by Jon F. Merz
“How so?”
“She wore a hat to conceal her face the entire time. I take it you guys didn’t get any prints?”
“None whatsoever,” said Niles.
“Because she also wore gloves,” I said. “Whoever she is, she’s either been well trained or she’s just a brilliant planner. Every step of this thing was carefully thought out so as not to expose her and leave any sort of identifying DNA behind.”
“We tried brushing for any of that on Amalfi’s corpse but found only traces of bleach on his skin.”
“She wiped him down,” I said. “No bodily fluids for the Ferrets to run down.”
“Exactly.” Niles paused. “This doesn’t leave us with all that much.”
“Well, we know we’re looking for a woman. I’ve got a plate for you to run down.”
“Go ahead.”
I gave the tag number to Niles and listened as he punched it into the computer. We had inroads into every sort of human database imaginable, including the labyrinthine servers at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I heard Niles cluck and knew what he was going to say next.
“Stolen earlier this week.”
“Imagine that.”
Niles paused. “These aren’t crimes of passion, are they?”
I frowned. “Certainly don’t sound like it. There’s too much planning going into them to be the result of a psychological imbalance. Whoever she is, she hunts and stalks her prey. What she’s looking for, I don’t know. But there has to be some sort of reason for it.”
“Just what we needed, another potential serial killer.”
“You did say this would be a nice break for me,” I said.
“I say a lot of things,” said Niles. “Many of them I wish I could retract. Call me when you have something concrete.”
The line disconnected and I put the phone down on the seat next to me. I needed lunch and a nap, and not necessarily in that order. I sometimes do my best thinking when I’m in that hazy area between full-on sleep and just light dozing. Maybe taking a quick break would give my subconscious mind a bit of a chance to process everything I’d seen so far today and come up with a workable plan.
At least that’s what I hoped would happen.
My phone rang a few seconds later as I was getting ready to head for route 128 and shoot for home. I didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway. “Yeah?”
“Lawson.” The voice was male and vaguely familiar. It took me two seconds to place it.
“Letourneau. Nice to hear from you.”
“Larazo gave me your number, which was interesting because I apparently couldn’t find you in any of our databases.”
“Imagine that,” I said. There was good reason, of course. I didn’t show up in most of the usual places, which lent itself to my supposed status as a spy. And the places I did show up only mentioned a few select details that would throw most people off.
“I know you guys like your anonymity and shit, so don’t worry, I won’t post about meeting you on Facebook.”
“Yeah, but what about Instagram?”
He laughed. “That’s a haven for narcissists.”
“I guess you don’t like selfies.”
“Depends on whether they’re of hot women or not.”
“So to what do I owe the honor of your call?” I asked then.
“I ran down that tag we zoomed in on at the bodega.”
I frowned. Letourneau was obviously sharper than I’d given him credit for. I’d memorized the tag and so had he apparently. “What’d you find out?”
“Probably the same thing you already did: that it’s stolen.”
“I may have heard that, yeah.”
“But I’ve got something you don’t have.”
I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car into park. “And what is that?”
“One of our units just located the car. I was thinking you might be interested in checking it out before anyone else.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Sure. Call it professional courtesy.” Letourneau read me off an address.
“You’ll have it buttoned up so no one else can get into it and muck around?”
“Already done. Meet me there in a half hour and we’ll see if there’s anything in it to write home about. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds good. And thanks.”
The phone went dead and I punched the address into my phone, getting directions quickly. I wheeled the car around and headed for the bowels of Allston, the unofficial armpit of Boston. Allston was home to college kids living on ramen, dive bars catering to those same kids, and immigrants from a whole host of third world countries. Time was, the neighborhood had been predominantly Russian, which gave KGB gumshoes a convenient place to hang out and get a taste of home when they weren’t spying. But the Russians had moved out and into the wealthier enclaves of Brookline when their hard work started paying off. They left behind a bunch of apartment buildings, triple deckers with decks that fell apart on a regular basis, and a smorgasbord of internationals that ranged from dirt poor to trust fund kids.
I hated the place.
The lone bright spot was that the martial arts school I studied at called the place home and had for over twenty years. My ninjutsu studies had taken a back burner for the last several years due to my job, but I’d get back there soon. I missed the camaraderie of my fellow students, I missed the awesome teachings of Mark Davis, and I missed my friends.
But work had to come first.
I found my way onto Beacon Street and then took left onto Harvard Avenue, passing the diners on one side and the building where the Boston Martial Arts Center was housed on the other. I knew there’d be classes going on at the moment and I desperately wanted to pull over and attend one.
Instead, I kept driving.
At the next intersection, I stayed straight until I hit the next intersection by the Pizzeria Regina. I stayed on my heading and as the road curved around to the left, I followed it. On either side, unnamed buildings lined the road. Some of them were legitimate auto shops, and others not so legitimate. You could find a whole lot of trouble in Allston if you didn’t know what to steer clear of.
By the end of the street, a tall brick building squatted across the way from a small shopping plaza with a grocery store and a few other bright spots of commerce. I eased into the parking lot and found my way to the back of the plaza where a row of dumpsters sat with bit of space between each.
I saw the marked cruisers first and then Letourneau’s Ford further on. I pulled over to the side and got out. As I did so, a uniform started to wave me on until I heard Letourneau’s voice tell him it was okay.
“Let him through, O’Riley, or he’ll have to kill you.”
I smirked and shook my head at the overweight cop who eyeballed me hard. “Such a joker that guy. Really, I wouldn’t kill you unless I absolutely had to.”
Letourneau came around one of the dumpsters and shook my hand. “We meet again.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Well, I figure I can always call in a marker if I need anything from you boys in the intel community. A little quid pro quo, as it were.”
“You never know,” I said. “Where the car?”
Letourneau nodded toward the dumpster. “Around there. Nice little spot to dump it, huh? Hidden from view, it’s a wonder anyone would even notice it.”
“Who called it in?”
“Worker at the store around front. They were dumping trash and noticed it. None of the employees are allowed to park here and this place has been used for drug deals in the past.”
“So no one wanted to get their hands potentially dirty with the dealers. Smart.”
Letourneau nodded. “Given the fact that we’ve had the Mexican cartels pushing into this area, it’s much better to not fuck with them.”
I nodded. I’d had my own run-in with the Mexican cartels a few months ago. It wasn’t an experience I was looking forward to repeating any
time soon. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Letourneau led me around the dumpster and there sat the Lincoln Towncar in all of its glory. Letourneau handed me a pair of late gloves and I pulled them on. If the killer had been careful enough to wipe down Amalfi’s body with bleach when she was done, I doubted that she would have left anything behind in the car.
Still, it was the only shot I had at the moment, so I took it.
Letourneau opened the driver’s side door and popped the trunk. While I squatted outside of the car and examined the footwell, he walked around to the back and checked out the trunk.
From what I could see, there wasn’t much of anything. I heard Letourneau whistle and went back to find him staring at an impeccably clean trunk. It was obvious that it had been vacuumed and then bleached.
Letourneau wrinkled his nose. “Now, why would someone use a whole helluva lot of bleach in trunk like this?” He eyed me. “You know, unless they were trying to get rid of…I dunno, say, blood?”
I glanced at him. “Maybe she stubbed her toe.”
He grunted and walked around the car, opening the doors and looking inside. The back seat was just as immaculate as the trunk. The entire car looked as though it had been so thoroughly detailed that there would be nothing left to find.
“You got crime scene techs on the way?”
Letourneau looked at me over the roof of the car. “Yeah. They’ll do their whole shebang on it and see if they can pull something. I doubt they’ll find anything of note, but I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
He came around the car and sighed. “Here’s the thing: if we’re going to share information then it’s gotta be a two-way street.”
“What do you mean?”
Letourneau frowned. “I know how you guys work. You want something for nothing. Everything you guys do is all secret squirrel stuff. But this is my town. And if some shit is going on here, then I want to know about it. I don’t want any untoward James Bond crap happening here, you get me?”
“‘Untoward?’ I didn’t peg you as being big on unusual words.”
“My wife got me a vocabulary desk calendar for Christmas. I’m trying to better myself.”
“How’s that working?”
He smirked. “The higher I get, the more they want to drag me back down.”
“Your CSI guys find anything, give me a call.” I started to walk away.
“I meant what I said,” Letourneau pointed a finger at me. “If we’re gonna do this, it’s gotta be a two-way street.”
“Noted,” I said. But there wasn’t going to be much I could give him.
And I think he knew that.
6
I managed to grab a halfway decent nap before my overactive mind woke me up and sent me driving back into Boston for a sit-down with Niles. I parked in the Boston Common garage and walked over to the Council building on Beacon Hill. I could have parked in their underground garage, but as a general rule, I don’t like the Council knowing my business. The less I showed up on their radar, the better off I was.
Niles brought me into his office and closed the door behind us. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you quite so soon.”
“I need more information than what I have already. Whoever she is, she knows how to keep herself concealed.”
Niles had a couple of files on his desk and he flipped one across to me. “That’s Amalfi’s jacket. Standard stuff we talked about already.”
“You mentioned another victim from December. Who was that guy?”
Niles pointed at the other folder. “Derek Cousins. Suburban cop, mixed martial arts guy. Divorced with two kids.”
“Proving once again that all the martial arts in the world won’t help you if you’re too unaware to sense a threat in the first place,” I said. I opened the folder and stared at Cousin’s picture. He looked about forty, but there was enough paunch in his gut to make me question whether he was actually older than that or not. A lot of guys hit their mid-30s so beaten into society’s expectation that they be balding, overweight, and lazy that a whole lot of them looked older than they were. And the fact that he was a cop didn’t matter; sometimes, they looked the worst of the lot.
“I would have thought an MMA guy could hold his own against a killer like this,” said Niles. “He apparently taught some sort of boxing fitness class, too.”
“Did he ever take one of his own classes?” I pointed at the picture. “This guy looks like he needs to drop a few pounds.”
“Probably a case of teacher first, student second.”
“Student never,” I said. “I’ll bet if we dig into his supposed martial arts background, he’s got some lineage that comes from the back of a napkin instead of a legitimate pedigree.”
“Regardless,” said Niles. “He’s dead. Done exactly the same as Amalfi.”
“And nothing at the crime scene whatsoever?”
“Nothing.”
I closed the file and put it back on Niles’ desk. “Boston Police found the car she used to drive away from the hotel. She ditched it in Allston.”
“Doesn’t everyone ditch everything there?”
“Pretty much. BPD is going to let me know if the crime scene techs find anything, but the expectation is about zero.”
Niles leaned on his elbows. “What are the odds that she’ll kill again?”
“High. December and now early February. Less than eight weeks between kills? For all we know, there may be others but they haven’t even been discovered yet.”
Niles shook his head. “I don’t think so. Cousins was done at a hotel, too. Just like Amalfi. Only difference was the fact that vampires own the Amalfi scene. That’s the only reason we technically have more to go on than with the first.”
“Not much at that,” I said. “Has anyone broken it to Amalfi’s family yet?”
“One of the counselors went over earlier. Why? You feel like taking a grief tour?”
I shrugged. “There might be something we can use there. I don’t know. Maybe if I can talk to his wife, find out what was going on, try that angle. How he might have met the killer, that sort of thing.”
“Well, since she’s one of us, you could certainly pay her a visit and let her know that you’ll be tracking down her husband’s killer. That should help facilitate acquiring any useful information. T hat is, if she feels like talking.”
“It’s probably going to run the gamut between my-husband-is-scum-for-cheating and find-the-bitch-and-kill-her-at-all-costs.”
Niles chuckled. “Sounds like an amazing time. Have fun.”
The only reason I normally go to Wellesley is for the restaurants. There’s a fantastic Thai place, Lemon Thai, tucked away on the main strip that serves some of the best beef and basil I’ve ever had in my life outside of Bangkok. And they make it with plenty of red peppers and extra sauce, which I happen to dig. The tom yum soup is pretty killer, too. I realized all of this as I drove route 9 westbound and wondered if I’d have time to stop at the joint on the way out of town so I could grab some food.
That would have to wait, however. My first priority was to talk to Amalfi’s widow and see if that turned up anything. Their house sat on a two-acre parcel, which meant serious bucks in Wellesley. But money didn’t impress me. As vampires, we all received a basic living stipend that was pretty generous. Then whatever you chose to do for work brought with it more money on top of it. The Council had set this up ages ago as a means of hopefully preventing the population from resorting to criminal activities in the event they got down on their luck. Despite their generosity, it still amazed me how many of my kind turned to illegal activities anyway.
Who was it that said the nature of man is inherently evil? I don’t know if I agreed with that entirely, but I’d certainly seen enough garbage in my life to say it held some validity.
Amalfi’s mansion looked pretty cookie-cutter, which was another reason I never let wealth impress me. Just because you have money doesn’t
mean you have any class. And most of the supposedly rich had about as much creativity as their neighbors, which was to say, not much. Million dollar homes that looked like everyone else’s home wasn’t something I aspired to. What the hell was the difference between a copycat house that sold for a huge chunk of change and living in a tenement high-rise in the urban sprawl? More room? Who cares?
My tires crunched gravel underneath as I rolled the car to a stop. I stepped out and felt the bite of the cold air hit me hard. February as growing ever more cold by the day and I worried my nipples might chafe if it kept up.
I was missing the sun and warmth from December’s jaunt to the Caribbean a whole lot just then.
The door of Amalfi’s mansion was one of those heavy wooden numbers with a lion’s head for a door knocker. The lion looked bored. I used it anyway.
Surprisingly, I saw no other cars aside from the two SUVs in the three-car garage. Maybe word hadn’t gotten around just yet.
It took several minutes and repeated attempts with the door knocker before the door finally cracked open and I saw Amalfi’s wife for the first time. She was petite, a brunette, and her eyes were a shade of brown that seemed at odds with her alabaster skin.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Lawson. I’m from the Council. I’d like to speak with you about your husband if I can.”
She eyed me for a moment. “Someone was already here earlier to give me the news.”
I nodded. “I’m not one of them. My interest in your husband’s case is a bit more…proactive.”
She hesitated and then nodded, opening the door. I stepped into the main foyer and the ceiling soared above me. A huge grand staircase curved up from the tiled floor, bordered by various paintings and photographs. Overhead, a crystal chandelier cast light over the entire scene. It was designed to make an impact and I was willing to bet the Amalfis had been quite the entertainers in their prime.
Before ol’ Richie got his organs scooped out.
His wife held out her hand. “Samantha.”
I shook it and found it warm to the touch. I smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you, I know this probably isn’t the best time.”