Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  Then abruptly he knew. The whole phrase rang in his head in the voices of Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. Stardate twenty-one oh three point one four. Zane grinned to himself. Manning wrote his date as a stardate, thinking no one would decipher it. Along with identifying the date, however, came the realization of a reason for Manning’s anxiety about the CD’s. Which might exonerate him in Demry’s death. If it were possible to see just one more CD...maybe one of those lying in a stack at the end of the section...perhaps albums not yet filed?

  Manning’s voice rose. “Didn’t you hear me? Get away! You can’t do that without a warrant!”

  “Huh?” Zane glanced over as if he just heard. “I don’t need a warrant for looking at anything in plain sight and I told you, I’m just–Jesus! Even them?” He plucked off the top case...took a quick look at the title and turned toward DiChristafero with a laugh. “I never dreamed Selina and the Yard Dogs cut a Christmas album.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Manning sprang toward him, hands like claws. “You give me that! You can’t touch--”

  But Zane had loosened the case lid and as Manning grabbed, the case jumped out of both their hands and fell apart on the floor. Zane made sure he swooped down for it first. The CD lay exposed for anyone to see...labeled with a computer-generated label that had Selina’s name and three rows of numbers, including a stardate: 2103.23.

  Manning grabbed for it. “You did that deliberately! I’ll sue you, you fucking bastard! I’ll have you up on charges! I’ll have your fucking badge!”

  Zane held the case above Manning’s reach, increasingly confident he could not have been Sir Galahad. Infuriated as he was, Manning had become no more physical than trying to recover the CD. A weenie. Threats were his style, or maybe something spiteful like spitting in your soup behind your back. Or stealing your music.

  “Call your lawyer. Does he know you’re still recording performances?”

  Manning froze. DiChristafero relaxed, his eyes brightening with interest.

  “You don’t know shit what you’re talking about.” Manning’s tone sneered, but it sounded forced. “I’ve already told you they check me for recording equipment before they let me into the clubs.”

  “Maybe you disguise yourself. But I know you’re there taping.” Police work offered a few very sweet moments. Zane spoke slowly to draw out this one. “I grew up with Star Trek, too.” He waved the case. “This CD is dated March twenty-third of this year. I assume that’s when you recorded the performance.”

  Manning snatched at the CD, voice shrill. “Get out! I’m not talking to you any more!”

  Zane let him have it. An A-One asshole wearing industrial grade blinkers. Some people he really regretted having to help. “You’re fucking stupid, you know that, Manning?”

  Fury twisted Manning’s face. “I don’t have to take--”

  “Do you prefer dying to admitting you were making another unauthorized recording Monday night?”

  Manning went dead still.

  Well, good. That got his attention. “Try to focus on what’s at stake here, okay? I don’t enforce copyright law. My job is finding Alex Demry’s killer...for which you are right now making yourself our number one suspect, based on...” Zane ticked off the points on his fingers. “...your beef with Demry, the fact you threatened him via e-mail, the fact that my cop nose tells me you’re lying about being home Monday night, and a witness saw someone of your description with the victim not long before he died. If you were to be arrested and tried, a crime this vicious would be prosecuted as capital murder. And in Texas we execute...have you noticed?”

  Manning went white. “The witness didn’t see me! I wasn’t there! I didn’t kill him! I don’t know anything about it! I was at Jazz until it closed.”

  Zane pulled out his notebook. “Can anyone verify that?”

  Manning forced words out between bloodless lips. “I have the tape. There was a surprise musician, a guy named Rusty Joe Simms who sat in on piano with the band for the evening. Cool Blue Gila plays just Monday nights and Rusty Joe hasn’t been there before. You can ask people at the club. They’ll tell you!”

  Zane believed him, but said, “Play the tape for me.”

  Manning brought several tape cassettes from a closet under the stairs. “These are the ones.”

  They sampled all the tapes, playing a bit then fast-forwarding and listening to another section long enough to confirm the same band played. Zane judged there was roughly four hours of tape.

  “Would one of your friends kill for you?”

  Manning paled again. “That’s ridiculous. And I didn’t put out a contract! I told you, I don’t know anything about him being killed!”

  “Maybe you did a Henry the Second?”

  Both DiChristafero and Manning blinked. “What?”

  “You remember from history class? He made his best friend, Thomas á Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking then he’d have control of the clergy, but when Becket realized that the Church gave him more power than the King had, he started screwing Henry over. So one night Henry when happened to grumble that someone ought to do something about Becket...four knights thought he meant it as a command and killed Becket.”

  Manning licked his lips. “I–I’m sure I didn’t say anything like that.”

  “Are any of your friends cross-dressers?”

  This time Manning’s jaw dropped. “I...don’t know.”

  “How about giving us a list of addresses?”

  Manning came back from the computer room with a list of e-mail addresses...but looked confused when Zane asked for telephone numbers and street addresses. “I don’t know those. We get together online.”

  “You mean you’ve never met any of these people?” DiChristafero said. “You don’t have any real friends?”

  Manning scowled. “These are real friends. We get together in our chat room and talk. I know what they look like. We have cameras on our computers.”

  But they could live down the street or across the world, and one could be a raving psychotic without Manning having a clue. Zane put the e-mail list in his pocket to check out.

  Meanwhile, he went out to the car for the mini evidence kit and roll of paper he had brought along.

  Manning eyed it. “What’s that?”

  Zane pulled the paper out of its mailing tube case and unrolled the evidence kit to reach the ink pad. “In order to completely eliminate you as a suspect, I want to take your footprints and hair and saliva samples. Unless you object?”

  Manning did not.

  5.

  Hugh Bass stood at the table inside the office doorway, rooting around in the mail tub on it. As Allison came in, he picked up a clasp envelope. “This has your name on it.”

  Written by the secretary down in morgue, who had, as usual, addressed it: Goodnite, Cms Agst Prs. Probably the autopsy report on Demry. She bent up the clasp prongs and started pulling out the report.

  “There’s also message on your desk,” Bass said. “A woman named Fiona. She’d tried your cell phone but you didn’t seem to have it on.”

  Church! Allison hurried to snatch up the note lying under one corner of her phone. Call Fiona C. ASAP, it said, and gave Church’s cell phone number.

  Allison punched in the number. “It’s Goodnight,” she said as Church answered.

  “It’s my office,” Church said...not into the phone. “If you’ll excuse me for just a minute.” The sound of movement came through, then Church’s voice, low, “I’m in Houston at that assessment meeting I mentioned yesterday, so this has to be short. I may have seen your hunter last night.”

  The words felt like a shot of electric current. “Where?”

  “Outside that big liquor store in Mercado Square.”

  Rick’s Wines and Sprits.

  “At one forty-five I left for your local Glendower-Morse branch. There was a volke female putting a handcuffed human male into a car. She wasn’t in uniform and it wasn’t a police car so I assumed she w
as a plainclothes officer and didn’t think anything more about it.”

  Of course not. “But now?”

  “Riding up in the elevator here, several guys boarded discussing cars...German engineering versus Italian styling. About the fifteenth floor I suddenly thought about last night and realized the car I’d seen the so-called officer using was a Mercedes sedan.”

  Current hit Allison again.

  “Since I assume your department fleet doesn’t included Mercedes, that struck me as suspicious.”

  The officer might have transported the prisoner in his own car for some reason, though that seemed unlikely. She would ask around about arrests made last night anyway.

  There might be other explanations for what Church saw. A game with a human lover, maybe...playing out a power and bondage fantasy. But the icy knots in her gut did not believe that. They said she had another slaughtered human out there somewhere.

  “Goodnight.” Bass touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She pulled her face under control. “It’s just cramps...that time of the month.”

  As she anticipated, he backed away.

  Allison sat down and lowered her voice. “Did you see the tag number?”

  “Sorry. The vehicle was light-colored... silver, grey, maybe pale blue. He had a body-builder look to his shoulders and arms. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless blouse and her hair loose. It reached below her shoulders. I’m sorry I can’t be more help. I’ve got to go.” Church paused. “Good luck.”

  Allison disconnected swearing silently. Missed her! She wanted to slam a fist on her desk. Instead she tore Church’s message into a pile of confetti on the peninsula. She had been so close...just up the A...and at Rick’s herself less than half an hour later, for the keg. If only Blondie had gone inside, so her scent would have been there at the door...though by the time Allison realized Blondie had been there, she would have been already too late to save the body builder.

  She called Kerr’s cell phone. “How is it going?”

  He described his interview with Manning. “So I think he’s out of it, and much as I hate to, I believe him when he says he doesn’t know anything about the murder. There’s still a chance he has some nutso friend who did it without his knowledge. Manning swears he doesn’t know anyone like that and never voiced a wish that Demry were dead, but I’m betting he complained plenty in his chat room and to anyone else who would listen. We’re on our way to talk to the PI and see what she knows about who that anyone else might be, then check Manning’s alibi at the jazz club.”

  What about girlfriends, Allison wanted to ask...but without suggesting to Kerr that a girlfriend herself committed the murder. “Does Manning have a girlfriend who might have arranged for Blondie to kill Demry?” When silence met her question, she prompted: “Kerr?”

  “Ah...not that we know of.”

  She hung up frowning. Manning out of it...and no apparent girlfriend. She could quit worrying about Kerr meeting Blondie in Austin. But–she swept the confetti off her desk and watched the fragments drift into her wastebasket, taking her stomach with them–they had a rogue...definitely a rogue. With the moon nearing full. The image of Demry’s body floated in front of her, accompanied by screams of burning volke.

  She kicked the wastebasket under the peninsula and headed for the door. If the Mercedes belonged to Mr. Atlas and Blondie caught him coming out of Rick’s, maybe she could learn his identity and tag number. Locate the vehicle and they had a chance at finding prints and trace evidence. Mother and Lights, please.

  Everybody came to Rick’s. They said so in their advertising. Everyone did come. They had the largest liquor and wine selection in the city, at a highly visible location, and they stayed open until the bars closed.

  Blondie’s victim had come, too. Upstairs in the office, on the same floor with their glassed-in, temperature-controlled wine room, the manager found a credit card receipt for liquor bought just prior to when Church saw the volke outside Rick’s...a Mr. John Surrette who bought for a party, it looked like...two hundred and fifty dollars worth of liquor, including a hundred sixty dollar bottle of Grand Marnier.

  She ran the name through DMV. It came back with a registration for a silver Mercedes S-Class sedan to John and Morgan Surrette of 1813 Heron Street. Yes! That had to be their man.

  Asking for an Attempt To Locate on the vehicle confirmed it. An ATL had already been issued at six this morning for both the Mercedes and Surrette, who had extensive tattooing given as part of his descriptors. If located, the driver was asked to contact his wife.

  Allison sat in her car outside Rick’s, staring into the bay at the ferry easing up to its landing. Officers had begun watching for the Mercedes over five hours ago. She doubted it sat anywhere on the street, then, or in a parking lot where it would be readily visible. It could be tucked in among the vehicles in a hotel parking lot...perhaps abandoned near wherever Blondie was staying. Starting with the hotels on Laguna Drive, she would canvass both parking lots and hotels--and the marinas, in case Blondie had rented or docked a boat--all the way around the bay to the fleabag hotels on the west side that rented by the hour.

  After calling Honora and updating her, Allison started the car and went to work.

  6.

  Zane made Ident his first stop back at the LEC. He handed them the rolled sheet of paper with Manning’s footprints and held his breath while a technician compared them to the casts made of prints around Demry’s body. But even a casual examination showed that the high arch and long, spread toes of the killer’s foot were a far cry from Manning’s broader foot with its bunched toes and nearly flat arch. Not that he expected a match. The jazz club had corroborated Manning’s alibi and the PI reported that her investigation of Manning for the copyright case found passing acquaintances but no close buddies.

  “What about girlfriends?” DiChristafero had asked her. “Goodnight asked me about any we might have listed in Manning’s record.”

  That interested Zane. On the helicopter flight home he sat wondering where this female Allison kept nosing around for figured in. Her question about a girlfriend hiring Blondie indicated she knew nothing of Makepeace’s charade, but what did she know...and why say nothing?

  So...if Manning were out, was this Church guy Sir Galahad?

  Natalie Herrera looked up as he came into the Crimes Against Persons office and pushed a stack of paper across from her peninsula to his. “You and Goodnight owe Bass and me. A bunch of musicians and people from some bar trailed through here in the past couple of hours to give formal statements. One of the musicians was just short of being strung out...and the majority were pissed at having, to quote one of them, get up at the fucking crack of dawn, unquote.”

  “Thank you.” Zane sent her a salute. “I appreciate the help, and forbearance.”

  “For-what?” She rolled her eyes. “Jesus...college boys.”

  He grinned. “I take it Allison hasn’t been around?”

  “Bass said she took off looking grim after talking on the phone to you.”

  Losing your best suspect would be upsetting, especially since it meant they seemed left looking for a homicidal maniac. And she must have been upset. Her telephone sat on the end of the peninsula and an envelope lay beside it with the contents pulled halfway out.

  Zane picked up the envelope with the intent of putting it in her In basket, then noticed the letterhead. Hertzel Pathology Associates. The autopsy report on Demry? He sat down in her chair to read it.

  Midway through he stopped and went back to the start to read more slowly. This psycho’s attack had been even more ferocious than it looked at the crime scene. How much force would it take to rip out a heart? Not that it affected the case except to confirm how strong and bent their perpetrator was, but it was bizarre enough that he wondered why Allison never mentioned it...nor these bite marks.

  Unless they had an urgent autopsy, the pathologists would be tending to their private practice at this time of day. He called
Dr. Pedicaris at her office. “Atypical bite marks you say in the autopsy report. How is a conical cusp atypical?”

  “The normal human bicuspid shows two biting edges. A conical cusp has a single rounded point.”

  He tried to visualize it. “You mean our killer has a second canine tooth instead of a bicuspid?” Something like that would certainly help identify their perpetrator...once they caught him.

  “No.” Zane could picture her shaking her head. “The human canine isn’t that pointed. And a dog canine isn’t either. This looks like...well...like the mark of a carnassial tooth. Those are the shearing teeth in carnivores.”

  Carnivores. It was a bite mark like a dog might leave. He glanced at the top drawer, thinking of Allison’s computer search for animal attacks. “This wasn’t a separate bite mark?”

  “Nope. It’s a dental anomaly in an otherwise typical human bite mark. Ask your partner. After we pointed it out to her she went to check the victim’s clothes for tooth marks on the jacket, but there weren’t any that showed the anomaly.”

  After hanging up Zane sat staring at the phone. One more thing Allison never mentioned, though now he understood her interest in animal attacks. Maybe she thought some of this nut’s work had been mistaken for that.

  He walked down to Carillo’s office door and rapped on the jam of the open door. “Excuse me, Sarge.”

  Carillo looked around from his computer. “I didn’t know you were back. I take it we don’t have an arrest?”

  “No. Manning isn’t involved in the murder.”

  Carillo sighed. “Too bad. It would have been nice to have more than the composite for the evening news.”

  Zane came on in to the desk. “I wanted to ask if there have there been any results from the ATL on Francis Church.”

  “Nothing’s come to me.” Carillo ran his mouse around the pad, clicking, and presently sat back, frowning. “That’s odd. I don’t even see an ATL for a Francis Church. Are you sure Goodnight said she was requesting one?”

  Zane nodded.

  Carillo leaned back in his chair, stretching. “Maybe something happened that made it unnecessary.”