Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (4 page)

‘That’s because it’s the middle of the night, darling. And I live round the corner.’

Again, I said nothing. Watched her slip a slender silver tube between her lips.

‘I thought you quit.’

‘I have. But what do you care? This is one of those extremely of the moment gadgets that fool the brain into thinking it’s stopped smoking.’ She waggled it under my nose. ‘Would you like a drag? Oh, that’s right: I forget; you quit. Along with everything else.’

I shook my head. Swallowed down a smart retort. Sarcasm was Eleanor’s middle name. I almost got up then and there. Didn’t.

Instead I watched her draw a lungful of vaporized nicotine, then release it slowly from the corner of her mouth like Lauren Bacall in the movie
To Have And Have Not
. It curled upwards and away like a liberated spirit. Don’t ask me why, but I have always considered the act of a woman smoking as mesmerizing. Maybe even seductive.

She blew fake smoke in my direction.

‘Is that thing even legal?’

‘Oddly, yes.’ She flapped a hand at Winston. He pretended not to notice. ‘Hey, barkeep. Am I breaking any laws smoking this in here?’

I saw him think it through. Then shake his head.

‘See.’

‘Winston’s a pushover. He’d let you cut coke and smoke dope in here so long as you kept drinking his whiskey.’

It was Eleanor’s turn to make a face. ‘Gabriel Quinn, you are such a cynic.’

Now I did stand up. Unfolded a twenty and some ones out
 
on the counter.

‘Maybe so. But I still don’t want to talk about it.’

9

^{___________________________}

In my line of work you need patience and cunning. Plus the gumption to know when to use which.

I waited in the shadowy alleyway down the side of
Winston’s
for fifteen long minutes until Eleanor shuffled past in her slippers. Made sure she was out of sight before going back inside.

Dreads looked up as I sat down opposite him at the Formica-covered table. ‘She’s pheromonal, man.’

‘Is that even a real word?’ I asked.

‘It is in my world.’

I pointed to his notebook. ‘How’s the exposé shaping up?’

Dreads is a writer – or so he’d told me. Working on conspiracy theories. I saw him loop a defensive arm around the computer.

‘That’s classified, man.’ He hunched over it. ‘Why you pushing me? I’m not ready to go public yet. I don’t ask about your work. Stop pushing me, man.’

‘I thought we were buddies.’

‘Yeah. We are. Buddies. That’s fine in here. We’re in the Neutral Zone. Kind of like lawyer confidentiality. But out there it’s a dog eat dog world. You’re a cop and you’re okay. But that don’t make us interfaced.’

I dug out my phone and brought up the snapshot of the SUV racing away from the Samuels crime scene. It looked like a black smudge in a yellow fog. A few blurry lights. Shapes that could be anything. Pathetic, really. I was never any good with cameras. I pushed it across the table.

‘Can you do anything with this?’

Dreads uncoiled himself from the notebook. Partially tilted its lid away from me before picking up the cell. I watched him turn it around in his hand as if it was a hand grenade.

‘Guess I could phone my mom. Haven’t phoned her in like a month. Too much pressure, man.’

‘What about the photo?’

I saw him glance at the image, as if realizing it was there for the first time. Saw one corner of his lip tweak upwards.

‘What’s this supposed to be?’

‘SUV.’

‘No shit.’

‘I need the license plate number.’

‘What you need is a miracle.’

‘Can you do anything with it?’

‘Sure. But don’t you have police techno dudes for this kind of thing?’

I smiled. Over the last ten months I’d gotten to know Dreads just about as well as anyone was allowed to get to know Dreads. In a strange kind of way I trusted him. Not the kind of way needed to house-sit or come feed the dog twice a day while you’re out at work, but the kind that keeps lips zippered. In some ways it’s a deeper kind of trust.

10

^{___________________________}

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. A mule with masochistic musings. I still didn’t go home. I sat in my car outside
Winston’s
and thought about the missing half of the photograph still burning a hole in my pocket. It looked like a TV studio. But which network? And where? More importantly, why had the killer vandalized the photograph in the first place? Why leave one half with the murdered little girl and take the other with him? What did it mean?

You know how I feel about coincidences.

I drove. West then South. On automatic pilot. Driving helps me think. The monotony makes mysteries unravel. I thought about the nature of the two murders. The rose petals. The crosses of ash. The glued lips and the meticulous staging of each scene. You didn’t need a degree in psychology to know that the killer was making a statement. My job was to figure it out in time to prevent more innocent lives from being lost.

Is that what I believed: that he’d kill again?

I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t. Neither homicide had the characteristics of a spur of the moment knee-jerk reactive killing. Both had been planned beforehand. Staged. I wondered why.

As for a connection, I needed more information.

Road signs blurred by. Intersections. Traffic signals.

I was distracted. Something was bugging me: I was undecided if the location of the child’s body was coincidence or contrivance. There was that word again. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Some things indelibly etch themselves in our brains. I remember a photograph taken in Vietnam during the American insurgence. A simple monochrome composition of a naked, scrawny fleck of a child screaming as he she fled advancing US Marines. Behind her lay her slain father, his brains blown out across the pavement. I’d spent thirty years trying to shake it off. Never had. The events of this morning had bled color into that picture.

I pulled over and killed the engine. Looked around, absently for a while, before realizing I was back where I’d started: in the grubby rail graveyard next to the manmade river channel.

I got out. I don’t know why. Took a deep, cool breath.

The numerous city vehicles had disappeared. And with them the flashing lights and the distorted radio chatter.

No signs of the willowy officer.

No activity at all.

It was like nothing terrible had even happened here.

But I knew otherwise.

I started walking. Passed silent freight cars, snuggled up tail to tail for the night like snoozing mastodons. This place had an old factory smell about it. Decades of oil mixed with the scent of sewage coming up from the river. I had an inkling why the killer had chosen this spot. But I didn’t want to confront it. Not yet. I was hoping I was wrong.

I hunched into my coat. Worked my way over the grimy shingle to the gap in the chain-link fence. Used the Maglite to lead the way down the steep concrete slope. I came to a slimy grating spewing stinking water out into the channel. Jumped it. Almost lost it. Caught myself and cursed.

Every nerve in my body was vibrating.

The Maglite beam found the black-and-yellow police tape. The first responders had looped it around the thick concrete pillars supporting the overpass. I homed in on it.

Forensics and their portable lamps had long since vacated the scene. So, too, had my Police Captain friend and his men. I ducked under the tape. Moved deeper into the gloom. Somebody had chalked a rough rectangle onto the dirty concrete, indicating the location of the blanket. I kept a respectful distance.

Turned off the Maglite.

Darkness engulfed.

But it wasn’t completely dungeon-dark beneath the bridge; I could make out the city glow above the river channel. And perhaps the first yellowy rays of dawn fingering their way in from the East.

I took another deep breath and looked around.

There was graffiti everywhere. Sprayed all along the sides of the manmade trench and up the squared-off pillars, higher than any arm could reach without assistance. Youthful venting. Multi-layered. All over the show. The City had given up painting it out a long time ago. Too costly. The voice of freedom was hard to stifle. But without the aid of the flashlight it lacked its day lit vibrancy.

I moved over to the closest pillar. Paused. Then placed a palm against its rough skin. I could feel the weight of the bridge bearing down. A thousand tons pressing me into the river basin. Above my head I could just make out the shape of a musical staff scraped onto the rendering. Five scrawled lines with thumbnail notes. I’d seen them before. Knew the score. Had played them in my head. Over and over again until they had driven me mad, almost.

I closed my eyes. Let the deathly atmosphere envelop. Dared to think about the last time I’d been here prior to this weekend.

‘Help me!’

I spun round with hot adrenaline flashing through my chest. Flung my eyes wide.

But there was nobody here.

Just the bitter aftertaste of regret.

11

^{___________________________}

The lights were out and nobody was home. No delicious smells of home cooking wafting through from the kitchen. For that matter, no food in the refrigerator either. Same setup every time.

I dropped house keys in the dish on the telephone table. Left the lights off. I felt unclean; in need of a shower. But I shelved the thought – at least for the moment. Instead, I speed-dialed my daughter, Grace, in Florida. Whenever I am faced with a child homicide, I have this urgency to confirm that my own children are safe and well – even if they are grown up and moved out.

The number rang and rang.