Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  Zane could just imagine. The male clerk behind Quickie’s counter kept drifting to this end, drooling. “How do you do the cleavage?”

  Makepeace stared down the front of his t-shirt. “Serious duct tape...so tight I’ll probably end up with stretch marks on my back. Though that’s not as uncomfortable as taping my dick and nads down tight enough to keep them from showing under the skirt. Then I add a push-up bra with top-of-the-line gel falsies.” He squeezed the breasts. “You’d swear they’re real.” He leaned toward Zane. “Check them out yourself.”

  “I’d rather hear about Monday night.”

  Makepeace sobered. “Monday night I was looking for this Lincoln SUV. The guy supposedly spends a lot of evenings at The Fifth Quarter but I didn’t find him there or at several other bars, and I didn’t spot the SUV in any of the Avenue B parking lots, so finally I gave up and went to catch Neery’s group at Five To Midnight. Getting a refill at the bar, this guy is there...Ivy League type, expensive leather blazer...and he’s looking me over, about five seconds away from putting the move on me and expecting me to fall into his bed. I thought to myself, I’ll bet he drives a Ferrari, and...I thought I’d see. So I hit on him...and of course it worked. I’ve got the act down pat. In no time Alex is inviting me back to his place and off we head toward his car.” He paused and sighed. “If I hadn’t gotten him out of the club, maybe he’d be alive.”

  “Why? What happened after you left?”

  Makepeace toyed with his cup. “He couldn’t wait for his place. He ran his hands up my skirt for an appetizer. And he was, shall we say, not pleased. What the hell was I up to, he wanted to know. He stormed away, back onto the A.”

  “You’re lucky. Some guys would have taken out their displeasure on your face.”

  Makepeace shrugged. “Nothing my repo subjects haven’t tried. Anyway, Alex took off and I followed him to apologize. He tried to duck me by going into Benton’s.” He called to the male clerk, “Darlin’, can I have another little ol’ coffee, please?”

  Benton’s. That had been one of the bars Allison checked while he was putting together the composite. “And that’s the last you saw of him?”

  “No. I went in, too, still trying to explain I never intended to make a fool of him. He gave me a little shove and told me to get the hell away from him. Suddenly this other guy jumps up from his table and grabs Alex’s jacket, calling him an asshole and saying you can’t treat women that way. A regular Sir Galahad. Alex tells him to fuck off, pulls loose, and stalks out. Sir Galahad chases after him. And that,” Makepeace said with a grimace, “is the last I saw of him. I should have gone after them. But...” His forehead furrowed. “...I never thought there’d be anything more than a scuffle on the sidewalk, and Alex wouldn’t have trouble decking a skinny dude like Sir Galahad.”

  A cautious excitement trickled through Zane. This might be a break.

  The clerk brought another coffee. Makepeace gave him a sultry smile along with payment. “You’re a doll.” After he left, Makepeace said, “Do you think Sir Galahad killed him?”

  “We don’t know until we talk to the man. He was thin. What else?”

  Makepeace frowned in concentration. “Shorter than either of us, kind of flyaway dark hair, and, oh yeah, these wild eyes. In a comic book there’d be lightning shooting out of them. He had on jeans and a sport coat with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows...like they used to do on Miami Vice?”

  Not exactly Manning, but...not unlike, either. Manning’s photo itched in Zane’s pocket, but Makepeace could be a vital witness. They needed him to pick Manning out of a lineup. “Have you ever seen the man before?”

  Makepeace shook his head.

  “What did you do then?”

  “Sat down at Sir Galahad’s table.” He smiled. “The waitress who took my order commiserated with me for a few minutes about what jerks men are. Cute chick. Monica, Margo, Mira. Something like that. If I’d been dressed as myself, I’d have tried to hit on her. But...I drank my drink and went home.”

  “Did you have any feeling Demry and Sir Galahad had met before?”

  “Met before?” Makepeace shrugged. “They didn’t call each other by name.”

  Zane closed the notebook. “I’ll need to have you come in and make a formal statement.”

  Makepeace’s face screwed tight, then he sighed. “I suppose. But does it have to be now? Maybe sometime when Allison is out of the office? I’m talking just to you.”

  Definitely not now. Zane checked his watch. He had that chopper to catch. “Give me a phone number and I’ll call you about it this afternoon.” Giving him time to put together a photo lineup, and interview this waitress.

  Makepeace gave him a relieved grin. “Sounds good. Until then...I’d really be grateful if you don’t mention this to Allison or Drew. Now, if you don’t need me any longer, I have cars to break into?”

  Hurrying back to the Law Enforcement Center, Zane wondered why Makepeace was so leery of Allison. In his place, a relative would have been the first person he went to.

  3.

  Every minute of the briefing with Chief Maldonado, the strategy session with Browning, and certainly the press conference, lasted an agonizing eternity. Allison struggled to remain focused, but this waste of time enraged her. Maldonado worried about the Chamber of Commerce’s concern how the publicity might affect tourism and the arrival of the summer people next month. The media, smelling blood faster than any of Kerr’s lawyer sharks and swarming in from area cities including Galveston and Houston to press for every gory detail, thought about readership and ratings. She saw Demry’s body...imagined his terror as a nightmare bore down on him in the moonlight...imagined the panic if the hunter remained at large. Heard the screams of her great-grandmother’s clan.

  She needed just five minutes sniffing around wherever Manning lived to know if he had a relationship with Blondie. Instead, here she sat, a prisoner of bullshit.

  The sound of her name caught her attention. “I’d like to ask Detective Goodnight if she thinks Lieutenant Garroway’s promotion is going to affect the investigation. Here we are over twenty-four hours after the crime and no arrest yet. Does losing him mean you’ve lost the old G & G magic?”

  No mistaking that snide voice...Roland Sparling from the Sentinel. How like him to insinuate that the lack of arrest must be due to her inability to handle an investigation without Garroway. Sometimes she saw Earth Now’s viewpoint and the pleasure of terrorizing at least one particular human.

  “Mr. Sparling, I was beginning to fear we wouldn’t hear from you.” Beside her, Garroway stiffened and kicked her ankle. She ignored him, smiling. “One problem with identifying psychotic individuals is that real ones aren’t considerate enough to wear goalie masks. Most of the time they can be totally unremarkable, nondescript individuals unlikely to rate a second glance from anyone. Individuals such as y--”

  “Such as anyone around us,” Garroway broke in. “But to answer your question: there’s never been any magic to Detective Goodnight and me solving cases, just hard, solid police work. That hasn’t and won’t change. It’s just complicated in this time by the random nature of the killing.”

  Allison checked her watch. Kerr was well on his way now, possibly flying into the wolf’s lair, a lamb to the slaughter. She had called volke officers in the Austin PD and warned them of the situation. They stood ready to roll on any backup request from DiChristafero. She hoped that was enough.

  4.

  “Shouldn’t take too much longer to reach Manning’s place,” Hal DiChristafero said. “The house is west of the UT campus. Too bad Goodnight couldn’t make it. I was looking forward to working with her again. A hell of a cop.” His mustache twitched. “Maybe a little spooky sometimes.”

  Zane grinned.

  They had run through exploratory talk...how long they had each worked for their departments, where Zane came from, why he should come back to Austin when he had time to sample its delights. Watching the streets pass outside D
iChristafero’s car while the detective enumerated what Austin had to offer, Zane thought this sounded like a city he would have enjoyed being turned loose to explore as a boy.

  Not that his exploration of Kansas City ever came of being turned loose. He slipped away from supervision, evading the safety precautions, steadily increased, to protect him from his “directional disability”. Almost the best part of investigating the city’s nooks and crannies, though, was “rescue” by the police, and sitting in police stations playing with handcuffs and batons, listening to war stories until the au pair girl arrived to reclaim the lost child. Eventually, of course, the officers realized he knew what he was doing. Having also noticed how much he enjoyed their company, however, they let him hang out. Because his hair made him conspicuous, the brass eventually questioned his presence, but he developed a fine sense of when to leave.

  DiChristafero drove along the edge of what had to be the university campus, and suddenly the tall tower rising on his right jogged a memory of a Police Academy lecture on emergency situations and urban terror. “That’s the sniper’s tower, isn’t it.”

  DiChristafero’s turned down a street away from the campus. “It figures. You know one thing about Austin and it’s something like that, that happened before you were ever born.”

  Deadpan, Zane said, “How much do you know about Kansas City?”

  DiChristafero cocked a brow his direction, then grinned. “Point taken.”

  A few minutes later they pulled up in front of a craftsman style bungalow. Music came from inside, a piano wandering around the same kind of quasi-tune Zane heard the club owner play at Five To Midnight. When DiChristafero had moved around the side of the house to where he could see the rear door, Zane pressed the doorbell.

  After three rings, footsteps approached the door and the shape of a head appeared beyond the curtained panes at the top of the door.

  “Lionel Manning?” Zane started to hold up his badge case.

  Before it reached the level of the windows, the door opened the width of its security chain. A hand thrust out through the opening. “Just give it to me.”

  He dug out a business card and laid it on the upturned palm.

  The hand pulled back. A few moments later the door closed, the chain rattled, then the door jerked open. The man standing there held up the card. “They’ve started using out of town fuzz as process servers?”

  The sneer in his voice raised Zane’s hackles, but the hand and demand made sense now. He gave Manning a polite smile. “I’m here on a different matter. May I come in?”

  Take off the glasses, put a sport coat over the t-shirt and jeans, pull his hair loose from that stubby ponytail...Manning might become Sir Galahad. The height and weight fit. The rimless glasses magnified his eyes. In the club’s light, Makepeace might not have noticed the glasses and interpreted magnification as wild eyes.

  Which at the moment regarded him squinted in suspicion. “Your name is Kerr?”

  Oops. The fake appointment. Zane gave him raised brows and innocent puzzlement. “Yes. Have we met before?”

  Suspicion turned to a scowl. Manning fingered the card. “What’s a cop from some town I never heard of want with me? Isn’t it illegal, operating out of your jurisdiction?”

  “Just a minute.” Zane backed to the edge of the porch, put a fingers in his mouth, and blew a piercing whistle. Moments later DiChristafero jogged around the corner. “He doesn’t think I’m legal.” So DiChristafero showed his ID and Zane repeated, “May we come in?”

  Manning held his ground in the doorway. “Not until I know what this is about.”

  “We have a couple of questions about Alexander Demry.” Zane watched closely for Manning’s reaction.

  His face froze. So did his voice. But both reflected anger rather than fear. “I settled that and I don’t talk to or about the bastard except through my lawyer!” He started to close the door.

  Zane’s foot stopped it. “He’s dead.”

  After a moment of blankness, Manning smirked. “There is a god after all.”

  Zane made another try at shaking him. “He was murdered.”

  The door banged against Zane’s foot again. “I don’t say one fucking word without my lawyer!”

  Zane raised his brows. “Why? Only suspects have rights and we haven’t arrested you, or even accused you of anything. Do you anticipate we’ll have a reason to do so?”

  Manning scowled. “You insinuated--”

  “I just said someone killed Alex Demry and we have questions for you.” Zane gave him a bland smile. “A murder makes us ask a lot of people questions. Now, we can come in, ask, then leave...or you can call your lawyer and we’ll wait around for him or all troop down to his office. And maybe it’s hours before you go back to what you were doing. Your choice. I’m paid the same either way.” He stepped away from the door.

  Manning stared hard at them, the magnified eyes hostile. After a minute he flung the door fully open and backed into the room. “Ask your fucking questions.”

  Such a sweetheart.

  The furnishings inside left no doubt about Manning’s interests. A massive recliner with drink and remote holders in the arms faced a room divider consisting of a TV screen the neighbors across the street could probably watch and a state-of-the-art sound system--CD and tape players, even a record turntable. The built-in shelves normally flanking the fireplace in a house this style had been replaced by racks of video tapes, CD’s, and LP albums. But no tape cassettes, Zane noticed. Small speakers snuggled against the ceiling around the perimeter of the room. Beyond the divider, where a dining room should be, long tables filled two walls, crammed with computer components and peripherals. He glanced up the stairs just inside the door, alert for the sound of anyone overhead.

  Manning swiveled the recliner to face a couch at the front of the room and dropped into it, leaving them to close the door. “I suppose you want to know where I was whenever?”

  Zane kept his voice friendly. “That works for me.” He walked over to turn down the volume on the CD player. DiChristafero sat on the arm of the sofa, eyes fixed on Manning. “Where were you Monday evening?”

  Manning grunted...a short, bitter sound. “That’s easy. Here.”

  “Last night, too?”

  “Last night, too.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire. Zane circled the recliner to the CD racks .

  Manning’s voice sharpened. “Get away from those!”

  DiChristafero’s brows rose a minute amount that only a fellow cop would notice.

  Zane agreed with the surprise. Even given his current legal situation, Manning reacted a bit strongly. “I’m not touching anything...just admiring the range of your collection.” It included everything from classical, opera, and new age to country western and rock of all flavors. He also had Christmas albums by what appeared to be every singer and band in the music business. “You were here all evening?”

  Manning watched him sharply. “Yes, I was here all night...updating web sites, working on building another. I need the money now, don’t I...thanks to Dickhead Demry...and I can’t go into the jazz clubs without the performers demanding a strip-search for recording devices.”

  Poor baby. “Did anyone call you during the evening...or drop by?” Zane never heard of many of these artists, but he recognized the type of CD...super cheap at supermarkets and discount stores. From the battered look of some jewel cases, Manning bought from the bottom of the bargain bins at thrift stores, too. Did he really like Christmas music that much? And how could he play these albums on his equipment, which would magnify every defect excruciatingly.

  Manning muttered, “No one called. No one came by. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Interesting that he had the jazz all arranged in alphabetical order by artist or group while the Christmas albums sat in random order...which, Zane realized, almost disguised the fact that Manning had multiple copies of many albums. While not in alphabetical order, however, each case had a number written on t
he edge in almost invisible silver ink. There seemed to be no pattern to those, either--a mixture of straight numbers, dashes, and numbers in parentheses, like a mathematical formula--except that the first group started with 1's, a second group with 2's, down to a final group with 26's.

  Manning’s voice changed to an I-just-remembered tone. “The web sites all have when they were last updated.” The lounger creaked. “Come on back to the computer and I’ll bring up the sites for you to see.”

  Suddenly he brimmed with cooperation? “That won’t don’t prove anything. It’s just the date, not the time.” The alphabet had twenty-six letters. Maybe they were in alphabetical order after all. Casually, back to Manning and one hand remaining in plain sight, Zane slid a jewel box from the Christmas group. Bracing the hinge end against his belt, he popped open the case for a peek inside. From the corner of his eye, he saw DiChristafero watching him with a deadpan intensity that telegraphed inner profanity.

  Zane returned the case to the shelf. A months’ pay said that CD had nothing to do with Christmas. Even though the disc inside carried a label matching the artist’s name on the case, it was a computer generated label, with three numeric lines below the artist’s name. It had to be some kind of code Manning used to identify the true contents. The top line looked as though it matched the sequence on the case. A second had a similar pattern. But the third was a straight number that seemed oddly familiar...2102.14. A Dewey Decimal classification? No. Too many numbers ahead of the decimal point, and Zane heard a voice in his head saying the numbers. Twenty-one oh three point one four. A recitation somehow...incomplete. Something more went with it.

  “You don’t have to stand that close to read the titles,” Manning snapped.

  Where did he know that number pattern? Twenty-one oh three point one four. Whose voice was it?