Don't Look Now (7 page)

I grabbed her arm, trying to get it near the headboard. ‘It’s just a game,’ I said, but I knew that I had lost her. She was
very
strong.

‘I’m not going to let you handcuff me!’ She wrestled herself free of my grip and rolled onto her back, then off the bed. ‘Are you fucking
crazy
?’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, trying to calm her. ‘We don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

But the blonde already had her skirt in her hand and was backing toward the bathroom and the rest of her things. She was nearly hysterical with rage.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said, stepping off the bed, slipping the small Taser unit out from between the mattresses. I just needed to touch her once. ‘I got a little carried away. We’ll forget the kinky stuff, okay?’

‘I don’t even
know you
.’

I stepped closer to her, naked, led not by my desire now but rather by my obligation. ‘If you’d just—’

‘Don’t come near me.’ She wiggled into her skirt, pulled her blouse over her head. She gathered her shoes, held her hands out in front of her. ‘Just stay away.’

She looked so incredibly beautiful, still flushed with her nearness to orgasm, her hair matted with the sweat of our lovemaking. As she turned to leave the closet door closed completely and I knew then that the blonde would get away. It was a first.

‘No hard feelings?’ I dropped the Taser into the pile of sheets at the foot of the bed.

‘You turned me on, you bastard,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I …
shit!
’ She threw open the motel door and the light from a nearby streetlamp washed the room.

And then she was gone.

I walked over to the door and closed it. I smelled my hands: perfume, sweat, the woman’s musk. I touched myself with what was left of it. As I walked back to the bed I noticed that the blonde had left her bra and panties. They looked very expensive, but something told me she wouldn’t be coming back for them.

I slipped into her panties and pulled the make-up kit from underneath the bed. I set it on the nightstand next to the bottle of Absolut. I lay down on the bed, cuffed myself to the headboard and waited. After a few moments, the closet door swung wide.

I closed my eyes.

And took my punishment.

ABOVE THE FOLD
yet, Paris thought. This was going to be a long one. The
Plain Dealer
had run the three pictures side by side – Maryann Milius, Emily Reinhardt and Karen Schallert. It had been just a few hours since the Schallert investigation began and already the newspaper had more information than the police. The
PD
had managed to fit all three pictures under the headline:
Are these women victims of a serial killer?
The article beneath carried no answers of its own:

Michael A. Cicero

Plain Dealer Reporter

As Karen Schallert stepped through the door of room 127 at the Red Valley Inn on Superior Avenue, she probably had every intention of leaving in just a few hours. According to Donna Ballou, the woman’s sister, Karen Schallert taught a morning reading group at Mayfield Regional Library and this Saturday they were going to read from
Oh the Places You’ll Go
by Dr Seuss
.

Her partner had no intention of letting Karen Schallert go anywhere
.

Because according to police reports, sometime early Saturday morning Karen Schallert, 23, a personnel assistant with the United Way organization, was brutally murdered in room 127 at the Red Valley Inn
.

A random killing? There are indications that it was not
.

On 21 October of last year, the body of Emily Reinhardt, 24, was discovered in a second-floor room at the Quality Inn on Euclid Avenue. On 23 December, police say, the body of Maryann Milius, 22, a bank teller living in Bedford Heights, was found in an abandoned warehouse on the city’s near east side. Her body had been severely battered, her throat cut
.

Although Cleveland police have not yet confirmed that they are treating these three murders as the work of a serial killer, according to Captain Randall B. Elliott of the Homicide Unit, the similarities are growing as the investigation continues. Capt. Elliott said that a taskforce – to be led by Detective John S. Paris – was being formed to catch the killer or killers. The details surrounding the
[see serial/3b]

And all of it above the fold.

Paris had found out that he was to lead the task-force at five-thirty that morning, when Elliott had awakened him and briefed him over the phone, prior to the
Plain Dealer
hitting the stands. It was nice to see it confirmed in print, though, Paris thought – right there on the front page, right over a double order of blueberry pancakes in the back room at Eddie’s on Coventry. It seemed his appetite had returned with a vengeance after only one night of not drinking himself into a coma.

He returned to the front page and began to reread the article. He looked at his name in print and wondered if Beth was reading about him at that moment. If she was proud of him. If she was pointing it out to Melissa.

He also wondered if someone else had had the chance to read it. He wondered if the tall man in the Irish walking-hat was sitting somewhere at that moment – perhaps in a little Italian bakery on Murray Hill, or in a booth at the Detroiter, or maybe even at the other end of the back room at Eddie’s – and perusing the article over his scrambled and sausage.

The
Plain Dealer
was on the story full press, with three writers contributing to the lead story, and a pair of sidebars. There was even a graphic of the city with each of the three crime scenes depicted with a star.

‘You’re gonna get fat eating that shit.’

The voice came from behind him. Paris spun around. It was Tim Murdock, one of the best detectives in Beachwood, ex of the Third District, and Paris’s senior by one year at the academy. ‘Timmy,’ Paris said. ‘What’s doin’, big man? How goes the rat race?’

Murdock had taken a .38-caliber slug in his shoulder three years earlier – a drug shoot-out at the Carver Estates. He had arms the size of a football player’s thigh and a complexion like a Maine shrimper, but his grip was weak because of his torn-up shoulder. Paris could never remember if he was supposed to squeeze his hand hard or go easy on it when they shook. He usually opted for both, always waiting for Timmy to double over in pain, clutching his shoulder.

‘Fucking rats are still winning, Jackie.’ Murdock slipped into the booth and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the waitress’s attention. ‘Congratulations on getting lead dog,’ Murdock said. ‘Is Dietricht gonna shit a potato or what?’

Bobby Dietricht was the Homicide Unit comer. He had his gold shield before he was thirty and had designs on captain by forty. It was just this kind of task-force that would have saved Bobby Dietricht a year or two on the ladder. But Captain Elliott didn’t care too much for Bobby Dietricht, and Paris got the call.

‘Thanks, Timmy.’

‘Play this smart, Jack.’

Paris smiled. ‘I got two till my twenty, man,’ he said. ‘After that, I’m out.’

Murdock laughed and called for the waitress again. ‘What the hell are you gonna do off the force, Jack? Go security? Go PI? I don’t think so, buddy. You’re too much like me. Blue all through. Just another lifer.’ The waitress finally came over, took Murdock’s order, grabbed his menu and walked back to the kitchen. Murdock lowered his voice. ‘So what do you have?’

Paris matched his volume. ‘I have shit,’ he said. ‘Not a print, not a partial, no blood from the killer, no semen. Not a fucking thing. Except three bodies.’

‘DNA?’

‘All three samples are out to the feds.’

‘What do you have on the asshole?’

‘I got a tall white male, thirties, glasses, mustache and a tweed hat.
Maybe
. And
that’s
probably a disguise. Could be you, even. If you had a mustache.’

Murdock smiled. ‘And if I was tall and still in my thirties.’

‘We don’t even have this guy anywhere near the Milius murder. She leaves work one day, she shows up dead. Could have been someone else. Except—’

‘Except what?’

‘It doesn’t leave this booth?’

‘Hand to God, Jackie.’

Paris took a moment, debating. ‘All three had patches of skin removed.’ He kept the information about the bodies being made up after they were killed to himself. He trusted Tim Murdock as much as any other cop, but some things were better kept inside the investigation for as long as possible. Murdock didn’t press Paris on any other details for the time being. He knew the routine.

‘How’s the hot shot?’

‘Tommy’s fine,’ Paris said. ‘He’s really going to be the lead sniffer on this one, though. Great instincts for a guy his age. He’s the real sleeper at the Unit. Everybody’s talking Bobby Dietricht, but Tommy might just smoke him.’

‘Kid’s that good?’

‘That good,’ Paris said. ‘I don’t know too much about him personally yet. Never been asked to his place.’

The two caught up quickly on each other’s ex-wives and children and Paris rose to leave just as Murdock’s breakfast arrived. Paris, whose stomach was legendarily susceptible to any and all sick jokes, knew that Tim Murdock was just as bad, if not worse. As Reuben Ocasio couldn’t resist taunting
him
, Paris found that he couldn’t resist taunting Murdock. For the first time, Paris thought he understood Reuben.

‘I’m telling you, Timmy,’ Paris began, laying down a tip, ‘this guy sliced the skin off in a wide strip. And when you look at it like that, it’s almost transparent, you know?’

Murdock – whose face was beginning to drain of color – looked down at his two pieces of slightly undercooked bacon and called for the waitress.

Paris drove south on Coventry, noting that the dogwood trees that lined Fairmount Boulevard were straining at their buds once again. He had told Beth that he would stop by on his way to the office, knowing that she and Melissa would probably be going to ten o’clock mass. He needed a built-in excuse for leaving, in case his emotions got the best of him, as they seemed to be doing with unnerving regularity of late.

He found a space right in front of Beth’s building, got out of the car, raised his collar against the wind.

It may have been Easter Sunday, but it was still March in Cleveland.

Beth wore a pale apricot dress and matching heels. Her hair was much shorter than Paris had ever seen it. Lighter too. She seemed to have taken on the look of a woman who was content to move among her new circle of friends: the movers and shakers of Cleveland society. Paris always scanned the society column in the
Plain Dealer
to see if Beth Shefler-Paris attended this society function or that hospital benefit. He saw her name once in a column about a recent chichi gourmet function called the Five Star Sensation, and it made him feel like shit for a week.

Beth kissed him on the cheek, looking much younger than her thirty-six years. She took the dozen lilies Paris had grossly overpaid for at the last minute, knowing well enough to let him hand Melissa the huge Easter basket himself. ‘How are you, Jack?’ she asked, walking him into the kitchen. ‘You look good.’

‘Overpaid, underworked, overstaffed,’ he said. ‘The usual.’

Beth found a vase for the lilies, cut them, filled the vase with water and arranged the flowers on the dining room table. ‘Read about you in the paper,’ she said as she poured him a cup of coffee. Just like old times. ‘Does one say “congratulations” at a moment like this?’

Paris thought she would have known that. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s a good move.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

She brought his coffee over to him, sat down. ‘Melissa said lunch was a lot of fun. She said you hardly ate a thing.’

‘I’ve never been a big lunch eater.’

‘I know. It hasn’t been
that
long.’

Paris sipped his coffee, put his cup back into the saucer, realizing that he had never seen this china pattern before. Like half the things in the apartment, it looked brand new. And expensive. ‘Not for you, maybe,’ he said, then instantly regretted it.

Shit
.

Beth reached forward, placed her hand on his. ‘Jack …’

Melissa came racing around the corner. She wore a white dress, white shoes and a white ribbon in her hair. But, because she was Jack Paris’s daughter, her purse was a shocking lime green. ‘Happy Easter, Daddy!’ She flew across the kitchen and into his arms. Out of the corner of his eye, Paris saw his wife look away.

‘Hi punkin,’ Paris said. ‘Let me look at you.’

Since she was five or six that had been her cue to walk around the room like a cat-walk model, spinning, hand on hip, flipping her hair. ‘Don’t
we
look pretty,’ Paris added.

‘Thanks, Daddy.’

Paris retrieved the basket from behind the island.

‘Easter bunny left this for you at my … house.’ Paris felt strange, in the company of his wife and daughter, talking about
his
house. It had been a long time since they had all lived under one roof as a family, but he was still wrestling with geographic demons; those real, and those whose boundaries were etched only on the map of his heart. He was still madly in love with his wife.

‘Wow!’ Melissa exclaimed, looking through the purple cellophane for her favorite Easter candy, knowing, of course, it would be in there. She spotted them. ‘Cadbury Creme Eggs!’

As anxious as she was to get at all that sugar, she slowly, methodically removed the cellophane and bows, folded them and stacked them on the kitchen counter. A cop’s kid at work.

Melissa walked over to the dinette table and plucked a hard-boiled egg from the centerpiece: a two-foot-high bunny made out of accordion paper and surrounded by green cellulose and what looked like two dozen brightly painted eggs. She removed a strand of hay and handed Paris the egg. ‘Easter bunny left this for
you
,’ she said. The egg was light blue with dark-blue speckles. It had a bright red ‘Daddy’ across one side, and a decal of a duck with a policeman’s cap on the other.