Wolf's Trap (The Nick Lupo Series Book 1)

by W. D. Gagliani

  But he had. And now Martin was filling up a whole new notebook with his perfect penmanship, noting in neat entries every time Corinne Devereaux left her building and when she returned.

  At first, he had neglected Detective Lupo’s schedule, but within two days, he had decided to begin a separate log with the policeman’s comings and goings as well. Soon, he enjoyed the exercise of matching their schedules and wondering if and when they were together. The coffee shop from which he kept vigil was as close as he could hope to come, and they were quite accommodating, especially once they heard about the novel he was writing, little by little, in their very own humble diner. Maybe he would name them somewhere in the book, he told them. I’ll have the hero meet the girl of his dreams here, he said to the blushing waitress. Before they go to his place and screw their brains out in seven positions, he thought but diplomatically did not add.

  The waitress, Linda, had a bit of an acne problem, but she was smart enough to play up her good features. Her lips were full and sensuous, and well-highlighted with violet gloss. Her auburn hair was a supple cascade around her shoulders. Unfortunately, she must have thought her pretty, upturned nose required some adornment, because the right nostril was pierced and sported a thin gold wire hoop. Oh, well, Martin thought every time he saw Linda, we can’t all be perfect. It somehow threw him off liking the girl. Still, she was flattered at his attention, and more than happy to keep his soda glass or coffee cup filled as long as the promise of some small measure of immortality hung between them.

  Today, Martin watched Corinne Devereaux pick her way carefully down the rain-slickened sidewalk leading to her building, balancing on her high heels like the professional she was. He would have liked Corinne as his own conquest, he had decided. He had already walked past her once on the street, had made brief eye contact with her, and smiled.

  Even in these days of mistrust, she had smiled back.

  Martin was taken with her. Stunning would have described her well. A cliché—so be it. Blonde, true blonde, without the aid of a bottle; he’d been through her garbage on a regular basis, so he knew. Medium height, slim but shapely build, long legs flattered by the leotards and stirrup pants she favored and, recently, those high-priced bell-bottoms that had beaten the odds and made a comeback. Facial features as fine as any supermodel’s, with light blue eyes looking out over a graceful, patrician nose that hinted of intelligence and charisma. Sublime lips, outlined in her favorite bright red, put the finishing touches to a face that should have graced magazine covers and cosmetics advertising. Instead, for some reason he could barely fathom—not that he really cared—she chose to make her living by escorting ugly old men to high-priced restaurants and then perhaps to their overpriced hotel rooms where she would put those features to work in creating the illusion that she enjoyed what she did and with whom she did it.

  Fools. Martin snorted. He drank a long swallow of tepid coffee and noticed that Linda was on her way—sweet, lovely, little nose-pierced Linda—with a fresh pot to refresh him. Fools. He returned to his thought after she had topped his cup and smiled at him. He smiled back disarmingly. All fools.

  In the meantime, Corinne Devereaux finally reached her building’s lobby door and went inside. Martin could still see her through the glass, struggling with her purse. Looking for her keys? He made a note in his log. Time. Which direction she had come from. How long it took her in the lobby. He would like using her as his first message. He would like it a lot. It might double the fun, seeing how long it would take the freak cop to finally understand what this was about, whom he was dealing with. Or was that, with whom he was dealing? As a writer, he should know. What if Linda asked?

  Martin smiled. The coffee was hot and strong—just as he liked it—and it felt good going down on such a wet, miserable day.

  He turned the page and started a new column. Soon the cop would be home, and then he would enjoy imagining what those two did together. Was it a professional relationship? Did she trade favors for a friend—a protector—on the force?

  Martin’s forays into Lupo’s trash hadn’t helped much. Hardly any processed foods, but plenty of meat containers. Little vegetable waste, though the apartments were likely to have sink disposal units. Mail was mostly junk or bill-oriented, with little to set it apart from anyone else’s. The meat made sense, and Martin smiled at the thought of any one person eating this much meat during this age of diet awareness. Oh, yes, it all made sense. Caroline’s journals were—to say the least—fantastic in nature. But Martin had always trusted his sister’s seriousness, even though his own relationship with her was complicated by his feelings, feelings that he had acted upon at an early age. Oh, yes, he had acted. And she would still be his, if Nick Lupo had never come along.

  He picked up the coffee cup but changed his mind and slammed it back down on the table, liquid sloshing over the side and forming a puddle. Linda looked up, startled, and watched him from across the room, perhaps wondering if he needed something.

  Martin knew he needed something, but he could never have it again, not ever, because of Nick Lupo, and now it was almost time for Lupo to pay.

  He waved his cup at Linda, wordlessly asking her for the pot and a rag. She jumped to his request. That was more like it. Maybe he would keep Linda in mind, too. He wondered if Lupo frequented the diner. It was so close to his building, Martin guessed yes. He wondered if he could sense where Lupo might have sat on one of his speculated visits.

  Martin’s hands itched, and he scratched them. Linda approached with a smile that brought tingles to his spine. He kept both throbbing hands under the table while she dealt with the spill and his cup.

  Linda.

  He did like that name, he decided. He looked up into the waitress’s pale eyes and smiled his best smile. Her glossy lips parted in return. “Would you like to be in my book?” he asked.

  Lupo

  Milwaukee

  March 19

  The first detail that struck Dominic Lupo was the tang of freshly spilled blood.

  The second was the inexorable greenness of everything. The walls were green tile, the sinks a deep green marble. And the fluorescents above made his skin green, according to the blurred reflection he caught in the long mirror. It made him shudder.

  “In here, Detective Lupo,” said the uniform, a veteran cop by the name of Robbins.

  Lupo already knew. His nose would have led him there in moments. The prickling sensation had already begun.

  In the stall, the green was overshadowed by splashes of crimson. Maroon, where the blood had begun to dry on the metal partition, and where shoes had marred the splatter patterns on the cold tile floor.

  Lupo gazed over the head of a photographer and waited with eyes closed until the electronic flash had gone off. Then he tapped the photographer on the shoulder and motioned him aside.

  There was something.

  But he wasn’t sure what.

  He leaned in for a closer look. Details, detached from all context, popped out at him like flashes of light.

  Blond hair, tied in a ponytail.

  Tied with a red-and-white bandanna.

  A shapely neck, with folds of skin and pale flesh parted like sliced lard along both sides of a long, wicked cut that stretched from just below the right ear to just below the left. Head tilted to the side, nearly severed from the torso, hidden in the shadows.

  Something. Lupo wished he could grasp exactly what was vaguely familiar about this messy scene, which was after all only one of many he had experienced. Not that it got any easier, but it was easier to think of the victim as a side of beef and get on with it, because overt sentimentality ruined an objective approach. Still, if he could only…

  The red bandanna.

  That was it. But why was it important? He struggled for a second, wanting to make the connection. It was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place how. He squinted and started to crouch.

  Then a hand was fastening around his elbow and manhandling him away from the
open stall, toward the side wall where a diaper station gaped open grotesquely as if offering a sacrifice to an unheeding plastic god. A smudged streak of blood solidified the image for Lupo. The sense of it all getting worse struck him like a physical blow. He let his partner, Ben Sabatini, lead him to the corner. As he passed the station, he was dismayed to see more bloodstains on its surface. No, not stains. Deliberate smudges. The perp had dipped his hands in blood and purposely fouled the plastic shelf. Truly a futuristic urban altar, now devoid of all innocence. Lupo shook his head.

  There was something lying flat on the surface of the convenience table, sealed in a clear evidence bag. Lupo reached for it, but Sabatini stopped his motion with a trembling hand.

  “Sorry, Ben,” Lupo said. “I thought the boys were done with this.”

  Ben Sabatini, a twenty-year cop who had seen more street crime than anyone Lupo had ever known, hesitated and held Lupo’s eyes with his own. He ran one meaty hand after the other through thinning silver hair—a stalling gesture, effective only for a few seconds. “They’re done, Nick. But I need to talk to you before you see this.”

  Lupo’s hair stood on end, and he felt a tiny growl work its way up his throat. Was it the sense of being thwarted, or that more was going on here than his first assessment had revealed? He almost wished he could take notes, so he could compare his response to that in other situations.

  “The girl’s name is Corinne,” Ben said. “Corinne Devereaux.”

  Later Lupo would remember the way his stomach seemed to drop within his body, pressing on his intestines with nearly unbearable pressure. He would remember the squeezing of his testicles, as if they lay cradled within a tightening vise. Lupo caught his breath and realized he had momentarily halted his intake of air. A strong itch crawled from his fingers, up and over the backs of his hands where coarse hair grew in large-tufts. He jammed his hands into his pockets and drew a long breath.

  “Corinne?” A hoarse whisper came out. Lupo tried clearing his throat, but he choked instead.

  “It isn’t—that’s not your friend’s last name, is it?” Ben’s discomfort was obvious.

  Lupo gave his partner a withering glance. “Are you sure about the name? The last name?”

  Ben nodded, looking at the floor. “‘Fraid so. No ID, but her girlfriend’s the one who found her. She’s outside. She fainted when she was talking to Robbins. Went in to look for her friend because she hadn’t come out.”

  Ben was a cold one, but Lupo’s shocked reaction affected him, making him revert to the persona he had used all too often to break such news to an unsuspecting wife or husband. He fidgeted, embarrassed, letting the news sink in. Lupo shook his head once, as if trying to clear it of knowledge. Of the truth. It didn’t work. His eyes refocused on Ben’s, which now fixed him squarely.

  “What happened? What the hell happened?”

  “It’s rough on the street, Nick.”

  “Fuck the street!” Lupo’s voice rose despite his caution, and his hands itched even more. He dug farther into his pocket. “This isn’t the street, Ben. This is Westridge Mall. Not some alley under the freeway down by the docks, for Chrissakes. Now, what happened? What the fuck happened?”

  Ben nodded. “In her line of work, you know how it is. It ain’t unheard of, Nick. Even here.”

  Lupo felt the growl building inside him again and forced himself to swallow it. The consistency of his tongue was too rough, almost sandpaper, and he felt desperately in need of water. Or anything wet.

  Anything.

  His gaze traveled downward as he tried to escape the green-on-green decor of the mall washroom, and suddenly he was looking at the bag that lay on the diaper station and the flat object inside. It was a strip of four color photographs from a mall photo booth. Each tiny photograph depicted the same scene, with only slight variation.

  It was Corinne, all right, his friend and neighbor, engaged in an activity relatively normal for hookers, but simply not usually managed in such cramped quarters, potentially in view of so many people only feet away.

  She did not appear to mind since she seemed to be smiling. It was hard to tell, because she was performing fellatio on a well-endowed male who stood next to the tiny stool. The pictures were cut off a little above waist-high. The plastic curtain must have been tightly drawn, Lupo reasoned. Ben hadn’t spoken of any reported commotion that might have been caused by public sight of the sex act, even though the booth was located near the food court, ensuring constant traffic.

  “Any security report on this?” asked Lupo as he gently pried the bag containing the bloodstained strip from the table and held it aloft between them.

  Ben avoided his eyes. “No. They managed to keep it private. This little booth escapade is a damned new one on me, but…”

  “Yeah, I know. In her line of business.” Lupo frowned. “Question is…is this the guy?”

  “I told the lab guys to treat this as a direct shot at the perp, but this guy’s anatomy doesn’t look very helpful. We don’t put those in the computer.” He smiled sardonically. “Some of ’em, maybe we should.”

  Lupo dropped the bag. “Yeah.” There was no humor in his voice.

  Then he was standing over the body, which had stiffened into a parody of human form. This Corinne was a marionette, cut from her strings and cast aside with last year’s toys. He bent at the waist and realized that there was more, much more, that he had missed in his shock. He stretched latex gloves over his hands and began. Her eyelids seemed to have been partially sliced off, perhaps with a razor blade or utility knife. They hung uselessly next to her eyes, now widened as if in terror. Her lips were garishly painted and smeared with crusted lipstick. Lupo touched her skin and smelled his fingertips; there was blood mixed in with the Revlon. The sick fuck had repainted her lips with blood and had then smudged them…smudged them how? He looked back at Ben, who shrugged.

  “Looks like he continued after she was dead, Nick.”

  Lupo wanted to let the growl out, but he contented himself with scratching the backs of his hands and saying a quiet good-bye to Corinne. Corinne, who’d made a point of saving his newspaper from hallway thieves when he forgot to retrieve it. Corinne, who brought over DVDs and chips and homemade salsa to enliven the occasional weeknight when neither was working.

  Working. That was a laugh.

  At least those nights I wasn’t up in the woods, locked in the cabin, covered with stale sweat, trembling as clouds traversed the sky and obscured the moon.

  Her breasts were bared, the low-cut dress ripped apart. Her nipples had also been partially sliced off, and he could see blood and lipstick streaks there as well. Her hands seemed intact and had been bagged for examination.

  A loud racket from the doorway announced the arrival of the coroner’s field staff, and Lupo was forced to step aside and watch as his friend’s body was unceremoniously transferred to the unfolded gurney and zipped into the waiting body bag. The last thing he saw was Corinne’s head—the wide-open, glazed eyes—and the gaping wound below her chin. Then the guy from the meat wagon stuffed her bloodstained hair inside after her and roughly closed the bag, his own face a mask of disinterest.

  Lupo’s fist shot out and caught the side of the partition, bending it like foil. He felt nothing.

  The coroner’s assistant eyed him warily as he pushed the gurney past, no doubt wondering what the hell was wrong with the hairy cop.

  After all, it was just another hooker. Not the first to die at the hands of a rough customer, and not the last. The guy hummed a little ditty as he and his partner maneuvered the gurney through the tight washroom and toward the door.

  Lupo closed his eyes, and everyone and everything disappeared. In his mind’s eye, which now resembled a reddish cavern, he thought he saw the murderer clearly. But only for a second, and then the image blurred and faded and he was following Ben into the mall corridor and wading through the crowd of excited rubberneckers.

  He could smell their enthusiasm for the scene
and all its gory highlights.

  “Guess what I saw at the mall tonight? Somebody whacked a chick in the John. Can you believe it? Two more minutes and I would have been the one to find the dead body. Man, I would have freaked. Heard somebody say she was a hooker—”

  There was a knot of police blues nearby, and Ben gently guided him in that direction. Corinne’s friend was sitting with her head in her hands, talking to a uniform who made tight, little precise notes on his pad.

  Lupo walked past the excited onlookers and tried to blur their bloated faces. Let them all into the John to revel in the stink of blood and death. Let them all get their Inside Edition scoop right from the front lines.

  In his pockets, his fists curled and trembled.

  He felt wretched, and barely in control.

  Corinne’s girlfriend was of little help. Between sobs, the story that unfolded was barely comprehensible. On a shopping—not working—expedition, the two were approached by a man who offered money for turning a trick right there in the mall.

  “I think he knew Corinne, but I’m not sure. She remembered him. Something about last year, at the Hyatt. She told him we were off duty.” Stacey Collins sobbed. Her makeup was smeared now, mascara running and bright lipstick askew on her full lips. Lupo wondered why he noticed such details and frowned.