But the man wasn’t about to move off the porch, not with Lassiter standing there.
Caesar moved his legs, trying to gather enough momentum to get up. The dog would be all right, but the jerk who owned him would still be a jerk. Lassiter felt a wave of fatigue wash over him. He’d lost interest in all this. Killing dogs and their terrible owners wasn’t what he did. He started to walk away.
“Asshole,” the fat man said.
Lassiter wheeled around. “What’d you say?”
But the fat man was already inside. Lassiter heard the click of the lock.
Caesar finally got up and climbed the steps, slow and labored. The man unlocked the door and opened it part way, and the dog slipped inside.
Bite him, Caesar, Lassiter thought. Kill him in his sleep.
He walked to the corner, turning onto Eckford Street, suddenly feeling sad. He squeezed the bag of mementoes, and random thoughts of his past bleeders gave him a boost as if he were squeezing blood back into his empty heart.
A light rain started to fall, but he didn’t bother to open his umbrella. He scanned the numbers on the houses as he walked—455, 457, 459—he was almost there.He picked up his pace, reinvigorated. This was a small chore but an important one.
He stopped at 465. The faded red aluminum-sided house had three apartments—basement, first floor, and second floor. As he mounted the steps, rain started coming down harder, pelting the white aluminum awning over the front door. He squinted to see the names on the buzzers, but he didn’t need to read them. He knew that his assistant Richard Shugrue lived on the second floor. He pressed the top button and looked for an intercom. There didn’t seem to be one, which didn’t surprise him. Most apartments in this part of Brooklyn were just a half step above student housing.
He heard the thud of footsteps coming down a wooden staircase inside, then the scrape of a chain lock sliding into place. Silly Richard. Those things are useless. Thieves kick in doors and rip right through those chains. Richard was so naïve. He hadn’t been the victim of a crime… yet.
The door opened, and Richard’s face appeared in the six-inch gap, the chain crossing his face like a metal mustache.
“Mr. Lassiter!” The poor boy was shocked to see his boss at the door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at home, Richard, but I have a small task for you.”
“Of course, of course. Hold on.” He shut the door, slid the chain off, then opened it all the way. He wore a faded black Kings of Leon tee shirt and green plaid pajama bottoms. His feet were bare. He looked down at himself and blushed.
“I wouldn’t be bothering you at home, Richard, if this weren’t important.” Lassiter avoided looking at his assistant’s attire, not wanting to embarrass him further. He needed him to pay attention.
“Would you like to come up? I can make tea or something.”
“No, nothing, thank you. But I’d prefer not to discuss this outside.”
“Oh, of course. Sorry. Come in.”
Richard led the way up the squeaky wooden stairs. A naked bulb lit the hallway. The walls were robin’s egg blue, but they were scuffed and marred from several generations of tenants moving in and out.
“Do you have a roommate?” Lassiter asked, keeping his voice down. “I don’t want to disturb him. Or her.”
Richard looked over his shoulder. “No, it’s okay. He’s with his girlfriend tonight.”
Perfect, Lassiter thought.
He followed Richard into his apartment—two bedrooms, a very small living room crammed with furniture, a large kitchen, and a bathroom. The layout was odd. The first room was the living room, and the bedrooms were off the kitchen. Rain water dripped off Lassiter’s jacket as Richard led the way to the kitchen. He leaned against the counter, crossing and uncrossing his bare feet, looking awkward.
Lassiter saw an opportunity. “Richard, I can see you’re uncomfortable. If you’d like to change into something else, please feel free.”
The young man smoothed his disheveled hair. “Ah… maybe I will. I’ll be right back.”
He went into one of the bedrooms and closed the door.
Lassiter grinned. He tiptoed to the kitchen cabinets and opened the one closest to the sink. Glasses and dishes. He opened the next one. Canned soups, cans of tuna, baked beans, corn, peas, a jar of peanut butter. He closed that one and opened the next and immediately saw what he was looking for. Cereal boxes. Raisin Bran, Puffins, Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch, granola, and a cardboard cylinder of Quakers Oatmeal. There was also a gallon-sized white plastic tub of something called Muscle Milk. Either Richard or his roommate was somewhat health conscious. He pulled down the Muscle Milk, unscrewed the top, and saw that it was an off-white powder. Unfortunately there wasn’t much left otherwise it would have been perfect. He’d come here to stash his bag of mementoes.
He put the tub back and took out the oatmeal container. He pulled off the top and decided that wouldn’t work either. It was almost full. He’d make a mess getting it in there.
He scanned the cereal boxes. He could pull out the opaque plastic bag that contained the cereal and stash his mementoes at the bottom of a box. But then he remembered Jerry Seinfeld and his row of cereal boxes on the fat man’s television. What if Richard and his roommate ate a lot of cereal? It wouldn’t be long before they’d find his bag. Plus, it would add extra weight to these lightweight boxes. They might get suspicious the minute they picked up a heavier-than-normal box.
He looked over his shoulder at Richard’s closed bedroom door. Damn it! Richard would be out any second.
He opened the cabinets under the counter. Pots and pans but not enough of them to conceal his bag. If he had thought to bring tape, he might have been able to tape it to the underside of a bottom cabinet where no one would see it. Did he have time to start looking for tape? Where would Richard keep it if he had any? He scrapped that idea. No time.
He opened the cabinet under the sink. In every house and apartment he’d ever lived in, he never kept anything under the sink that he used everyday except for dishwasher soap, and this apartment didn’t have a dishwasher. Perhaps he could just throw the bag in a dark corner and bury it behind whatever he found down there. But then he spotted something that made him smile. Behind a clutter of plastic bottles was an extra large box of Brillo pads. He pulled the box out, careful not to knock over anything. It was mostly full. How often do two young guys change their scouring pads? Not that often. Perfect.
He glanced at Richard’s door as he dug into his pocket for the bag. He burrowed through the steel-wool pads and put it at the bottom, then quickly buried it. He angled the box over the bottles and put it back where it had been. He closed the cabinet, stood up, and moved to the other side of the room, rubbing his hands to get rid of the Brillo dust.
He stared at the cabinet and considered it. Maybe he shouldn’t have put the box so far back. Maybe he should move it closer to the front so that the boys could reach it. He didn’t want them to pull out the whole box to get a new pad. It was a very light box and the extra weight might make them curious. He looked at Richard’s door. It would only take a second.
He rushed to the cabinet, reached in, and moved the box. He heard Richard’s door opening and immediately stood up.
Richard stood in the doorway, staring at him. He wore a dark suit over his tee-shirt and black leather loafers without socks.
“Do you need anything, Mr. Lassiter?” Richard’s air of uncertainty reminded Lassiter that he was the young man’s boss and therefore entitled to a bit of odd behavior.
“I was just looking for the garbage,” Lassiter said.
“Over there.” Richard pointed to a blue plastic trash bin in the corner next to the stove.
Lassiter poked his hand through the swivel door and pretended to be throwing something away. He turned toward Richard and stared a
t his outfit. “Awfully dressed up, Richard. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Oh, I just wanted to show you the suit.”
Lassiter was puzzled.
“The suit you bought me. Remember? I picked it up from the shop today.”
“Oh, of course,” Lassiter said, recalling that he had bought Richard a suit as a ruse to go looking for Trisha. “It looks terrific. Very becoming.”
Richard smiled.
But Lassiter hadn’t come all this way for a fashion show. He had more business to attend to.
“The reason I stopped by, Richard, was to give you this.” Lassiter pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, the one he’d swiped from the woman at the farmers’ market, and handed it to Richard.
“Take this, too.” Lassiter handed him a 3”x 5” file card with a ten-digit code written on it. The writing was perfect, Lassiter’s deliberate attempt to disguise his own handwriting.
“Listen carefully, Richard. I might need you to do something. If I call you on your company cell and tell you to ‘put it through,’ I want you to dial the first preset number on this phone. Just press 1 and hold it down. It’ll ring—”
“Right. I know how to do that.”
“Okay, a Mr. Freitag will answer. Tell him that you’re calling on my behalf and that he should follow my instructions. That’s all you’ll have to say. He’ll know what to do.”
“Okay.”
“He’ll ask you for the code. You just give him this number.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Nothing. That’s all you have to do. Just say goodbye and hang up.”
“Okay…” Richard sounded unsure about all this. “So if you call me and tell me to ‘put it through,’ I call preset number 1 and tell Mr. Freitag to follow your instructions—”
“Yes, tell him that you’re calling for me and that he should do what I told him to do.”
“Okay. Then I give him this code and that’s all there is to it. Just hang up.”
“Correct. And I want you to burn the card when you’re through.”
“Burn it?”
“Yes. Don’t just shred it, burn it.”
“All right. I understand.”
“I know this all sounds a little odd, but I’m afraid it concerns one of our clients who insists on secrecy. It all has to be kept under wraps.”
“Okay. I understand.”
“I’m asking you to do this because the timing is critical, and if I’m in a meeting with another client, it would be rude for me to leave the room and do the transaction myself. Besides, many of our clients are very eager to know what other clients are doing with their investments. Mrs. Cardinalli, for instance.”
“Say no more. I hear you.”
Whenever Adele came to the office, Lassiter had to assign a secretary to keep her company. She had an annoying habit of wandering around and reading over shoulders.
“I’ll let you get back to your evening,” Lassiter said. “And I apologize for all the secrecy. Believe me, it’s not as intriguing as it seems.”
“No, that’s okay. No need to apologize. I wasn’t doing anything special.”
Obviously not, Lassiter thought. Not in your jammies.
He stepped toward the door. “I can show myself out.”
“No, I’ll come down with you. It’s not an automatic lock.”
Richard’s heels banging on the bare wood stairs as they went down. Lassiter turned the deadbolt for himself and stepped outside. The rain had shifted to a heavy mist.
“Thank you, Richard. And again I apologize for interrupting your evening. See you tomorrow at the office.”
“See you tomorrow, Mr. Lassiter.”
He started down the brick steps, then turned around. “And by the way, Richard, again, nice suit. It looks very good on you.” He flashed a warm smile.
Richard’s face brightened, happy to get the compliment.
Lassiter continued down the steps, flipping up his collar, and opening his umbrella. His smile faded as soon as he turned his back on Richard. The phony cordiality peeled off him, like a snake shedding its skin.
Casting a long shadow on the sidewalk, he felt empty and alone again. And surly. As he walked, he could see white areoles formed by the falling mist around the streetlights. Once again, for the millionth time, his brooding thoughts returned to Natalie. And Trisha.
Chapter 17
Whatever the female equivalent of testosterone was, the air was thick with it. Trisha, sitting on an uncomfortable antique parlor chair next to a wrought-iron coffee table with metal ivy climbing the legs, felt as if she’d been called into the principal’s office. The room was both cozy and formal, like the reading room of a private club. Two eight-foot camel-colored sofas faced one another on opposite sides of the coffee table. The sculpted mocha-brown carpeting felt like a blanket of moss under her feet. A fire crackled in the fireplace even though it was June, and a life-size portrait of the man who had made all this finery possible towered over the mantelpiece, the late Jasper A. Houghton—inventor, manufacturer, founder of Global Express, and former United States Secretary of Commerce.
Trisha exchanged poker-faced glances with Pete Warwick who was seated next to her in an identical chair. Trisha’s sister Cindy and the lady of the house, Jocelyn Houghton, sat on one sofa. Mrs. Houghton was in her seventies and had a patrician bob of pure white hair. If she’d been wearing a floor-length colonial gown, she could have passed for the spouse of a founding father. She had hooded eyelids and maintained a constant demure smile that Trisha suspected concealed her true mood. She was on the board of directors of the Orchid Club and was the one who had called her good friend, the First Lady, to complain about the Drac situation
Barry Krieger and Colleen Franco sat on the opposite sofa at least five feet apart—a meaningful distance that in Trish’s mind conveyed the NYPD’s feelings about the Bureau: on the same side of the law but not close. Barry wore a freshly pressed charcoal gray suit with razor-sharp creases in the trousers, and he didn’t look at all comfortable in the presence of so many powerful women.
Assistant Chief Franco, on the other hand, wore a black skirt suit that showed a little too much leg. She sat confidently, strafing the room with eye contact, marking her territory like an aggressive hound. She might have thought she was doing a good job of establishing her dominance, but her tactics were obvious, the kind of thing that works on underlings, not powerbrokers like Mrs. Houghton.
Trisha knew that her sister shouldn’t be underestimated in this showdown either. Cindy was low key and always friendly, but when push came to shove, she had the instincts of a moray eel. Graceful and flowing but vicious if she felt her domain was under threat. That she had come in jeans was her statement to the group—she didn’t need to dress up for them; they had to dress up for her.
The sound of bone china cups clicking on saucers mingled with the crackle of the fire and the distant murmur of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum on their cell phones in the kitchen. They were a good prop for Franco to establish her importance in case anyone had any doubt. A chrome coffee carafe sat on the coffee table with a sugar bowl and creamer, but the maid had been dismissed and Mrs. Houghton didn’t offer anyone a second cup. It was her well-bred way of putting the assembly on notice that it was time to get down to business.
Franco set down her cup and saucer. “I’d just like to start off by thanking you, Mrs. Houghton, for calling this meeting. Pro-actively concerned citizens are always a benefit to our work.”
Pete glanced at Trisha. They were thinking the same thing. Colleen was ladling it on thick.
“On behalf of the Bureau, I would like to thank you as well, Mrs. Houghton,” Barry said.
Mrs. Houghton ignored the ass-kissing and cut to the chase. “What exactly are you planning to do about this maniac?”
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Barry jumped in before Franco had a chance. “One of our top profilers has been brought in to work on the case. Agent McCleery, why don’t you bring us up to speed on where we are right now?”
“Well,” Trisha said, “there are certain things we’ve discovered about our unsub, our unknown subject.” She wasn’t sure how much she should reveal to a civilian so she decided to start slow and basic. If she veered into sensitive territory, Barry could stop her. “This killer has shown a definite preference in his type of victim. The women he’s targeted so far have all been small to medium build. Attractive women between the ages of 43 and 61. Almost all of them blue-eyed brunettes.”
Snow Whites, she thought, a whiff of panic tightening her chest. Like me and Mom.
Trisha coughed into her fist and sat on her fear. “Drac ties his victims and bleeds them to death.” She looked at Barry, wanting to know if she should reveal the instrument of death, but Barry’s face was blank. She was on her own. “Drac uses a spinal needle, longer than a standard hypodermic. He pierces their hearts, gets a flow going, then watches them bleed out.”
Mrs. Houghton waved her hand as if she were erasing a blackboard. “Agent McCleery, I’m not interested in the details of his method. I want to know what law-enforcement techniques and strategies are being brought to bear in this case. Women are dying. Friends and acquaintances of mine. When and how are you going to stop this person?”
Trisha hoped Barry would take over, but he was leaving the heavy lifting to her. No matter. She could handle it. “Mrs. Houghton, I would love to tell you we’ve pinpointed a suspect and his arrest is imminent, but we’re just not there yet.”
“And why not?” Mrs. Houghton may have looked like a founding mother, but she had the laser-beam stare of a Terminator. “Am I severely deluding about these kinds of investigations? I read books and articles and see programs on television about serial-killer profiling. Those investigators seem to be able to close cases with some degree of efficiency.”
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