by John Lutz
Paula felt slightly ill.
“A surgeon?” Bickerstaff asked.
“Not likely,” she said, “according to the ME. The murder knife isn’t surgical, and a doctor would probably cut rather than stab.”
“So?” Bickerstaff raised his bushy eyebrows as he delicately picked up a last crumb of bacon from his plate and popped it into his mouth. Paula noticed that though it was cool in the diner, there were still dark crescents of perspiration beneath the arms of his wrinkled blue shirt.
“He’s killed plenty of times before,” Paula said. “Not only these three times. He must have, in order to learn precisely how, where, and the number of times to stab his victims to inflict pain without causing immediate death.”
“Or even unconsciousness,” Horn said, smiling at Paula.
She was pleased by his approval but at the same time irritated. Horn had known where she was going and was there ahead of her, waiting for her to catch up. He must have thought of the likelihood of previous victims and already talked to the ME about it.
“I called the ME from home this morning,” he said, knowing what she must be thinking.
“What about the partial bare footprint?” Bickerstaff said. “What the hell is that all about?”
“Our barefoot boy didn’t get undressed to prevent himself from getting bloody,” Horn said. “In all but the Sally Bridge murder, the sheets wrapped around the victims absorbed most of the bleeding and prevented him from becoming bloodstained. At least bloodstained enough that it was worth the risk to take extra time undressing, washing up afterward, and dressing. And there was no sign of blood in the bathroom or kitchen drains.”
While they were thinking about that, Horn finished his coffee and set the cup down slowly but firmly in its saucer so it wouldn’t clink. If the cup was going to be picked up again soon, it wouldn’t be by him.
“So what’re our marching orders for the day?” Bickerstaff asked.
“You and Paula see if you can find some cold cases in the area during the past three or four years that are similar to the three murders we’ve got.”
“Murders when he was learning,” Paula said. “Perfecting his act.”
Horn nodded. “And it wouldn’t hurt to check some other cities. Our killer might be a transient.”
He slid his bulk out of the booth and stood up straight, a big man with dark slacks, white shirt with tie, and suspenders. The shirt had long sleeves, but they were neatly rolled up to about six inches above his wrists. Paula thought he looked like an ominous blackjack dealer and wondered if he always dressed that way.
“What I’m going to do today is consult some experts,” he said.
“Medical experts?” Bickerstaff asked. “No,” Horn said, “I’ll be looking for somebody who climbs mountains.”
They’d just stepped outside the cool diner into the bright, warm morning, when Horn’s cell phone chirped.
He fished it from his pants pocket and stepped a few feet away. Paula could see his face while he listened to whoever was on the other end of the connection, the phone made miniature in his huge hand. His expression might as well have been sculpted in marble. The call could be his wife reminding him to pick up some salami on the way home tonight, or it might be news of catastrophe. You couldn’t know which by studying Horn’s features.
It wasn’t the salami.
He slid the phone back in his pocket and returned to where Paula and Bickerstaff stood in the shade of the diner’s rust-colored awning.
“Another killing,” he said, and gave them a West Side address. “We’ll take your car. Use the siren so we arrive before the crime scene gets as cold as the victim.”
9
When they approached the address of the reported homicide, Paula saw only one police car parked directly in front of the building. No unmarkeds of a make and model like hers and Bickerstaff’s. No ambulance or other emergency vehicles. Only a hint of the horror above.
“We got the call early,” Horn said from the backseat. “So we can examine everything fresh and unedited.”
Paula was impressed. She had to admit it was nice working with someone with pull. Bickerstaff, quiet beside her, simply stared straight ahead. “There,” he said, pointing to a parking slot that turned out to be a loading zone featuring a homemade sign saying don’t even think of parking here.
Paula parked there anyway and pulled down the visor to display the NYPD placard. Inanely, she wished she had a sign saying don’t even think of towing this car.
When they were out of the car, Horn led the way. He was swinging his long arms, head thrust forward on his bull shoulders. He seemed eager.
An overweight uniformed cop stood near the building entrance and straightened his posture when he saw them approach. Horn flashed his shield in the way of a man who’d made the motion thousands of times.
“Nineteenth floor, sir,” the cop said to Horn. “Apartment 195.”
“Anybody up there but the victim?”
“My partner Eb guarding the door. We got a ten-three when we got the call, then phoned in and were instructed to secure the scene and wait for you.”
Horn nodded and pushed inside, holding the door open for Paula and Bickerstaff. There was no doorman. Except for the uniform outside, nothing in the lobby seemed out of the ordinary. The elevator door opened and two women got out jabbering to each other about someone’s wedding. Not a word about anyone’s death.
The three detectives made it into the elevator before the door slid shut, and Paula punched the button for nineteen.
When the door glided open they saw Eb halfway down the hall. He was young and tall and looked as if he’d spent most of his brief life lifting weights. When he pushed away from leaning against the wall, Paula noticed his uniform appeared to be tailored.
When Horn showed his shield, Eb said, “Door’s unlocked, sir. Vic’s name’s Patricia Redmond. When she didn’t show for work this morning, her employer called and had the super check on her. He found her. . like she is.” An expression of distaste, maybe fear, crossed his handsome features, which appeared to be unmarked by previous experience. “My partner carl and I checked to make sure she was dead, like we were instructed when we phoned in to the dispatcher. Then we secured the area and kept a low profile till you guys showed.”
Paula wasn’t sure a low profile was a six-foot-two uniformed cop stationed in an apartment hall, but it seemed to have worked. An elderly woman emerged from an apartment down the hall, did a double take when she saw the uniform and knot of people near Patricia Redmond’s door, then got in the elevator and descended. Seemed to have worked so far, anyway.
The door was cracked open half an inch. Horn used a knuckle to ease it open all the way. He instructed Eb to stay on guard in the hall, then led the way into the apartment.
Immediately, Paula caught the faint but unmistakable scent of fresh blood and sensed the unearthly stillness that gathered like coagulated time in the wake of violent death. She and Bickerstaff looked at each other, then at the broad back of Horn moving almost grudgingly toward the bedroom. She knew both men felt as she did, that they were unwilling trespassers in a place made terrible and sacred by the killer.
Horn had been to this place many times following the footsteps of numerous killers. While he moved slowly, he didn’t hesitate as he entered the bedroom, leaving enough space for the other two detectives to come in behind him without inadvertently touching anything.
Paula heard her own involuntary gasp as she saw Patricia Redmond beyond Horn’s left shoulder. Bickerstaff swallowed, phlegm cracking in his throat. Horn, still facing away from them, held out a big hand and motioned for them to stand still.
To his credit, Paula thought, he didn’t voice what he was thinking: that they should be careful here and not disturb any evidence. A virgin crime scene had to be treated with respect.
Patricia Redmond was lying on her back in the center of her double bed, shrouded in tightly wrapped blood-soaked sheets. Even the bottom sheet, with elasticized
corners, had been pulled up from the mattress and used to shroud her. She must not have been able to move anything but her head, fingers, and toes. The toes of her left foot, nails enameled a brilliant red, extended beyond the edge of the taut sheets, tensed and curled like talons. At the other end of the shrouded form was her head. Her shoulder-length dark hair was wild, suggesting she’d thrashed her head around violently as she’d suffered. The white of the one eye visible beneath the tumble of hair could be seen all the way around the pupil, as if she’d taken a terrified peek into the void an instant before death. Her mouth was agape, forming a round depression in the gray duct tape that covered it. To Paula, nothing had ever looked more silent. Where are the screams she tried to form? What happened to the stillborn screams of these women?
“Pattie,” Bickerstaff said, breaking Paula’s mood.
“What?” Horn asked.
“I bet the people she knew called her Pattie. She was probably a pretty thing.” Bickerstaff shook his head. “Fuckin’ shame!”
“The victim was stabbed repeatedly,” Horn said, slipping into cop talk to put a protective shell around his emotions and to signal Bickerstaff and Paula to do the same.
“I’ll bet somewhere around thirty-seven times,” Paula said, noting the many slits in the bloody sheets. Each cut must have seemed like a world of pain in suspended time. Paula hoped her stomach, her emotions, were going to hold up here.
Careful not to tread on any impressions on the throw rug, Horn moved across the bare wood floor to the open window. He peered up beneath the shade. “The glass has been cut so he could open the window and climb in. Looks like soap or candle wax on the tracks to smooth the way and mute the sound.”
“Our guy,” Paula said. Not that there’d been some doubt.
Horn led them back into the living room. Strangely, it was like leaving a church.
“We’ll let the ME and techs go over the place,” he said, “see what they come up with before we conduct a thorough search. Assign some uniforms to question neighbors in this building, and don’t forget canvassing adjacent buildings. Then you two interview the best possibilities in a second pass and compare their stories with the first versions.”
Bickerstaff was staring down at an angle through the living room window. “Cavalry’s here. Ambulance, two squad cars, and the ME.”
Paula walked over and looked down at the small shiny vehicles parked at careless angles in front of the building, like toys hurriedly shoved there by a child. Tiny, foreshortened human figures were scurrying toward the entrance. “They’re on the way up.”
“Fine,” Horn said. “We’re done here, for the moment, anyway.”
“Let’s go up to the roof,” Bickerstaff said. “Maybe he dropped his wallet.”
It’s happened before, Paula mused, as they exited Pattie Redmond’s apartment and made their way toward the elevator.
Not this time, though.
But the roof gave them what they expected to find. There were scuff marks in the heat-softened, graveled tar directly above the victim’s window. The tile-capped parapet was marked by what might have been a rope rubbing on it. And there, low on the parapet, was a deep and freshly forged hole where a piton might have been driven into the mortar.
“He was here, all right,” Horn said.
“Notice the pigeon droppings here have been stepped in,” Paula said. Further evidence.
Horn looked over at her approvingly, but Bickerstaff said, “Sherlock Homing pigeon.”
The roof of the building next door was only about ten feet higher than the one on which they stood, and only about ten feet away, sharing what amounted to an air shaft. At that edge of the roof they found more scuff marks, and, in farther, a vent pipe that was marked by what might have been some kind of grappling hook that secured a line.
Horn smiled grimly. “We certainly have his MO nailed.”
“Now all we have to do is nail the bastard himself,” Paula said, surprising herself with the vehemence of her words. Horn didn’t seem to notice, which didn’t fool Paula. Bickerstaff was grinning at her.
The three detectives spent another ten minutes on the roof, carefully searching for anything of possible use.
All they came up with were a tangle of old antenna wire and a crumpled chewing gum wrapper.
“Juicy Fruit,” Bickerstaff said, staring at the smoothed-out wrapper in his hand.
“The sun’s faded the lettering,” Horn said, “and the antenn wire’s rusty. This stuff ‘s been here awhile and doesn’t help us.”
Bickerstaff nodded, then wadded and flipped the gum wrapper away.
They went back through the service door and into the building. As they were descending in the elevator, it stopped at nineteen to pick up Eb, the uniform. He nodded to them, and when he stepped in, Paula looked beyond his bulk and got a glimpse of the techs and emergency personnel milling around in the hall. The ME was there, too. Harry Potter again.
He caught sight of Paula and smiled and winked at her as the elevator door slid shut. There was no reason death shouldn’t be a little bit fun.
10
Pattie Redmond’s fellow clerk at Styles and Smiles wasn’t a guy who minded people seeing him cry. His name was Herb, and dressed in black as he was, he looked too thin to be alive as he stood near a rack of swimwear and unabashedly let tears track down his sallow cheeks.
“She was a sweetheart,” he said of Pattie Redmond between sobs.
“They say the good die young,” Bickerstaff said.
Paula rolled her eyes. She felt sorry for Herb and wished Bickerstaff would keep his sarcastic platitudes to himself.
“Ain’t it the fucking truth!” Herb said, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief.
“Did she have any-”
“Nobody in their right mind could help loving Pattie,” Herb interrupted her.
“We don’t think whoever killed her was in his right mind,” Bickerstaff said. “You got any idea who he might be?”
Herb shook his head, sniffed, and folded and replaced his handkerchief in the pocket of his black silk shirt. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, gaining control of himself but not completely or permanently. He stood there as if he were balancing on a wire.
“She confide in you much?” Paula asked.
“Quite a bit.” Sniff. “We were friends.”
“Just friends?”
Bickerstaff gave Paula an incredulous glance.
“You can count on it,” Herb said. Sniff, sniff. Out came the handkerchief again. He dabbed at the tip of his nose while holding his free hand out away from his body as if to provide a counterweight and keep from tilting.
“So she might talk to you about the men she dated?” Bickerstaff asked.
“Now and then. She wasn’t the sort to dish.”
Bickerstaff looked puzzled. “Dis?”
“Dish. The dirt.”
“Ah!”
“She was kinda excited about this guy she met last week. Gary something. According to Pattie, they met some place in the Village. I’m not sure exactly where.”
“So you can’t think of Gary’s last name, and you don’t remember where she said they met.”
“She never told me Gary’s last name. The place in the Village she did tell me. Sounded something like a stream or river, but not those.”
“Like Mississippi or something?”
“No, no.”
“Creek?” Paula ventured.
“Brook!” Herb almost shouted. “Brook’s Crooks. It’s near McDougal, I think.”
“I know where it is,” Bickerstaff said. To Paula: “It’s a respectable enough place, hangout for yuppies who work nearby on Avenue of the Americas. They go there and pick each other up, try to mesh their pathetic lives.”
Herb gazed at Bickerstaff with wounded eyes. “God! Such a cynic!”
“You’ve just seen the surface,” Paula said.
“I doubt if it was Gary,” Herb said, “considering how kind and gentle Patti
e said he was.”
Bickerstaff simply looked at him, and Herb turned away.
About ten years before, on the Upper East Side, some people were killed with an ice ax of the sort mountain climbers used. Back then the NYPD had called on a mountain climber of note named Royce Sayles to identify the weapon, then to help the police locate the killer. Sayles had then testified in court and helped to gain a conviction. The murderer turned out to be an attorney who was well-known for championing controversial liberal causes. The Times was convinced the police arrested the wrong man. Horn had thought they might be right, but there hadn’t been another ice ax murder on the East Side.
It wasn’t difficult for Horn to locate Sayles. He lived in the same apartment near Riverside Drive and, in fact, was now married to the young widow of one of the ice ax victims. Lucky in love and rent stabilization, Horn thought, as he parked his low-mileage, ten-year-old Chrysler in front of an attractive apartment building with a white stone facade and fake Doric columns flanking the entrance.
A uniformed doorman held the outer lobby door open for Horn and called up to tell Sayles he’d arrived, then directed Horn to the elevators. Directions were needed; the elevators were around the corner in the main lobby and had doors of such convincing faux marble that they blended perfectly with the red-veined marble wall. Only a single brass button gave them away.
Horn had called ahead and Sayles was expecting him. When Horn stepped out of the elevator on the tenth floor, the mountaineer was standing across the hall holding the apartment door wide open in welcome.
Sayles was average size and still looked fit, though Horn remembered him with dark hair and now it was gray. His blue eyes were the same, brittle bright with quiet daring and surrounded by heavily seamed tan flesh. He was wearing pleated gray slacks, a pale blue-on-blue striped dress shirt open at the collar, and a maroon ascot with white polka dots. He looked good in the outfit. Horn wondered how he got by with it, thinking maybe it was the thirty-two-inch waist on a man who was probably in his sixties.
The apartment had tall windows and was bright, what decorators would call airy. On both sides of the windows were bookcases stuffed with volumes of every size and stacks of dog-eared magazines that appeared to have been pored over. The top magazine on one of the stacks was The Economist. The furniture was traditional and expensive. The walls were white, and on one of them was a vast framed landscape oil of a mountain range. There were framed black-and-white photographs of mountains on the other walls. A tall, black-laquered desk that looked to be of Chinese origin was the only incongruous thing in the room.