Gladyss of the Hunt (22 page)

Why the hell did he bother with all this if he didn't want to follow through?

“Fine.”

I opened the door and jumped out. Before I could slam it in his face, he said, “I'm going back to LA soon, Gladyss, and I really am not the Casanova they all make me out to be. I need to move at my own pace.”

At least we weren't naked and he hadn't suddenly seen a photo of my twin.

“All right,” I said, doing my damnedest to swallow my fears of rejection. “We'll take it nice and slow, I guess.”

“I'd like that,” he said with a smile. The car sped off to the economic sanctity of his uptown palace.

I didn't know how drunk I was until I took the few wobbly steps into my apartment building. The elevator seemed to be spiraling upward. I tried closing my apartment door gently, so as not to alert my nosy neighbor, but of course Maggie came dashing over immediately. She was holding a large, black hardcover book in her hand.

“You're alone,” she said almost gleefully, as she dumped her heavy book on the cabinet across from my sofa.

“What are you reading?”

“The Bible. I need it for my scene tomorrow.” She spoke with a slight slur that made me realize I wasn't the only one who had been drinking.

“You're rehearsing now?” I asked, feeling wobbly from the beer and whiskey.

“Sure,” she said, then eagerly asked, “So tell me about the big date.”

“Well . . . for the first time, I found myself really turned on by him.”

“You're kidding!”

“No, but . . .”

“What happened?”

“We started kissing on the drive back here, then the next thing I know he's wishing me a good night.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

Maggie thought for a moment. “I don't mean to be presumptuous, but it might be that you're not using the right technique.”

“What kind of technique should I be using?”

She got up, went to my pantry, and took out the bottle of vodka
she had given me earlier that evening, along with two old wine glasses.

“Over the years, I've collected quite a few tools in the art of seduction.” She plunked down on my couch and flipped on a lamp.

“Like what?”

“Trust me,” she said, patting the cushion next to her. When I took a seat, she poured a shot of vodka for each of us.

“First, let's toast to losing your virginity to the most eligible bachelor in the world.” We clicked glasses and down the hatch.

“Now let's see how you smooch,” she said.

“Am I suppose to kiss the air?”

“No, kiss me.”

“Uh, I don't think so.”

“Why? What's the big deal?”

“Maggie, I never suspected you were a dyke.”

“Weren't you the one weeping to me for weeks after your cop buddy rejected you?” she asked.

“That's low!”

“I'm just saying, this is the second sexy guy you had on the hook who wriggled free. Now if you like, I can show you how to reel them in.”

“I know why you're really doing this,” I suddenly realized. “You want practice for your lezzie soap kiss tomorrow.”

“You caught me,” she chuckled, and poured us both a second shot. We knocked them back in unison. “Okay, now come on and pucker up!”

I started giggling.

“Look, I'm an actress, not a lesbian.” Pinching her arm, she said, “This is just a big pink instrument that I've spent years learning how to use in order to get specific reactions. If you don't want me to share the secrets of my craft, that's fine, but I'm telling you—a good kiss is your gateway to love . . .”

Just to shut her up, I closed my eyes, aimed my head toward her, and nervously pursed my lips.

Delicately she put her lips over mine. Then, withdrawing just a bit, more tenderly than I'd ever experienced it, she grazed the tip of her lips over the bulbous edge of mine.

When I opened my lips to inhale, she plunged her hot tongue into
my mouth. Instinctively, I tried to back away. She reached around and embraced me tightly. Soon I felt my heart going pitter-patter as she held me and playfully flicked her tongue back and forth. Then she brushed her fingertips down my bare arms, and along my chest, until I felt paralyzed by the tenderness.

“Come on!” she suddenly broke off.

“What?”

“This is a rehearsal, remember? I'm supposed to be one of the handsomest men in the world.”

“So?”

“I've seen more responsive corpses!”

I took a deep breath. “I'm just not used to being . . . the assertive one.”

“There's your problem!” she said. “Modern guys are a lot softer than they used to be. They'll just melt away like marshmallows if you don't take charge.”

“What should I do?”

“You took some acting classes in college, didn't you?”

“Yeah, one. Why?”

She poured us both another shot of the Grey Goose. “Pretend you're the man. I'll be the chick.
You
kiss
me
.”

“I'm the man?”

“Yeah, you're a little tomboyish already. It shouldn't be that hard.”

“How?”

“Think of some specific guy you find manly and be him.”

I closed my eyes and considered some of the macho men I knew. For a moment, O'Ryan crossed my mind, but after his reluctance to ask me on a second date, he seemed more like a wuss. What other attractive, intriguing men did I know? Surprisingly, Detective Farrell popped into my head. Even with his wheezy remarks and decomposing foot, he struck me as a decent, courageous man and a straight shooter.

Leaning forward, I fixed on the thought that I was Bernie, and Maggie my little coquette. Matter-of-factly, I put my mouth around hers and slipped my tongue between her soft lips. I felt her swoon, and the warm, wet tightness of her vodka-flushed mouth. Moving my hand up her back, I held her firmly and pulled her in. Just as she had done to me, I started caressing her large, firm breasts.

Stop!” Maggie said, pushing me back. “I just can't.”

“Can't what?” I asked, thoroughly lightheaded.

“I mean . . . Good! That's a good start.” She got up, blushing, and grabbed her Bible off the chest of drawers.

“So that's it?” I asked. I was hoping there was something more she could impart.

“If you showed him you can be submissive and he doesn't bite, try that.”

“I guess I can try.”

Glancing at my wall clock, she said it was time for Letterman and Leno and dashed back to her place. It was her habit to sit, remote in hand, and ping pong between the two, making them into one single, blurry talk show. TV really was the center of her celebrity-driven existence.

My brother called before I went to sleep. He was unusually mellow, even sort of sad. I figured he was on his meds. Usually it was hard for me to get a word in, so I took the opportunity to mention that I had met a new guy, a movie star, and we'd actually made out.

“Who?” he asked, clearly not impressed.

“Noel Holden,” I said, expecting him to ask what life was like in the fast lane – or at least not the slow lane.

But he answered, “Then things are over with you and the scorpion.”

“Yes, but Eddie's a good guy. Please stop calling him that.”

“Goodnight,” he said, and hung up before I could tell him anything more.

I had a mini-hangover the next day, but I took off my sunglasses as soon as I walked into the precinct. I didn't want anyone to sense something was wrong. In the squad room, Bernie was reaching for his coat as I was taking mine off.

“Leave it on,” he said. “We got a new one.” Clearly he meant a victim.

“It gets worse,” he said as we started down the stairs. “Remember your cheap date, Tinkerman?”

“What about him?” I asked, thinking,
Could he be the killer after all?

“He went back to his hotel room last night, called his wife, told her he loved her, then hung himself.”

“Oh no!” I froze mid-step, recalling that I had essentially told a desperate, old man that it was time to kill himself if he couldn't handle his loneliness.

“She told me he was battling cancer.”

“Shit!”

“Come on,” he said. “Feel bad on the way to the scene.”

“Where is it?”

“That's the kicker. You remember the two hotsheets we had under surveillance?”

“Are you kidding?”

It was the Hotel Fabio, one of the two remaining establishments he'd said did not have closed circuit cameras. After Jane Hansen's body was found at the Ticonderoga, the captain decided to pull the surveillance teams, which were needed elsewhere, since the killer was evidently now working outside his original territory.

As we drove to the hotel, Bernie called Raj to see if pictures of this new crime had turned up on the Marilyn web site. More importantly, if the killer did upload the photos, could Raj again trace their point of origin?

I could tell Raj's response by the disappointment in Bernie's voice. No new pictures had come in.

It didn't really matter. All I could think about was Tinkerman. I kept remembering his sad little shriek when he thought I was trying to rape him. I might not have murdered the poor old guy, but inadvertently I had been an accomplice in his death.

We doubleparked at Thirty-eighth and Ninth and went up to the fifth floor of the Fabio, where uniforms had already locked the scene down. O'Ryan and Lenny were stationed outside. Eddie said hi to me as I walked past.

The techs had widened the perimeter of the crime scene this time, and were combing the entire stairway. We snapped on our rubber gloves and overshoes and I followed close behind Bernie.

The killer had returned to all his original rituals. A tall blonde had been drugged and strangled: Her limbs were taped up. Her head had been brutally cut off. The same numbers were carved on the same corresponding limbs, just like the first three vics.

“See, this isn't like the Jane Hansen murder,” Bernie said. “This is Coke Classic—like Mary Lynn, Denise, and Nelly.”

In addition, a long V-shaped incision had been made up and down her inner right thigh, as with the first victim. And, again like Mary Lynn, a sock had inexplicably been left dangling from the tip of her left foot. The number 8 had been gouged into her forehead. A paneled bracelet, set with what looked like jasper, was dangling from her left wrist, and wedged in her right hand was a business card for this rat hole hotel.

Another fallacy I had picked up watching movies was that you could run your hand over the eyelids of the deceased and gently close them. But however much I tried to close her sad eyes, they remained fixed in an upward gaze, as though she were longing to be reconnected with her detached body.

Bernie looked closely at the point where her head had been severed. Judging by the corkscrew twist of the top of her spinal column and the way a piece of the esophagus trailed below the head like a little tail, it looked as though the fucker had literally twisted her skull off.

“Did he ever
twist
off a head before?” I asked Bernie.

“He had to cut the muscles before he did the twisting, but no.” Then he added. “This is one pissed response.”

“To what?”

“He's got to be one of the cocksuckers we interviewed. This is his fuck-you to us.”

“Why did he go back to West Side fleabags?” I asked. “Do you really think—”

“—The same reason he went back to decapitations and forehead numbers and single socks . . . Who the fuck knows?”

After I interviewed the witless desk clerk, who apparently had noticed absolutely nothing, Annie and I spent an hour knocking on all the other doors in that house of horrors. Next we canvassed other residents of the block looking for possible witnesses, and checked for any outside surveillance cameras—no luck. Bernie had me keep pushing Missing Persons, whose job it had been to take the dead girl's prints and try to make an ID. By three o'clock we got a hit. Her name was Tabetha Sayers.

Bernie had Alex attend the big news conference the commissioner
was holding in time for the six o'clock news. The commissioner had decided it was time to reveal more details about the murders of Tabetha and her four predecessors. If we couldn't catch the son of a bitch, he wanted to make sure that any blonde hookers who were tricking around midtown knew what was awaiting them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After work, late that night, feeling unbelievably crappy but fearing that unless I tuckered myself out, I was going to do something foolish like get drunk and kiss my neighbor again, I caught the final yoga class of the day. Again I encountered the turbaned gang of four.