Don't Look Now (13 page)

The blood on the floor had spread to a tortured circle about four feet in diameter and was already brown and sticky. A huge Rorschach on the smooth tile.

The room, Paris learned, had been vacant, and Nels Morrison had already determined that the electronic lock had been tampered with. The process was a lot easier than most people think, if you know what you’re doing. Electronic locks in modern hotels were by no means tamper-proof.

Murdock and Paris agreed that whoever had carved up Eleanor Burchfield was either a professional thief or had been partnered with one. They also agreed that the new wrinkle narrowed the investigation considerably. Serial killers rarely came from the ranks of second-story men. And they almost always acted alone.

I think he may have come in with this woman
…

‘So is this where you tell me not to leave town?’ Paris asked as he and Murdock stood in the doorway.

‘Get the fuck outta here,’ Murdock said.

Edgy tone, Paris thought. Not good. ‘I’m serious, Timmy. I know how this looks.’

‘You’re not a fucking
suspect
, Jack.’ Murdock leaned forward, lowered his voice. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re heading the task-force. This is probably going to be on
your
desk in twelve hours.’

THEY DIDN’T TALK
about their escapade all week. Nor did the blond wig make another appearance. Andie had put the wig in an empty hatbox on the top shelf of the linen closet and that’s where it stayed.

Saturday night it had been clear that they were still running on Friday night’s leftover animal energy. Sunday afternoon found them on the floor of the living room, screwing like college students. Andie had put on her cheerleading outfit. It was a little tighter than it had been at Normandy High, but that was just fine with Matt Heller.

Monday took Matt to Buffalo and a project he was working on for their Port Authority. He spent the night at a Holiday Inn and made a cursory, hands-in-pockets stroll around the parking-lot at two in the morning, glancing at the few windows that were still lit.

Nothing exciting.

When he made last call at the hotel’s small lounge, all he could think about was his wife on one of the bar-stools. He went back to his room a little bit buzzed and chock full of lead.

Wednesday morning, back home, as he absently buttered his English muffin, Andie got a phone call from her sister Celeste. She sat on the counter letting her skirt ride up her thigh as she talked, the lace edge of her slip peeking ever so coyly from beneath the hem, taunting him.

To his dismay, by the time Matt stepped out of the shower, Andie had already left for work. But she had left him a small
billet doux
to tide him over until that evening.

There, on her dressing table, perched on a velvet rostrum, sat the blond wig. Beneath it sat a white tea rose, a lone petal pierced with a ruby earring.

Enthralled,
engorged
, Matt Heller turned on his heels and walked back into the bathroom.

BY EIGHT O’CLOCK
Wednesday morning there had been a half-dozen confessions to the killings, spurred on, no doubt, by the
Plain Dealer
headline that screamed
Fourth Victim?
next to a rather unflattering picture of Eleanor Burchfield. The usual group of nut-house Napoleons had come in and spilled their guts, but none of them had known enough of the specific details to warrant the task-force following up.

The truth was, every alley Paris and the task-force had ventured up in the past seventy-two hours – the friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances and casual contacts of the victims – was blind. And for a string of homicides that had produced such copious amounts of human liquid, and thus the potential for a forensic banquet, there was nothing.

The weight of nothing was becoming unbearable around the sixth floor of the Justice Center.

At eight forty-five, Paris’s phone rang again.

‘Homicide, Paris.’

‘I know where to find them,’ a woman’s voice said.

Paris knew right away that the woman on the phone was using a computer-generated voice-altering device of some sort. It had a soulless sound, flat and electronic. He had become very familiar with such devices when Cyrus Webber, a twenty-eight-year-old Wadsworth, Ohio, schoolteacher responsible for the death of five young girls, had used a small digital processor to make his voice sound younger when he telephoned his victims, claiming to be from their school, asking to meet them at the playground. ‘What do you mean?’ Paris asked.

Silence for a few moments, then: ‘Look in the backyard. Next to the sandbox. What do you see?’

Paris should have known. ‘Well, I’m not sure
what
I see,’ he said, rapidly losing interest. ‘I don’t have my glasses with me. Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to see?’

‘Four girls gone,’ the woman said, her voice changing pitch, up and down, as the synthesizer cycled.

‘Right. Okay,’ Paris said. ‘Thanks.’ He absently made a note about backyards.

‘Four roses cut and laid to rest in long, white boxes.’

The word sat him upright. The rose tattoo information had not been made public. ‘What about the roses?’ he asked, pressing the record button on the tape machine connected to his phone via an in-line microphone.

First came the loud hiss of the woman’s voice device, followed by a low, warbling sound. Finally, she said, ‘The one you seek is like the Rose of Jericho, Detective Paris.’

‘Tell you what, why don’t you let me have your name and phone number and I’ll call you back in a little bit,’ Paris said, but even before he had finished the sentence, he knew the woman – if it indeed was a woman – had hung up.

Reuben called at nine-ten. ‘I got good news, I got better news, I got great news,’ he said. ‘How do you want it?’

‘Ascending, Reuben,’ Paris said. ‘Always ascending.’

‘The good news is that Eleanor Burchfield had a large piece of skin missing. Of course, that isn’t good news for
her
, but damned if the pattern of the rectangular cut isn’t the same as the other three. I’m positive this is the same cutter, Jack.’

‘Do you have the skin?’

‘No. It wasn’t found at the scene.’

‘Where was it?’ Paris asked. ‘I mean, where was it cut from?’

‘It was about two inches wide by four and a half inches long and it came from the back of her neck.’

Paris had looked for a tattoo on Eleanor Burchfield but of course he hadn’t seen the back of her neck. Her hair was down.

‘What else have you got?’

‘We have a match on the face powder for the first three. Haven’t gotten to Burchfield yet. Brand called Chaligne. An import of Cinq, Limited.’

‘Who?’

‘
Cinq
.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘It’s French for the number five, Jack.’ Reuben spelled it for him as Paris erased what he had originally written on his pad: S-o-n-k. Eventually he would also revise his spelling of S-h-a-l-e-e-n for the face powder.

‘It’s a moderately expensive powder,’ Reuben continued. ‘But the other stuff is cheap. The lipstick and blush and mascara. Strictly bargain-basement shit, so it’s going to take a while to pin down the formula. Need the feds for that one, though. Anyway, Cinq has a field office in Cleveland, if you want to talk to them or get a client list. Over at Tower City. But there’s no doubt about it. All of these women were made up post-mortem.’

‘You’re positive on that?’

Silence.

‘Reuben?’

Nothing.

‘Okay,’ Paris said, moving on, remembering that silence was one of the many endearing ways Reuben Ocasio had of saying, ‘Fuck you, I can do
my
job, can you do
yours
?’

‘I also found something else on two of the victims’ upper lips that I can almost guarantee they didn’t put on before leaving the house,’ Reuben said, letting Paris off the hook for the moment.

‘Lay it on me, babe.’

‘Spirit gum.’

‘Lay it on me again, babe.’

‘Jac
quito
,’ Reuben said. ‘You are so uncultured.’

‘What? I watch PBS.’

‘The main use of spirit gum is in the theater. It’s used to keep on beards and eyebrows and sideburns and birthmarks and—’

‘Mustaches.’

‘Yep.’

‘You
have
something for me, don’t you, Reuben?’

‘I would say that we’ve got a psycho in disguise out there. Your boy’s mustache is a phony.’

‘I
knew
it,’ Paris said. ‘Anything available in there?’

‘In the spirit gum?’ Reuben asked, incredulous. Ever since DNA testing had begun, cops expected MEs and labs to find it everywhere. ‘I doubt it. But we still may be able to get something anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

Pause. A long
dramatic
pause. ‘Got the mustache, Jack.’

‘Say
what?
’

‘It was tangled up in Karen Schallert’s hair. Nobody saw it until last night. We’ll have to send it out, but I think there may be something we can use on the mesh backing.’

‘I love you, Reuben.’

‘Should I start shopping for a dress?’

‘I don’t think you can wear white.’ Paris looked through his doorway, into the common room, and caught Greg Ebersole’s attention. He waved him into his office.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I have brand names on the other cosmetics and the details on the mustache,’ Reuben said, clearly pleased with himself. ‘In the meantime, tell your partner that he has won, hands down, the Cocksman of the Year award.’

‘Tommy?’

‘He didn’t tell you yet?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Connie Maitland – you know Connie, right?’

‘Do I know Connie …’

‘Yeah, stupid question,’ Reuben said, considering that Connie Maitland, one of the assistant MEs, looked exactly like Anne Hathaway. Everybody in the department wanted to jump her bones so, for Tommy Raposo, it was like a mission. ‘Anyway, Connie’s on third shift last night and she’s walking through the fridge and she sees a light on. She opens the door and there’s Tommy Raposo nosing around a couple of stiffs.’

‘What do you mean “nosing”?’

‘I guess he had a couple drawers open or something,’ Reuben said. ‘So anyway he tells her that he’s working a case, yak, yak, yak. Connie comes in this morning walking like a penguin and speaking Italian. Kenny Mertenson saw them leave together last night.’

‘You’re telling me Tommy bagged Connie Maitland?’

‘That’s the way it looks,
amigo
. The Formaldehyde Princess herself.’

‘Unbelievable.’

‘I’ve seen men go to great lengths,’ Reuben said. ‘I’ve gone to a few myself. But over a fucking stiff?’

Paris said goodbye and hung up, thoroughly envious, once again, of Tommy Raposo’s astounding prowess with women.

It was that quiet time of the afternoon, that brief corridor between lunch and dinner when the calm before the deluge flattens out into silence on the sixth floor of the Justice Center.

By noon Paris had talked to every major wig and barber-products distributor in the North-east. He was told time and again that mustaches – high-quality, professionally woven, real-hair mustaches – had not been in demand since the height of the disco era. The cheaper ones were available locally at Cleveland Costume and a few other theatrical supply houses, but the type of mustache found in Karen Schallert’s hair, he was told by virtually all of the firms, was not even being manufactured anymore. The most recent wholesale shipping record anyone was able to fax him was from a decade ago. And that was to a wig supply-house in Dayton.

Blind alleys. Dead ends.

‘Who the hell you gotta know to get arrested around here?’

Paris, who had been daydreaming at his desk about slamming the iron door shut behind his clean-shaven psychopath and receiving a ticker-tape parade held by all the women in Cleveland, looked at his watch – already three o’clock – then looked up to see the owner of the surprisingly sweet voice.

It was Rita the Barmaid.

‘
Hi
,’ Paris said. ‘Come on in.’

Rita looked even younger than she did at the bar. She wore faded denim jeans, white Reeboks, a short leather jacket. Her wild brunette hair was pulled back into a ponytail, secured by a black-leather holder with silver studs. She wore very little make-up. She took off her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt with the logo for Ketel One emblazoned across the front.

‘I just got done with the sketch artist, but I don’t know how much good it did. I never really got that close to the guy and it’s pretty dark in there. Plus, I never wear my glasses at work.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘It’s just that I know a hunk when I see one. Radar, I think.’ She helped herself to a handful of microwave kettle popcorn from the bag on Paris’s desk. ‘But I had no idea it was all done with computers these days, you know?’

‘Yeah, well, we’re real modern up here in the big city.’

She helped herself to a sip of his Coke.

‘Can I
get
you something?’ Paris asked, more than a little charmed by Rita’s forthright, familiar manner. And the way she made everything sound like a question.

‘Why? You wanna
wait
on me, Detective Paris?’ She leaned over his desk, smiling broadly. ‘Is that it?’

Paris smiled back. Zoomed by a ninety-eight-pound waitress. ‘Let’s just say I owe you one. I appreciate your getting involved. And if you want something to eat—’

‘I’m fine.’

Paris shifted gears. ‘Let me ask you something. Did you notice anyone suspicious hanging around the bar, either before or after I was there that night? Somebody watching me, or maybe someone who might have followed Eleanor out of the bar?’

‘Sorry,’ Rita said. ‘There wasn’t much of a crowd, as you know. When it isn’t busy I tend to zone out. I just remember a couple of the regulars and a busload of little old ladies with cheap raincoats.’

‘Did you remember anything else about the first woman?’ Paris asked. ‘The one our boy may have come in with that first night?’

‘No. Sorry.’ Rita narrowed her brow. She looked out into the hallway, closed the door to the office. ‘You know, that other cop was asking about you.’