Signature Kill

by David Levien

  “Oh, I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do,” she says. He smells her vanilla chewing gum in the air.

  “I hear you, Stace,” he says, and gives her a smile.

  68

  The house was as benign as a sugar cookie, sitting there on a tree-lined street that must have been positively leafy during the spring, summer, and fall. There was nothing going on behind the shaded windows as far as Behr could tell in the two hours he’d been sitting there. Every few years or so, it seemed, a nondescript home like this one was revealed in the news to be a house of horrors, a wife kept prisoner by an abusive husband, kidnap victims locked up in the basement. He’d even had his own experience with a place more run-down than this, in a worse part of town, used as a temporary depot for unimaginable crimes, where again, the bland facade of suburbia masked pure malice. But this time it wasn’t the house itself that held his attention. No, this time his gaze kept shifting to the oversized detached two-car garage. There were no windows on the garage bay doors, which was a bit odd, and the sliver of window on the side of the structure that he could just glimpse from where he sat appeared to be blacked out.

  About halfway through his sit, a somewhat portly middle-aged woman arrived and entered the house. After the camera store, Behr had run a quick background, which he finished on his laptop with a Wi-Fi card on his stakeout. So he had the plate on the Toyota Corolla station wagon she had driven up in. He knew she was Margaret Abler and that she had been married to Reinhard Peter Abler, his subject, for the past eighteen years.

  Abler himself had served a five-year stint in the army and had gotten out with the rank of first sergeant via honorable discharge. This was about eighteen years ago as well. He had no criminal record, was listed as a member in good standing of and donor to the Bethel Lutheran Church, and was currently employed by Martin, Miller & Elkin, a firm that provided audits, tax management, and advisory services to corporate clients. Though not as large as PricewaterhouseCoopers or Deloitte & Touche, MM&E was in the same mold, and as a director of accounting services, Abler was firmly middle management. He had a blue 2004 Buick Park Avenue registered to him, and Behr had the plate number on that. He had modest credit card bills, low outstanding balances, and no liens against him. On paper he was a most innocuous individual, a solid citizen. But Behr was interested in what was off the paper.

  That was when Abler’s wife exited the house after fifteen minutes inside, got in her car, and drove off.

  His gaze pulled away from the house once again and landed on that garage. That garage. They didn’t use it for parking their cars. She didn’t anyway. Maybe there was a way inside, so he could take a look. He sat there for a long half hour wondering, thinking, sweeping the neighborhood with his eyes in all directions for witnesses. And then he reached for the door handle.

  His feet felt like they were hovering inches above the ground, such was the deftness with which he tried to move as he crossed the street, then the lawn, and slipped between the house and the garage. His big concern was that he’d be spotted, perhaps by a neighbor, who would alert Abler that someone was creeping around, giving him the chance to clear out evidence and cover his tracks. Behr couldn’t let that happen. He moved along the wall until he got to the window. He peered inside, or tried to anyway. The window had been treated with a darkened film, and there seemed to be another layer of solid blacking on the inside, so there was no seeing through it, and it wasn’t the type that opened. Behr moved on until he reached the rear, where there was a regular door. He didn’t have to try the knob to determine if it was locked, because there was a chunky stainless-steel padlock with a thick hasp securing the portal. It was a security measure, to be sure, but to what end—to safeguard valuables inside, to keep people out, or to keep someone in?

  Behr gave a quick glance over to the house. The back door would present less of a challenge than the garage and that padlock, but the house didn’t hold the answers. Of that he was sure. Then, as he headed back to his car and got in, a sick feeling descended upon him. He took out his phone and looked at it. It was a miserable call to have to make, but he went ahead and placed it.

  “Hey, Breslau, it’s—”

  “I know who it is. Your number comes up under ‘asshole.’ What do you want?”

  “I was thinking about that DB you mentioned, the little girl. Did her aunt turn up yet?”

  “No,” Breslau said.

  “You got a description on her?”

  “She’s thirty-two, Caucasian, five foot nine, eyes blue, hair blond.”

  The facts settled on Behr. He felt his eyes go to the garage.

  “Have you looked out by where the other bodies were found?” he asked.

  “Of course. And by the tracks where Quinn turned up. We’re looking everywhere,” Breslau said.

  “If I had an idea—”

  “Yeah?”

  “A potentially related crime that led to a search warrant on a location …” Behr was thinking about the assault at the massage parlor, and how he’d made the ID at the photo store. It was circumstantial, potentially rickety in court. Breslau was ahead of him.

  “Did this related crime get reported?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “We’d need solid linkage. Will the victim come forward?”

  “Doubtful,” Behr said.

  Breslau took a breath. “All I can tell you is: I cannot afford a bad search or any other brand of bullshit right now. And neither can you.”

  “Shit …” Behr breathed. “You got a pic on the aunt?”

  “E-mailing you now,” Breslau said, and hung up.

  A moment later Behr’s phone buzzed with the incoming message. He opened the attachment, and the photo scrolled onto his screen. Pam Cupersmith was young, lovely, and blond. As Behr stared at the picture, an urgency to get inside that garage exploded within him. She was right there, across the street and inside that small structure, he suddenly knew, in whatever condition, mere wood and glass and metal all that was separating him from recovering her. Hell, maybe she was even alive, as doubtful as that seemed.

  But Breslau and the rest of the cops weren’t going to help him. They couldn’t. He had to help them. He jerked his car into gear and stepped on the accelerator. He drove for MM&E, where Abler worked, moving like an automaton now, programmed for one function at any cost: entry.

  Amber plate-glass windows reflected the late-afternoon sun onto a dozen rows of vehicles. Behr had arrived at the office building that housed MM&E, and he drove slowly up and down the columns of cars until he spotted Abler’s Park Avenue. Advertised as a slice of American automotive luxury when it was new, it was more like the baked potato of cars now. Innocuous and forgettable, and in a dark blue color that vaguely connoted authority, the car was getting old. But he imagined Abler’s reluctance to sell it considering what Behr imagined it had been used for—the collection and transportation of victims. Behr had dug up a police report on file back from 2003 when Abler’s prior car, a Pontiac Grand Prix, had been “stolen.” The car had been found three days later, burned. Abler had collected the insurance. It read like an effective sterilization of evidence to Behr, but it wasn’t a move that could be repeated often, if ever, and Abler was smart enough to know that.

  Behr continued past the car, drove out of the lot, and parked on the street. He took a page out of Abler’s book, got a baseball cap from the trunk, and pulled it down low. He had to assume there were security cameras in the lot. That was the assumption he labored under in almost every public place these days. He wasn’t stealing anything, so there’d be little reason for the footage to be reviewed before it was recycled, but since he was illegally entering a vehicle, he didn’t want to be easily identified. He got organized with a few other items he kept stored in his trunk, slammed it shut, and started walking with bland purpose toward the Park Avenue.

  No one who saw him from a distance of more than five feet could see the clear vinyl gloves that covered his hands, nor could they see the
slim jim he slid out of his sleeve when he reached the driver’s door. He hadn’t worked a car lock in a while, but it wasn’t a skill that took a lot of maintenance, and the age of the car helped. He fed the slender piece of metal between the window glass and the rubber seal, down into the door panel, and fished around for a moment before he was able to pop the lock. Then he opened the door and got in. He slammed the door behind him and breathed in pine-scented air freshener before he found what he was looking for: the automatic garage door opener, clipped on the passenger-side visor.

  Behr took out his Horizon-net, a device the size of a key fob. Technically a backup or replacement remote, for all intents and purposes it was a code grabber. If Abler’s opener was part of a high-end modern system, with a rolling combination that created a completely new code each time it was used, Behr would be at a dead end because he’d need access to the main unit in the garage in order to duplicate the frequency. But the more basic brands of garage door openers, especially older ones, created codes with the same basic values, and the Horizon-net was able to run a simple resynchronization protocol that basically cloned the remote. Behr took Abler’s from the visor and saw it was a Genie that was a good ten years old. He opened the Horizon-net and set the brand jumper switch to Genie. He pressed Abler’s remote and then the Horizon-net. His unit blinked red a few times and then went green.

  He was done with his business in the car. He put Abler’s remote back on the visor and opened the door. He was ready to walk away, but then couldn’t resist doing one more thing: he pressed the trunk release button next to the steering column and heard the latch disengage. He got out, circled around to the back, and took a look. The trunk was completely empty, immaculate. Behr didn’t know what he expected—handcuffs, knives, bloodstains, a body? There was nothing inside but factory-installed industrial carpet like the day it rolled off the assembly line. He closed the trunk and walked back across the lot toward his car. A tall blonde, about Susan’s height, maybe a few years younger, caught his eye as she exited the building, but she peeled off in the opposite direction.

  When Behr got back in his car, the sun was already disappearing from the building’s side, and he dialed a call on his cell phone.

  “Good afternoon, MM&E,” a bright-voiced receptionist answered.

  “Yeah, this is John Daniels from Lucas,” Behr said, naming the biggest petroleum company in town. If MM&E didn’t handle them, they wanted to. “I’ve got some P&Ls to drop off for an Abler in accounting. How late are you folks around?”

  “Would you like me to connect you?” she asked.

  Behr considered chancing it and actually getting the man on the phone, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

  “Nah, that’s all right. What time does he usually clear out of there?”

  “Usually about quarter to six, six.”

  “Great, I oughtta just be able to make it,” Behr said, hanging up. He glanced at the clock on the dash. If he drove fast he’d have just shy of ninety minutes.

  I oughtta just be able to make it, he said, this time to himself.

  69

  What in the goddamn hell is he doing here? Abler wonders.

  He can’t be sure, but he thinks he’s just seen the big guy from the community meeting crossing the parking lot, from the direction where his car is parked, no less. He almost missed him, so locked was he onto Stacie and her prancing across the lot and getting into a red Mazda 6. Just like a young filly to drive too much car for her salary. Fine by me, though, he thinks. With a flashy car like that parked out front, there’ll be no missing whether she’s home or not in a little while.

  “You’re not breaking out early on me, are ya, Hardy?” It’s Kenny, coat on, computer bag in hand. He’s the one breaking out early.

  “Nope, just getting some fresh air before I finish up.”

  “That’s good. We’re gonna need all those audits done before the last week of the month.”

  “You’ll–”

  “I’ll have ’em. I know. Just reminding you.” Kenny continues on. “Keep up the good work,” he calls back.

  “I will.”

  I should do a piece of work on you …

  He stares after Kenny’s departing back, then stands there for another moment scanning the lot, watching Stacie drive away and trying to figure out where the big guy went. That’s when he sees a maroon Olds Toronado crossing the other way on the street past the exit. It has to be him. He breaks into a run toward the corner of the parking lot and the Olds gets stuck at the light, and he’s able to make out a license plate number. There are databases that cross-list owners and addresses with plate numbers. There are ways. He’ll soon know who the big guy is and where he lives. The projects are just falling into his lap right now.

  70

  The street was quiet and the light was going day’s-end flat when Behr arrived. The shadows thrown from the trees and light poles were being swallowed by everything around them. Behr rolled to a stop a good distance down the street from Abler’s place and doused his headlights. He saw one window illuminated upstairs in the house, but the wife’s car wasn’t out front, nor was there any movement inside. A neighbor four houses over walked toward home with a large mixed-breed dog on a leash and disappeared inside. Behr felt his heart hurtling around his chest. His mouth went slightly dry. He had to go in.

  At least wait until dark, he bargained with himself, which was mere moments away, the gloam falling all around the car, but there was no deal to be made.

  Come on, do it, another interior voice urged.

  What if the Horizon-net doesn’t work? Behr pushed the doubt from his mind.

  Do it now, that other voice demanded. Do it for Pam Cupersmith. She was inside, and every moment could mean the difference to her.

  That voice won.

  He reached for the handle of his car door, and in an instant his feet were on the pavement and he was walking through the quiet twilight toward the garage. Each step he took closer to the property spelled potential disaster for his case. If Abler had returned home before him somehow and was hidden behind those shades or in the garage itself, and he discovered Behr, he would be flushed like a game bird and able to disappear, or at the least dispose of any evidence inside. Or, if he had the nerve, he could even call the cops, and Behr would be the one who ended up in jail for breaking and entering. But Behr continued on, feeling as if his feet belonged to another.

  He paused when he reached the big bay door, trying to blend in with the corner of the structure, and then came the moment of truth: he hit the Horizon remote in his pocket. The low grinding of the opener’s motor and chain that escaped from underneath the lifting door as it moved upward told him the code grab had worked. No light spilled outside from the customary bulb attached to most automatic garage doors—it had been shut off. Behr dropped to the ground and rolled underneath the rising door and into the blackness of the garage, hitting the remote again and closing the door behind him before it had gone up three feet.

  He knew immediately, before he even shined his flashlight around, that he was both right and wrong in his assumptions. He lay there in the dark and quiet once the door settled, and sensed the place was empty, at least of anyone living, and that if Pam Cupersmith were there, he was too late. Yet all the confirmation he needed was in the air, which hung heavy with the scent of oxidized blood and entrails. An undertone of bleach and other chemicals stung his nostrils. He recognized the smell from when he was young and worked in a meat-processing plant. He knew right away he had entered a slaughterhouse.

  He sat up and took out his Mini Maglite, which he’d fitted with a red lens, and when he clicked it on, a swath of the garage was bathed in a crimson light. There was no car inside. Instead a long couch covered by an old blanket took up the center of the space. He went and checked, quickly, hopelessly under the blanket, and then below some workbenches, and in the corners, which were the most likely places a person could’ve been hidden, but he was alone.

  There was
a low chest along one wall that he supposed could’ve been used for such storage, but inside it he found multiple stacks of pulpy pornographic magazines. Across the space was a carpenter’s table, and above that a pegboard covered with tools, both manual and electric. They were not of the automotive variety though, rather the array was of knives, cleavers, machetes, saws, chisels, awls, and all manner of other pointed and bladed instruments. They were items of torment, of annihilation.

  As Behr walked toward the wall to get a better look, he stumbled over a depression and saw that the floor was angled slightly toward a rusted metal drain. A channel was cut into the concrete that led from the drain to a large slop sink against the opposite wall, and then something caused him to look up and shine his light. Above him was a set of iron hooks suspended from the ceiling just like the kind livestock and game animals were hung from to drain before butchering. There was also a block and tackle rigged to it, for hoisting carcasses. Behr’s head swam as he tried to process all he saw, and his eyes fell upon a set of shelves and cabinets and a large battered refrigerator along the deep wall of the garage opposite the bay door.

  He walked with dread toward the shelves, and as he drew closer to them, the weak beam of his light began to pick up the shapes of cardboard banker’s boxes. He went to the nearest one, lifted the lid, and found photo-developing supplies inside—chemicals, trays, tongs. The same with the next one. But inside the third he found something else: prints.

  Behr had never seen anything like them. With the Maglite clamped between his teeth, he flipped through eight-by-tens of highly stylized yet gruesome images of women, shot extremely close up for the most part, their faces obscured, and their bodies cut into pieces. The photos were an abomination of the human form and all that was decent in the world, and even still the power and the artistry in them struck him. They were masterful for how they made his soul churn. In a strange way, Quinn would’ve truly appreciated them. One print bore text that appeared to have been scratched into the negative. The words, covering the image of a woman, her head nearly severed and twisted all the way around her torso so her eyes looked out over her back, were the same, repeated over and over: I am death. I am death. I am death. I am death. I am death …