Chill of Night (36 page)

Murder was popular. The narrow vestibule of the brownstone apartment building was so crowded that half a dozen cops and CSU personnel were standing outside. Tenants were directed to a basement entrance usually accessible only to the super. Several windows were open above, and people leaned out of them, silently watching what was going on below.

Beam flashed his shield but didn't go all the way into the vestibule, simply leaned in and saw Bradley Aimes's body on the bloody tile floor. Aimes was lying on his back, his eyes open and gazing up the stairwell but seeing nothing. Techs were tending to business with their tweezers and brushes and plastic bags. A photographer was sending brilliant flashes over the scene every ten or twelve seconds. The little mustachioed ME, Minskoff, was stooped next to the body. He glanced over and saw Beam.

“'Nother one,” he said.

Beam looked and saw a bit of red cloth clutched in the dead man's right hand. “That what I think it is?”

“I'd say so,” said the ME. “Haven't touched it yet.”

“That a gunshot wound I see in his head?”

“Certainly is. Bullet went in just behind his right ear.”

“Thirty-two caliber?”

“Could be. It's still in his head, so we'll know better after the postmortem.”

On the floor, near the hand clutching the cloth
J
, was a small brass key. “Mailbox?” Beam asked, pointing to the key.

“Haven't touched that, either,” Minskoff said, deftly using the back of his wrist to adjust his glasses. “But his mailbox is open. Looks like he came downstairs to get his mail, but never got a chance to read it. It's still in the box. Envelope I can see looks like it contains a rebate check. His lucky day.”

“You notice a lot for an ME.”

“Too many years hanging around guys like you. I learned to observe. Too much, I might add.” He bent back to his task, signaling that he was now ignoring Beam.

“I'm observing blood getting on your shoes,” Beam said, backing away from the doorway.

“Damn it!” he heard Minskoff say.

“Let's find the super,” Beam said to Looper, “so we can have a look at Aimes's apartment while Nell keeps tabs on things here.”

 

What they learned as soon as the super opened the door for them was that Aimes had bad taste and didn't bother keeping things neat.

Aimes had been a smoker. His apartment reeked of tobacco smoke, and there were ashtrays scattered around, most of them with ashes or filtered cigarette butts in them. Looper closed his eyes and took in a deep and blissful breath, like a man who'd stepped into a perfume factory. The blinds on one of the windows were broken and hanging crookedly. The furniture was a mishmash of styles, a couple of uncomfortable looking Danish chairs, a fat sofa with a rose and vine pattern, an Oriental rug that managed to avoid every color in the sofa. On one wall were some framed photos of a racehorse—“Secretariat,” Looper announced, after closer inspection—and a blown-up color photo of a big sailboat, the racing kind, listing to starboard almost enough to capsize. There was a crew of about half a dozen in the boat. Beam looked closely and saw that one of them was a younger version of the dead man in the lobby.

“This prick used to have a lot of money,” Looper said. “Did things like race sailboats and kill girls. After the trial, his family still thought he was guilty and disinherited him.”

“Maybe played the horses, too,” Beam said, looking again at Secretariat. “Trying to regain his lost wealth.”

After putting on evidence gloves, they searched the apartment and found a sagging, unmade bed, a closet full of expensive but mostly out-of-style clothes. There was a desk drawer full of unpaid bills, past due notices, a checkbook that showed a balance of eighty-seven dollars and change. The checks were written for cash or to places like bars, restaurants, and shops.

Beam thumbed through the check pad. “Oh-ho! A ten-thousand-dollar deposit front end of every month.”

“Family buying his absence,” Looper said. “Black sheep, wild goose.”

“Probably.” Beam glanced around. “Whatever the species, you'd think he could still live better than this on a hundred and twenty thousand a year.”

“Gambled most of it away, would be my guess.”

Beam opened the desk's shallow center drawer. There were some postage stamps in there, pens and pencils, a couple of race track stubs, Mets and Yankees schedules, a shabby deck of Bicycle playing cards. Beam thought Looper's guess was a good one.

Looper was looking over Beam's shoulder. “If he owed anybody money, they're gonna be outta luck and pissed off.”

“Reverting to the mean,” Beam said.

“Huh?”

“That's how most gamblers wind up.”

“Oh, I dunno. You ever been to Atlantic City? Vegas?”

“Yeah,” Beam said. “I left a little of me both those places.”

“I hit for nine hundred dollars once on a quarter slot machine,” Looper said. “Three smiling strawberries, straight across the pay line.”

“That would suggest you've got some bad luck coming.” Beam shut the drawer. “Let's go downstairs and see if Nell's got anything.”

 

What Nell had was a short, serious-looking bearded man wearing khaki shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt, and rubber flip-flop sandals. He appeared to be in his fifties, and had medium length, unkempt gray hair. Despite his casual clothes, there was a professorial air about him. Probably because of the oversized wire-framed glasses.

Nell and the man were standing at the curb, next to a parked radio car with its red and blue roof-bar lights winking almost unnoticeably in the bright sunlight.

“This is Vash Kolinsky,” she said, and introduced Beam and Looper.

“This is a terrible thing, this kind of violence,” Kolinsky said, glancing toward the crime scene. He had a slight middle-European, or maybe Russian, accent.

“Would you repeat to these detectives what you told me?” Nell asked.

“You ask nice, not hit me, so sure.” He was grinning—his idea of a joke. “I was playing chess on my laptop up there.” He pointed to a third-floor balcony on a building diagonally across the street. There were potted plants on it that might block a view of anyone sitting there. “My opponent in the Internet chess club, a dummy in Vancouver, is so slow it bores me to play him, so I wait for him to move, and wait and wait, and happen to look over here, toward this building. I see this policeman, and he was there when I first came out on the balcony half an hour before. There was something about him, like he was pretending to look into the parked cars. But I don't think he was interested in the cars at all. He was up to something, watching for something or someone. Me? I worry. I have family in Kiev. I didn't leave Russia under the best circumstances. I know policemen, and when something's not right with them. With this policeman, something wasn't right.”

“Can you be more specific?” Beam asked.

“Mostly, the way he acts. Like there's more than one thing on his mind. And he had on a jacket, on such a hot day. And his uniform cap didn't look right, didn't fit him right.”

“Did you see him go into the building?” Beam asked.

“No. But I look away, look back, and he's gone.”

“Then what?” Nell asked. She was staring at Beam as if he should pay special attention to Kolinsky's answer.

“I move my queen's pawn two spaces.”

“Mr. Kolinsky—”

“Then I hear a bang.”

“Like a shot?” Beam asked.

“Could be like a shot. I didn't pay much attention. This is a noisy street, all the traffic, horns honking, and kids around, they bang on things. I see that dummy in Vancouver has already fallen into my trap, so I go back to playing chess. Then I hear sirens, hear them stop, look back outside, and see something is wrong. More police come. A crowd. I hear loud talk, people yelling back and forth, and I learn someone has been shot. Then I remember the bang.”

“Do you remember the time?”

“Exact? No. About one-thirty.”

“After you realized someone had been shot, did you continue to observe from your balcony?”

“Yes, I look, see everything. More police, ambulance. Saw the lady detective arrive, then you and you.”

“The cop wearing the jacket, did you see him again?”

“No. He was there before the shooting. Not after.”

“He could have left through the basement,” Looper said to Beam. “The way we went in to get the super.”

“That could be,” Kolinksy said. “I wouldn't have seen him. I wasn't looking for him.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Beam asked.

“No. Someone in uniform, you see the uniform, not the face. He was average man. Not too tall or short or fat or thin. Average man.”

“Hair color?”

Kolinsky shrugged. “He had on cap.”

“Anything about the way he moved?”

“Like he's not supposed to be there. That's why I noticed him in the first place. I have an eye for such things.” Kolinsky looked back up at his balcony. “King's knight,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I need to get back so I can counter the move of the Vancouver idiot.”

“Certainly,” Beam said.

He thanked Kolinsky for his help, then watched him cross the street and enter his building.

“Sounds like he saw the cop who was at Knee High's murder,” Nell said.

“Someone who looked like him, anyway,” Beam said.

Nell and Looper stared at Beam. “If he wore the jacket to conceal the bulk of a sound suppressor,” Beam said, “he didn't use it. Kolinsky heard the shot from across the street.”

“Might have been something else,” Looper said. “Something not related to the murder. Backfire, somebody hitting something with a board or hammer. This is a noisy neighborhood that time of day.”

“Kolinsky's a good witness,” Nell said. “I'm sure he's heard gunfire before and knows what it sounds like. And there's corroboration. Two tenants on the first floor of Aimes's building also heard what might have been a shot, at about the same time Kolinsky heard it.”

“Which would be about the time Aimes died,” Beam said.

“Maybe Kolinksy just saw one of the uniforms we've got patrolling around here,” Looper said.

“I checked,” Nell said. “None of them were on the block at the time, and nobody was wearing a jacket.”

“Maybe the guy Kolinsky saw wasn't a cop,” Looper said. “A delivery man, maybe.”

“Lots of maybes about this one,” Beam said.

“But at least we've got a witness who saw and heard something,” Nell said.

“There is that,” Beam said. “Even if we don't understand it.”

“Yet,” Nell said, under her breath.

An hour later, in da Vinci's office, Kolinsky's name came up again.

Beam, Nell, and Looper were there, along with Helen. It seemed to Beam that the profiler was always in da Vinci's office these days. He appeared to be relying more and more on her.

“Somebody must have seen you three talking to Kolinsky in the street and found out where he lived,” da Vinci said. “The man doesn't mind talking to the press anymore than to the police. I got a call a few minutes ago from the
Post
, wanting to verify that we now suspect the Justice Killer is a cop.” He looked at his three detectives. “You should have conducted that interview indoors.”

“They still would have gotten to him,” Beam said, protecting Nell. “And when he isn't playing chess, Kolinsky likes to talk.”

“The media's gonna be in swarm mode,” da Vinci said. “Hell of a story, a cop who's also the Justice Killer.” He looked over at Helen, who was seated slightly sideways in a chair and resting her chin on her fist.

“The odds are still against him being a cop,” she said.

“This is a killer who figures screw the odds,” da Vinci said. “Maybe one that's smarter than the cops trying to chase him down.”

“That's what he wants you to think,” said the imperturbable Helen. “He's trying to pressure you.”

“He's doing it.”

Beam thought da Vinci did look pressured. His hair was mussed, his eyes hollowed, and there was a slight razor cut on his chin, as if his hand had trembled while he was shaving this morning.

“And
he
feels pressured,” Helen said. “From within and without. At a certain point, he'll want to be caught as badly as you want to catch him. Maybe more so.”

“Psychology bullshit,” da Vinci said.

Beam thought he was probably right. But Helen might be right about one thing: “There's no guarantee the killer's a real cop,” he said.

“Since when's the media need a guarantee?” da Vinci asked.

“He's got a point,” Helen said. “There'll be more pressure applied by the press and pols and NYPD brass to stop the killings. Might as well be ready for it. And we'll probably hear again from Adelaide Starr.”

“Unless she's too busy writing her book,” da Vinci said.

“She's probably got sample chapters by now,” Helen said. “Somewhere in them she'll point out that the Justice Killer's achieving his goal. Since the deaths of Cold Cat and Aimes, potential killers will know it won't be only the courts weighing their guilt or innocence—or their punishment.”

“They already know it,” da Vinci said. “The assholes saying the city's safer are right. Latest violent crime statistics, the murder rates, everything's in free fall.” Jabbing a finger at stat sheets on his desk that he'd ordinarily be proud of, he looked mad enough that Beam thought he might actually spit. “If it weren't for the Justice Killer, we'd hardly have any murders at all.”

“Put us all out of work,” Looper said.

Da Vinci gave him a black look. “Why don't you go someplace and smoke a friggin' cigarette.”

“Andy,” Helen said, “you've gotta take it easy, let things work for you. Remember, the killer's feeling the same kind of heat you are.”

Beam was careful not to glance at da Vinci or Helen.
Andy?

“I don't think so,” da Vinci said. “Things seem to be going his way. The press, the public, they don't want this sicko caught. They're against us.”

“Bradley Aimes was part of the public,” Beam said.

“Who cares about that prick? He should've gotten the needle years ago. This killer's doing what his name implies. He's executing people who deserve it.”

“What about Cold Cat?”

“That was Knee High's fault. And Knee High paid the price.”

“I've been thinking about the cop who was spotted at the crime scenes,” Looper said. “The jacket, the cap that doesn't fit right. Maybe the officer has breasts. Maybe the cap's too small or crooked because it has long hair tucked up under it.”

“You think the killer might be a woman?” Beam asked.

Da Vinci was looking at Looper with cautious contempt. That the Justice Killer might be female was something they hadn't considered.

“Female cop?” Helen asked.

“Maybe, or a female civilian in a cop uniform.”

“Not much chance of it,” Helen said. “Serial killing is something women don't do. Something cops don't do. Not normally, anyway.”

“Who's thinking about normal?” da Vinci said.

“All I'm saying,” Helen said, “is the odds are so long it's not a hunch worth pursuing.”

“There really isn't much evidence pointing that way,” Nell said.

Da Vinci grinned. “So the two women present agree.”

“What do you think?” Beam asked him.

“Helen's right. As usual. And as usual, Looper's—”

The desk phone buzzed. Beam thought it was a break for Looper.

“I know what that is,” da Vinci said, “only call I'm letting straight through.” He snatched up the receiver.

After a series of “yeahs” he said, “You're sure?” Then he grunted and hung up.

“More bad news?” Beam asked, looking at his face.

“I ordered a rush on the Aimes postmortem,” da Vinci said, “told them to call me as soon as possible. That was Forensics.”

“And?”

“Cause of death, a bullet to the brain, thirty-eight caliber. This bullet doesn't match the others.”

“Shit!” Looper said. “He's switched guns.”

“I'm sure he's trying to help us out, right, Helen?” Da Vinci slumped down in his chair and stared at nothing on his desk.

No one said anything. The silence took on weight.

After a while, da Vinci said again, “He's smarter than the cops trying to chase him down.”

“He'll screw up,” Nell said. “We'll be there.”

“Then go there,” da Vinci said dejectedly. “Find there. Go.”

Beam nodded toward the door, then led his detective team from the office.

Behind them, Helen said, “Andy.”