Time of Death

by Shirley Kennett

  They drive away, the car’s exhaust making a thin stream of exhaust fumes, doing its part to hasten climate change.

  The snow is beginning to cover me, too. By nightfall I will be nothing more than a bump on the oak’s branch, which I suppose is better than being a pimple on the ass of the world. Having been one, I will be able to make a down-to-earth comparison.

  I begin to see the individual snowflakes dancing in the wind, putting on a performance for me, and growing larger, too. As big as the oak’s silent leaves, soon as big as toasters. That’s when they talk to me. Falling things talk to me. Leaves, rain, waterfalls with their drops as big as my head, and snow. They all have different voices, but they all say the same thing to me: You deserve better. You deserve to be a Rich Bitch who can do anything you want, go anywhere you want.

  And so I will. The God of Successful Parties can be wooed and won over.

  Did I mention that my oak is close to the building? The hardest part was getting here, climbing up the side of the tree away from the surveillance cameras. Once up high, I might as well be invisible. Nobody looks up, including cameras. Maybe I am invisible.

  This is the way it will happen. Time will do its skating-by thing again, and then I’ll shake off the snow and move. After tying my rope to this heavy branch I’m on, I’ll toss the other end over to the building. It has a grappling hook. The hook catches, I take up the slack in the rope. I’ve done this tree-to-tree in the woods, but tree-to-building is different enough that my body will be buzzing with adrenaline. Next I’ll lower myself onto the rope like a sloth hanging underneath it, and work my way over to the building. My arms and legs are up to it, but what if I’m unlucky? What if the God of Successful Parties chooses that moment to sneer at me, and I tumble to the ground? I’ll be on camera at the very least, caught and handcuffed at the very most. If that happens, if I get the handcuffs, I’ll freak out. Handcuffs bring it all back.

  No falling.

  I’ve studied the architectural drawings so much they must be tattooed on my retinas. There’s a vent shaft topped by one of those huge twirling metal caps, like a dome on a Russian church. Unscrew it, drop a rope, shimmy in. The shaft goes horizontal and I can crawl in it, just barely. Good thing I didn’t eat today. Count the passageways, third left then fifth right, ends in an air return in her office. Kind of tricky here. The air return grid is a tight fit. If I drop it, maybe handcuffs.

  No dropping.

  Jasmine has no cameras in her office, I suppose because some of her business dealings aren’t squeaky-clean. Or she doesn’t like Candid Camera keeping track of how many times she uses her private bathroom.

  It’s the best of circumstances. Jasmine has her arms folded on the table, and her head resting on them. She’s taking a quick nap. Poor dear, I guess she hasn’t been sleeping well lately.

  I put the tip of a knife to her throat, make a small cut. A few red drops well up, and she startles awake. There’s not much light in the office, she can’t see me clearly, but she knows it’s me. I pull the knife across her throat. Her scream turns into a gurgle.

  As she dies, I make a few quick doodles with the knife, and then I’m out. Traversing the rope, I play back my triumph as the snow whispers in my ears.

  Chapter 51

  SCHULTZ WISHED HE WAS driving. It was hard enough for him to relax as a passenger, but when it was snowing, relaxing was out of the question.

  “I can drive if you’re tired,” Schultz said.

  “I’m fine,” PJ said. “That’s the third time you suggested that. If you have something to say about my driving, just come out with it.”

  “I get nervous when other people are driving in bad weather. I trust my reflexes.”

  “And not mine, I guess. I grew up in a small town in Iowa. I’ve slipped around on more snowy streets and little country roads than you can imagine.”

  “Don’t take your eyes off the highway when you talk to me,” Schultz said. “Why do you keep bringing that up, anyway? Your idyllic early life in Iowa?”

  “Do I?”

  “Oh, it comes up every now and then. You’re not the only country mouse, you know. I grew up on a farm in Missouri.”

  She looked over at him, eliciting an annoyed gesture to keep her eyes on the road. “I never knew that about you. I thought you were a city boy.”

  “Well, I exaggerated a little. I only lived on the farm until I was nine. Then I moved in with my aunt in St. Louis.”

  “Your parents kicked you out at age nine? You must have been some little devil.”

  “My parents and my two sisters died in the fire that burned down the farmhouse. My little brother and I survived because he’d pestered me into going out looking for frogs.”

  “I’m so sorry, Shultz. I didn’t know about that.”

  A cellphone rang. Both of them reached for their phones, but it was Schultz’s that was trilling in his pocket.

  “You can’t answer your phone anyway,” he said as he flipped the phone open. “You’re driving.”

  She rolled her eyes, but at least she was facing forward at the time.

  Schultz listened, then mouthed to PJ that it was Dave on the other end.

  “Good news,” Dave said, “times two. Searching the cab records for pickups at Laclede’s Landing paid off. We got three between ten-fifteen and eleven o’clock that Saturday night. Two destinations were hotels. The third was a house in South St. Louis. The driver remembers it because it was a nice fare, but in the opposite direction of where he was hoping to end up, which was to the airport.”

  “You show him the photo?” The picture of the two sisters on the beach, the one PJ had received in the mail, had been passed around.

  “Yeah. He thinks it was her, but that picture’s thirty years out of date. She still had red hair, though.”

  “Shit, what a break.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw PJ turn to look at him. “Cut that out, you’re making me nervous.”

  “What?” Dave said.

  “Not talking to you. What else?”

  “You’re gonna love this one. Couldn’t get any fingerprints or blood off the pickup truck, but we did get hairs that had gotten trapped well enough to outlast a dunking in the river. Some were caught in an exposed bolt head in the pickup bed, having been yanked roughly out. DNA says it’s Arlan’s. More hairs were caught in the driver’s sliding headrest support, tangled and pulled loose when the person turned his head. Or her head, in this case. There were only two hairs, but it was enough for mtDNA testing. Whoever was driving had the same mother as May and June.”

  “Holy shit motherfucking Christ!”

  “Yeah, no shit. It’s all coming together.”

  “We’ll be there,” Schultz looked at his watch, “in forty-five minutes. I want to be there.”

  Schultz folded his phone. “Put the pedal to the metal, woman, we got her!”

  “What about all the careful driving business?”

  “To hell with it. We have to be in South St. Louis in forty-five minutes.”

  “Your wish is my command,” she said. She pressed on the gas pedal and sent the rear end fishtailing, then regained control, going at a higher speed.

  “I told you I was good at this,” she said. “I’ll have us there on time, unless there’s an accident on the road between here and there that slows me down. Now explain what’s going on.”

  Schultz went over everything Dave said. When he started on an explanation of mitochondrial DNA, she interrupted.

  “I know all that. It’s DNA found outside the nucleus of the cell in the mitochondria, little energy factories. A mother’s egg has a bunch of them, sperm relatively few because they’re so tiny compared to the egg. So the embryo’s mitochondria come almost entirely from a single donor, the mother. The nuclei of the embryo’s cells have two donors.”

  “I’m impressed,” Schultz said.

  “I’m not. Biology 101.”

  Damn, it took me a year to learn that.

  It was nearly
dark by the time they got to Morganford Road in South St. Louis. Snow was pelting the window with serious intent. Three inches had fallen in a short time, with no sign of letting up. Schultz had to call Dave back to get the address, something he’d neglected to ask about in the first call.

  “We just passed Bevo Mill Restaurant,” Schultz said. “Only a few more blocks.”

  PJ squinted out the window. It was hard to make out anything in the road, much less alongside it. “You mean that big thing over there that looks like it has arms?”

  “It’s a windmill,” he said, “and a restaurant. It’s hard to see the street signs. There’s the cemetery. Turn left. Left!”

  PJ turned, trusting that there was a street there. Almost immediately, she came to a roadblock and slid to a halt, the front bumper inches from a cruiser that had been parked on an angle, blocking the street.

  Someone was tapping on her window. She fumbled for the button to lower it, not having had enough time in the Focus for her fingers to go there automatically. The glass slid down, and snow rushed in, speckling her face.

  “We’re about two blocks away from the house,” Dave said. “Officer Daniels will park your car out of the way. C’mon out, we’ve been waiting.”

  A preoccupied Schultz walked away with Dave, leaving her standing alone. At least I can follow their footprints.

  She gamely took off after them. The wind was bitterly cold and insistent, finding all the chinks in her coat’s armor. She wasn’t wearing a hat or scarf, so she pulled her neck and head down, turtle style. Hunched, eyes tracking footprints, puzzling over the fact that other footprints were starting to criss-cross the two sets she was following, she collided with someone.

  It was her boss, Lieutenant Howard Wall.

  “Howard,” she said. “I’m glad I ran into you. I seem to have gotten separated from Schultz and I don’t know where all the action is.”

  “The action hasn’t started yet, and when it does, it will be the SWAT team going in. The subject’s taking a little break from murdering people, watching TV, probably having a beer.”

  “So I do what?”

  “Go in after the house is secure. Let the guys with the big guns handle knocking on the killer’s door, Doctor. You notice I’m not up there at the front of the line, either.”

  I guess when it’s safe to go in with paper booties, they’ll call me.

  PJ knew she was being illogical, but she resented not being there when April was captured. “So when does this knocking occur?”

  “We’re taking it slow. The house is under close observation, so she’s not going anywhere.”

  “How do you know she’s in there?”

  “Neighbor saw her go in before the snow started and not come out. Like those sticky cockroach traps. We got her on thermal imaging. SWAT likes to know how many people are in a house before entering, anyway. She’s in there, all right.”

  PJ’s first experience with thermal imaging hadn’t been much fun for her, except in retrospect. Schultz had brought in infrared goggles attached to a helmet, and said he could see through her clothing like X-ray vision. She kicked him out of the office. Later she found out from Anita that the thermal image included clothing and the only way he’d be seeing skin is if PJ was naked in the first place. Even then, the image was not detailed.

  “You’re saying it might be awhile until April is taken into custody,” PJ said.

  “Could be quite a while. I think the neighbor’s houses are slowly being evacuated. Don’t want any possibility of her running into one of them and starting a hostage situation. Excuse me, Doctor,” Howard turned away to talk to someone.

  Excuse me, Doctor, I have something important to do. She made a face at his back. Oh, get a grip. Let the police do what they’re trained to do. Suddenly ashamed of her pettiness, PJ’s cheeks were flushed with warmth in spite of the snow.

  Turning away from her distracted boss, PJ thought that May, June, and Jasmine should be warned to stay wherever they were until April was in custody. Not that she could say so in those exact words. She was sure Schultz wouldn’t want news of this operation leaked out before an official arrest was made. Even then, it would probably be up to the prosecuting attorney to decide when and how much the women would hear of April’s story.

  Don’t contaminate the witnesses or the process.

  She headed back to her car, to sit in the relative warmth and make the phone calls. Roaming around, she couldn’t find her car. Officer Daniels had parked it somewhere, and she didn’t know where the officer was either. Ready to stomp her feet in frustration, she spotted Anita and hurried over to her.

  “Any idea where my car is parked?”

  “Not yours specifically, but there are several over there,” she said, pointing to several cars lined up along the street outside the blockade formed by the cruiser.

  “Thanks. Call me when I can get in the house, will you? I want to study any setups April has, like photos or items collected from her victims.”

  “Will do. Stay warm until then, Boss,” Anita said. “Great work on this case, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” Anita had already turned to go. The wind swept PJ’s response away.

  She found her car by remembering that the license plate number had double-oh-seven, James Bond, in it. For cars of the approximate size and shape of hers, she wiped off the license plates with her fingers. Only when she was standing next to the Focus did she remember that she’d left her keys inside for Officer Daniels to use.

  Shit! What now?

  PJ cleared some snow from the driver’s window, cupped her hands, and peered inside. The key was still there. She searched for the door handle under the snow, found it, and opened the door. Using the scraper thoughtfully put in the car by the rental company, she cleared a little of the front window so she could see what was going on outside. Then she got in and savored the feeling of being out of the wind. Snow covered all the windows and was already beginning to cover the area she’d cleared directly in front of the steering wheel.

  Feels like being in an igloo.

  PJ took out her cellphone, and then paused to get her thoughts together and plan something to say.

  Something cold pressed against her right temple. She reached up instinctively to push it away, and her hand came into contact with the barrel of a gun.

  “Hands in your lap, Dr. Gray.” It was a woman’s voice.

  Fear stabbed PJ’s chest like an icicle. Although she’d never heard the voice before, there was no doubt in her mind that it belonged to April.

  To the woman whose murders, counted and uncounted, probably exceeded the number of fingers on both her hands.

  PJ’s hands dropped into her lap like stones into a pond. “Hello, April. I was wondering when I’d get to meet you.” She kept her voice as noncommittal as she could. One wrong word and her brain was likely to be decorating the window of her rental car.

  The rental car company will charge extra to clean that up.

  PJ squeezed the shakiness out of her voice and tried to wrap some discipline around her thoughts. The barrel of the gun made a cold circle where it was pressed against her head.

  A cold kiss. A last, cold kiss.

  She wasn’t dead yet, so April must want something from her or have something to tell her. Or something to do to me. Don’t think that.

  Unbidden and unwelcome, images of Old Hank’s barn streamed through her head. Flies in the middle of winter. Blood soaked into the grain of the old workbench. Shriveled pieces impaled on nails.

  Stop!

  “What do you want from me?” PJ said.

  “First, toss that cellphone into the back seat.”

  PJ didn’t want to let go of it. It seemed like a lifeline to the world of sanity and safety. But she lobbed the phone over her shoulder and heard it land on the seat.

  “Now,” April said, “I want you to drive out of this area. Act like nothing is wrong. Honk the horn and it’s the last thing you’ll do.”

  Snow
covered the front window like a grave blanket. “I’m going to have to clear the window,” she said. “I can’t see to drive.”

  PJ shifted toward the door, one hand on the handle. There was a sound near her ear that could only be the pistol’s hammer being cocked. She put her hand back in her lap.

  “Use your windshield wipers. I don’t want that front window too clean, anyway. It’s more private like this, don’t you think?”

  PJ switched on the windshield wipers. The wiper on the driver’s side, which had less snow to clear, did a fair job. The one on the passenger’s side tunneled under several inches of snow and dislodged some of it.

  “Pull forward and make a right turn onto Morganford. I’m taking the gun away, but remember, Dr. Gray, bullets can go right through this car’s seat and out through your chest.”

  The gun’s hammer dropped harmlessly, and April withdrew into the back seat, crouching down. PJ breathed for the first time since she’d put her hand on the door handle to get out.

  She started the car. The heater came on full blast and startled her. She adjusted it lower and turned on the headlights. The snow in the beams of her headlights blew almost horizontally, lashed by the wind.

  PJ gasped when a gloved hand thudded on her window and a flashlight followed.

  “That you, Dr. Gray? Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  PJ sat still. She couldn’t open her mouth or the scream inside would get out.

  A whisper came from the back seat. “Answer.”

  “Dr. Gray?” The person outside made a gesture with her hand: Roll down the window.

  PJ opened the window a couple of inches. “Oh, it’s you, Officer Daniels.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I saw your headlights come on and thought I’d check to see that everything was okay. Wouldn’t look good to have a car stolen from the crime scene with all these law enforcement personnel around.”

  PJ tried to force herself to laugh, but it came out as a choking sound. She patted her throat. “Catching a cold, I think.”