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

by W. D. Gagliani

  Behind her, a cop chuckled at her choice of words.

  “I mean, we weren’t here to—” She broke off with another sob.

  “Go on,” Ben said, using his gentle fatherly voice. “What did he look like, and what did he ask for?”

  “He was so ordinary looking. Maybe sandy blond hair, real average. Like, Docker pants and a shirt. Not much of a john, you know? He said he was going away tonight—to Silliman Valley or whatever, then to Europe.”

  “Did he sound European? Have an accent?”

  “No—real Midwestern, just like us.”

  “Go on.” Ben’s patience with statements was legendary. “Any other details about him or the way he was dressed?”

  “I think he had a shopping bag.”

  Ben looked at Lupo. “What did he want?”

  “He said he was leaving and she could give him a bon voyage gift—right here in the mall. He wanted—I mean, he made it pretty clear he wanted a blow—I mean, you know, oral sex, right in the booth while the camera was going.”

  She looked at each of them in turn as if it were a secret she had just revealed. She wasn’t aware of the photograph strip they had bagged.

  “This was the booth upstairs?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How did Ms. Devereaux react to the request?”

  “Well, Corinne, she kinda dug it, I think.” Stacey smiled, a little wickedly. “I mean, it’s kinda sexy and it’s so naughty to be in the middle of the mall and—” She caught herself and let her voice fade.

  Lupo spaced in and out of the session, watching as the curious crowded around as closely as the uniforms would let them, which was fortunately too far to hear the details. The constant traffic and the sheer gall of this perpetrator, taking a victim so easily and within sight of so many potential witnesses, boggled the mind. Though it was not standard procedure, they had decided to interview the girl before taking her downtown, in case the perp was still in the mall, which was Milwaukee’s largest and most sprawling. This was a procedural no-no, but Nick and Ben had conferred with Lieutenant Don Bowen and gotten an okay under the circumstances. A second forensic team was working at the cosmetics counter where the suspect had approached the women, but apparently he hadn’t touched anything. And a third team had cordoned off the photo booth on the food court level upstairs.

  The unsteady drone of Stacey’s voice lulled Lupo into a trance. He stepped away from the knot of cops and tried to breathe regularly, though the stench of deep-fried grease and popcorn blended nauseatingly with the vivid memory of the mall slaughterhouse just a few feet away and enveloped his nostrils.

  Lupo ducked under the yellow tape perimeter and headed back into the corridor that led to both restrooms and to the janitor’s closet. The service closet was locked when he rattled the knob. He bowed and sipped from the metal water fountain between the restroom doors, then stood before the doors. Three doors. Why was he even here? What could three doors tell him that Stacey’s account couldn’t? Why was he so unconcerned with what she was saying?

  Ben will get it. He’ll get it all.

  There would be plenty of time to go over Stacey’s story. Within minutes someone would drive her downtown, and she would be asked to repeat it all again. And maybe again, depending on how it played. Lupo knew all this and wanted nothing more than to avoid it. Maybe Corinne would be magically restored if he ignored the details of her death. Maybe it would all turn out to be a mistake, a huge misunderstanding—the chorus of the Genesis song flitted through his mind like an old 33 at 45 rpm. He shook his head.

  Can’t seem to let go of the music.

  He was standing right in front of it, and it didn’t register for the longest time. Opposite the wall in which the restroom doors were set, and behind anyone who stood before those doors, was yet another door. A different janitor’s closet? Storage? It seemed narrower than the other doors. Perhaps access to the Chick-Fil-A franchise next door?

  Jesus, Chick-Fil-A? Is that the guy’s sick-luck sense of humor?

  On a whim, Lupo grabbed the knob and turned. Uniforms had already checked this particular egress from the scene, he was certain. Yet the knob turned freely. Not locked, and no lights. He pushed the door and saw bare cinder-block walls a few feet from the door. The walls formed a sort of tunnel that led away from the front of the food court.

  He cast about for a light switch, blindly feeling the textured wall, and nearly sprained his hand on a fuse box with a master switch. He threw the switch even as the prickling sensation worked its way up his back. Naked overhead lights sputtered on, and Lupo stepped back, turning again toward the door and wanting to wade into the small crowd to drag Ben here and show him the access tunnel that apparently no one had even noticed, let alone considered important. But there was something here. Some vibe, or at the very least a feeling, as well as an obvious escape route.

  The lights threw the red-brown smears into a near three-dimensional relief.

  The angular letters formed a crooked message: Here’s one for you, Nick!

  Down below the eight-inch scrawl, on the dusty floor, sat a jar half-filled with dark liquid, smeared up the sides and on the lip.

  Blood. Corinne’s blood. Lupo caught its scent in his nostrils.

  The son of a bitch had dipped his hands into her still-warm life’s blood and left a cheery message for him.

  His hands itched more than ever now, and he jammed them back into his pockets.

  In the harsh glare of the naked bulbs, Lupo saw that the floor dust had been disturbed. Keeping clear of them, he crouched for a few moments and examined the scuff marks in the dust, right where the bastard would have had to stand as he fiddled with his palette and canvas. A single row of faint footprints snaked its way out of the confused area immediately in front of the bloody message. Lupo squinted slightly and saw that the footprints had some sort of trite pattern on them, as if from a gym shoe, and that they seemed to lead lightly down the hallway.

  The tunnel. He headed down this damned service funnel. Fucking tunnel. How did he get the keys?

  Some feet away, the hall narrowed and darkened, becoming somewhat like a single cyclopean eye that implacably returned Lupo’s gaze.

  He felt himself tremble slightly, and every tip of every hair on his body seemed to tingle.

  Even as instinct screamed for him to exit into the well-lit corridor and alert Ben and a half-dozen uniforms that here was a viable trail to follow, that here the perp had lingered to leave a polite personal message for one of their party and that now was a good time to ensure some sort of backup, Lupo began following the footsteps.

  Almost immediately, he entered the area in which the lighting had deteriorated (or the perp had purposely damaged the light strips), and even as his senses protested, Lupo still followed the scrapings a pair of gym shoes had made in the dust.

  In the near-darkness, he was rewarded with a brown handprint smeared waist-high on the yellow cinder blocks. Tiny splatter marks made a pattern around its edges.

  Lupo grasped his Glock 9mm, pulled it out of its holster, and hurried down the passageway, unmindful of the deepening shadows.

  It wasn’t an altogether new feeling.

  Chapter Two

  Lupo

  1976

  The air had been electric all day.

  It was as if something, some event, had announced itself only to those whose eyes were sensitive enough.

  Dominic Lupo was sensitive enough, and the day felt somehow intense.

  He had watched the harsh morning sunlight turn nearly blue in the afternoon. Grass and tree leaves wore blue-green coats, and he found he had to squint whenever he stood in the sun. He imagined ultraviolet rays skewering him like yellow beams in an all-color comic book, and he could already feel heat building up in his forearms and the back of his neck.

  He manhandled the lawn mower over the pits and valleys of the backyard even though it was a self-propelled machine, believing the effort would help develop his arm muscles. Certain
ly, wrestling fifty pounds of machinery over rough terrain on a hot day should tighten his muscles, and it also gave him some reason to accept the fact that his lot in life seemed to be yard work.

  Last week it had rained, and he’d been forced to mow the soggy lawn, which had been a nightmare. Comparatively speaking, this was better, because at least he could try to tan his arms. Jeans and his surplus army shirt covered the rest of his body, protecting him from the intense jungle-like heat. It was intense, and he liked that because the Lake Michigan humidity, the haze, and the blue sunlight helped cement his fantasy. He was some Jungle Expert in the middle of nowhere, performing a vital duty for his country.

  He snickered. Well, a vital duty in the lawn-care war his father seemed dead set on winning. Why, Nick didn’t know. The neighborhood was going to pot. Railroad tracks not far away, the biggest American Motors plant a few blocks farther than that, and very few homeowners—and increasing numbers of renters—were having some effect. Only the Lupos’ home showed the efforts of continued care and tinkering, while every other house on the block seemed to crumble slowly into disrepair. It wasn’t that Nick wanted his own house to end up like that, a worthless lump of Sheetrock and siding, but he resented his father’s insistence that every little thing be done just so: every task a mission, every crooked nail to be straightened, and every crack repaired or at least well-hidden. Nick just didn’t understand his father’s urgency, the old man’s determined effort to keep some tool in his hands. Only two short weeks of summer left, and Nick had spent most of his vacation single-handedly repairing some joke Nature must have been playing on his father. Every other kid in the neighborhood cruised by on a bicycle or high-pitched minibike, or played softball down at the corner where no house had ever been built, or roved in one of several mostly harmless gangs that hung out near the curb on summer evenings.

  Nick wasn’t free to hang out, and he knew that his image—that of a snotnose who didn’t hang out or talk to anybody, or even go to the same school as everyone else—was at least partly earned. His real friends he never had over, inside the house as guests, because he knew his parents would disapprove of that one’s hair, or that one’s foul mouth. Maybe if his friends came to visit in suits and short, plastered hair. But, no, Nick was accustomed to a loner’s existence. In fact, he had come to crave solitude.

  Nick maneuvered the mower around the yard in ever-decreasing circles, making sure he missed no patch. No bigger perfectionist existed than Frank Lupo, and he would not hesitate to make his kid mow the lawn a second time to get it right.

  Suddenly, the blade clanked against an obstruction—either a branch or a piece of gravel—and the mower threatened to quit. He pulled back desperately on the handle, raising the base of the mower off the ground until the blade cleared and sputtered back to life.

  He glanced quickly at the house. Whatever his father was doing, it seemed Nick was safe for the time being. There was no angry shout or glaring face at the window. He hoped—no, prayed—that the blade hadn’t snapped, then continued mowing when he was reasonably sure it hadn’t. He was nervous about the effort the mower seemed to make. But now he was behind the old garage, next to the neighbors’ fence and under the willow (those goddamned tiny leaves!), and he knew a casual look from the back of the house would not catch him resting. God forbid.

  He let the mower roar for a moment, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow, and then nearly shouted in startled surprise when he looked up and saw a face peeking at him from atop the fence.

  Andy!

  That fucking fool. I almost crapped my pants.

  Nick gave Andy the finger, then glanced around guiltily. His father could wield the finger whenever he wanted to, or call some idiot in another car a “cocksucker”, but he wouldn’t stand for Nick’s use of his middle digit or such language.

  He looked at the fence again. Andy was just staring at him, his face an expressionless mask.

  “What’s up, Andy?” He had to shout over the mower’s racket.

  Wisps of smoke hung around his head, their edges blue from the sunlight. He hoped he had got the right proportions in pouring the oil and gas mixture. He’d never hear the end of it if he damaged the mower. He wasn’t the most mechanically inclined of people, so a stalled mower was a dead mower. Nothing his father would want to deal with on his day off, no sir.

  Andy still hadn’t moved, though from twenty feet away Nick could see his friend blinking. Andy’s blinks were slow and purposeful and not at all like his usual rapid-fire pattern of facial gymnastics.

  “Are you okay, Andy?”

  Something about the light that day, the blue sunlight he always associated with mid-August yet somehow different, suddenly made him feel creepy. Really creepy. And Andy, just staring at him over the fence.

  Nick’s mouth was dry, and his voice was hoarse as he called out again.

  But that was easy to explain. There was smoke all around him from the clattering mower, and the sun was weird, and he was afraid he’d broken the blade, and he was just being…

  Why was Andy acting so strange? Why wouldn’t he talk, or wave, or come to the low fence and shoot the shit like he always did?

  “What the fuck’s the matter?” he shouted, hoping the mower’s clatter would cover his words enough to avoid earning him a punitive visit.

  But Andy just stared right through him, almost as if he didn’t recognize his own best friend.

  What the hell was Nick supposed to do, stop mowing to figure out what Andy’s problem was? Fat chance. In the Lupo household, if you were assigned a chore, you didn’t stop until it was done, unless the supervisor stopped you to stack another chore on top.

  Nick shrugged. “Hey, hope you feel better.” He put his head down and pushed the mower again, hoping he wouldn’t catch any hidden dog shit. Whenever that happened, a cloud of toxic fumes would envelop him and he couldn’t help but think of the tiny chunks of waste that would line the rounded bottom of the mower, which he would then have to clear (after disconnecting the spark plug cable first, of course) by hand. Yuck! The thought turned his stomach and brought up a sour reminder of his breakfast. Double yuck!

  He went on about his job, pushing the mower back and forth in front of the fence, occasionally glancing up to see if Andy was still there. Every time Nick looked, the other boy was indeed there, frozen in stone.

  Andy Corrazza was the next-door neighbor’s kid and Nick’s current best friend by default. Andy’s three sisters had no interest in Nick. A happily mutual feeling—until recently, anyway. For years, he had ignored Jacie, Jenny, and Donna as the alien life forms they were, and they had ignored him as the snot-nose brat next door, the one who mowed the lawn incessantly, grooving to some macho jungle fantasy world only he could visit, or the one who sat on his front porch reading—reading, for crying out loud—even in ninety-five-degree weather. Nick would have concurred on all fronts; only now was he noticing that their blouses were filled with mysteriously enticing things, actually quite a bit, he had gathered from Stan, a Polack-Italian mix from down the street who had the hots for all three Corrazza sisters. Nick wasn’t even sure what “having the hots” meant, but he knew that whatever it took to lead boys to that condition, the three girls had it—they all had it. He’d seen them in bikinis out in their yard, and he had begun to understand plenty.

  Andy was a normal kid, for someone who grew up with three sisters, and he could always be counted upon to sign on to any irrational scheme Nick devised—like the theft of four thirty-five-gallon drums from a warehouse near the tracks, drums that would float their super-raft (if they ever built it). Never mind that the two of them could barely lift a single drum. They had already removed four of the colorful containers and hidden them in the underbrush, then camouflaged the area with freshly cut foliage. Andy was not quite so much the dreamer as Nick, but he recognized in Nick the grandiose plans that would land both of them in the spotlight for some great feat. Nick read of great adventures, and Andy was the only other kid
who listened enough to paint himself into them.

  Why was Andy acting so strangely?

  Nick looked up again, and Andy was gone, a slight breeze gently rustling the willow branch under which he had just been standing. Nick stood behind his stuttering mower and carefully examined the Corrazzas’ weather-beaten fence. You could see through most of its length, and the rest stood barely upright because of neglect, and Nick figured he would see Andy crouching behind it, maybe hoping to play some sort of half-assed prank. How would a Jungle Expert handle a possible ambush? Would he walk into it open-eyed, only to wipe out the enemy using his superior intellect and battle-honed instincts?

  But, no, Andy wasn’t anywhere behind the fence.

  Nick gave the Lawn Boy a reluctant half-push. What the hell, if the idiot wanted to play games…

  The prickle he felt on the back of his neck was like a leaf or an insect landing on his sweaty skin, and at first he tried to wipe it off. When that didn’t work, he stopped mowing and used both hands to feel his upper back and neck methodically. There was nothing there, yet the feeling continued.

  Nick whirled and stared at the fence where Andy had been. The willow branch still swayed gently, occasionally dropping a squad of narrow yellow leaves. Nick’s gaze slowly traveled up and down the rickety redwood fence, then into the shadows created by the sides of his garage and the Corrazzas’, which were parallel and about three feet from the fence. The shadows were deep next to the fence, somehow enhanced by the brightness of the day. A dark window set into the back wall of his garage stared at Nick with vague malevolence. Or was the uncomfortable gaze coming from the tight little alley between the garage and the fence, the place where no sunlight whatsoever seemed to penetrate?

  “Okay, Andy, you asked for it,” Nick called out over the mower’s erratic rattle. “I’m comin’ after ya!”

  He took a single tentative step toward the corner of the garage, all the while staring into the Cyclops eye of the black window.