He found Dr. Spencer in the alcove on the far side, strapped to the table, just as he had left her.
“You can’t get away with this,” she shouted. Her words echoed through the basement, reverberating off the stone walls. “I’ve had people following me everywhere I go.”
“Then where are they, madam?” he replied, smiling sweetly. “I’m afraid I find that statement lacking a certain credibility. You see, I am intimately familiar with all your security precautions. I struck at a time when your protection entrusted you to the custody of the rather poorly chosen and recently bifurcated Harv Bradford.”
Between the two of them, forming a partition between the alcove in which she lay and the rest of the basement, was a four-foot-tall brick wall.
“You’re the security man, aren’t you?” she said, staring at him. “Back at the hotel. The other one.”
“What a memory you have. Spectacular.”
“Let me tell you something, mister. You didn’t know half the precautions I was taking. I had eye-in-the-sky copters watching me. There’s a homing device in my shoe.”
“I don’t think so.”
“As soon as they zero in on my position, your ass-”
“Madam, you have been here more than twenty-four hours.”
She paused, her mouth sucking air. “But-I just-”
“You’ve had a nice long nap, courtesy of my favorite pharmaceutical. But I am forced to conclude that if anyone had the slightest notion where you were, they would have long since arrived.”
She was silent for a while. “What do you want? Are you going to strip me naked and… do whatever it is you do?”
He struggled to maintain control. “I have not removed your clothing because you are not now, nor could you ever be, an offering. And may I add that I have never assaulted or in any way behaved inappropriately with any of my offerings. Your public accusations were offensive and ungrounded.”
“You killed three girls!”
“That is correct, in a technical sense. But there was no sexual misconduct, my dear pseudo-doctor. I’m sure the police have conducted tests establishing that for a fact. They in all likelihood have shared that information with you. Nonetheless, you appeared in a public forum and made your vile accusations.” He paused. “A gentleman’s reputation is his stock in trade. You have impugned my personal integrity. For that, you must be punished.”
He had prepared the mortar earlier. He added some water from the sink, loosening it. He stirred it with the trowel. It was ready.
“I can’t believe this,” Spencer said. Her voice was hoarse from shouting and it had acquired an edge, but one born more of fear than of menace. “I’ve got a serial killer complaining that I tarnished his reputation.”
He slapped mortar down atop the partial wall, then pressed a brick into place. It held.
“I mean-don’t you see a certain irony in that?”
“I see that you understand nothing,” he said, applying another brick, then another. “I see that you categorize me with the insane, or those who kill for pleasure or sexual gratification. Insult upon insult.” Another brick. Then another. Then another.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just finishing a little something I started. I’m a great devotee of home improvement.” Another row finished. Then another.
Time passed. She watched him work. As each new brick fell into place, her voice became more strained. “Look… I never meant to offend you. I just-I loved my daughter.”
“You did not, madam.”
“How dare you-”
“Annabel talked quite a lot about you before she was offered. She told me that you never paid any attention to her, hadn’t for years. That you were always absent, obsessed with your career. Your work, that was what you loved. Not her.”
“How can you presume to-”
“I have it from the best authority, wouldn’t you say?”
“Annabel was a child. She couldn’t understand what a working single parent-”
“She knew whether her mother paid attention to her or not.”
“Paid attention to her? I lavished every possible attention on her. Did she tell you she was going to MIT, for Christ’s sake? Did she tell you what she was driving?”
“The checkbook, my dear woman, is no substitute for parenting.” He slapped another layer of brick on the wall. It now reached two-thirds of the way to the low basement ceiling. He had to stand on a ladder to continue his work. “Could you perhaps name one of her friends? No guessing, now.”
“What difference does it make? Friends come and go.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
Her voice came back a little quieter. “The police told me.”
“Did you know the name of her beau, before the police found him?” He smiled, stirring the mortar. “His name was Warren. He and Annabel were in love and wanted to marry. She came to Las Vegas to make some money playing blackjack so they could start their life together.”
“She could’ve just asked…”
“She felt she couldn’t. She knew you would be importunate and disapproving and would not give her anything, so she didn’t bother. Because you were too wrapped up in your own world to be a part of hers.”
Dr. Spencer was quiet for several layers of brick. When she spoke again it was with a sullen defiance. “So you’re doing this to punish me for being a bad mother?”
“Not at all. You’re the one who brought up your relationship with your daughter.”
“Then why?”
“I cannot let you continue to interfere with my work. My plan.”
“What are you talking about? What do you think you’re doing?”
He slapped down another slab of mortar. “At the moment, I’m building a wall.”
“Around me? Is that your sick idea? You’re going to entomb me in your basement?”
“More or less.”
“And I’m supposed to lie here till the end of time?”
“Goodness, no. That would be cruel and inhuman.” He continued laying the bricks. “This is a small alcove, and the way you’re breathing, you’ll use up the air quite quickly. I doubt if you’ll last more than an hour or two.”
Her arms and legs stiffened, straining against the leather straps. It seemed her muscular control had returned. “Sadist!”
He made a tsking sound, then continued working. Barely half a foot remained between the top of the wall and the ceiling.
“Please don’t do this.” Her voice finally cracked. “I’ll give youanything you want. Just let me go. I won’t hunt you anymore, I promise.”
He sighed a little as he slapped down the bricks. It was so disappointing. In the end, they all gave way to weakness.
“What is it you want from me?”
“Only your death. A slow and painful one. A terrifying demise.” The wall reached the ceiling. There was only one opening remaining, one space he had left vacant at eye level. “I’m afraid this is where I must bid you adieu,” he said, peering through the gap.
“Please don’t leave me in here!”
“Dr. Spencer, you are wasting precious air. Instead of this useless caterwauling, may I recommend that you spend your remaining time coming to terms with your Maker? Use these last precious hours to commit yourself to your faith. If you have one.”
“You’ll pay for this!”
“And if not,” he said wearily, “this might be an opportune moment to adopt one.”
“For God’s sake-”
“Yes. For the love of God.”
With a splash of mortar he wedged the final brick into place, then plastered over the wall to ensure that it remained airtight. Not a bad bit of masonry, if he said so himself.
She did scream, of course, even though it was the stupidest thing she could possibly do. She threatened and pleaded and repeated the vile insults that had made this action so necessary in the first place. After a while, he realized he did not need to subject himself to this. He went
upstairs, closing the basement door behind him, and waited for the screaming to end.
18
“Explain this to me again,” I asked Tony.
“My pleasure.” His nose was pressed against the glass of the vacuum chamber as he repeated the entire exegesis. “We put the floor mat in there with a milligram of gold in the heating element, then sealed it. The pumps suck out the air and create a vacuum. The gold boils, almost into a steam. A thin invisible layer coats the plastic. The gold will sink into the oil from the print, leaving only the ridges uncoated. Then we do it again, this time with zinc in the heating element. The zinc vaporizes, then recondenses only on metal-in other words, the gold from the previous treatment. And the result?” He directed our attention to his nearby computer monitor. “A great big beautiful high-contrast reverse-image print.”
“Nice little gizmo you’ve got here,” I murmured softly.
“Glad you think so, Susan,” he replied. “Because vacuum metal deposition costs a fortune, what with the gold and all. I’m telling Granger you authorized it.”
I hunched over his shoulder, peering at his computer screen, but no matter how much I squinted, no matter which way I turned my head, no matter how long I let my eyes go fuzzy, I couldn’t make out the print. “The lines all look the same to me,” I said, admitting defeat.
“Don’t sweat it,” he replied. “Psychos all look the same to me.”
What we were looking at was a computer enlargement of the print he had found on the floor mat in the car from which Fara Spencer was taken. It wasn’t all there-a chunk from the upper left never came clear-but Tony assured me that was enough to make a match. And this time it was a forefinger, not a palm print. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but we were all hoping this would allow us to identify the killer. With Patrick’s assistance, he’d already fed the print to FINDER, the FBI’s automatic fingerprint reader and processor. If this print or anything like it had been recorded by any computerized law enforcement agency in this country or several foreign nations, they could give us the identification we so desperately needed.
“We’ve got mail,” Tony said, pointing at his screen. “Three partial matches.”
I watched as three more prints appeared on the screen in a vertical column opposite the original. Tony scrutinized each whorl and swirl.
“Well?”
“Give me a minute.”
I saw that each of the match prints had a name beneath it with a hyperlink to a full FBI bio. If we could get a name, maybe even an address, this killer could be behind bars by midnight.
“No,” Tony said, after dragging the suspense out for what I thought was an ungodly length of time. “None of these work.”
“What do you mean?”
“They aren’t him. There are similarities, sure. Enough to pass the computer software match threshold. But they aren’t the same.”
“You’re sure?”
He was still staring at the screen. “Much as I wish I weren’t. Besides, none of these guys comes close to matching your description. This one’s a woman. The next is a guy in his seventies.”
“But we were sure that print came from the man who abducted Fara Spencer.”
He pushed back away from the computer, rubbing his eyes. “So now we know that our guy has never been arrested. Never run for political office. Never taken the bar exam. He’s managed to get through life without being fingerprinted. He’s never done anything like this before.” He slid out of his chair and switched the power off his monitor. “Or if he has, he’s never been caught.”
He ambled up the sidewalk outside Central Division headquarters trying to concoct a suitable conversation starter. As it happened, the young man sitting on the front steps eliminated the need.
“Are you a grown-up person?”
“Ye-es…”
“You must be kind of a short person. Are you kind of a short person?”
“I am as God made me.”
“I’m six foot one. Do you know how tall the Sears Tower is?”
He tugged at his collar. All his initial impressions were correct. There was something strange and more than a little disconcerting about this man’s demeanor. The way he struck up a conversation, albeit a nonsensical one, with a total stranger on a Vegas street. His voice was simple, almost childlike. And yet he was an adult, somewhere in his mid-twenties by appearances.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“It’s one thousand four hundred fifty-four feet tall. One hundred and three floors. It used to be the tallest building in the world. Not anymore.”
“Fascinating.”
“Do you know how tall the Empire State Building is?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s one thousand four hundred fifty-three feet. One foot shorter than the Sears Tower. One hundred and two floors. Have you ever talked to a midget?”
He stiffened. “I’m not sure what-”
“I saw a midget once and I talked to her. I got in trouble for talking to her but I don’t know why because I didn’t do anything to hurt her.”
There was something wrong with this man, a discernible… vacancy. He didn’t lack intelligence or language. His syntax was skewed, but there was a distinct legerity to his responses. At the same time, there was a profound oddness about him: the way he held his head when he talked, the curious inflection, the unvaryingly excessive volume.
“I’m Darcy O’Bannon the second. My dad named me for my uncle, he’s dead. My uncle, not my dad.”
“Please to meet you, Darcy.” He extended his hand, but Darcy did not take it. Instead he stared at it, as if hesitant to make contact. “My name is Ethan.”
“Are you a jockey?”
“Uh… no…”
“Because I read that jockeys have to be short and they like jockeys to be short so you should be a jockey.”
“No, I’m… I’m an accountant.”
“How tall do you have to be to be an accountant?”
“I’m not aware of a height requirement.”
“I think I’d like to be a jockey. I rode a horse once and I liked that. It went really fast and I like to go really fast. Do you think I could be a jockey?”
“Uh… probably not, given your height. But I’m no expert.”
“Willie Shoemaker won eight thousand eight hundred thirty-three races, did you know that? He was four foot eleven. But he got rich. I think my dad would like me better if I were rich.”
“Darcy… I’m looking for Lieutenant Pulaski. Do you know where she might be?”
Darcy cocked his head to one side. “Do you know Susan?”
“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her, yes.”
“You’re not going to take her away from me, are you?”
“I’m… not sure what you mean.”
“Whenever I really like someone somebody else takes them away or tells me I can’t play with them anymore. I’ll be sad if Susan goes away. I like her a lot. Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Most striking.”
“I think so, too. But she’s not the prettiest woman ever. Some people say Cleopatra was the prettiest woman ever but did you know archeologists dug up a coin with her face on it and she wasn’t pretty atall?”
“I didn’t know that.” He suppressed a smile. And he had worried that this harmless meshuggener might be a threat, a rival, that he might come between himself and Susan. Obviously, that was not going to happen. What was she doing with this boy? Was he some sort of charity work, a Good Samaritan exercise? Was this Susan’s plan for worming her way back onto the force? Earning Chief O’Bannon’s favor by babysitting his brain-addled son?
“Do you know what the tallest building in the world is?”
“Uh… the Sears Tower?”
“Wrong!” He made a honking noise and pointed. “Faked you out. It used to be the Sears Tower, but now it’s the Petronas Tower in Malaysia. It’s one hundred and ten stories tall. That would be two hundred and sixty-four of me stacked on top of
each other.”
“Imagine.”
“Would you like to see the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building stacked on top of the Petronas Tower? I would. Do you know how many stories that would be?”
“Rather a lot.”
“One hundred and two plus one hundred and three plus one hundred and ten. Know what that is?”
“Sorry, I’ve never been good with numbers.”
Darcy’s head tilted. “But I thought you said you were an accountant.”
“I… I rely heavily on my calculator.”
“Accountants are good adders. I read that in a book. My dad took me to an accountant once and he could add five-digit numbers in his head. So can I but he was the only other person I ever saw who could. Why can’t you add three-digit numbers?”
“Well… of course… I wasn’t really listening.”
“Are short accountants not as good at adding as tall ones?”
He stepped onto the sidewalk. “I really must be going.”
“Goodbye,” Darcy said. “You might think about seeing if you could become a jockey. ’Cause I’m not sure how good you’re going to be as an accountant.”
He hurried back to his car, wrapping his jacket tightly around himself. That had been an unforgivably stupid mistake. He’d relaxed his guard, thinking this mental deficient could pose no danger to him, and as a result, he’d made a foolish error. If the boy were not so pitifully without guile, he would’ve become suspicious, perhaps conveyed his suspicions to Susan. And that could be disastrous.
At least he’d ascertained that there was no romantic affiliation between the two. Now that he knew he had a clear field, he would contact Susan again. Soon.
What bothered him was his inability to read the young man. The connections this Darcy’s brain made were unpredictable. Illogical. There was no way of anticipating him.
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