Cutter

by Laird, Thomas

  *

  ‘The ad on the Internet has disappeared,’ Matty McGinn moaned. He looked as if someone had hit and run over his pet pooch.

  ‘You mean the Bridgeport advertisement, I assume,’ Doc told him as the trio of detectives stood behind him at his station in Computer Services.

  Matty nodded.

  ‘Ain’t your fault, kid,’ Doc commiserated. ‘We had him

  and we lost him, and it had nothing to do with you ... Maybe they’ll come back with something else. They aren’t going to stop business, young man.’

  He clapped the kid on the left shoulder and we walked out of his office.

  ‘Next?’ Doc smiled.

  ‘We go back after those three Lester the Molesters. They’re the only leads I can think of,’ I told him and Jack, out there in the hallway.

  ‘I hope your keen sense of intuition is on the money, Holmes,’ Doc told me, ‘or we’ll be watching three cheese-dicks while the real guy starts in on slicing and dicing more thirty-something white women.’

  Gibron went down to the exit and held the glass door open for Jack and me.

  ‘Why is it thirty-something white women?’ Jack asked.

  I looked him in the eyes, and then I looked over to Doc, still standing there like the doorman.

  *

  ‘Why indeed?’ Doc asked, back at my downtown cubicle.

  ‘Why not younger, or older?’ I shot back.

  ‘I don’t get it either,’ Wendkos joined in.

  Doc was staring out my window, toward the east and toward Lake Michigan.

  Jack and I sat opposite one another. I was behind the desk.

  ‘If he’s supplying organs, why not go with younger women?’ Doc asked. ‘They’d be even healthier, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t about the organs’ age. Maybe it’s just about the kind of woman he wants to cut,’ Jack suggested.

  ‘I think he may have you there, Holmes.’ Doc smiled at me.

  ‘So you’re saying you think he’s got a history with some female in her thirties. A white woman. Attractive. At least minimally. She did something that’s triggering his wanger.’

  Doc nodded at my proposal.

  ‘So if we’re right about why, how does that help us nab this prick?’ I proffered.

  ‘It doesn’t help us nab him. But it might let us know we’ve got the right collar when we catch up to him,’ Gibron told us.

  I looked over to the board with my cases written in red and black ink. The reds were outstanding homicides. The blacks were recently solved investigations. The two latest reds were Genevieve Malone and Delores Winston. I tried to visualize changing the color of the ink that listed their names, but I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t see the change happening.

  I looked over to Doc and Jack. I nodded, the three of us rose, and we headed out toward the elevators.

  *

  Dawson Repzac had a live-in lover. We found out about her from his apartment building’s owner. The owner didn’t give a shit who lived with whom, he told us, but he liked to remember the faces of the people who inhabited his properties so he knew who to look for if there was any damage done to his flats.

  The girl was the right height. We saw her coming into Repzac’s as we staked his place out on this Thursday night. She was just the way the owner described her. About five feet five, 120 pounds. Not a beauty, but pretty. Nice rear end, light in the chest, as Jack might put it.

  An hour later she waltzed out with himself, with Dawson Repzac. We watched the two of them get in the Toyota that the girl had pulled up in.

  Her name was Janice Ripley. We got that from the landlord, too. He knew all their names — even the cohabitors. He was a very careful man.

  They took off from the curb, going east. We waited a beat, and then the three of us in the Ford with Doc behind the wheel were tailing them. They were moving out of this near north neighborhood toward the Lake. We saw Lake Michigan as we approached the beach. Then Janice turned right on Lakeshore Drive and headed south. We were keeping our distance, but we had to be careful not to lose her since we were the only car behind her. We hadn’t got the juice on Repzac to pull a massive triangular pursuit, so we were alone on this one. If she lost us, we were lost.

  Doc started to become nervous when we were at 79th Street.

  ‘Shit, she’s headed for Indiana,’ he told me.

  ‘Seems like she’s got no inclination to turn off,’ I agreed.

  ‘So?’ Jack wanted to know.

  ‘We follow her a few more miles, and then we’re out of our jurisdiction anyway,’ Gibron conceded.

  When we saw her heading south, riding in the middle lane, we knew our pursuit would gain us nothing. So Doc turned off, headed west, and we figured we’d give them a free ride. We’d return to Repzac’s tomorrow and try them again.

  *

  Preggio appeared to be a loner. Except for his pool buddies. We didn’t see him with a woman.

  ‘Maybe he’s gay,’ Doc suggested as we were parked outside that same pool hall on Milwaukee Avenue.

  Jack Wendkos was downtown, checking out leads in another investigation he was involved with.

  I looked over to my partner and I saw that he was yanking me. Neither of us thought this shithead was a homosexual. He had that swagger that women love, and I couldn’t see him refusing all that feminine attention that his great physical build must have attracted.

  No, he was a ladies’ man. But we simply hadn’t seen him with female companionship yet. The investigation process involved a whole lot of endurance. Many times it was a matter of who crapped out first — the copper or the perpetrator. You couldn’t let them outwait you. That was one of my mentor’s first lessons to me when I began to work this job. Doc Gibron was my mentor.

  ‘He’s here for the evening,’ Doc groaned.

  He closed his eyes and slumped back down on the passenger’s side. He was wired to his jazz station, and I heard him click the pocket radio on.

  I was wide awake. It was my shift anyway. I didn’t like to listen to the radio on stakeout. It was a distraction. So I watched and I imagined myself with Natalie. It passed the time.

  But Doc was correct. Preggio was not going anywhere. I could see him shooting eight ball through the big picture window at the front of the poolroom. He played game after game. Pretty soon it was midnight, and our afternoon shift was over. I pulled away from the curb, but Doc never woke up until I approached the Loop.

  *

  We saw the girl at Preggio’s crib on the northwest side. He lived in a surprisingly solid middle-class neighborhood. I had pictured Preggio living at the Y downtown or somewhere like that. With transients. For a good-looking guy, he gave out these seedy vibrations, compared to Repzac and Karrios. The reason I was stuck on these three suspects was Stephanie Manske. I knew the man who approached her in that mall parking lot was our guy. I didn’t have any physical evidence to back me up, but I knew it in my guts. It was The Farmer who almost opened Stephanie up in that lot. If it hadn’t been for that mutt with the cutesy name — Longsworth — she would’ve been the third name in red. I was certain of it. These three all fitted the physical description she gave of the soaked man with the bag that she encountered, and I didn’t know how else to narrow the field down. There was virtually no physical evidence. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no semen, no hairs. Nothing. Nothing left but what I had as a feeling in the middle of me.

  The girl was too tall. She had to be five seven or five eight. And she was too busty. Too heavy up top. She had long red hair that Jack Wendkos would’ve spotted immediately.

  ‘This isn’t the one,’ Jack agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s bonking only one princess. Maybe the guy’s got a stable, for crissake.’

  ‘You didn’t expect this to be easy, did you, kid?’ Doc chirped from the back seat. ‘They’re playing Brubeck and his version of "West Side Story",’ Doc said as he put the headset back on.

  ‘Easy, no. I’d like to kick the s
hit out of those uniforms who saw the right female walk right past their noses. This should’ve been over that afternoon. She would’ve got us The Farmer, and we’d have black ink on your board, Jimmy.’

  I waved him off and watched Preggio’s lights come on. I could see the silhouettes against his sheer curtains. And then I saw it.

  ‘There’s somebody else up there,’ I told my partners.

  Doc snapped off his portable and sat up.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Three of them. And the newest member is female. And a few inches shorter than the redhead. Wouldn’t you say, Jack?’

  ‘We got a full house, Jimmy P. Karrios, Repzac, and Preggio. They’re all real popular with the ladies.’

  Then the light in the living room upstairs was extinguished, and the three shadows cast on the curtains disappeared.

  *

  We had a pair of detectives around the clock on Preggio’s place. The coppers saw the smaller female emerge from the apartment building at 8.26 a.m., the report read. I was in my office at noon, going over that document. They scoped the girl’s license plates and followed her home. She was Caroline Keady, and she lived in a very affluent location — Lake Forest. Apparently with her parents. The old man was a corporate lawyer. Mommy was an heiress in her own right.

  ‘Caroline’s got shitty taste in men,’ Doc said after he reviewed what I had been reading. Today was Jack’s day off.

  ‘She’s doing a sandwich with Preggio and the redhead. Rich bitch from the ritziest neighborhood in the city, and she’s slumming with a molester and some whore,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Juicy, ain’t it?’

  But Doc was not smiling.

  ‘We’re stretching this out on your intuition, Jimmy. How far does all this extend?’

  ‘I’m open for suggestions.’

  ‘Don’t read me wrong. I’m just saying we might want to leave some options open.’

  ‘Like what, Doc? I’m all ears.’

  ‘Like working with that Fibbie profiler the Captain mentioned. I like your gut feelings, guinea, but I think we ought to work this thing with more lines in the water.’

  ‘Okay. So we talk to the profiler. That’s good with me.’

  ‘You’re not pissed off, are you, dago?’

  ‘No ... But I still think we’ve got the fucking shark in the tank. I still think our boy’s in this group of three.’

  ‘You’re probably right. But let’s make this shrink work for a living. Okay?’

  I nodded. Then he told me he was buying at Garvin’s. Brats and beer for everybody. It was impossible to stay angry at this would-be professor. He knew our case against my three guys was non-existent, and he was being as gentle as he could with me. I was wondering if I was getting senile at fifty. Or maybe it was the upcoming wedding next spring. Or perhaps I was too anxious about Natalie being a decoy for The Farmer. I didn’t know which, and maybe it was all.

  ‘We’re gonna find out that you were right on the money, but right now, fuck it. Man has to eat,’

  He threw me my jacket and I flopped the three files onto the top of my desk.

  Chapter Thirteen

  So,we have close calls.The police have found us,probably through the Internet,and they almost catch her at Brookfield Zoo.She was prepared to die if they had caught her.She tells me that,over and over.She is prepared to die for me,for us.

  She wants to know why I torture her in bed.Why I do the little things I do.Who is it that hurt me so badly that I have all this bile saved up in me that gets aimed at her?She says she wants to know.Then I have to strike her.I slap her across the mouth and I plunge into her,and she doesn’t know which reaction hits her first—the pain or the pleasure.I try to explain to her that what I do is intentional,that it merely fuels her desire for me.Not knowing which is coming.Pain or pleasure.They are both unique experiences that I want to show her.She cannot quite understand that the awareness of one of them simply heightens the expectations in the other.I try to explain to her that pleasure and pain are part of the general dichotomy.She complains that she doesn’t know what I’m talking about,but when I explain what ‘twoness’ means,she seems to grasp some of it.That is what I find exciting about her.Not her grapesized nipples,not the mound of black pubic hair,nor the flatness of her ripe white belly.Not the melon-shaped breasts nor the lovely handfuls of buttocks nor the pouty,full lips.Nothing about her physically is all that extraordinary.It is her willingness to subjugate herself to my desires.It is her ability to try and learn what it is I’m attempting to teach her.

  I lunge at her and her eyes widen.I lunge again and again and she cries out.It is all right for her to be noisy.We have another place apart from people.We’re miles from the city.Sixty miles west of Chicago,just outside the bounds of a state university.We’re close enough to be inside the city limits in an hour,and we’re far enough away for the privacy we need.We live,sometimes,in this old farmhouse.I bought the ten acres that surround the place with the money I’d saved in the military.My war was good for something,after all.

  She cries out again and so I stab at her deeply and she comes.She comes hard.I can tell by the way she lifts us both off the mattress.She was a gymnast in high school.She has abnormally powerful thighs.When she wraps them about my waist,sometimes she can cut off my air.Until I slap her.Which sometimes only encourages her to tighten her legs about me.I forget the things that turn up her heat,occasionally.Pleasure and pain.Sometimes they are interchangeable.

  We’ve tried bondage.We’ve tried cutting off her air at the moment of orgasm.But she doesn’t enjoy being choked as much as I’d hoped.

  She is a useful woman.I owe her a great deal in regard to my business.Her connections have made this venture get off the ground.The people she knows.The places she took me after we first met.Some of her qualities are indeed priceless.There is also her knowledge of computers.If it hadn’t been for her,we wouldn’t have the immediate access to the marketplace that we have.

  Or had.Now we have to change our advertisements.Well have to recode our ads because it’s obvious the police have invaded our cyberspace.

  She said she felt them as they closed in on her.She couldn’t see them at first because they gave her a great deal of space between her and the cop in the green jacket.But then she felt them moving in.And just as they were about to nab her,she hit the fence.Luckily the animals on the other side were giraffes.If they had been more aggressive predators,she would’ve been killed.And perhaps the two police who scaled the fence would’ve gone down with her.

  The thought of her being ravaged heats me up.I’m hard again,even before I’ve had time to withdraw.I start at her again.We’re heaving on top of the bed.Her hands are still tied to the bedposts,but she’s raised her legs toward the ceiling.I don’t know how she sustains her position.Perhaps it’s the gymnast in her.

  I’m pummeling her,but she doesn’t cry out.There is a determined look on her face.It’s as if she’s refusing to acknowledge the beating I’m giving her.Finally I can withstand her no longer,and it’s finished.

  I flop on her,exhausted,and she screams loudly.It’s as if she’s defeated me in some kind of contest.

  I raise myself above her and see that she’s smiling,so I kneel and then I slap her across the mouth.There’s a trace of blood at the corner of her lips.She probes the wound with her tongue and tastes the sticky,salty,sweaty fluid at her mouth.Then she smiles up at me again.

  I have to hurt her.She’s begging me to do it.So I reach down to her and do it,this time,with my hands.I begin plucking hairs.She will not let the sounds come out of her mouth,but I can see the silent shrieks in her eyes each time I pluck a short,kinky strand.

  It all serves to inflame me once more.We’re back as we were,and in seconds she is lifting me off the bed,as if she were a magician.We’re levitating above the mattress,and I look over at her left thigh.It is inflated and huge,and the sweat glazes her leg as well as her torso and face.I feel like I’m going to slide off her.But we are locked together on account of her e
normous female strength,and so I stay in place until she is finished.And this time when the end arrives,I have no energy left to begin again on her.We lie on the soaked sheets,both of us gasping for oxygen.She writhes in pleasure next to me,teasing me,but I’m spent.I undo her bonds,and her arms flop down to her sides.Then she takes hold of me with her hand and,before I can protest,she has her hair and head over my middle.

  Suddenly she looks up at me and smiles,but all I can see is her teeth.Her white and perfect teeth.And I don’t know whether it’s a smile or a grimace.And then she goes back down and resumes working on me.

  I want to see if she’ll cry out if I yank a few strands of her luxurious hair,but I’m too tired.So I lie back and let her go on and on with it,until she’s had enough.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We had backed off from Karrios. We had spent a lot of time on Repzac and Preggio, so we’d let the first guy slide. Doc and Jack and I decided to go back to our original suspect.

  We went to his apartment, but all we met up with was the girlfriend who’d given him the alibi for the nights in question. Her name was Ellen Jacoby, and as soon as I saw her, I knew I’d seen her somewhere before.

  ‘Do I know you, Ms Jacoby?’ I asked her as the three of us sat on the sofa inside their apartment.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She smiled.

  ‘You look very familiar to me, somehow,’ I continued.

  She smiled again, and I could see what Karrios saw in her. There was a flame underneath her skin. It was the kind of sex that permeates some women who didn’t have all that cosmetic flare to operate with. She was a pretty woman, but not a beautiful one. I’d say she was an Italian, except for the name, Jacoby.

  I showed her the three dates of the two killings and the near encounter, and she came up with the same scenario that she had when we’d interviewed her directly after talking with her boyfriend.

  She had her gaze fixed on me, and it was almost embarrassing. She was ignoring Doc and Jack. Usually when the three of us did any talking with suspects, females couldn’t keep their eyes off Wendkos. He was the face-man of the three of us. But she was concentrating on me, and I was wondering if she had remembered where it was the two of us had seen each other. I was very good with faces, but not so good with names. I had to work at memorizing people’s names, which was a flaw in a homicide investigator. It was my most glaring weakness, so I had to work at it the hardest and the longest.