by John Lutz
This demonstration had tied up traffic in Times Square for over two hours. The volume was barely audible on the TV. There was no sound in the office that wasn’t muted almost to nonexistence. A faint, acrid odor hung in the still air, like that of burning electrical insulation, as if the subject matter being shown were too hot for the television perched on top of the file cabinet.
Da Vinci glanced over at Beam. “Isn’t this a crock?” He motioned with his head toward the television.
“Crock and a half,” Beam said. “Console yourself with the fact that Adelaide doesn’t have TV in her cell.”
“She knows what goes on,” da Vinci said. “That lawyer-manager of hers, press agent—whatever the hell he is—tells her.” He pointed at the TV, muted mayhem on a small screen. “Look at the Free Adelaide signs! I count over a dozen. Free her to do what? I hear she’s already got a schedule of talk show appearances lined up, and a goddamned book contract. She’s writing the opening chapters in her cell.”
“Industrious,” Beam said, “but she never struck me as the writer type.”
“Got some uppity little editor who visits and tells her the difference between who and whom,” da Vinci said in disgust. “Or is it whom comes to visit her?”
“I’m not sure,” Beam said. “We could ask Adelaide.”
Da Vinci scowled and threw a paper clip at him. “I got more DVDs,” he said. “You should see the one of the Cold Cat memorial service held in Riverside Park last night.”
“It features some of the same faces that are in the Adelaide demonstrations, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah, but made saintly by candlelight. And maybe one of them is the Justice Killer. Helen said he might be compelled to attend some of these mob scenes. After all, he caused them.”
“Like a pyromaniac hangs around the fire he’s set,” Beam said.
“Exactly. That’s what Helen said.”
Beam wondered about da Vinci’s relationship with Helen. He was single, but still, an affair with a police profiler could squelch his NYPD career. Something like it had happened in recent memory.
“This shit has got to be stopped,” da Vinci said, “before the Justice Killer’s a bigger hero than Superman, leaving you, me, and the rest of the NYPD about as popular as kryptonite.” He used the remote to switch off the DVD, then the TV. Tiny green lights dimmed, as did the TV screen. Hot plastic popped faintly, and the acrid scent in the office seemed to lessen. Da Vinci looked hard at Beam. “So you’re the idea man, the cop who’s supposed to be able to think like the killer. What’s he thinking now, besides how much fun he’s having at various demonstrations that make us look like monkeys and tie up traffic?”
“He’s thinking about Knee High,” Beam said.
Da Vinci began running his fingertips lightly over the motorcycle sculpture on his desk, as if the feel of cool metal reassured him. “Say again?”
“Cold Cat’s death and the news of his innocence mean Melanie Taylor is probably no longer in danger.”
“One victim for each trial.”
“You noticed.”
“Yes, but what’s it got to do with Knee High?”
“I think the Justice Killer’s been thrown badly off his game by killing Cold Cat, an innocent man. That makes him no better—even a damned sight worse—than the people he’s been going around despising and murdering. The person to blame for that is the defense’s main witness, who lied on the stand and provided a false alibi—Knee High.”
“Not to mention,” da Vinci said, “Knee High going out and recruiting another witness to perjure himself and back up that lie.”
Beam was surprised. “Knee High recruited Merv Clark?”
“That’s what they’re both saying now. But we know how credible they are. It’s a good thing for Knee High he’s safe in jail awaiting arraignment.”
“Spring him,” Beam said.
Da Vinci stopped caressing his motorcycle and stared at him. “You serious?”
“Yeah.
Reduce his bond and let him walk. He’ll need the police to protect him from the Justice Killer, so he’ll be even more cooperative. More credible.”
Da Vinci went into his chin-rubbing routine, thinking hard. “What if Knee High cuts and runs?”
“He won’t. Too many cops will be protecting him for somebody not to notice him leaving. And where’s he gonna go where Cold Cat’s fans won’t tear him apart, even if the Justice Killer doesn’t find him?”
“You’re right,” da Vinci said. “And after a few days, he’d feel awfully naked without that police protection.” He leaned back in his chair so he was looking up quizzically at Beam. “So we get Knee High back out in the world, then what’s our next move?”
“We let it leak that we made a mistake. It’s been decided he’s too likely a flight possibility, and his bond reduction’s going to be rescinded. Knee High will soon be going back to jail to await trial.”
“We change our minds? Just like that?”
“Uh-huh. We say so, anyway.”
“Which accomplishes?”
“The Justice Killer will know that if he wants to kill Knee High, the clock is ticking. His opportunity is limited to the time until Knee High’s taken back into custody.”
Da Vinci rubbed his chin a while longer, then smiled. “A rattrap with a timer, and Knee High will be the very nervous cheese.”
“Run it by Helen and see what she thinks of the idea,” Beam suggested.
Da Vinci reacted as Beam thought he would. “I don’t have to run it by anyone. You’re the one I put in charge of the investigation, and you ran it by me. I like it. We’ll do it. But keep in mind, it’s your ass if it goes wrong.”
“Always,” Beam said.
Da Vinci seemed mollified. He sat back and appeared to be more relaxed. “You’re an even more devious bastard than I thought.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll run it by Helen anyway.”
“I don’t look outside without seeing a cop,” Nola told Beam that afternoon in Things Past. The shop seemed brighter than usual. The display window had been washed, and the stock was less layered with dust and more neatly arranged. Beam could actually walk along the aisles without brushing something a hundred years old and sending it plummeting to the floor.
He glanced out beyond the display of antiques, through the window and across the street. “I don’t see anyone out there now.”
Nola looked exasperated, for her. “Of course not. There’s a cop in here with me.”
“Are you sorry about that?”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the chin. “Not really.” She walked around behind the counter and began sorting through some papers. It occurred to him for the first time that she didn’t need glasses for reading. He was pretty sure she didn’t have contact lenses.
Aging well…
Despite her initial reticence, once they’d become lovers, her sexuality amazed him. Made him amaze himself.
“Ever think about sex in the back room?” he asked.
“These days, I think about sex now and then whichever room I’m in.”
Beam grinned.
Nola tapped the edges of whatever it was she was sorting through and laid the neatened papers aside. “This is a place of business,” she said. “Besides, we’re both a little old for the kind of thing you have in mind.”
“You’re only as old as—”
“—you are,” she finished for him. “Any progress in tracing where the duplicate ring came from?”
“Not yet.” He didn’t tell her that NYPD personnel had already been diverted from the task of finding the ring’s origin to protecting the soon-to-be-released Knee High. The ring itself wasn’t in its usual spot on a shelf next to a rose-colored vase. “Did you put the ring in your safe?”
“In a drawer. I’m hoping somebody will steal it.”
“You should give it to me. It might become evidence.”
She moved to the far end of the counter, reached down and open
ed an out-of-sight drawer, and tossed him the ring.
Beam caught it and stuck it in his pocket. “Do you want a receipt?”
“You’re my receipt.” Nola looked at him in a way that made him uncomfortable. “When this business with the ring, the Justice Killer, is over, Beam…”
“What?”
“I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Beam said honestly. “I’d like to think it’s happily ever after for us.”
“Such bullshit, Beam.”
“Well, maybe tolerably ever after.”
Nola smiled. “That’s more like it.”
The bell above the door tinkled, and a short, middle-aged woman in jeans and a T-shirt lettered NO FEAR entered the shop. She gave Beam and Nola a blue stare through rimless glasses and smiled. Beam pretended to be interested in a shelf lined with cut-glass vases that all looked pretty much alike.
Nola asked the woman if she was looking for anything in particular and the woman said she was just browsing. Which she did for about five minutes before buying a beat-to-hell looking antique doll and leaving.
Beam had heard the conversation before the sale. “She really pay two hundred dollars for that?” he asked.
Nola nodded. “It’s nineteenth century, and it’s eyes close when you lay it on its back. It’s worth three hundred.”
“What did you pay for it?”
“Ten.”
Beam glanced around the shop. “Maybe there’s more to this antique business than I thought.”
“Oh, there is,” Nola said. She walked over and turned the deadbolt on the door, then put up the Closed sign.
“Lunch time?” Beam asked.
“Already had lunch.”
“Back room?”
“Let’s go see.”
“He’s coming undone,” the police profiler, Helen, was saying in a television interview done outside One Police Plaza. “He’s finding more and more pleasure in his murders, and more and more hell.”
“He’s conflicted?” asked the interviewer, a man six inches shorter than the statuesque Helen.
“I thought I made that clear,” Helen said. “Inner conflict is what started his string of increasingly brutal murders, and inner conflict will destroy him. That’s the way it works with serial killers. The process is already well underway. It’s like acid produced by the soul it’s destroying.”
“That’s very poetic.”
Helen smiled grimly. “I guess it is. What it means is that the killer’s thought process is breaking down. It will eventually lead to his arrest or suicide.”
“He’ll get careless?”
“He’ll take larger and larger risks,” Helen said. “He won’t be able to stop himself.”
“You’re saying he’s going mad?”
“Oh, he’s already quite mad.”
The taped interview with the police profiler was too much to bear. The Justice Killer felt like throwing the remote at the TV. Instead he merely switched channels.
And there was another interview. This time with the intrepid Beam, saying something about Knee High.
Justice listened, turning up the volume.
A few minutes later he sat back, shaking his head.
Released on his own recognizance!
Goddamned judges!
A commercial came on the cable news channel he was watching. A duck, or some other kind of fowl, talking about term insurance. He used the remote to switch to another channel.
There was a photograph of Knee High, a mug shot taken shortly after his arrest. The hash marks and numerals behind him indicated he was five-foot one with his hair combed almost straight up. He wore a cocky, nervous smile, as if made apprehensive yet enjoying his notoriety.
“—released this afternoon,” the newscaster was saying. He was a full-faced man in a gray suit with some kind of pin on the lapel. “The court ruled that it didn’t consider the accused a risk to do public harm or to flee. He is not required to wear an electronic anklet.” The anchorman turned to a guest. “Now, if Martha Stewart—”
Justice switched to another twenty-four-hour news channel. A female anchor with teased red hair was sharing a split screen with the same mug shot of Knee High. They were both smiling.
Why was Knee High smiling minutes after being booked? Advice of counsel? Was he already working toward an insanity plea?
Or perhaps the relief of confession had prompted Knee High’s smile when the mug shot camera had captured his image. Or maybe even then Knee High had understood that not everything was lost. Like so many others before him, he could use the system to his advantage.
Justice full well knew how firmly fate was on his side, how Knee High was being delivered to him. Fate would side with the avenging angel of justice, the divinity of death. Because of Knee High, the Justice Killer had slain an innocent man. That was the very antithesis of what Justice was trying to do. It could undermine his mission.
“Oh, he’s already quite mad.”
What Knee High had done was an abomination. Justice could not let the matter stand, and he would not. That wasn’t madness; it was making a madness right.
The police would strive to protect Knee High, but even with the tightest security there would be lapses, vulnerable moments. Time would pass without incident, and even Knee High might consider himself in danger only from the usual justice delayed.
Delayed forever.
Not this time, little man. Justice hastened, Justice served, Justice pleasured.
Sooner or later, by breath, blade, or bullet, you belong, to me.
59
“This isn’t the usual thing,” Beam said, when Knee High approached him for their meeting in Grand Central Station.
The little man had phoned Beam personally and requested that they speak, and had chosen the place. The shuffling of hundreds of soles and heels was a constant echoing whisper, as if there were secrets in the stone and marble vastness.
“Knee High be short,” Knee High said. He moved over toward a wall where they’d be more or less separated from the throngs of train passengers and tourists. “This the most public place in New York, lotsa people all the time. Hard for anyone to follow Knee High, ’cause he get in amongst the masses and everybody be taller, shield him from prying eyes.”
“That makes sense,” Beam said. “But what I meant is, it’s unusual that a murder suspect who’s out of jail would phone a police detective so they can meet someplace and he can complain about being free.”
Knee High looked astounded. “Free? You call this free? Knee High got cops comin’ out his ass, mornin’ till night.”
“All night, too,” Beam said. “That’s because they’ve been assigned to protect you.”
“Protect Knee High, shit. What they’re hanging around for is a shot at the Justice Killer. You think Knee High don’t know how you guys set up Knee High? Knee High ain’t no fool. Weren’t born yesterday, nor at night, neither.”
Beam wished Knee High weren’t one of those people who habitually referred to themselves in the third person. It gave the impression there might be another Knee High here.
“You want that Justice Killer mother come after Knee High,” said Knee High. “You tell Knee High that ain’t the truth.”
Beam felt no pity. “Whatever position you’re in, you put yourself there,” he said.
“Po-sition? Knee High’s po-sition is bent over, tha’s what.”
“Why did you want to talk to me about it?”
“Knee High wanna be arrested. Then he want you to tell the media in this town, so the Justice mother know and won’t be tryin’ to shoot Knee High.”
“I can’t arrest you,” Beam said. “The law doesn’t work that way. You could sue me.”
“Knee High don’t sue people. Way the law works, it’s s’pose to protect the citizens. Knee High a citizen.”
“Edie Piaf was a citizen until you killed her.”
“So why don’t you arrest Knee High?” H
e held his hands out, wrists together, as if waiting to be cuffed. “C’mon, do your job an’ put Knee High back where that Justice mother can’t get to him.”
“I can’t do that unless there’s a warrant out for you. You’ll need to speak to a judge.”
“Yeah. Knee High do that next time we be lunchin’ at Four Seasons. Uh-huh. You see that?”
“See what?”
“That big guy in camouflage fatigues, carryin’ an automatic rifle.”
Beam peered across the teeming marble vastness to where Knee High was pointing. “He’s in the military,” Beam said, “part of Homeland Security. They’re stationed throughout Grand Central.”
“How you know what he is? What Knee High see’s a man with a machine gun, might wanna shoot Knee High dead. You know tha’s what he ain’t? Anybody can go rent hisself a soldier suit, get hold of a gun, go walkin’ ’round Grand Central, blast the damn eyeballs outta Knee High ’fore you can stop him.”
Beam knew Knee High had a point, but he wasn’t about to concede it. “I think Knee High’s got a case of the nerves.”
Knee High extended a stubby little leg and kicked the marble wall. Had to hurt his toes. “Nerves? Those cops you say s’pose to be protectin’ Knee High—you know what their code name be for Knee High?”
“No.”
“They call Knee High ‘the cheese,’ what they say to each other. Damn cop code.”
“That wasn’t my idea,” Beam said, thinking da Vinci must have mentioned the cheese-in-rattrap analogy when assigning NYPD personnel to their tasks.
“Whoever’s idea it be, Knee High don’t like it even a little. What he wants is for you to use your considerable in-fluence and get Knee High back safe behind walls.”
“Well, I guess that makes a certain kind of sense.”
Knee High gave Beam a suspicious look. The cheese, Beam thought, wasn’t very smart.