Two Graves (A Kesle City Homicide Novel) (7 page)

Without really thinking, Preston picked up the yellow plastic strap some careless paperboy had discarded after opening his bundle of papers. He supposed he picked it up because he hated litter. It might be useful though.

He crossed the street and walked quickly along the other side. Sandra was walking slowly as though she had all the time in the world. She was smiling. She must have enjoyed telling her friends about him.

Rage began to fuel every step. His vision was clear – observing every detail on the street.

He saw where he wanted to be and walked even faster. There weren’t too many people around. Only the little neighborhood tavern was open at this time of night. With a little luck, it could work. He crossed back again.

Timing was everything. He set his pace to be at the precise spot when she arrived. She passed a couple walking in the opposite direction and said something. He couldn’t quite make it out but was sure she said to go and hear the story at the bar. He wrapped an end of the strap around both hands.

A cab was coming down the street toward him. He watched Sandra turn and step toward the curb.

Her arm went up to signal the cab. But between her and the cab, the couple did the same. The cab swerved to the side in front of the couple and they got in.

As the cab did a U-turn and started back down the road, he watched Sandra shrug and start back down the street.

He glanced behind to make sure he was still alone. The cab would be out of sight in seconds. A lone man walked in the opposite direction across the street. Preston adjusted his speed to make up for the interruption by the cab.

She passed him at the mouth of the alley and said hello.

He almost missed his chance.

She said hello right to his face but didn’t seem to recognize him. For a moment, he was confused and then he realized it was just her way of saying how unimportant he was. The rage flared brighter.

The strap slipped easily around her neck and he snapped his hands back. Taken completely by surprise, she fell backwards. He dragged her into the alley and moved behind a huge garbage container. He used all his strength to pull the ties tighter around her neck.

She clawed at the strap.

A gurgle escaped.

He heard the sound and pulled the straps tighter.

Even as she died, she laughed at him.

Would he ever escape the laughter?

She stopped moving after a minute or so. He released the strap after five. She fell backwards into the garbage. Her tongue was sticking out at him, taunting him. He kicked her in the face. His foot connected just under the chin and almost totally severed her tongue.

Flexing his cramped hands, he felt the pain for the first time. He looked down at his bloody hands and realized it was his blood. The strap had cut into him. He sucked the blood and took a step back, careful that the garbage bin still hid him from the street.

Shoving one hand in his pocket, he felt the boy’s knife. He pulled it out, looking at the black handle with the thin red stripe. He thumbed the button and the blade sprang out. Bending down, he finished cutting through her tongue until it fell onto her chest, landing right between her breasts.

Was that enough to stop her laughter? He looked at her throat, pale against the dark blood and bright yellow plastic. Why not be sure and take her voice with him? The Egyptians and the Vikings believed you brought your world with you into the afterlife. What if she went without her voice? Forever mute?

He stabbed the blade into her throat and cut around her larynx. He reached his fingers in and pulled out her voice box, silencing her for all eternity.

He stepped back and admired his work, his hand still wrapped around the bloody bit of flesh in his jacket pocket. He had done it. He had struck another blow for the used and abused. Once word got out, all those like him would feel uplifted and rise up in his support. They might not be capable of acting but they could live through him. They would take pleasure in his acts. Their support would be spiritual but support nonetheless.

But how will they know? She’s just another slut in the trash. Who will understand? It isn’t as if your last kill made any difference.

He had to leave a mark. But what mark could represent him? Whenever his mind played through his years of torture and terror, there was a single focus. His signature was obvious.

Like an artist examining a sculpture, he decided on the perfect spot.

Using his foot, he kicked her over. She landed with a wet plop in the soggy garbage. Too bad it isn’t mud, he thought, surveying her smooth slim back.

Kneeling down, he started to cut.

“Damn it all to hell. This crime scene is three days old! There isn’t anything cordoned off let alone a body.”

Mann stared down the alley and then backed up to look down the street, trying to picture the position of the body based on the photos. If he backed up enough, he could see the unlit sign of Jake’s Tavern. “It shouldn’t have taken so long to get to us.”

“It’s the knife,” Tetrault explained unnecessarily. “They tossed us the case once it was IDed. If it wasn’t for the new database the tax payers bitched so much about, we never would have tied it together and Central would still have it.”

Kesle’s divided its policing into fourteen Divisions. However, although each Division had a Detective squad handling most crimes, budget restrictions wouldn’t allow for each Division to have its own Homicide squad. Mann’s squad, operating out of Southfield Division, covered Southfield, High Park and the Bluffs.

Central Division, covering the oldest sections of the city, buffered Southfield from Downtown. Central’s Homicide squad looked after Central and Downtown. Those two Divisions accounted for over thirty percent of the murders in Kesle, double any other Divisions. If there was an opportunity, they would dump a case in a second.

And they got their chance when they identified the knife buried to the hilt in the victim’s back.

“OK, give me what you have,” Mann said, still looking at the blank alley.

Tetrault consulted his notes. He had spent the day looking at the gang angle, which Central had ignored up until then, while Kydd stayed with Gabel.

“So far, nothing gang related in her background,” Tetrault said. “She was straight as they get. Nothing connected her with the first victim. She lived in a different area, worked near here but not really in Gabel’s turf. Gabel and his boys would have been toast if they had wandered this far east of Spinner.”

Mann rubbed his eyes, looking from Tetrault to Kydd. “Same with your side?”

“Nothing more on the kid. If they knew each other, I don’t know how they would. I can’t find any common ground. Nothing but the fact that she had his knife in her back.”

“Tetrault, what was she doing here?”

“She was having a drink with her girlfriends at Jake’s. She was supposed to have left yesterday to get married in Jamaica.”

“Was she a regular at Jake’s?”

“Nope, never been there before. One of her girlfriends is and suggested it.”

“What about the fiancée? Could he be involved in some way?”

“Central cleared him right away. He has an alibi for each killing. He’s clean as far as the gangs go. Nothing there worth a second look.”

“Take another look. There has to be something.”

“Just the knife.”

“What about the knife?”

“The rest of the Intimidators say that Gabel would have had the knife on him when he was killed,” Kydd confirmed. “He was never without it. They even described the chipped blade. Happened during a game of Mumblety-peg.”

“How does it get from Gabel’s pocket into the girl?”

“The same killer whacked both,” Tetrault said.

“Why?”

The question went unanswered and Mann stared down the alley. “What about the other three in Gabel's gang?”

“All have good alibis.” Kydd shook her head. “And Garnham was right, they’re wimps.”

“And this is definitely right up there on the violence meter,” Mann said, flipping through the crime scene photos. “Makes the bashing that Gabel got look like he got bitch slapped and sent home to bed. What about the severed tongue? Could this be some sort of warning? We need to look into her business contacts. Could she have been blackmailing her way up the ladder? Was she some kind of a whistleblower?”

“ME says the tongue was partially severed by her teeth,” Tetrault said. “Then the job was finished with a sharp object, likely the knife.”

“She bit her tongue while she was being strangled? That doesn’t sound right,” Mann said.

“No, it was post. Looks like a blow to the chin. A kick would have done it.”

“Does this get any worse? Any physical evidence?”

Tetrault flipped open the file in his hand. “No prints but CSU found another footprint in the blood. We are working on a match for the print in the garden. But the garden print was useless. This one is for a Hush Puppy. Who the hell wears Hush Puppies, for Christ’s sake? They got some blood, type O positive, off the strap he used on the girl. It is definitely not her blood so we might get a hit on the DNA.”

Mann looked at his own hands. “Make sure you ask the boyfriend for a swab. Make sure he knows about the blood. If he says no, we’ll turn up the heat on him. Check his hands for cuts. It would be good to clear him. So, our boy didn’t wear gloves but he did take the time to wipe everything. What about this yellow strap?”

“They use them to bundle the
Daily
. There is a drop between here and Jake’s. There are a bunch of them in the gutter and next to the building. He likely picked it up on the way.”

“No gloves and he used a piece of garbage for his weapon? It looks very spontaneous with not much planning. Any signs of rape?”

“No rape. And that doesn’t make sense,” said Kydd.

Mann motioned her to continue and Kydd shrugged. “I saw her picture – the before picture. She wasn’t gorgeous but good looking. If this was a gang, they would have done her for sure. Pretty, white, twenty-something. She would be pretty hard to resist. They took time for everything else; they would have taken time for that. Especially if they were trying to leave a message for the boyfriend.”

“She’s got a point,” Mann said. He turned to Tetrault. “What makes you so sure that it’s a gang hit?”

“What else could it be with the knife, the kid and the sign?”

Mann had saved the sign for last. He flipped the file open and looked carefully at the design carved into the back of the girl. On the next sheet, the ME had sketched a rough version of the circle with a half circle intersecting the top. “You’ve ran this?”

“First thing Central did. Nothing. Not related to any gang in the country.”

“Why wasn’t it on the kid?” Mann stared at the ceiling again. “What’s your theory, Shane?”

“No gang, sir. Except for the fact that Gabel was part of an insignificant gang, there is no other connection. Yeck had no connection at all with street gangs. My guess, she hardly even knew gangs existed. Except for what she saw on the news, gangs wouldn’t even be in her world. Even this neighborhood isn’t really gang banger turf.”

Sensing her hesitancy, Mann prodded her. “And?”

“A psycho, sir.”

Mann wasn’t surprised, just worried.

“That, I don’t need. I hope you’re wrong but we need to consider the idea. For now, I want that design, whatever it is, kept quiet. I don’t want to read about it in the papers. I’m not saying we do – and I don’t want this repeated – but if we do have a psycho on our hands, we’re going to get another body. I’ll get on to Central and make sure it stays quiet. Too many have already seen it and it might be too late. But if we can contain it, let’s do it. I want to be able to identify our man.”

“Could be a woman.”

“That might explain no rape,” Tetrault agreed.

Mann stretched and rubbed the back of his neck. “Who had that case a few years back, the one where they thought it was devil worshipers?”

Kydd shrugged but Tetrault, who had been at Southfield for five years, spoke up. “The sacrifice thing? Greer. It wasn’t a sacrifice though boss, just two girls getting rid of some rival on the cheerleading squad. Thought they could throw everything off them – good Christian girls that they were.”

Mann looked at his watch. He was running late. Brant Davis wanted him to come to the hospital to discuss something about Davis’ nephew, Cliff. Mann knew the boy had been tossed out of the police academy a couple years ago and disappeared. Davis had sounded pissed. If Cliff was back Mann thought he better get there before Davis got any angrier.

“OK. I’ll just see if Greer recognizes anything. You two stay with what you have. Keep checking for any connections. Check out this boyfriend. Canvas the bar and the neighborhood. Come back tonight for the bar. Pull in the Intimidators and see if there is anything more there. But don’t mention this latest victim, the sign or the knife. They’ll mouth off all over the street if they find out that Gabel’s knife was used. Just see how far their territory extends or at least how far they roam. I’ll talk to Greer. I want to see if we should be worried about some kind of cult angle. If we’ve got a crazy on our hands, we had better move fast.”

Really fast, Mann thought, before The Hill decides a gang killing is politically less damaging than a serial killer.

Preston threw the paper down and cursed.

You killed the wrong one.

He looked at the paper on the floor. “Who the hell is Christine Yeck?”

That would be the woman you killed in the alley, idiot.

“I killed Sandra Kew,” Preston shouted.

Louder, I’m not sure they heard you all the way downtown!

How could it not be Sandra? It looked so much like her. He would have sworn it was her.

He went to the bookshelf and pulled out a thin book. He carried it to the dining table where he sat staring at the book. His rush of anger quickly faded into fear. He never understood why he kept the book. It meant nothing but pain. But now, he was beginning to understand.

Rubbing his sweaty hands on his pants, he got up and walked to the kitchen. His eyes never left the book as though it would suddenly open and all his worst fears would spill out. He reached into the refrigerator and felt for the milk carton. He carried it back to the table but made no move to pour the milk.