Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Oh, I do.’

  ‘And besides, I know I’ve been a real bitch lately.’

  ‘Nah,’ Matt said, hoping she wasn’t losing the mood.

  She slid around the booth, closer to him. ‘And I wanted to make it up to you.’

  ‘It’s working, believe me.’

  The waiter returned and poured the rest of their wine into their glasses. Andie leaned forward in front of him, her breasts shifting noticeably beneath her blouse.

  ‘Will there be anything else?’ the waiter asked, trying not to gawk.

  ‘No,’ Andie said. She stared at her husband, slowly uncrossing her legs and slipping her hands under the table. ‘That will be all.’

  The kid placed the check on the table, smiled, and took his leave.

  ‘You’re a real piece of work, Della Croce,’ Matt said, moving closer to her.

  ‘Want me to flirt some more?’

  ‘Well, let’s see. Are you going home with me?’

  ‘Always.’ She drained her glass, set it on the table. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun while we’re out.’ It was her third glass of wine and Matt knew that that was prime Andie buzz-level for sex. She ran her finger up and down his leg. ‘Let’s go play,’ she said.

  ‘Andrea Heller. Now who’s the naughty one?’ He felt himself start to harden. Something was definitely happening here.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘Oh,’ she began, running her hand over his thickening erection, ‘let’s go someplace where nobody knows us.’ She squeezed him. ‘I’ve got this idea.’ She stuck her tongue in his ear. ‘Tell me what you think.’

  He sat at the bar, scanned the room. Forty or fifty people. Mostly men. Mostly business types.

  They had driven to a hotel bar they had never gone to, just to avoid any possible run-ins with anybody they knew. Between their two jobs, their circle ran rather wide, and Andie Heller in a blond wig on the opposite side of a bar from her husband would warrant some pretty good tap-dancing to explain.

  Matt’s erection had reached furious proportions before he even made it inside the bar, so he had ducked into the men’s room first and hidden out in a stall until it was manageable. All that Andie had said – that is, the new Andie, as Matt was beginning to think of her – was to go in, sit at the bar and she’d be there in ten minutes or so. That was it. Matt had no idea what she was up to, but he was absolutely delirious with the possibilities. How far would she take this?

  Was she going to pick someone up?

  Would she actually do that?

  And if she did, how would he really feel? He had no idea, but the very notion filled him with an intoxicating mix of arousal, jealousy and a physical euphoria.

  After a few minutes, Andie walked into the bar and sat three empty stools to Matt’s left. She crossed her legs and ordered a White Russian, another first.

  Before long, one of the business types stepped between them. Dark hair, medium build, gray suit, thirtyish. Matt heard the man say something about buying her a drink. Andie said something about having one on the way. They chatted for a bit, but Matt could only pick up bits and pieces over the music. Ten minutes later the guy left.

  Matt found that his heart had been racing the whole time, and for the first time in his life he was beginning to wonder if he was cut out for the actual fulfilment of his fantasies.

  Andie looked over at him and smiled. Matt was just about to slide over and suggest they leave, when another of the business types slipped between them. Taller, much better dressed, much better looking. He paid for Andie’s drink and said something that made her laugh.

  Somehow, for Matt Heller, that wasn’t part of the fantasy.

  6

  PARIS STARED AT the bottle. Manfred stared at him. He had walked the dog twice, smoked a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights, eaten an entire package of turkey hot-dogs without benefit or comfort of mustard and drunk a six-pack of Diet Pepsi. Everything but clean the tiny apartment. What was left? He looked at his watch. Eleven-o-five.

  Let’s see, there was news, more food, another cigarette, another walk. Fuck it.

  He grabbed the pint of Windsor, as he had a dozen times already, then put it back. He patted the sofa twice and Manfred leapt to his side. ‘Are we going for another walk, Manny?’ The word put a motor in the terrier’s abbreviated tail. ‘You’re gonna be the best-conditioned mutt in Cleveland.’

  Paris clicked the remote, turning on Channel 5. Hank Theodore, the never-aging cyborg who anchored the six and eleven o’clock news, was chatting with a citizen in Collinwood who was carrying a picket sign. Paris shook his head. All he ever heard was people bitching all week about the drug problems in their neighborhood and how nobody gives a shit, but come Saturday night when some dealer with a 9-mm pistol in his hand gets capped on somebody’s front lawn, you can bet they’ll be on the streets Sunday carrying signs about how the cops are killing their children. Paris reached for the remote.

  Before he could change the channel the words cut across the screen in eye-popping red, superimposed over the silhouette of a man brandishing a butcher knife. Then came a huge black question mark. ‘Serial Killer?’ Paris’s heart sank. He turned up the volume.

  ‘… have a serial killer on our hands? Well, our very own Triple F-Fact Finder Five has been sniffing out the details. TV Five’s Paul Coaklin has more. Paul?’

  The camera cut to a medium shot of the Red Valley Inn. The reporter stood in front of room 127 and began to speak as the camera zoomed slowly in.

  ‘Hank, she was twenty-three years old, single, active in the community, a woman who, according to friends, didn’t date much, due to her extraordinarily high standards. A graduate of Cleveland State University, a career woman just trying to make it in the big city.

  ‘So how did Karen Schallert end up here, in a cheap motel, savagely murdered by someone who, in all likelihood, was someone she trusted. Someone to whom she had reached out in love or friendship. Someone who—’

  Paris shut it off. He couldn’t handle the soap opera bullshit. Next they’d have his boss, Captain Elliott, commenting on how it was too early to tell if there was a connection between the three murders and yes, it was safe for women to go out of their houses and yes, the investigation was continuing and yak, yak, yak.

  When Paris stood up, Manfred dove off the couch and all but slid to the door on the wood flooring. ‘All walked out, Manny,’ Paris said. ‘Going to hit the showers.’

  Manfred, banking on the outside chance of an after-shower jog, staked his place by the door.

  * * *

  Taking a shower at the Candace Apartments, a twenty-suite Gothic nightmare at the corner of East Eighty-fifth and Carnegie, was a science. Early in the cleansing experience, when the water was hottest, it was also rusty as hell. As the water got clearer it also got cooler, so there was this window of opportunity no more than two or three minutes long when the water was warm enough and clear enough to take a shower.

  When Paris stepped in, the water was still pretty hot. He soaped himself quickly, feeling better by the second. Better about not stopping at the Caprice after his tour. Better about not touching the Windsor. Better about Missy.

  He knew that there was a good chance that Elliott would call him in the morning and give him the job of organizing the task-force to catch this psycho. His solve rate was one of the highest in the department and it had been two years since there had been any real movement in his career.

  Was he up for it? He knew it would mean less time off, less time with Melissa. Less time at the bars, too, he thought with a curious mixture of emotions. It would also mean that the media would be in his face until it was over. Unless he was going undercover, something he had not done in years.

  He thought about Karen Schallert and what a shame it was. She was so pretty. So fresh. He thought about her body, the contrast of the black-lace camisole against her fair
skin, the curve of her hips as she lay, naked and violated, on the carpeting. He closed his eyes and saw Karen Schallert’s beguiling face before him. But it wasn’t the face so mechanically rendered on her driver’s license or even the twisted death mask in the police photographs that would haunt his desk by morning. Paris instead imagined a more impassioned Karen Schallert: expressive and very alive, moving, smiling, laughing and—

  Sweating.

  Beneath him.

  You wanted to fuck her too.

  7

  ‘PHARAOH KNOWS.’

  The blond woman rolled over, on to her stomach, and bit her lower lip. Like a child. ‘Pharaoh doesn’t know,’ she said, pouting.

  I ran the feather along her spine, over her hips, around to the side, up along her torso. Her skin was porcelain white, smooth and supple. She had a few imperfections, a blemish or two on her back, but overall her skin was soft and fragrant. One of the current-rage perfumes. When I met her at the bar the scent had been a little weaker. She had put on more for me, and I appreciated it.

  I reached her breasts, which were ample and pressed tightly against the sheet, and drew the feather up and over on to her back. The blonde shivered. ‘Pharaoh will show you.’ I climbed on top of her and reached toward the headboard, turning up the volume on the stereo. It was a Bill Evans recording. For Lovers.

  I grabbed a condom.

  ‘Pharaoh has something he knows you’re going to like.’ I reached down between her legs and touched her. She was very wet, very warm. ‘Pharaoh wants to please you.’ When I inserted my fingers she let out a little gasp, as if she had not been touched in quite some time. She tried to turn over and face me, but I gently resisted her.

  ‘You have something for me?’ she said.

  I raised my fingers to my lips and tasted her. ‘Oh, yes.’ I slipped the condom on and flattened myself against her back for a moment. We locked fingers and I drew her hands toward the headboard. I nibbled on her ear.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she whispered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘No.’

  She writhed beneath me. ‘Please. Fuck me now.’

  ‘I said, no.’ I ran a fingernail down the center of her back, raising a thin welt. The blonde shuddered with delight. She liked a little pain, it seemed. But how much? When would she bid me to stop?

  ‘Let me turn over,’ she said. ‘I want to watch you fuck me.’

  ‘In time.’ I pulled the handcuffs from beneath the left pillow as I gently spread her thighs.

  In my periphery I saw the door to the closet open slightly.

  I brought the handcuffs around to the right and began to run them up and down the slicked planes of her back, her shoulder blades, the tops of her arms, all the while toying with her, probing her, drawing her deeper into the game.

  I gave her an inch, then took it back. She emitted a sigh.

  The closet door opened a little more.

  ‘And what do you want, little kitty?’

  ‘You,’ she said softly.

  ‘You want me?’ I leaned over and kissed the back of her neck, tugging lightly at a wisp of baby-fine hair.

  ‘Mmmmm …’

  ‘Why do you want me?’

  ‘Because you’re so big.’

  I teased her as she said the word, moving my whole body forward.

  ‘I knew when we were dancing,’ she said. ‘I could feel you. I knew.’

  ‘And you want all of me?’ I let slide another inch or so.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t handle all of me.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Another inch, then back.

  The blonde moaned. I got the cuff over to her right wrist as I thrust myself halfway inside her, moving her body up toward the headboard, up where I could secure the shackle to the post. The blonde screamed once and tried to get up on all fours, trying to buck me deeper. She was strong. When we eased back down to the bed, the handcuffs swung into her face and fell between the headboard and the wall. I reached for them but, in that instant, the blonde made the game. She began to fight me off.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she screamed, struggling to turn over.

  I grabbed her arm, trying to get it near the headboard. ‘It’s just a game,’ I said, but I knew that I had lost her. She was very strong.

  ‘I’m not going to let you handcuff me!’ She wrestled herself free of my grip and rolled onto her back, then off the bed. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, trying to calm her. ‘We don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

  But the blonde already had her skirt in her hand and was backing toward the bathroom and the rest of her things. She was nearly hysterical with rage.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said, stepping off the bed, slipping the small Taser unit out from between the mattresses. I just needed to touch her once. ‘I got a little carried away. We’ll forget the kinky stuff, okay?’

  ‘I don’t even know you.’

  I stepped closer to her, naked, led not by my desire now but rather by my obligation. ‘If you’d just—’

  ‘Don’t come near me.’ She wiggled into her skirt, pulled her blouse over her head. She gathered her shoes, held her hands out in front of her. ‘Just stay away.’

  She looked so incredibly beautiful, still flushed with her nearness to orgasm, her hair matted with the sweat of our lovemaking. As she turned to leave the closet door closed completely and I knew then that the blonde would get away. It was a first.

  ‘No hard feelings?’ I dropped the Taser into the pile of sheets at the foot of the bed.

  ‘You turned me on, you bastard,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I … shit!’ She threw open the motel door and the light from a nearby streetlamp washed the room.

  And then she was gone.

  I walked over to the door and closed it. I smelled my hands: perfume, sweat, the woman’s musk. I touched myself with what was left of it. As I walked back to the bed I noticed that the blonde had left her bra and panties. They looked very expensive, but something told me she wouldn’t be coming back for them.

  I slipped into her panties and pulled the make-up kit from underneath the bed. I set it on the nightstand next to the bottle of Absolut. I lay down on the bed, cuffed myself to the headboard and waited. After a few moments, the closet door swung wide.

  I closed my eyes.

  And took my punishment.

  8

  ABOVE THE FOLD yet, Paris thought. This was going to be a long one. The Plain Dealer had run the three pictures side by side – Maryann Milius, Emily Reinhardt and Karen Schallert. It had been just a few hours since the Schallert investigation began and already the newspaper had more information than the police. The PD had managed to fit all three pictures under the headline: Are these women victims of a serial killer? The article beneath carried no answers of its own:

  Michael A. Cicero

  Plain Dealer Reporter

  As Karen Schallert stepped through the door of room 127 at the Red Valley Inn on Superior Avenue, she probably had every intention of leaving in just a few hours. According to Donna Ballou, the woman’s sister, Karen Schallert taught a morning reading group at Mayfield Regional Library and this Saturday they were going to read from Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr Seuss.

  Her partner had no intention of letting Karen Schallert go anywhere.

  Because according to police reports, sometime early Saturday morning Karen Schallert, 23, a personnel assistant with the United Way organization, was brutally murdered in room 127 at the Red Valley Inn.

  A random killing? There are indications that it was not.

  On 21 October of last year, the body of Emily Reinhardt, 24, was discovered in a second-floor room at the Quality Inn on Euclid Avenue. On 23 December, police say, the body of Maryann Milius, 22, a bank teller living in Bedford Heights, was found in an abandoned warehouse on the city’s near east side. Her body had been severely battered, her throat cut.


  Although Cleveland police have not yet confirmed that they are treating these three murders as the work of a serial killer, according to Captain Randall B. Elliott of the Homicide Unit, the similarities are growing as the investigation continues. Capt. Elliott said that a taskforce – to be led by Detective John S. Paris – was being formed to catch the killer or killers. The details surrounding the [see serial/3b]

  And all of it above the fold.

  Paris had found out that he was to lead the task-force at five-thirty that morning, when Elliott had awakened him and briefed him over the phone, prior to the Plain Dealer hitting the stands. It was nice to see it confirmed in print, though, Paris thought – right there on the front page, right over a double order of blueberry pancakes in the back room at Eddie’s on Coventry. It seemed his appetite had returned with a vengeance after only one night of not drinking himself into a coma.

  He returned to the front page and began to reread the article. He looked at his name in print and wondered if Beth was reading about him at that moment. If she was proud of him. If she was pointing it out to Melissa.

  He also wondered if someone else had had the chance to read it. He wondered if the tall man in the Irish walking-hat was sitting somewhere at that moment – perhaps in a little Italian bakery on Murray Hill, or in a booth at the Detroiter, or maybe even at the other end of the back room at Eddie’s – and perusing the article over his scrambled and sausage.

  The Plain Dealer was on the story full press, with three writers contributing to the lead story, and a pair of sidebars. There was even a graphic of the city with each of the three crime scenes depicted with a star.

  ‘You’re gonna get fat eating that shit.’

  The voice came from behind him. Paris spun around. It was Tim Murdock, one of the best detectives in Beachwood, ex of the Third District, and Paris’s senior by one year at the academy. ‘Timmy,’ Paris said. ‘What’s doin’, big man? How goes the rat race?’

  Murdock had taken a .38-caliber slug in his shoulder three years earlier – a drug shoot-out at the Carver Estates. He had arms the size of a football player’s thigh and a complexion like a Maine shrimper, but his grip was weak because of his torn-up shoulder. Paris could never remember if he was supposed to squeeze his hand hard or go easy on it when they shook. He usually opted for both, always waiting for Timmy to double over in pain, clutching his shoulder.