Night vision jl-2

by Paul Levine

  "Jesus H. Christ," Nick Fox breathed. "You got any proof of this?"

  "At a homicide scene on Miami Beach a young assistant ME shoots enough pictures to make a family album. It's good training. You never know what you'll find. He takes close-ups of Marsha Diamond's neck. He thinks he can tell if a strangler is right-handed or left-handed from the crescents. Charlie Riggs sets him straight. No big deal. Charlie notices that one of the crescents isn't a crescent at all. It's jagged because of a torn nail. But that's no big deal either, because it'll grow back in a few days. No use looking for a guy with a hangnail. It's not like DNA, where your genes are your genes for life. Then Whitson takes shots of all the spectators, including one of Pam Maxson squeezing my forearm and a close-up of the marks. Nobody pays attention to anything but the reversal of the crescents. And that's all you can see until you blow it up to an eight-by-ten and compare it to the enlargements of Marsha's neck. They match, Nick, four crescents and one jagged edge."

  I opened my tackle box and showed Nick Fox the blowups. He held the photos in the light of the tower and studied them. Then he grimaced. "This shit won't hold up. There can be ten thousand people with a busted nail. This ain't fingerprints. Jake, you're off the deep end again."

  "Nick," I said, "do me a favor and shut the fuck up."

  Pam was forcing a condescending smile. I hadn't gotten through to her, and Nick wasn't helping.

  "I should have seen it earlier, but I couldn't or didn't want to. But it was there all the time. She has a good grip, really dug her nails into me. Maybe her hands aren't as strong as a jockey's. No fractured larynx, but she was strong enough to cut off the air, squeeze Marsha into unconsciousness, and from there into death. Then there was the lipstick message on the bathroom mirror. 'Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.' Who's the expert on Jack the Ripper? The lady from England, that's who. And how about a motive? Insane jealousy. Infidelity infuriated her, and she found Marsha sweet-talking on her computer just after they made love. What was it Jack the Ripper wrote: 'I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled.' They were all whores to Pam Maxson, too. But one thing kept bothering me. Why did Marsha Diamond get out of bed with one lover-a lover who left no trace of semen-and start seeking another on the computer?"

  Nick Fox shrugged. Pam Maxson looked away.

  "Because Marsha knew this lover was just passing through, a one-night stand who was heading back across the Atlantic. I wasn't listening, Nick, but the clues were everywhere. Maybe she wanted us to know. Even the title of her book, The Murderer Within Us. It was there, within her, now and always."

  "Mr. Fox," Pam said, "surely you don't believe-"

  "It's my fault, Nick. I couldn't see. I was dumb enough to think she came back to be with me. She came back to be part of the investigation, to relive the murder, just like the ambulance driver who killed and rushed to pick up the body. It's a thrill, isn't it, Pam? Tell me, did you really want to be caught?"

  "Madness!" she spat. "Sheer madness."

  "But you were right about one thing, Pam," I said. "I fouled it up with Bobbie Blinderman. She wasn't a killer. She was a pathetic lost soul in search of herself. She didn't come to the hotel to kill you. She came to love you, to tell you there was nothing between us. You didn't have to do it."

  "She fell," Pam said, "that's all."

  "She never would have hurt you, and you knew it."

  Pam turned away and stared across the water. The cruise ships were lined up at the seaport on the south side of Government Cut, thousands of tourists prepared for their seven days, six nights of prepackaged Caribbean fun. When Pam turned back, she said, "Bobbie already had hurt me with her slutty ways. I could have treated her, arranged for her operation, everything. But she couldn't help being a trollop, could she?"

  "And you hated her for it, just as you hate your mother and you hate yourself. But you would never kill Mum and you would never kill yourself."

  "I would never kill anyone, not even a strumpet who deserves no respect whatsoever."

  Nick Fox's head was bouncing back and forth. Finally the enormity sank in.

  He grabbed my arm and said, "She killed them both?"

  "That's what I've been trying to tell you," I said.

  "Christ, the two of you are something. The broad kills my girlfriend and some she-male. The guy I hire kills my friend."

  That stopped me.

  He really thought I did it. He was willing to cut a deal to save his own skin, but he really thought I murdered Alex Rodriguez. Which meant, of course, that Nick Fox didn't kill him.

  Pam said, "As you just indicated, Mr. Fox, you can't prove a thing. You have no-what do you call it? — hard evidence. Just the pathetic ramblings of a man I assure you is quite unbalanced. Now, this has really gone too far, and I have a plane to catch." The breeze was blowing her auburn hair into her eyes, and she brushed it away.

  "Wait," I said, the fog in my mind beginning to lift. "Of course. Nick, was Rodriguez keeping you informed of everything he did in the Diamond investigation?"

  "Sure. You told him not to, but he worked for me."

  "Rodriguez wanted to interview Pam again. He told the professor. What do you know about it?"

  "Fingerprints. She was never considered a suspect, but she was one of the last people to see Marsha alive. Rodriguez thought it was just covering the bases to get them. Compare with latents from the apartment. Apparently, he never did."

  "No, she must have kept putting him off. But she couldn't just refuse to give him the prints. How would it look? At the same time she figured he was the only one interested, and if he wasn't around anymore…"

  "You're quite mad," Pam said.

  "I must be, to have gotten involved with you." She shot a glance toward the end of the bridge where her cab waited. I couldn't keep her from leaving, but as long as I kept talking I figured she would stay put. "The story's not over yet, so humor me. The problem is, she can't strangle a cop. Then she gets lucky. A gun drops into her lap, a. 38 registered to me. Better yet, my fingerprints all over it. So are hers after she fires it, but that's fine, too. After we go to my place, I'm knocked out with the large economy-size dose of vodka and Darvon. She leaves to meet Bobbie but stops at Cindy's and picks up the gun. Next day or so, she calls Rodriguez, says she'll stop by his house, save them both some trouble. He could have a fingerprint kit there. He's expecting a helpful witness, but he gets a slug in the chest. Then she dumps the gun where it's sure to be found. Her prints are easily explained. One shot in the apartment, two witnesses. Second shot?

  Must have been fired by that hothead Lassiter. Now I see, Nick. You didn't frame me. She did."

  Again, three toots from an air horn. A big Bertram with a tuna tower was idling near the bridge. The tender hit his buttons and the traffic gate came down next to us.

  Nick Fox thought about it. "It's just crazy enough to be true, and easy enough to find out. Dr. Maxson, we're going to check your prints against the latents from the apartment. If they don't match, you'll be free to go. If they match, I'm going to hold you on suspicion of the murders of Marsha Diamond and Alex Rodriguez. As for the death of Mrs. Blinderman, Jake's got his own ideas, but there's no proof, so that's between you and your Maker."

  Pam Maxson didn't stop to plea-bargain. She ducked under the traffic gate, ignoring flashing lights and warning signs in three languages, and headed up the bridge. She moved quickly, but the bridge had already started its jerky ascent. She stumbled after three steps, the heels of her beige pumps wedging into the steel grid work, each opening big enough to swallow a man's fist. She fell to her knees, then kicked off her shoes. Regaining her balance, she started again, on all fours now, slowly climbing hand over hand.

  The bridge tender saw what was happening and hit the air horn, which bleated a frantic warning. Drivers poured out of their cars, pointing, laughing at the crazy woman scaling the drawbridge. Others began honking their horns, cheering her on, the same yahoos who holler "jump" at the guy on the ledg
e. One middle-aged man leaped from his custom van, video camera already running.

  I called after her. "Pam! No. There's nowhere to run."

  Nick Fox grabbed me by the arm. "Let her go, Jake." I shook him off and moved closer to the foot of the rising span. As she climbed uphill, the increasing grade slowed her. In a moment I knew she would never make it. The opening at the mouth yawned wider. She couldn't reach the top, and if she did, she couldn't jump it. So she hung there, a hundred feet from the base of the bridge, clinging to the steel grating with both hands, digging her bare feet into the open grids, poised at a precarious angle as the bridge shuddered even higher. Then she looked back over her shoulder at me. In the eerie green haze of the vapor lamps I could not make out her face. She was calling to me, but the cacophony of horns drowned her out.

  I wasn't doing any good where I was, so I sprinted to the tender's shack and pounded on the wall. "Stop it! Bring it down."

  I looked through the window, covered with a metal screen. The tender was on the far side of sixty, a skinny guy in a Yankees T-shirt, propped on a dirty pillow in an old wooden swivel chair. He pointed to the Bertram about to chug through the opening and shook his head. I didn't care about a rich guy's tuna tower. I tried the door. Locked. But it was peeling plywood, and one good shoulder caved it in. I faced the control panel, a series of black and red buttons, four three-foot levers.

  "Which one?" I demanded. "How do I stop it?"

  He froze, eyes widening. "Unless you're from DOT, you're not allowed-"

  "Which one!"

  "It's against regulations to-"

  I grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him from his chair. "Tell me!"

  He was frightened senseless. I dropped him onto his pillow, my eyes skimming the control panel. Under a button covered with red plastic was a hand-lettered sign: emergency hydraulic stop. I smashed it with my fist and grabbed for the lever where the sign said, descend, east span. I leaned back and pulled. It didn't give.

  "No!" the tender yelled. "It's got-"

  I bent my knees, grabbed the lever with two hands, and yanked it toward me, hard. It jerked away like an ornery gearshift when you've missed the clutch, gave a bit, then pulled loose, and I nearly fell over backward.

  "— to stop before you bring it down."

  A hydraulic whoosh from deep inside the bridge slowed the huge piston that was pushing the span upward. A second later, from somewhere inside the motor, there was a clangor of metal. The span was just reaching its peak, and it jolted and quaked. Below us, in the belly of the mechanical beast, sparks shot from the motor housing, orange bursts reflecting off the water below. The span lurched to a stop, first pitching, then yawing, the vibrations reverberating through the metal. Beneath my feet I felt the main bridge sway.

  I looked out the window of the shack. Pam Maxson had lost her grip. She slid down twenty feet, her face scraping the metal. She caught hold again, a death grip on the hot steel. There was a grinding of gears, and the bridge shuddered again and began its descent, and again she lost hold. The Bertram gunned it and just made it through, a bare-chested fat man at the wheel blasting his air horn and screaming obscenities.

  Pam's slide slowed, but still she could not hold on. She slid another ten feet and was bleeding from the nose and mouth, a crimson trail across the steel. Then the span shook once more and stopped dead, electrical sparks crackling from the heavy cables strung along the railing. From beneath us, a puff of gray smoke drifted like a cloud from the motor housing.

  "Shorted out," the tender said, shaking his head mournfully. I'll hook up the emergency generator, but it'll take a bit."

  I ran from the shack. The drivers had stopped their honking. As the main bridge continued to sway they held their steering wheels in white-knuckled grips. A ten-foot gap separated the main bridge and the tilting span. Nick Fox saw what I had in mind, moved toward me, and started to tell me to forget it, then changed his mind. If I didn't make it, so much the better for him. I ducked underneath the traffic gate, took three giant steps, and leaped across the gap, landing on all fours on the span. I scrambled upward like an overgrown monkey. When I stopped, I latched onto the grating with one hand to steady myself and reached up, toward her, with the other. She was ten feet above me and three feet to the side. An instant later, she lost her grip again.

  She clawed at the grating as her slide began, and she called my name. "Jake!"

  I'm here, Pam."

  "Jake, I can't hold on."

  Still clinging to the grating with my left hand, I reached out with my right and caught her by a wrist. I pulled her up next to me, her feet dangling helplessly. I inched my hand up her arm, then slid it around her back, gripping the back of her head, pulling her face next to mine. Blood seeped from two gashes in her forehead, smeared her hair, and ran down her face. The back of her neck was clammy with cold sweat.

  "Help me, Jake," she whimpered. The color had drained from her cheeks. Her face was a ghostly pallor streaked with red. "Kiss me quick…"

  Stunned, I didn't move. Clinging to me, she hoisted herself up and kissed me, at first softly, with parted lips, and then harder, our teeth scraping. I tasted the warm sweetness of her blood…before I die."

  "Hush, now. I've got you. You're not going to-"

  "Take me away, Jake. Don't let them-"

  "I'm going to get you help. The best doctors, the best hospital, the best-"

  Suddenly the span shuddered again and, with a clatter of meshing gears, began a slow, balky descent. She pulled away, digging her feet into the grating. She climbed out of my grasp, dragging herself up again. "I've seen the best, Jake. It doesn't work. I am what I am."

  I caught her by an ankle, but she jerked it away. She clambered up, hand over hand.

  "Pam, there's nowhere to go."

  Still, she climbed toward the sky, and I followed, overtaking her a few feet from the top of the span. Hanging on again with one hand, I grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to me. As Pam turned she clenched her right hand into a claw and raked my face with her nails, now ripped by the steel. She drew four tracks of blood from my forehead to beneath each eye. Instinctively, I let go of her hair, my hand shooting to my face. My forearm collided with her shoulder, knocking her off balance, and I heard her gasp. She had lost her grip. I reached for her as she skidded by me and our hands touched, but only for an instant. I grabbed for her, but my timing was off, and she slid past me, her head glancing off the grating. Farther she fell, trying vainly to hold on, slowing down, but only for a moment. An instant later, she disappeared into the blackness between the raised span and the bridge.

  I waited for the splash, but there was none.

  There was no scream, no plea.

  There was just the heavy, deadweight thumpety-thump of body on metal. I pressed my forehead into the hot steel and looked through the grating. In the milky reflection of the moon off the water below, I looked into the guts of the motor. She was pinned in the gear housing, feet first. Her face was twisted into a grotesque mask of fear. She extended an arm upward, toward me or toward heaven, I couldn't tell which. Slowly, the span descended, the gears churning, and her body disappeared into a mammoth, oily black-toothed wheel that groaned and creaked as it dragged her into an unseen crevice.

  I heard her scream.

  A piercing wail of pain.

  And then silence except for the sound of the bridge itself.

  I waited an eternity for the wheel to emerge from its turn. When it did, the crusted blackness ran wet with crimson. The wheel chinked and chawed and then clunked to a stop, spitting out shards of linen, obscenely red. It came to a stop and, with a final jangle, expelled the bony stump of an arm and a clenched fist.

  I closed my eyes, said a silent prayer, and wondered if one without a conscience could have a soul. When I opened my eyes, the bridge had lumbered into place, and the gates lifted. I scrambled to the catwalk, cars zooming by, one nearly clipping me.

  The old bridge tender was jabbering
frantically into his phone. Nick Fox leaned on the railing, mouth agape. "Jesus H. Christ," he said. "As bad as anything I saw in 'Nam." He took off his suit coat and ran a hand through his hair. "You're a little pale. You okay, Jake?"

  I was not okay.

  CHAPTER 42

  Night Vision

  Charlie Riggs inserted the serrated knife at the base of the tail and sliced forward with a steady hand. He took care to avoid the razor-sharp bone at the outer edge of the gills. He cut off the gill plate and removed the stomach cavity. Then he slid what was left of the snook into the chicken-wire drawer of his homemade smoker, a six-foot-tall contraption with a brick floor, tarpaper roof, and cypress sides covered with wooden shim shingles. Charlie wore his hiking boots, old gray socks, a canvas hat, and khaki shorts with six pockets. He looked like a sixty-five-year-old Boy Scout.

  I was wearing gray sweat pants, sneakers without socks, an old practice jersey, and an AFC Champions ball cap. I looked like an over-the-hill ex-jock. My job was to gather the wood and stay the hell out of the way. Get buttonwood or mangrove, Charlie commanded. Not hickory. If I had known this would be so much trouble, I would have chosen the veal porcini at Cafe Baci in the Gables. But Charlie wasn't much for cream sauces with mushrooms and wine, and besides, he knew that making me work for my dinner was a form of therapy.

  The trick with the fire is to keep it burning, but not too hot. The idea is to smoke the fish, not dry it out. When the fire was going just right, we sat there in Charlie's battered lawn chairs, watching the tangy smoke seep out of the roof. He was waiting for me to start, but I couldn't find the words. So finally he asked me, and I told him of a sweltering Sunday night on the bridge.