeroing in on the garage and giving us a voiceprint we can later match up we get a good suspect? First thing we got to do—”

  “We?” Carella said.

  “Why, sure,” Ollie said. “I don’t like young girls getting their necks broke by no fuckin’ idiot. I’m gonna be workin’ this one with you.”

  The detectives looked at him.

  “We’ll have a good time,” Ollie said.

  Which they found less than reassuring.

  The first edition of the city’s afternoon tabloid hit the stands at 11:30 that morning. The headline blared:

  THIRD YOUNG CO-ED MURDERED

  Below the headline was a photograph of Darcy Welles hanging from a lamppost in the 83rd Precinct. The brief text under the photograph read:

  Nineteen-year-old Darcy Welles, freshman track star at Converse University, became the third victim early this morning of the Road Runner Killer. Story page 4.

  It was not unusual for this particular newspaper to label killers in a manner that would appeal to the popular imagination; its parentage was in London, where such sensationalism was commonplace. The police would have wished otherwise. Handy labels never helped in the apprehension of a murderer; if anything they made matters more difficult because they encouraged either phone calls or letters from cranks claiming to be “the Nursemaid Murderer,” or “the Mad Slasher,” or “the .32-Caliber Killer,” or whoever else the newspapers had dreamed up. Their killer had now been named: the Road Runner Killer. Terrific. Except that it made their job harder. The story on page four read like a paperback mystery written by a hack:

  In the cold early light of this morning’s dawn, detectives of the 83rd Precinct in Isola’s Diamondback area came upon the third victim in a now indisputably linked series of murders. In each instance, the victim has been a young woman. In each instance, the young woman was a college track star. In each instance, the victim’s neck was broken, and she was found hanging from a lamppost in different deserted areas of the city. The Road Runner Killer is loose in the city, and not even the police can guess when and where he will strike next.

  The story went on to relate in detail the circumstances surrounding the previous deaths of Marcia Schaffer and Nancy Annunziato, and then advised the reader to turn to page six for a profile on Darcy Welles and an interview with her parents in Columbus, Ohio. The profile on Darcy seemed to have been pilfered from the files at Converse University. It sketched in her educational background, tracing her years through elementary, junior high, and high school, and then went on to list all the track competitions she had entered, giving the results of each. The profile was accompanied by a photograph of Darcy in high school graduation cap and gown. A line of text under the photograph identified Darcy simply as Victim Number Three: Darcy Welles.

  The interview with her parents had been conducted via the telephone at 9:00 that morning, presumably immediately after a stringer sitting police calls in Diamondback had phoned in with news of the girl hanging from the lamppost. The reporter who spoke to both Robert Welles and his wife Jessica wrote in his interview that he had been the one to break the news of their daughter’s murder, and that for the first five minutes of his conversation with them, they had been “sobbing uncontrollably” and “scarcely coherent.” He had plunged ahead regardless, and had elicited from them a description of Darcy that showed her to be a good, hardworking girl, dedicated to running but nonetheless maintaining a solid B-average in high school and “now in college.” When their just-spoken words “now in college” registered on them, both parents had broken into tears again “with the realization that their daughter was no longer in fact a college student, their daughter was now a third grisly victim of the Road Runner Killer.”

  Darcy’s older brother was a man named Bosley “Buzz” Welles, who worked as a computer programmer for the IBM branch office in Columbus. She’d had no steady boyfriends when she was living at home, but she was an attractive popular girl who had many friends of both sexes. So far as Mr. and Mrs. Welles knew, she had not been dating anyone since she’d started her freshman year at Converse in September. Her parents told the reporter that she had recently been contacted by the magazine Sports USA regarding an article they were preparing on promising young women athletes, and was in fact scheduled to be interviewed on the night she was murdered. Mr. and Mrs. Welles did not remember the name of the man who was to conduct the interview. On his own initiative, the reporter had called the editorial offices of Sports USA in New York, and had been told that they knew of no such article in preparation.

  “Is it possible, then,” the reporter editorialized in the distinctive style of his paper, “that the Road Runner Killer is representing himself as someone who works for Sports USA, thereby gaining the confidence of his young victims before leading them to slaughter?”

  You bet your ass, Ollie thought, reading the article.

  He was sitting beside Carella in a car they’d checked out not ten minutes earlier, heading downtown. Hawes was sitting in back. He did not like having his usual seat usurped by Ollie, but at the same time he did not envy Carella having to sit so close to him. He noticed that Carella had opened the window on the driver’s side of the car. Wide.

  “Listen to this,” Ollie said, and began reading aloud. “‘If this is indeed the case…’”

  “If what is indeed the case?” Hawes asked.

  “Somebody palming himself off as a reporter from Sports USA,” Ollie said, and began reading aloud again. “If this is indeed the case, the baffled policemen of this city might make note of it. And they might do well to warn any young female athletes at universities or colleges against accepting at face value anyone who represents himself to them as a reporter or journalist.”

  Alf Miscolo, in the Clerical Office of the Eight-Seven, had already typed up and photocopied a letter dictated by Lieutenant Byrnes for hand-delivery to every college and university in the city. The detectives had, in fact, debated whether the letter should go out to high schools as well.

  “There’s more,” Ollie said. “This guy here, he all of a sudden remembers this is supposed to be an interview with Mom and Dad, and not a story giving advice to the police department. You ready? ‘Mr. and Mrs. Welles were sobbing again as we ended our telephone conversation. The wires between here and Columbus hummed with their grief, a grief shared by parents all over this city, a grief that seemed to echo the words: ‘Find the Road Runner Killer.’”

  “Beautiful,” Hawes said.

  “Page opposite has pictures of the other two girls,” Ollie said, “hanging from lampposts like Christmas ornaments. Whole fuckin’ paper is full of the murders. They even got comments from the cops in New York who were handling the ‘Son of Sam’ killings, and a story by the reporter who covered it there, trying to find comparisons in m.o.s. It’s headlined ‘Psycho Similarities.’ I’m surprised they didn’t dig up Jack the Ripper. If this doesn’t drive our man underground, nothing will. I’m glad the parents didn’t remember his name, the name he gave the girl. Otherwise Corey M
cIntyre out in LA’d find himself splashed all over this rag.”

  Ollie folded the newspaper and threw it into the backseat. It hit Hawes’s knee and fell to the floor of the car.

  “Give ‘em time,” Hawes said. “They’ll get to it.”

  “They wanna be cops,” Ollie said, “why don’t they join the force? They wanna be reporters, they should shut the fuck up and not stick their noses in police work. You’re coming to Haley, you know that?” he said to Carella.

  “I know it.”

  “Which garages did you hit already?” Ollie asked.

  “I’ve got the list,” Hawes said.

  “‘Cause this one is supposed to be right around the corner from the restaurant, near Jefferson.”

  “I thought we hit everything in a five-block radius,” Hawes said.

  “Yeah, well maybe you missed one, huh, Red?” Ollie said.

  Hawes didn’t like anyone to call him “Red.” He preferred Lefty to Red. He preferred Great Bull Moose Farting to Red.

  “My name’s Cotton,” he said mildly.

  “That’s a dumb name,” Ollie said.

  Hawes silently agreed with him.

  “I think I’ll call you ‘Red,’” Ollie said.

  “Okay,” Hawes said. “And I’ll call you ‘Phyllis.’”

  “Phyllis?” Ollie said. “Where’d you get Phyllis from? Phyllis? There’s a space,” he said to Carella.

  “I see it,” Carella said.

  “In case you didn’t,” Ollie said. “Way you guys missed a garage right around the corner from the restaurant, who knows if you can see parking spaces or not?”

  Carella pulled into the space. He threw down the visor with its attached notice that this was a police officer on a duty call, just in case some overzealous patrolman hadn’t met his quota of parking tickets today. The three detectives got out of the car. Carella locked all the doors. He knew some cops from the Six-One who’d had their car stolen from the curb while they were inside a liquor store investigating an armed robbery.

  “So where are we?” Ollie said. “Restaurant’s on Ulster and South Haley, this is what?”

  “Ulster and Bowes.”

  “So what we should do,” Ollie said, “is go back to the restaurant, use that as our starting point. Then we go up to the corner closest to Jefferson and fan out left and right from there. He said right around the corner, didn’t he? Near Jefferson?”

  “That’s what he said,” Carella said. “But right around the corner could mean anything.”

  “What could right around the corner mean but right around the corner?” Ollie said. “Am I right, Red? Or am I right?”

  Hawes winced.

  “Ollie,” he said, “I really don’t like being called ‘Red.’”

  “So I’ll call you ‘Cotton,’ will you like that better?”

  “I would.”

  “Okay, okay. But if I had a dumb name like ‘Cotton,’ I’d prefer being called almost anything else, I got to tell you. Am I right, Steve-a-rino? Or am I right?”

  Carella said nothing.

  The detectives walked back to the restaurant.

  “Fancy joint,” Ollie commented. “Guy must have plenty of bread, he takes his victims here before he zonks them. Okay, now to the corner. You guys with me? I want to show you how to find a garage.”

  The garage was not right around the corner.

  It was a block up from the corner, and then a half-block to the north, toward Jefferson Avenue. It was one of the garages Carella and Hawes had hit on the night of the Welles murder. They had spoken then to a little Puerto Rican parking attendant named Ricardo Albareda who could not remember seeing a young girl in a red dress with a man wearing a dark brown suit, a tan tie, and brown shoes. They had gone on to give Albareda the same description the waiter at Marino’s had given Hawes: five feet ten or eleven, 170 pounds, brown hair and brown eyes, a mustache. Albareda still couldn’t remember the couple.

  Albareda was on duty now. He explained that he usually worked the day shift, but that last night he’d been filling in for his friend who was home sick. He told the detectives that he didn’t get home till 2:00 last night, and he had to be at work again at 8:00 this morning. He told the detectives that he was very tired. He told them all this with a marked Spanish accent.

  “Look, shithead,” Ollie said reasonably, “this is the fuckin’ garage, you unnerstan’ English? This is where they were, and I want you to start rememberin’ right away, or I’m gonna kick your little spic ass all around the block, you think you got that?”

  “If I cann remember them, I cann remember them,” Albareda said. He shrugged and looked at Carella.

  “We questioned him fully last night,” Carella said. “If the man can’t remember them, then he can’t re—”

  “That was last night,” Ollie said, “and this is today. And this is Detective Ollie Weeks,” he said, turning to Albareda, “who don’t take no for an answer unless somebody wants to be in serious trouble like for spitting on the sidewalk.”

  “I dinn spit on no si’walk,” Albareda said.

  “When I hit you in the mouth, shithead, you’re gonna be spittin’ blood and teeth on the sidewalk, and that’s a misdemeanor.”

  “Look, Ollie—” Hawes said.

  “Keep out of this, Red,” Ollie said. “We’re talkin’ a quarter to ten, somewhere in there,” he said to Albareda. “Young girl in a red dress, her picture’s all over the newspaper today, she got killed last night, you unnerstan’ that, shithead? With a guy twice her age, has a mustache like yours, okay, Pancho? Start rememberin.’ “

  “I don’ r’member nobody with a mustash like mine,” Albareda said.

  “How about a young girl in a red dress?”

  “I don’ r’member her.”

  “How many fuckin’ girls in red dresses you get here at a quarter to ten? What were you doin’, Albareda? Jerkin’ off in the toilet with Playboy, you didn’t notice a girl in a red dress?”

  “We get lotsa girls they wearin’ red,” Albareda said defensively.

  “At a quarter to ten last night? You had lots of girls wearing red?”

  “No, not lass night. I’m juss sayin’.”

  “Who else was working here last night? Were you all alone, you dumb spic shithead?”

  “There wass ony two of us. There wass s’pose to be t’ree, but—”

  “Yeah, your amigo was home in bed suckin’ his own dong. So who else was here?”

  “Thass not why there wass two of us.”

  “Then why?”

  “‘Cause another man s’pose to be here, an’ he wass sick, too.”

  “A regular epidemic, huh? What’re you all comin’ down with, herpes? So who was the other guy with you?”

  “Anibal.”

  “Annabelle?”

  “Anibal. Anibal Perez. He works all the time d’night shiff.”

  “The night shiff, huh, Pancho? You got his number?”

  “Si, I haff his number.”

  “Call him up. Tell him to get his ass down here in ten minutes flat or I’ll go find him and hang him from a lamppost.”

  “He lives all the way Majesta.”

  “Tell him to take a taxi. Or would he like a squad car pulling up in front of his house?”

  “I’ll call him,” Albareda said.

  Perez arrived some forty minutes later. He looked very bewildered. He glanced at Albareda for some clue as to what was going on, and then he looked at the one he figured to be the most sympathetic of the cops, a fat man like himself.

  “Whass goin’ on?” he asked.

  “You here last night at a quarter to ten?”

  “Si.”

  “Talk English,” Ollie said, “this is America. You see my two friends here last night askin’ questions?”

  “No.”

  “He wass upstairs when they come aroun’,” Albareda said.

  “Very sloppy,” Ollie said to Carella, “you didn’t check to see there was more than one
guy here. Okay, Pancho,” he said to Perez, forgetting he’d been calling Albareda the same name, “now you’re downstairs, and now we want to know did you see a young girl in a red dress last night about a quarter to ten with a guy about forty years old, brown hair and brown eyes, a mustache like your amigo here got.”

  “Si,” Perez said.

  “I tole you to talk English,” Ollie said. “You saw them?”

  “I saw them.”

  “Young girl nineteen years old? Red dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Guy about forty wearing a brown suit…”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, now we’re getting someplace,” Ollie said. “What kind of car was he driving?”

  “I don’ r’member,” Perez said.

  “You the one who got the car for them?”

  “I’m the one, yes.”

  “So what kind of car was it?”

  “I don’ r’member. We get lots of cars here. I drive them up, I drive them down, how you ‘speck me to r’member what kind of car this car or that car wass?”

  “When you talk to me, you get that tone out of your voice, you hear me, Pancho?”

  “Yes, sir,” Perez said.

  “That’s better,” Ollie said. “So you don’t remember the car, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Was it a big car, a little car, what kind of car was it?”

  “I don’ r’member.”

  “You’re a great pair, you two fuckin’ spics,” Ollie said. “Where do you keep your receipts?”

  “What?”

  “Your receipts, your receipts, you want me to speak Spanish, or is this the United States?”

  “Puerto Rico is also the United States,” Perez said with dignity.

  “That’s what you think,” Ollie said. “When a guy comes in to park his car, there’s a ticket, right? You fill in the license plate number on both halves of the ticket, right? And you tear off the bottom part and you give that to the customer for when he comes back to claim his car, right? You followin’ me so far? That’s called a claim check, what you give the guy who parks his car. Okay, you throw the top part of the ticket in a box, and when the guy comes back with his half of the ticket, you match them up, and that’s how you know what floor you parked his car on. So where do you keep them tickets, the receipts?”