by Blake Banner
He nodded. “That’s what I brought you here for. To tell you the whole truth.” He sat and I started to inspect the undergrowth surrounding us while he continued to speak. “You’re a smart man, Stone. A lot of cops are stupid. You know that? But you—you’re smart. What I told you was the truth, but it wasn’t all the truth, and you saw that.”
When I was satisfied we were alone I returned to where he was sitting, found a rock and sat where I could see the path up to the road. I released the hammer and holstered my gun.
“You saw the news, huh?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I saw the news. I’m a hero!”
“You didn’t know we’d found Rosario and Sonia.”
He shook his head and waved his hands in circles. “But, dude, you jump to so many conclusions on the basis of nothin’. I told you there were other girls. I told you he was talkin’ to some chicks. The only one I witnessed was Angela.”
I smiled without much humor. “So what am I doing here?”
He wagged a finger at me like I had been naughty. With his left hand he took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it on the turf and crushed it out with his toe. “I knew! I knew that you would start over-thinking things, and read too much into these other chicks. And I thought, if we could have a private conversation, just you and me, we could resolve any doubts that you have.” He leered. “You feel me?”
I shrugged. “The DA believes you, my inspector believes you, why do you care what I think?”
He nodded down at his feet. “Because you, my friend, are a Rottweiler. You grab a hold of somethin’ and you will not let go. Even if you’re wrong. I know dudes like you, and I am never gonna get a day’s rest as long as I have you on my tail.”
“So what are you going to show me, Wayne? Jimmy’s trophies from Rosario and Sonia?”
He sat upright and spread his hands. “Now, how in the world would I know where to find them?”
“You tell me, Wayne. The same way you got hold of Angela and Cherry’s panties. The same way you got hold of all those photographs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Stone. I think you have developed a fixation.” He leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, and pointed at me. “You know what I think? I think you are sufferin’ from a bad case of jealousy.”
I smiled. “Really?”
“Your cute Detective Dehan, man, she could put the cuffs on me any day. You think I ain’t noticed the way she looks at me?” He grinned. “All that anger and hostility, man, that masks passion and hunger. A woman like that, with all that animal power, she is drawn to a badass like me. It ain’t cerebral, Stone…” He shook his head. “Her relationship with you? That’s love. I can see that. It’s a connection of two minds. But with me? Dude, it is pure animal biology. That pony wants this cowboy to ride her.”
There was a hot rage in my belly, but I was not going to let him see it. Not yet. Instead I kept the smile fixed, shook my head and gave a small laugh. “You’re sloppy, Wayne. You overrate your own intelligence. An IQ of 145? What did you do, get a DIY Home IQ Test? You sure it wasn’t just 45? Let me tell you what happened. You called Jimmy and you told him not to go to work, because you were going to go and visit him. As soon s you got out you went straight to his apartment. You took a bottle of rum with you, to celebrate your release. You sat with him on the sofa and filled his head with all that pretentious shit you talk, and then you shot him. You wiped your prints off the gun and squeezed his hand onto the butt and the trigger. Then you took the glasses to the kitchen, washed the prints off them and left, taking your bottle of rum with you, because you remembered you had told me you liked rum.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“It’s more than a story, Wayne.”
Yeah?” He laughed. “How you gonna prove it? You ain’t got no witness.”
“Witness? Oh, I have a witness, Wayne. I have you. You are at least intelligent enough to know that a guilty plea can seriously affect sentencing. You will plead guilty.”
He laughed out loud. “You are one crazy son of a bitch, Stone. How’d you figure that?”
“Well, for a start there is the circumstantial evidence.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like the fact that Jimmy did not own a gun, and he was too timid and mild ever to have fired a gun. He was all talk, he was a fantasist, but there was no way on Earth that he was violent. He did not belong to a gun club and he did not own a gun.”
“That is bullshit and you know it. New York is full of dudes who own guns that are not registered.”
“Second, and a little more persuasive, is the fact that, in those photographs you helpfully left in the box, you can see clearly that Jimmy was right-handed. We can find a hundred witnesses to testify to that if we need to.” I studied his face. He was expressionless. Somewhere on the river a barge moaned. The orange moon was turning silver and her molten light warped on the black water. I shrugged. “I guess it must have been awkward. That was his spot on the sofa. That was where he always sat, with his right elbow on the arm. You couldn’t very well say to him, ‘Hey, Jimmy, you mind if I sit there and you sit here? Only, I have to shoot you in the right temple. So you banked, correctly as it happens, on the authorities’ willingness to turn a blind eye to small details, so long as they could report to the press that the Westchester Creek Strangler was no longer a threat.”
He grunted. “That is… odd. You might get some people scratchin’ their heads. But it ain’t conclusive, not by a long chalk.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. You know? It is really hard to shoot yourself in the temple, even with your dominant hand. There are all those autonomic responses that make your hand waver at the last minute, plus the recoil. Most people who try it wind up maiming themselves instead. To manage such a lethal shot with his left hand, that is almost impossible. But, you are right, it is not conclusive. To be conclusive I would need something that showed that you had definitely been at the apartment shortly before his body was found.”
He shook his head. “There ain’t no way in hell you ever going to prove that.”
I stared at him for a long moment. “You’re stupid, Wayne. And you know what makes you stupid? Your vanity and, above all, your laziness. You spend so much time thinking about how damn smart you are, you forget to actually be smart. Being smart, Wayne, is something you do, not something you are.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“Being smart means thinking. And thinking means learning, studying, knowing your subject. Not memorizing smart quotes that make you look and sound smart.”
“Cut to the chase, Stone.”
I laughed, “Dude, chill man, you have such a bad attitude.” I sat a moment, smiling at him, enjoying his discomfort. Eventually I said, “The glasses, Wayne. You should have dried them and put them away. For a start, why would he have two glasses there when everything else on the rack was a single item? One plate, one knife, one fork, but two glasses. On its own, that means almost nothing, but added to the left hand shot? It tells us there was somebody else in the apartment. The glasses were still wet, so they were used very recently, and whoever used them took the bottle away with them. What would make them do that? Well, the fact that they didn’t want me to know they drank rum. Careless and sloppy, Wayne. Very careless and very sloppy. But the most important thing? The really, really stupid thing?”
His face was as tight as a bowstring. He said, “Stop calling me stupid, Stone.”
I leaned forward. “What was really stupid, Wayne, was that after you washed off your fingerprints, you rinsed the glass under the tap and put the glasses on the rack. Leaving fresh prints.”
“They were wet. You can’t leave prints on a wet surface.”
“I don’t know where you got that gem, Wayne, but it’s bullshit, just like everything else in your head. Those prints are being processed right now. And you are going down for Jimmy’s murder, as well as Angela’s and all the others. You are not a genius, Wayne,
you’re a moron.”
I was expecting it, but even so his size, his weight, his strength and the sheer rage of his attack overwhelmed me. I am not small, but he was a giant. He collided with me and threw me on my back. He straddled me, sitting on my belly. His massive hands fastened around my throat, he locked his elbows and his thumbs began to press into my windpipe. His face was twisted and contorted with rage and hatred.
My instinctive reaction was to grip at his wrists and his arms, but I knew that if I did that I would never have the strength to pull him off. I would be signing my own death warrant. My lungs were screaming for air and my heart was pounding in my ears. I groped for a rock, anything solid, but there was nothing there. I was going, slipping into darkness.
Then, it may have been panic, I don’t know, but a furious rage welled up inside me and I twisted and rammed my forearm savagely into his locked elbow, forcing the joint the wrong way. He didn’t let go, but he howled with pain and his grip slipped. I rammed again, twice and he stood, backing away, holding his arm, swearing. I was still suffocating, but I knew I could not give him time to recover. I scrambled and charged him, roaring like something demented, with a mixture of rage, fear and sheer relief at getting air into my lungs. I smashed my head into his chest. He went over backwards and I stumbled, tripped and fell sprawling just beyond him, rolling down the slope into cold, shallow water.
I staggered to my feet and started to scramble up the slope, gulping air as I went. I got to the top with my legs shaking. He was standing just eight or ten feet away. His left arm was hanging limp by his side. I said, “Give it up, Wayne. It’s over.”
As I said it I reached for my weapon. He moved with the speed of a viper. He leapt at me, swinging his right fist. I leaned back but not far enough and the rock in his hand caught me a glancing blow on my temple. The pain was like a knitting needle being driven through my skull. I staggered back and he lashed out with his foot, catching me on the thigh. I fell painfully and rolled down the slope again, into the shallow pools of water. Sharp stones stabbed into my back and for a moment I went into spasm, unable to move or breathe. Above me I could see his silhouette, standing at the top of the slope, with the rock still in his hand.
He half ran, half skidded down and stood over me. Thin shards of pain shot through my lungs. Air rasped in my throat. I wondered if I had broken my back. I could feel the water lapping at the side of my cheeks and my mouth, and I knew what he was going to do. He was going to beat me unconscious with the rock and then drown me, face down in the black river. I thought of Dehan and knew I could not let that happen. He knelt and loomed over me, leering down into my face.
“First you,” he said. “Then I’m going to pay a visit to your cute Detective Dehan. I’m gonna ride me that pony tonight.”
I struggled to focus. I moved first my toes and then my fingers, and knew my back was not broken. Wayne raised the rock in his right hand, high above his head. I had maybe a second, at most. It was enough. His vanity would betray him.
I said, “Wait, if you’re going to kill me, at least tell me first. Was it you who killed Angela? Was it you?”
He threw back his head and laughed. Then he grinned down at me. “Yeah, I did. I killed ’em all, right here. This is my killin’ hill on the River Styx. And wouldn’t you love to know how!”
I said, “You’re under arrest, Wayne.”
He snorted. “Fuck you. Now you gonna be real Stone Cold.”
He raised the rock again, gritted his teeth. I pulled the 1911 from my holster and shot him through the heart. He looked very surprised, then slowly keeled over and fell into the dark waters where he had cast the bodies of all the young girls he’d killed.
All but one.
EIGHTEEN
I dragged myself up onto the bank and lay gasping for thirty long seconds. Then I reached into my jacket and pulled out my phone, saying, “Dehan! Did you get that? Did you call for backup…?”
I stared at the screen. I was not connected. My brain ached. I called dispatch. “This is Detective Stone requesting backup at Randall and Zerega. Notify the inspector. Wayne Harris is dead. I’ll need a team and the ME.”
I hung up and struggled to the top of the bank, trying to think. I called Dehan.
“The number you are calling is turned off or out of range. Please try again later…”
A burning pellet of dread seared in my belly. I ran, scrambling, stumbling and falling through the dark, up the track toward the gate in the fence. I burst out onto the road, gasping, my heart pounding in my ears, trying to think, trying to make sense of what was happening. Somewhere in the night sirens were wailing. Two patrol cars skidded around the corner from Randall Avenue. I hailed them and they screeched to a halt in front of me. As they climbed out I shouted at the nearest, “Secure the scene! Wayne Harris is down there. He’s dead. You!” I turned to the other. “Get on to dispatch. Have a car go to my house, now! Detective Stone’s house! Haight Avenue! Check on Detective Dehan! See if she is there! Now! Do it now!”
She was already talking on the radio. I was running for my car. My phone was ringing. I fumbled for it, praying it would be Dehan. It was the inspector. I answered as I clambered into the Jag.
“Stone! What the hell is this? Harris is dead?”
I said, “I haven’t got time. I think Dehan maybe too. Get off the line.”
“What? Stone! Talk to me! Where?”
Where?
I said, “I don’t know.” My mind was reeling. “I left her at home. There’s a car going there now.”
“You left her at home? John, you’re not making sense. Where are you? Are you at the river?”
I was at the river. I was at the river where all the killings had gone down.
All but one.
“Yes. I’m at the river.”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“He called me.”
“Who did? Wayne Harris?”
My mind was beginning to clear. “Yes. He called me and told me he wanted to talk to me, alone. He said he didn’t want to see Dehan there. He said he wanted to tell me the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That he had killed the girls.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, John!”
“No, it doesn’t…”
“John, are you sure of all this…?”
Was I sure? I stared out of the windshield at the black mass of the trees and struggled to put the pieces together. But something was wrong. Something didn’t fit. In the distance I could hear more sirens wailing across the Bronx. I heard the crackle of a radio. Then there was a uniform running toward me. The inspector’s voice in my ear: “John! John, are you there?”
“Sir?” The patrolman’s face was at the door of my car, peering at me. “Sir, the lights are on at your house, but nobody is answering.”
Wild panic was pounding in my chest. I shouted, “Blow out the lock! Smash the window! Get in there! Get in there now!”
I slammed the door. Fired up the engine, spun the wheel and went screaming north up Zerega. A voice in my head kept screaming at me that somehow he had got to Dehan. Somehow he had got to her. But how? That was the truth he had wanted to tell me. The one shred of hope I clung to was that her body had not been there. All his other victims had on that spot, by the river. That was where he killed.
All but one.
Then everything went into slow motion. Up ahead on the left I saw Teddy’s Late Night Bar. It was closed. I heard a horrible noise in my head and realized it was me, bellowing. I slammed on the brakes and careened across the road, my tires screaming on the blacktop. I hit the curb, mounted the sidewalk and, as the rage inside me took hold, I released the brake and stood on the gas pedal.
There was a shattering explosion. I was thrown forward in my seat and smashed my chest and forehead against the wooden wheel. All around me there were showers of jagged, sparkling, spinning shards of glass, shattering and bouncing off the hood. They were like the shafts of pain
stabbing through my head and my chest. But somehow it all seemed to be happening to somebody else, somewhere else.
I shoved open the door and climbed out. There was an alarm bell jangling, lonely and ineffectual in the night. The Jag was half inside the bar. All around the hood was the shattered debris of glass, broken tables and chairs. I looked back down Zerega. I was six or seven hundred yards from the crime scene. And there was a bend in the road at the intersection with Randall. They would not have seen or heard anything.
The bar was still and silent after the explosion of glass. It was a one story building that sprawled back and to the right from the bar. There would be an office. There would be a kitchen. There might be living accommodation. I pulled the Smith & Wesson from under my arm, cocked the hammer and moved across the floor to the bar. There was a door behind it. I remembered Teddy had come out through there the afternoon we had come to talk to him. I lifted the flap, moved behind the bar and stepped up to it. It was locked.
I selected the screwdriver from my Swiss Army knife, rammed it in the lock and turned. By the dim light that filtered in through the plate glass windows, I saw a short passage. At the end of the passage I could make out a single door. There was no handle and no lock, but there was a spring-loaded arm at the top. My gut told me this was the kitchen. I inched forward and pulled the door open, holding it with my foot. Nothing happened. I crouched down and peered in. It was dark but for the odd reflection of cold blue light off steel pots and pans. I listened for movement or breathing. There was nothing.
I stood and flipped on the light. The kitchen was empty, but across the other side there was another door. In my mind’s eye I could see the layout of the building. I was at the right hand extreme of the one story section of the block. After this, it was two stories, and I was pretty sure that when I opened the door I would be in a stairwell. A stairwell is a death trap. But on the other side of that death trap was Dehan. There was no doubt in my mind about that.
I opened the door and peered in. The light was on. It was a narrow, straight flight of stairs. On the right it was wall all the way up. On the left it opened out into what seemed to be a room or a large landing. I flattened myself against the wall with my .45 held at arm’s length in both hands, aimed at the landing, and started moving up slowly, one step at a time. The steps were wood and made enough noise to start a zombie revolution, but I was committed and there was no going back. I kept climbing. My whole body was rigid, expecting to get shot at any moment. I realized I wasn’t breathing. I exhaled and took another step.