A Killing Night mf-4

by Jonathon King

  When he was finished he backed off and she started to relax. She could take this. She could get through this, she thought.

  But then he held her by the shoulders and turned her and pushed her chest down on the trunk of the car and she let him take her again. She closed her eyes and silently vowed: Last Time.

  On the ride back home he sipped at the flask and actually asked her if she had liked the movie. She forced herself to say yes, especially the part when the SWAT team came in and cleared out the room of foreign terrorists without firing a shot. He'd just nodded. She tried to concentrate on the moon and remembered a storybook from when she was a child about a boy with a purple crayon and how the moon walked with him.

  When they got a block from her apartment he parked and got out and opened the door for her. She stepped out and then stood facing him, looking into his face, her eyes as dry as parchment.

  "I gotta go. I'll call you," he said, and she nodded and he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  She watched him get back into the car and pull out onto the street and she stayed still until the red glow of the taillights disappeared around the corner. And then she turned and threw up into the gutter over and over and over until her throat was raw.

  CHAPTER 24

  I walked into the bar late afternoon and the darkness and the odor of stale beer and a subtle hint of mildew stopped me. I took two steps in and waited until my eyes adjusted, pupils spiraling down from the brilliance of the sun outside.

  There were three humped backs at the bar, men with their shoulders turned in as though the light that came through the door was a cold wind. There was a blonde head moving beyond them. Her hair was pulled back tight. Marci, working the day shift just as Laurie had told me over the phone. The manager had offered quickly that the girl had just asked to switch her shifts and get off the eight-to- two for a few weeks. Laurie became even more suspicious when I said I needed to talk with the girl and would rather do it in private.

  "She came in with the strangest look. Said there was nothing wrong but I knew there was. Is she in some kind of trouble with the police?"

  I told her again that I wasn't a cop and that I was only a consultant when detective Richards and I had met with her.

  "But you didn't say that then, did you?" she reminded me.

  I apologized for leading her on.

  "It's OK," she said, brightly, like she meant it. "You get used to liars in this business."

  I let the dig sit.

  "So can I talk with Marci?" I asked.

  "You don't need my permission. She's on four-to-eight all this week."

  I made my way down the bar and took the end seat on purpose. I had called Richards the same day I'd given her the picture. I knew she would look up his name. Pissed as she was, she was too good a cop to turn away from it. What I was surprised at was that she gave me the rundown. Maybe it was in the form of an apology, maybe she was intrigued. It was hard to read her over the phone.

  Kyle Morrison. Three years on the Fort Lauderdale Department. Came in from a small department in North Florida. Since he'd been here there were a handful of complaints in his file. Most of them gripes from arrestees about use of force, but not one that had stuck. Like most metropolitan departments, Fort Lauderdale had a strong union. They dealt with most complaints internally and even if they did think Morrison was heavy-handed, there wasn't much they would do unless he knocked around someone prominent and it went public. He was assigned to a night prowl car shift in the Victoria Park area. The only odd thing Richards said she noticed was that despite his experience Morrison had never taken the sergeant's exam. He seemed to be satisfied with what he had, which does not always endear you to the powers that be. Supervisors are wary of those who don't aspire to management like they did. It makes them second-guess themselves.

  I complimented Richards on her thoroughness and her sources.

  "I'm sorry for this morning, Freeman," she'd said and hung up.

  Marci looked twice at me when I sat down and then she reached into the cooler. She brought out a Rolling Rock and pried the cap off.

  "Hi," she said when she put the bottle in front of me and then stood back, waiting.

  "How you doing?" I said, my tone conversational.

  She stared at my face a couple of moments too long. Her eyes had a color like rainwater on a concrete slab and had about the same amount of emotion in them. She looked older than the last time, and not just by days.

  "You on the job?" she said, like an accusation.

  I took a sip of beer and couldn't hold her look.

  "Used to be. Now I'm working as a private investigator," I said.

  The other men at the bar were too far down the rail to hear me. I had the feeling it was as intimate a setting as I was going to get with her.

  "But you were with that cop the other day, the woman with the hair?"

  "Yeah. She's looking into a case that I was trying to help her with."

  "What kind of case?" she said, all subtlety gone from her voice. I had the feeling she'd given up on subtlety.

  "The disappearance of some women," I said. "Women who were all bartenders."

  She actually stepped back, though I was sure she was aware of it.

  "From here?"

  "One from here," I said. "The others from a couple of places in the area that are pretty much like this. Small bars. Relatively quiet. Regular customers."

  "What happened to them?"

  "No one has been able to find out," I said. "They never turned up. They just vanished. No notes. No argument with family. No damage to their apartments. It was almost like they went out on a date and never came back."

  When I said it I watched her face. I thought she was looking at the mirror on the wall behind me but I could see a paleness spread down her face like the blood was sliding down out of her cheeks, leaking somewhere below her throat. She stumbled like she'd suddenly fallen off a pair of high heels and I came off the stool and reached out for her.

  She put up her palm.

  "Don't touch me," she said, regained her balance and then turned and poured herself a shot of brandy from the back of the bar. When she tossed it back one of the boys down the way picked up on the movement and raised his tumbler of dark liquid.

  "Cheers," he croaked in a raspy voice, downed the drink and went back to studying the wood grain on the bar top.

  I waited for a hint of color to come back into her skin but I wasn't going to waste my advantage.

  "You know a guy named Morrison, Marci? A Kyle Morrison?"

  "Yeah," she said and I could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. "Why? Does he have anything to do with this?"

  "It's possible," I said, using the fear. "How well do you know him?"

  Now she was looking down into her empty shot glass.

  "Maybe not as well as I should, huh?" She motioned for me to take a stool down around the corner of the bar, behind the electronic poker machine, and we talked for an hour, breaking on occasion so she could tend to the others when they tapped their glasses on the African mahogany. At first she just listened while I described the cases that Richards thought were more than just disappearances. I gave her the details about the girls, all from places far away with no local family connections and not a lot of close friends outside the bar business. They had all lived alone. They were all single. She waited until I'd given as much detail as I was going to give and then she poured herself another brandy.

  She hadn't known any of the women. She had heard some of the other bartenders gossiping, but hadn't given it much thought. Trading in rumor was all part of the business.

  "So, you don't know if any of them was raped?" she asked, the question coming far too quickly.

  "No. There weren't any reports made before they disappeared, no," I said.

  The slightest tremor had set up in her chin. Scared? Disappointed? Heartbroken? I couldn't tell. She looked vulnerable for the first time, but I am not beyond taking advantage of vulnerable.
/>   "Tell me about Kyle, Marci," I said, looking straight into her eyes.

  "He's a cop," she said.

  "I know."

  "I've been dating him."

  I let her eyes look past me again.

  "You two have a drug thing going, him supplying, you selling to the customers over the bar?" I said.

  "No," she said instantly. "Shit, no. Kyle doesn't do drugs. Neither do I. No."

  But she was putting him somewhere.

  "Then why are you so scared, Marci?" I said. She was shaking her head and despite her effort to stop it, moisture was coming into her eyes.

  "You think Kyle did it, that he killed those girls?" she said.

  I shook my own head.

  "No one's sure of anything," I said. Marci had made the jump, suspecting Kyle, for some reason. And I did not peg her as a simple, paranoid woman.

  "Why? Do you think he could have?"

  I was watching her eyes to see if she was working back on days or nights or conversations with Morrison, putting him in a context that she had never before imagined.

  "The guy we're talking about went out with these girls several times, knew where they lived and had some access to their apartments so he could cover up afterward," I said.

  I knew I was leading her. But I didn't care. If my drug theory was out, I had to find something to get this Morrison guy off the list.

  "Jesus," she said and her head dropped and she slowly shook it, letting strands of her hair swing loose. After a few seconds her chin came up and it was set, back teeth tightened down.

  "Kyle," she said and nothing more.

  "Do you think he's capable?"

  "Goddamn right he's capable," she said, now letting the anger into her voice.

  "Why? Did you see anything? Did he say anything that makes you believe that?"

  She shook her head.

  "Too smart," she said, again with the look over my shoulder, seeing him and all his motives and moves through a whole different looking glass. "He'd be way too smart for that."

  I still didn't know for sure where she was coming from, but I did know there was something under the surface. Even if your boyfriend has jerked you around and done you wrong, you don't accept the accusation that he's a killer this easily.

  "But he wasn't smart enough with you," I said, hoping it would come.

  "No, he wasn't," she said, and the anger she was holding flashed into her eyes. "He raped me. And I let him."

  Christ, I thought. As a cop, I had heard the accusation of rape fly from the mouths of a lot of women. The word still stung, just the thought of it, even when it had a ring of untruth. But this wasn't an accusation. It was an admission. Marci turned her face away from me. Some guy at the other end of the bar banged his glass on the wood. I looked down at him and the expression on my face made him return his attention to the bottom of his glass for further study.

  Marci did not move, no sobs, not even a snuffle. The blonde ponytail, for Christ's sake, made her look like a college girl. I put my hand on her shoulder and she did not flinch, just rotated the stool back to me and her eyes were dry.

  "So what do you need to know?" she said.

  The rape had taken place two nights before. She had not gone to the hospital, so there was no rape kit. She had come home and scrubbed herself in the shower after throwing up in the gutter. She had slept with Morrison several times over the last couple of months and it wouldn't make any difference, she said. They'd call it consensual, she said: "And they'd be right. I let it happen."

  I kept shaking my head no. She was turning on herself, giving him a way out. I needed the strong side of her.

  "Don't go there, Marci. Husbands get convicted of raping their wives. Don't go there," I said. "You can file charges against him."

  I tried to make my voice sound convincing, even while she kept shaking her head no, no, no.

  "Where did this happen, Marci?" I said, still thinking evidence, evidence.

  "Out in the Glades," she said. "Way out past the toll booth on the Alley."

  "All right. Do you think you could find it again, this place out in the Glades?"

  She shook her head, still facing the length of the bar away from me and the other men now began to take notice.

  "There's no way I would recognize it. It was dark when he took me there. It's an unmarked turnoff."

  "Had he taken you there before?" I asked. Every human has a pattern, does what he does in a way or in a place that he considers a comfort zone. The bars, the women running the show in those bars, the night as cover.

  She nodded her head and turned away, picked up the empty shot glass but did not move to fill it.

  "You'll never find it," she said.

  I looked across at myself in the mirror. I knew I could take this all to Richards. God knows she'd be all over Morrison if she thought she could substantiate another officer raping a woman. She'd shot and killed the last one.

  But I also knew the system, the PBA lawyers, the disparagement of the victim, the drawn out court process with filings and cross- filings. My own mother had taken a more direct route to justice and I'd praised her for it. If there were other victims, they too would be buried forever in the paperwork. If Morrison was our guy, it might be the best chance to come up with evidence to give those girls and their families some justice. If Morrison wasn't our guy, at least we'd have the chance to nail his ass.

  I knew I was freelancing on this. I'd have to tell Richards in either case, but not yet.

  "All right. Then there's another way," I said. "But it would involve some risk-to you."

  She turned around and her eyes were dry and hard.

  "Then I'm in."

  CHAPTER 25

  I set up surveillance on Kim's across the street in the movie house parking lot. I could see the west side door to the bar and the two south exits of the shopping center. O'Shea had borrowed an unmarked Camaro from the security firm he worked for and was on the other side with a sight line to the front door of the bar and the east and north exits. Marci was inside, setting up her boyfriend.

  As far as O'Shea knew, we were tagging Morrison and the girl with the chance of finding a drug connection. That's what I'd told him when I recruited him, but I wasn't dumb enough not to think he was stringing the pieces together. But I'd convinced myself that even if I was wrong, I wasn't giving him any outs. O'Shea would still be there, and the fact that he was willing to spend this much time with me was easing my doubts that he was the man Richards thought he was.

  We had sketched out a plan that was simple and believable because the bulk of it was true. I'd learned a long time ago that the trick to getting confidential informants to lie well was to give them enough truth to sell it.

  All I wanted Marci to do was to call Morrison, tell him that she had gotten a personal visit from the tall guy who'd been with the woman detective. When he asked her what I'd talked about, she needed to convince him she was too scared to tell him over the phone. That she needed to see him. I didn't need to instruct her to sound scared. She was tough, she was angry, but her fear was real. She did exactly as we had planned and Morrison told her he'd be by before the end of her shift. She called me. I called O'Shea.

  O'Shea brought a couple of Nextel cell phones from his job so we could stay instantly connected. It was the way business was done. A high tweet came from the cell. I clicked back.

  "Your boy is here," O'Shea's voice came over the Nextel. "And this one's got some balls, Freeman. He's in his goddamn squad car."

  "You're sure?"

  "Same guy I snapped the picture of. He parked the unit over on the other side of the lot and is walking into the front door of the bar now."

  "He's in uniform?"

  "No. Plainclothes."

  "What's the number on the car?" I asked, and when O'Shea read it off I matched it to the number I'd scribbled down when watching the cop car in the parking lot, thinking it was security, knowing now that it was no such thing.

  "When he come
s back out, you're on him; if he leaves on your side, I'll follow and we can switch up the line."

  "I know how to work a two-man tail, Freeman."

  "Yeah, all right," I said. I was nervous. A two-tail was not a difficult technique, but South Florida was not a big urban city like Philly where parallel streets are a common layout and traffic moves like patterned waves that rush and stop at lights. But if I was correct, or better, lucky, most of this tail was going to be on the highway leading out to the western part of the county to the Glades.

  If I'd read Marci right, she would be in Kim's now, down in front of the last seat, telling Kyle that I was a private investigator working for the family of some bartender from up north who'd disappeared down here months ago. In a way, it was a truth.

  She would tell him that I had worked a theory that the girl had been picked up by someone who had dated her, killed her and then dumped her body. Another truth, and when I had gone over this part with Marci she had again blanched and the look on her face was exactly the look I hoped she was using now.

  "And if he asks you why I think that, you tell him that I've found evidence, DNA evidence, and all I need to do now is find corroborating witnesses to set up a time line so the authorities will take the cases seriously."

  The tricky part, I told her, would be if he didn't ask about where I got DNA. Then she was going to have to offer up the lie about my finding a body in the Glades. She had nodded at the instructions, said she could do it. But this wasn't some drunk she would be trying to convince. There was something raw about the way she used his name. I could not dismiss the feeling that she was too anxious to hurt this guy and if that showed through, no way was this going to work.

  "Whatever you do, Marci," I'd said, "don't go with him." She'd tightened her mouth and I repeated my instruction. "Don't go with him or it's off."

  Morrison was inside for forty-five minutes. O'Shea buzzed me when he came out.

  "Guy's marchin,' Freeman," he said into the cell. "Looks like a man on a mission and hasn't looked left or right yet."