Shaken (9 page)

The elevator was fast, and a minute later we were on the twentieth floor knocking on the oak door to unit 20a.

The man who answered was unremarkable. Average height, looks, build. He wore the same black suit we saw him in at the storage facility, but up close I could see it was tailored. His tie was still on, cinched tight on his neck. The bulge in his coat from earlier, the one I thought was a gun, was no longer there. He was clean shaven, the barest hint of gray stubble on his chin. I also noticed his skin was tight—too tight to be natural on a man his age. Mr. Dalton was no stranger to plastic surgery.

He looked at us as a fish might peer out from an aquarium, without interest or expression.

“May I help you, Detectives?”

Herb and I exchanged a glance. Neither of us had told the doorman who we were here to visit, so no doubt Dalton had an arrangement with him, asking to be informed whenever a cop came into the building.

“John Dalton?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, nod, or react in the slightest.

“Lieutenant Daniels, Chicago PD. This is my partner, Detective Benedict. We’d like to ask you some questions about your whereabouts earlier today.”

“Daniels, you said?” For the first time, his face showed an expression—a slight crinkling around the eyes that might have been amusement. “The Homicide lieutenant?”

My fictionalized exploits had been televised as a grade D television series. I hadn’t been portrayed on the show in a positive light.

“May we come in?”

Dalton stepped aside, holding the door for us, then softly closing it. He led us down a short hallway, lined with framed black and white photos. A cornfield. A city skyline. A house on some tropical beach.

The condo was tastefully furnished, cherry wood paneling and floors, Persian rugs, stylish furniture that looked straight from the showroom. Dalton led us into the living room and offered us a sofa facing a bay window with a spectacular lake view. We declined the seat. Then we waited. Waiting is a standard interrogation technique. People find silence uncomfortable and tend to fill it when they can.

Dalton, however, said nothing. He simply stood there, watching us with his slack expression.

“Did you visit Merle’s U-Store-It earlier today?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Might I ask why you were there?”

“To store something.” Again, a tiny, bemused squint.

“And what did you store?”

“Don’t you mean to ask if I stored a dead body there?”

“Why would you say that?” Herb asked, his voice the essence of cool.

“You’re Homicide detectives. Am I wrong to assume you’re investigating a murder?”

I went with it, curious to see where this would lead. “Did you store a dead body there?”

“Did you see me store a dead body there?”

Herb and I exchanged a look.
Did Dalton know we’d followed him?

“Please answer the question, Mr. Dalton,” I said.

“Now, that would be quite an accomplishment, wouldn’t it? Hiding a body in a storage locker. One would probably need a container of some sort. Something on wheels. Or perhaps not. The manager there isn’t very attentive, is he? Perhaps a savvy murderer could carry a body in without even being noticed.”

“Mr. Dalton, please answer—”

“I’m tired of this question,” Dalton said. “Ask me a better one.”

I knew Herb felt the same thing I felt. This was our killer. This might even be Mr. K. But we were guests, without a warrant, and although we could probably drag him down to the station to answer questions, no doubt he would lawyer-up and probably sue us and the city. Dalton apparently had money, and he radiated confidence. He wouldn’t confess.

But he might screw up if we kept him talking.

“I’d like to show you some pictures on my laptop, Mr. Dalton. It will take a moment.”

“Feel free.”

I placed the computer on a coffee table and booted up Windows. Then I took a memory stick out of my purse—one that contained the photos from the storage locker crime scene, and the crime scene from Seventy-fifth Street—and accessed my slide show viewer.

The first was of the man found earlier, at the U-Store-It. He hadn’t been ID’ed yet. I winced, seeing his misshapen body again.

“Do you recognize him?” Herb asked, taking over because he must have sensed my revulsion.

“I don’t. Perhaps I might, if he wasn’t so puffy.”

“He had his arms and legs broken and was tied to a wheel that spun him around.”

“The Catherine Wheel,” Dalton said.

“You’re familiar with it?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“I confess a fascination with the macabre, and have quite an extensive collection of books about torture and death, and those who commit such atrocities. I also have several that feature you, Lieutenant. I’m sure there are many who have followed your career. A very many, including some very bad people. May I ask you a question about the Kork family? Is Alex still in prison?”

The Korks were one of the many cases I’d had that still gave me nightmares. That is, when I was even able to get to sleep. “No. A maximum security mental health facility.”

“Well, let’s hope all of those despicable people you put away never get out. I bet they’d be most upset with you.”

“How about this man?” I asked, flipping forward a few jpegs. An ugly image splashed across my desktop, of a crime scene lit with kliegs, illuminating a poor bastard whose intestines had been removed from his body an inch at a time by being wound around a stick.

“Ah, the Guinea Worm,” Dalton said. “Quite a terrible way to die.”

“You’re familiar with it?” Herb asked.

“You know the term
drawn and quartered
? The
drawn
part is being disemboweled. Here, let me show you.”

Dalton led me and Herb to a bookcase. He removed a hardcover from the shelf with the title
The History of Torture and Punishment,
and quickly flipped to a page that showed a graphic drawing of a man in agony, his insides being pulled out. The caption below read “Guinea Worm.”

“There is a parasite known as the guinea worm,” Dalton said, “which gets into the bloodstream and then bursts out of a vein in the leg. The only way to remove the creature is to tie it to a stick and slowly pull it out, bit by bit. Imagine someone doing the same thing with your intestines. Most painful.”

I was stunned. This man was practically telling us he did it. Was he presenting some sort of warped challenge to us? Daring the police to catch him?

Next he turned to a full-page sketch of someone dying on the Catherine Wheel.

“I bet the two could be combined,” Dalton said. “As the victim turned, his intestines could also be wound around a stick. The best of both worlds.”

I looked away, eyeing some of his other books. They were all true crime, except for two novels. One was called
Blue Murder
. The other,
The Passenger
.

Dalton noticed my gaze. “Are you familiar with author Andrew Z. Thomas?”

I nodded. “A bestselling thriller writer. He became a serial killer.”

“He allegedly joined forces with another killer named Luther Kite. They were both involved in the Kinnakeet Ferry Massacre of 2003, among other unsavory murders.”

I remembered the crime back when it came over the wires, and I still recalled the pictures of the duo. Thomas was average-looking, not the serial killer type at all. But Luther looked like he stepped out of a horror movie. Gaunt, pale face. Dark eyes. Black, greasy hair.

“How about this one?” Herb asked, pulling a title from the shelf.

The book was a dog-eared paperback entitled
Unknown Subject K
.

“Yes, I’ve heard of him. Supposedly, he’s killed more than the top ten other famous murderers put together. Some think he’s an urban legend, created by the FBI.” Dalton stared at me, his eyes crinkling. “What do you think, Lieutenant?”

“I think he’s make-believe,” I said carefully. “No one could have committed all of the atrocities that have been attributed to him.”

Now Dalton actually did grin. It was small, no more than a slight upturn of his lips, and seemed oddly out of place on his emotionless face. “Are you sure about that?”

“Did you recognize the man in the last photo I showed you, Mr. Dalton?” I asked, despising his smile.

“The Guinea Worm fellow?”

“The man has been identified as Jimmy ‘The Nose’ Gambucci. He was a member of the Lambini crime family. Do you have any associations with organized crime?”

“Are you asking if I could call up Tony Lambini, have him talk to his powerful friends, and get you fired? Why would I do that, Lieutenant? Do you perceive yourself as a threat to me?”

This conversation had gone from bizarre to downright surreal.

“Mr. Dalton,” I said, figuring I had nothing to lose. “Are you Mr. K?”

Dalton touched his index finger to his chin, then pointed it at his hallway. “Did you see my photographs, when you were coming in? The one on the end is of my chateau in Cape Verde. It’s one of the few hospitable countries in the world that doesn’t have extradition treaties with the United States. Do you know what that means?”

“It means bad guys can go there,” Herb said, “and we’re not allowed to bring them back.”

“A gold star for the chubby sidekick,” Dalton said. Then he turned to me. “I’ve worked hard for my entire life, Ms. Daniels, and am ready for retirement. I’m leaving for Cape Verde tomorrow. After I go, I don’t plan on ever returning. If I am this elusive Mr. K, you have a little over twenty-four hours to come up with enough evidence to arrest me, or else I’m afraid his identity will forever remain a mystery to all but a select few.”

I replayed everything he’d said since we’d walked in. Was it enough to take him down to the station? If so, would it be enough to get a warrant to search his house?

No. Dalton hadn’t actually admitted to anything. And I had no doubt he’d be free an hour after I brought him in.

“Let me tell you what I think of Mr. K,” I said evenly. “He’s a parasite, just like a guinea worm. And like the guinea worm, he needs to be drawn out into the open and exterminated.”

Dalton leaned in close. “I’ve followed your lackluster career, Lieutenant. You aren’t good enough to catch him.”

“We’ll see.”

I picked up my laptop and left the condo with Herb at my heels, swearing to myself I’d put this creep away if it was the last thing I ever did.

Present day

2010, August 10

C
ontrolling my breathing was the first step. Once I slowed that down, I was able to stop crying, relax my cramping muscles, and think through the panic.

My wrists were ridiculously sore, as if someone had branded them with hot irons. I wiggled my fingers, keeping the circulation going, and then tried to reason out my situation.

Mr. K had me. That was obvious. But I didn’t see how that could be possible. Too much didn’t make sense.

Could it be a copycat? Someone imitating Mr. K?

I wished I could remember how I got into the storage locker. My last memory was watching infomercials in the living room, Phin asleep in bed. He was doing another round of chemo after an ultrasound had found another tumor on his pancreas. How long ago was that? A few hours? A day?

I must have been drugged. That would explain the loss of memory.

Could Mr. K somehow have tracked me down and—

The loud
CLICK!
was accompanied by an explosion of light. I slammed my eyelids closed, but the glare still burned my corneas, causing an instant headache. After a few seconds, I peeked through the painful brightness, squinting at the spotlight hanging on the wall.

Blinking away motes and halos, I began to look around. I was in a storage locker, as I’d guessed. Metal walls. A metal door. The concrete block I was tethered to was larger than I’d assumed, at few hundred pounds at least. I swiveled my head around, looking for the machine making the whirring noise.

When I saw it, my whole body clenched.

It was a wheel. A large, spinning wheel, with straps for a person’s arms and legs.

The Catherine Wheel.

But this one was unlike any I’d seen before. Attached to it was a metal pole, which looked like the rotating spit from a gas grill.

I immediately knew what it was. I remembered John Dalton’s description of the Guinea Worm, and I could picture someone strapped to the wheel, their broken bones grinding together, while the turning metal bar slowly disemboweled them.

Next to the wheel, on the floor, was a digital clock. It was counting down the seconds.

1:59:43…1:59:42…1:59:41…

After a brief, internal battle to squelch panic, panic won out. I screamed into the gag. Screamed until my throat was raw, until the tears came again, until I was hyperventilating so badly that I passed out.

Twenty-one years ago

1989, August 16

I
didn’t take Shell up on his offer to shoot some pictures of me back at his place. He was cute, smart, and almost predatory with his sexuality. While I liked the confident, lothario vibe he gave off, and the attraction was no doubt mutual, I wasn’t going to screw up my first real case by, well, screwing one of the people involved.

So I took him to my place instead.

He had one of those expensive SLR cameras with an assortment of lenses and filters, portable lights, and even a stand-up backdrop, all in the trunk of his Caddy. While he was setting up in my living room, I went into my bathroom and futzed around with makeup. While I wasn’t Max Factor, I managed to slap enough color on my face to look feminine. Then I ran a brush through my hair and hit it with Aquanet, trying to tease it up as big as possible. By the time I was finished, I looked like I could be in a Whitesnake video.

Then I changed out of my Sears suit and put on the outfit Shell had bought for me. All dolled up, it was hard for me to recognize the person in the mirror. It didn’t look much like me. Rather, it looked more like the person I wanted to be.