“I know, it’s weird. The world just seems so empty.” Tess couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I…did you get my message?” Chrissy inquired.
“Yeah, although I didn’t really listen to it; I was running through the house while it played.” Tess wasn’t going to let Chrissy’s dickweed husband off the hook so fast.
“I’m…well, you know Steve’s just as upset as you or me…” Chrissy tried again.
“You could have fooled me. He sounded way more interested in attacking me than in offering condolences,” Tess said.
“I’m not going to defend the way he handled that. I just wanted you to know, we’re both sorry it happened that way.”
“Let’s just let it go, okay, Chrissy? We have a lot of things to work through. There’s a funeral to plan, I have to fill out insurance papers, we have to find out if there’s a will. A lot of stuff, and Steve’s not even on my radar right now.” Tess had a mental list of the problems at hand; she declined mentioning the counterfeit bills. Why complicate things further?
“I don’t know if I can get over to the East Coast on short notice for a funeral. Let me know when it will be so I can see about flights and baby-sitters. Steve’s in a big trial and can’t leave town this month at all, and can’t really take care of the kids, and they’ve got summer school…”
Chrissy, in typical fashion, was thinking about what would be easiest for Chrissy. Tess would bet she’d be on the next flight out if travel was a requirement for her to see money out of the will—presuming there was one. Tess always felt disgusted when she dealt with her sister, and was being reminded why she never called her.
“Yeah, everyone sounds really busy. Don’t worry, Chrissy, I was planning to handle everything from this end. You can send flowers or something. No need to disrupt your or Steve’s schedule.” Tess tried to sound neutral, but she knew it sounded snippy.
“You have no idea how hard it is managing a family and taking care of a husband, Tess. Your life is different than mine…”
“Spare me. You have the life you chose. And mine is more complicated than you know.” Tess didn’t have any patience for her sister’s pity act.
“I don’t want to get into this with you. Let’s just agree to talk once you have details on the funeral.” A pause. “And the will.”
Aha. There it was. How much am I collecting? She knew it—pure self-interest driving Chrissy, as always.
“Okay, fair enough.” Tess felt like getting in a dig at her sister. “I might need to ask you for some cash to help pay for Dad’s funeral, Chrissy. I’m a bike messenger, so money’s tight.” Now Tess could watch the squirming start.
“I’ll have to talk to Steve. I know that with the remodel and the kid’s braces, we’re pretty strapped too. I’ll have to see what we can scrape up…” Chrissy hadn’t expected to have to give—the purpose of her call was to get. “I’ve got to go, Tess, the kids are up to no good. I’m sure you’ll manage. Call me when you hear something.” She couldn’t disconnect fast enough.
So Chrissy, who hadn’t worked a day in the last decade, and whose husband made six figures, was going to pawn off the entire expense of a funeral on her bike messenger sister. Did it get any lower? Not that Tess was surprised. It was completely in character.
Tess figured that the insurance would cover the costs, anyway. She’d just mentioned it to get another opportunity to watch her sis in action. The pit viper, as Tess had nicknamed her in high school. Which was actually was pejorative to snakes everywhere.
~ ~ ~
A black American sedan with government plates pulled up in front of Saul’s brownstone and two men got out, wearing sports jackets in spite of the heat, and ascended the stairs to the front stoop. They checked the little glass-paned directory, which only listed three names, and pushed number three. Waited. No response. Pushed it again, held the button longer. Nothing. The first one shrugged and started back down the stairs; the second one tried the door, more out of habit than for any other reason. It opened. He looked down at his partner.
“Larry? It’s open.”
Larry re-mounted the steps as he looked around the neighborhood. “That’s a little strange, don’t you think?”
“Takes all kinds,” his partner David said.
They climbed the stairs to the apartment and rang Saul’s buzzer. Listened for footsteps. Nothing.
“This is a big waste. This guy was always regarded as a freak when he was in Washington; that’s what my buddy told me. Paranoid. He’s probably gone off the deep end, started imagining things.” David had broken a sweat coming up the stairs and it was stifling in the hallway. “Damn, it’s hot.”
Larry tried the doorknob and it turned. They looked at each other.
“Hello? Treasury. Mr. Balinsky? You there?” Larry called down the hall after opening the door. At least it was cool inside.
“Hello?” Larry entered first, followed closely by David. They stopped when they got to the living room.
“Holy mother of God…” David said.
Saul had lost a lot of blood, and it had coagulated around his chair. The mutilation he’d suffered was obvious.
Both men had seen combat before joining Treasury, so they weren’t unaccustomed to death. Still, this was so vicious and so unexpected, even they were shocked. David dialed emergency on his cell and reported the murder, identifying himself and providing the address. The operator told him someone would be there within ten minutes and not to touch anything. David agreed, even as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves he’d brought with him for handling the bills.
Larry slipped on his own pair and they went through the flat. There was plenty of foreign currency and old U.S. banknotes, but no hundred dollar bills. Given the torture and slaying of the currency dealer, they were now taking the counterfeiting charge with deadly seriousness. They opened every drawer, looked on every shelf, in every cranny, even flipping through the pages of the books in the bookcase.
Nothing.
They heard the first squad car pull up, and Larry pulled his gloves off, returning them to his pocket. David was staring at the equipment standing in the far corner of the room. He approached the copy machine and lifted the cover. Nothing on the glass. His partner called out as he lowered it.
“David. On the cover.”
David stopped. There, stuck to the dirty lid, was a new hundred-dollar bill. He would have missed it if Larry hadn’t been staring at him as he fiddled with the machine.
“I’ll be damned.”
He carefully peeled the bill off and dropped it into a baggie, then slid it into his inside jacket pocket and removed his gloves, returning to where his partner was standing as footsteps approached.
“Police. Freeze.”
“Officers, I’m David Kim and this is Larry Torn. We’re with Treasury. We called you.”
“Let’s see some ID. Slowly, use two fingers.” The officers had guns trained on both of them, and seemed jumpy. David did as instructed and showed them his badge. They relaxed.
“What have we got here?”
“In the other room you have a mutilated corpse. Had his fingers chopped off as well as his...well, you’ll see. There’s a ton of blood, and the place looks to have been ransacked.” No point in getting the currency involved yet.
“What are you two doing here?” the cop asked.
David gestured toward the living room. “His name’s Saul Balinsky. He was ex-Treasury. We stopped by to chat, and found him like this. It’s ugly.” The story was technically true; as always, the devil was in what wasn’t said.
The two officers moved past David and Larry into the living room.
“Jesus. You weren’t kidding.” The first cop hit his transmit button, confirmed the 187, and requested backup and a crime lab van. He returned his attention to the two agents.
“Did you guys touch anything? Move anything around? We have to make sure the scene wasn’t contaminated.”
“I walked over to the
window to see if there was anything suspicious out on the street.” Larry said.
“And I went into his bedroom to confirm we were alone. Other than that it’s pristine,” David said. They’d established themselves as walking through the area, but left out the search and the discovery of the bill. That was off the table until Treasury and Secret Service figured out how to handle things—assuming the bill was actually a counterfeit, which the corpse made a compelling argument for. You didn’t see torture and murder over nothing, and if this had been a robbery the perps would have taken everything. They hadn’t.
“I wish you hadn’t walked around,” the first cop reproached them.
“Yeah. We thought about standing at the doorway, hoping the killer wasn’t still in here or making his way down the fire escape, but it seemed like a bad idea at the time…” said Larry in an “aw, shucks” voice.
The second cop stepped in. “What’s done is done. I need you to go out in the hall while we secure the scene, and wait for the detectives to get here.”
David nodded. “We know the drill.”
He was hoping it wouldn’t take long, because he really needed to talk to his supervisor and brief him, and get the bill to headquarters for analysis. They hadn’t had time to examine it yet, but if Saul’s expertise lived up to his reputation, they were holding the currency equivalent of nitroglycerine.
Unfortunately, by the time they got done with the interrogation and made it to where they could safely make a phone call without eavesdropping ears picking up the details, the offices were closed, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.
Chapter 20
Ron’s Blackberry went off while he was in the john. Not one call for the last three hours, but the second he’d taken some time to himself, the alarms sounded. What a job.
He made it back to his desk within a few minutes and called the number back.
“This is Officer Jacobs,” a deep male voice answered.
“Jacobs, this is Ron Stanford from homicide. You called me?”
“I think we have another one for you.”
“Where?”
“Down by Houston’s on Park, between 26th and 27th, in the alley around the back.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Ron cursed under his breath. He’d known it was just a matter of time. At least they found this one within a few hours, instead of several days later. That meant the decomposition would be minimal—at least compared to what they’d had to deal with on the other corpses.
He supposed there was always that to be thankful for. Maybe they could get better evidence from what he was sure were Candy’s remains.
~ ~ ~
Tess tried Duff at his home number, which he’d left on the machine. He picked up and she heard a child crying in the background.
“Hey, Duff.”
“Tess?”
“Yeah. Thanks for calling yesterday. It was rough,” Tess said.
“I figured. I heard about it from Frank. That’s messed up,” Duff said.
“It is. He was a gentle and good man. He didn’t deserve to go like that. It should have been from old age at ninety-six.” Tess swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d mostly been able to keep her mind occupied, but every time she thought about the situation she wanted to cry, throw up, and kill someone.
“I hear you. It’s the good ones that get taken from us. Any clues on who did it?”
“No. They don’t think it was a robbery. Which means it was something else.” She thought about telling Duff about the counterfeit bills. Not now. Not until she’d decided what to do about them. “They don’t know what, though.”
“You need anything, you call me. I still got my connections in the ’hood, so you think anything mean is coming your way, call. For real. My boys are bad-asses. The cops are useless.” Duff paused. “You hear about Candy?”
She shivered. “Hear what?”
“She didn’t show for her shift today.”
“Oh, my God…” Tess couldn’t finish out loud.
“There’s some bad shit happening, that’s all I know.”
“And no one’s heard from her?” Tess asked.
“Pug called and left a message. Nobody I know talked to her. I got a bad vibe about this—she’d never miss a shift without calling. First Loca, now Candy. Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t here right now.” Duff was right, it was a good thing. There weren’t that many female bike messengers; two of them disappearing meant they were being targeted.
“Maybe so. Thanks for the offer, I may take you up on it.” Tess thought about Candy, how young she was, right off the farm. “I hope I don’t have to.”
“Me too. You be good. I gotta deal with my little girl. She’s upset about something,” Duff said, and Tess could hear increasingly strident crying.
“Don’t worry, they grow out of it by the time they hit thirty,” Tess joked.
“That’s a good one. Catch you later.”
“Yeah. You too.”
~ ~ ~
Ron arrived before Amy, which was surprising, as she usually got the call first. The scene was depressingly familiar: yellow crime scene tape strung across the mouth of the alley, police cars blocking the street, a small crowd gathering to see what the fuss was about. Ron flipped out his badge and ducked under the tape, approaching the uniform in charge.
“How did they find the body?” Ron asked.
“The guys from the restaurant were hauling out the trash and smelled something funny. One of them is from Nicaragua and remembers what the bodies smelled like when the guerrillas came through. He’s the one that called the police.”
“Good nose. How’d you like to have that as your memory of home?”
“I thought the same thing,” the officer said.
“Where’s the crime van?”
“Probably stuck in traffic. Rush hour.”
“That’s right.” Just as Ron said it, the van came around the corner. Amy was in the passenger seat, her assistant driving. She rolled to a stop at the alley mouth and got out.
“Hey, Amy.”
“Ron. You look at the goods yet?” she asked.
“Nah. Figured that’s your deal, don’t want to screw up the scene. I have a feeling I know what we’ll find.”
“Candy is dandy,” Amy said, rolling her equipment cart to the dumpster.
Ron gave her twenty minutes to do her preliminary assessment, and spent the time talking to the janitor from the restaurant. He was a nice enough fellow, but had absolutely nothing to add.
Ron returned and spoke with the officers. One of them had seen the body, and it was scalped, with the eyes and breasts removed. Now Ron was sure it was connected to Red Cap—one of the employees or an ex-employee stalking the women. The second girl had probably been an opportunity target, too easy to pass up.
He was angry the interstate background checks took so long. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours was forever when you had a serial going at it with this kind of momentum. And any and all of the winners at Red Cap were flight risks; Ron couldn’t very well hold anyone with no evidence, much less an entire company. He felt in his bones that he’d interviewed the killer, and the killer had known that Ron knew it was one of them, and had still pulled off the meeting. None of the crew had bolted, so obviously the killer wasn’t worried about getting caught. It was disheartening.
Amy waved him over. She smiled, but the circumstances were such that it didn’t hold.
“It’s her, far as we can tell. Same exact deal on the cutting and the trophies, nothing new there. But the body’s in better condition, so maybe we’ll figure out how he’s killing them.”
“I suppose that would be progress,” Ron said.
“I actually have a hunch I know what he’s using. I was reading up on the toxin used on that watch store security guard, and it occurred to me there were similar classes of poisons that wouldn’t show up on a tox screen. The problem I have now is how he’s administering it. It would have to be intravenous, but
there are no punctures.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance they’re related, do you? Ron asked.
She looked at him strangely. “No, I just said the guard’s death gave me the idea. Are you okay? Getting enough sleep? You don’t seem to be processing.”
“Sorry. I’m just trying to figure out which of the Red Cap crew is the perp. My mind is elsewhere. Nothing personal,” Ron explained.
“Didn’t take it that way,” Amy countered.
“How long until you know if your theory’s correct?” he asked.
“I need to find out how he’s getting it into their systems… this time I’m going to ask for some specialized scans for giveaway trace elements in the screening. The compound I’m thinking of dissipates quickly, leaving little trace, but if you know what to look for there’s always a footprint.” She looked at him. “Always.”
“Well, we have two more nights until our busy boy goes to work again.”
Ron was distracted by a commotion at the periphery of the crowd. He recognized one of the faces: George Solomon, a reporter for the Post. It was just a matter of time until the press got involved. Ron approached him.
“George, how’s it going?” he asked warily.
“Great. I guess your presence confirms we have a serial working the city? I’ve seen some carefully buried stories over the last week about some women being killed. Wouldn’t happen to be related, would they?” George was a sharp, irritatingly persistent pro with the instincts of a vulture.
“I don’t read the papers, so I wouldn’t know.”
“A little bird told me we have a new psycho scalping young ladies. Care to comment?”
Just what he needed. A leak in the department, which wasn’t a shock. Actually, it was surprising it had taken this long to get out.
“All I can tell you is there’s an ongoing investigation into the murders of several women. The M.O. appears to be the same.” Ron spoke in a lower voice. “Off the record, I’m not going to release all the details of the killings, or we’ll be dealing with copycats trying to get famous.”
Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series Book 1) Page 15