Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  In this case, push came to shove the moment the razor descended upon Karen Schallert.

  ‘We think we have a psychopath on the loose, people,’ Elliott said in his slaggy Midwest brogue, bringing the group to order. ‘Three women, nearly six months, no leads. And we’ve been averaging a half-dozen calls an hour since the Plain Dealer broke the story this morning. How do we tell them it’s okay to leave the house? Or that it’s okay to stop at the corner tavern for a drink?’ He turned and looked at Paris. It was Elliott’s awkward way of passing the baton.

  Paris rose, opened his portfolio. ‘Let me first brief you on what we have so far. All three women were white and in their twenties but, as you’ll see, they all looked much younger.’ He placed the crime-scene photos on the easel at the foot of the table. ‘Karen Schallert was twenty-three, Emily Reinhardt was twenty-four, Maryann Milius was twenty-two. They were all working women, no criminal records. No drugs, no gang affiliations, no intrigue.’ Paris placed the last of the photos on the easel and stepped to the side. ‘Neither Milius nor Reinhardt were seeing anyone special at the time of their deaths. Maryann Milius had an ex-boyfriend, but he has an airtighter in Phoenix the week of her murder. As far as Schallert goes, we haven’t interviewed her family yet as to the woman’s personal life.’

  ‘What about murder weapons?’ asked Cyndy Taggart.

  ‘It looks like a straight razor,’ Paris said. ‘All three had patches of skin removed, but Karen Schallert’s was the only one recovered at the scene. On it was a tattoo of a pair of roses. I spoke with Emily Reinhardt’s father and he told me she had a rose tattoo on her shoulder, which is consistent with the patch of skin that was missing.’

  ‘Were the other two patches of skin ever found?’ Dietricht asked.

  ‘No,’ Paris said. ‘What else appears to link these three murders is that the victims were all found with carefully applied make-up on their faces – powder, blush, lipstick, eye-shadow, the works. Reuben believes that in two of the cases the make-up was applied after the time of death. Lab’s working on a comparison study which we should have by Tuesday or Wednesday morning. The crime scenes were covered in prints and hair and fiber, along with everything else secreted in a cheap motel room, so it will be a while until it is all sorted out, if ever.’ Paris leaned against the wall. ‘All three women went out to a nightclub alone and were never seen alive again.’

  ‘It sounds like we’re going undercover,’ Greg Ebersole said.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the only way,’ Paris said. ‘This psycho is cruising the bars and that means we cruise with him.’

  Paris placed the sketch of the suspect as described by the night clerk of the Quality Inn on to the easel. The oversized Irish walking-hat effectively hid the upper half of the man’s face, and the rest was taken up by tinted glasses and a big mustache. The man’s nose was straight, his jawline square.

  ‘That’s our boy?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘That’s him,’ Paris said. ‘White male, thirty, over six feet. Checked into the rooms at both the Quality Inn and the Red Valley Inn. Paid cash for both, of course.’ Paris distributed the files to each of the detectives. ‘Looks like we’re going to be spending some time at the meat-markets.’

  ‘Could be worse,’ Tommy said. ‘I saw that movie Cruising, you know.’ He was referencing the 1980 film where Al Pacino goes undercover into the gay leather culture.

  ‘What, like heteros don’t get vicious?’ said the politically correct Bobby Dietricht.

  Tommy turned slowly and glared at Dietricht. The feud between these two was three months running already, and everybody in the room rolled their eyes because they knew exactly what was coming next. ‘I’m sorry. Did you take that personally, Bobby? Because if you did, I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

  ‘Fuck you, Raposo.’

  ‘Right here?’ Tommy said, sliding off the desk. ‘You want me to bend over and drop my pants right here? Is that what you’re asking me to do?’

  Greg Ebersole placed a hand on Dietricht’s arm. ‘Guys.’

  ‘You know,’ Dietricht said. ‘You people and your—’

  ‘What?’ Tommy yelled as he walked straight into the chest of Greg Ebersole, who stood about four inches shorter than Tommy’s six-two frame. ‘You people?’

  ‘You’re so goddamn typical, Raposo.’

  ‘I’m so—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’

  The shout came from the back of the room. Tommy and Dietricht nearly jumped at the volume and force of the command. They turned, like two third-graders caught misbehaving on the playground, and looked at Cyndy Taggart.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, stirring a cup of coffee with her pen. ‘We have a job to do.’ She sat down and crossed her legs. ‘Let’s play nice until we catch this motherfucker, okay?’

  Because of the undercover assignments on the case, Randall Elliott conducted the news conference while the five detectives remained out of sight. Paris and Cyndy Taggart, they had determined, would be going undercover on the east side; Tommy, Ebersole and Dietricht would all team up with female vice-officers and cover the south side, the west side and downtown respectively.

  Paris put his homework in his briefcase – including photographs of all three crime scenes and the autopsy protocols for the first two victims – and grabbed his coat. He was wrestling with whether or not to stop at the Caprice for a quick one before heading home, when his phone rang, deciding for him.

  ‘Homicide, Paris.’

  ‘Officer Paris?’

  It was a woman, maybe in her mid-twenties by the sound of her voice. And she was nervous. ‘Detective Paris,’ he said, correcting her. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was calling about the story in the Plain Dealer?’

  She made it sound like a question. They all did. Paris had spoken to hundreds of people like her in his years on the force, people who are afraid to get involved. They figured that if it all sounded like a question, the answer might be: No. No, you aren’t going to die. No, you’re not going to jail.

  ‘This morning’s Plain Dealer?’

  ‘Yes. You see, I met this man.’

  Paris waited a few beats, sat down, prompted her again. ‘And?’

  Deep breath. ‘I think he might be the guy you’re looking for.’

  Paris sat up a little straighter. ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘Well, I can’t really talk about it on this phone. I’m at work.’

  ‘Were you harmed in any way?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. Nothing like that.’

  Paris eased up. ‘Would you like to come down to the station and talk? We’re located at the corner of—’

  ‘Could we meet somewhere else?’

  ‘Sure,’ Paris said. ‘Where do you have in mind?’

  ‘How about the lounge at the Radisson?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Radisson East,’ she said. ‘In Beachwood.’

  ‘That’s fine. What time?’

  They made arrangements but, as they did, Paris sensed that he might be losing her, that she might be setting him up for a no-show.

  ‘If you like,’ Paris continued, ‘I could bring a female officer along.’ He caught Cyndy Taggart’s eye and waved her into his office. She came in and sat on the edge of his desk. ‘She’s very nice and she’s very good at her job. I could even send her alone if you’d like.’

  The woman hesitated for a few moments, but then said, ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll be there. I really will.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how will I know you?’ Paris asked.

  ‘Oh, well, I’ll be wearing …’ She trailed off again, a career woman who didn’t know she’d be planning an outfit this late in the day. ‘I’ll be wearing an oatmeal skirt and a beige cardigan.’

  ‘Fine,’ Paris said, jotting the information down in his notebook, knowing he would look at the word ‘oatmeal’ somewhere down the line and wonder what the hell
it meant.

  9

  ANDIE HUNG UP the bedroom phone and peeked around the corner, looking for Matt. But there was no sign of him. He was still eating dinner. She crossed the bedroom to the bathroom, letting her robe drop to the floor, turned the water on hot and stepped into the shower.

  The water soon reached the perfect temperature and Andie turned into it fully, letting it cascade over her breasts, down her stomach, her legs. She followed the stream with a smooth bar of soap, rounding the curve of her hips, creating a lather slowly, rhythmically.

  She knew she had crossed a line the previous night – she was willing to bet that she had crossed nearly all of them, from the look on Matt’s face at the end of the evening – but there was something beneath the surface of the game, something that drove her to do what she did, as if she had little or no control of herself. She had wanted to flirt. She had wanted to be wanted. She had wanted … what?

  She still wasn’t sure. But she knew enough to know that it wasn’t over.

  When she stopped at Ava’s at Fourth and Prospect at around four o’clock that afternoon, she had no idea what she would buy. She had never bought a wig in her life and, although she was bound and determined to finally live out at least the first phase of her fantasy, she wasn’t about to drop $200 on something that, best-case scenario, she might wear a half-dozen times in her life.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ the saleswoman asked with that knowing smile that some women, women who are far freer about their sexuality than Andrea Della Croce-Heller on Wheels would ever hope to be, always seem to possess. This time the woman was black, mid-thirties. She smiled as she looked Andie up and down. She wore a deep red wig, cut into Prince Valiant bangs in the front and razored into an inverted V in the back. Her fingernails were bright turquoise and sported small opalesque stones in the center of each.

  What am I up to? Andie thought. What was she doing in a wig store on a sooty downtown street, gearing up, literally, to do God knows what – with, near or in front of her husband? ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what I’m up to is getting my husband up to—’ She stopped, seized by the double entendre of what she had said, and burst into laughter. The saleswoman, whose name was Denisha, joined her.

  ‘I know what you need, girlfriend,’ Denisha said. ‘It’s what all us women of brunette shading must turn to at times.’ She sashayed down the narrow area behind the counter. ‘That is, if we want to keep our men up and running.’ Denisha wore a tight red and black pin-dot dress, silver drop earrings in the shape of T squares.

  Andie followed her, marveling at the array of wigs and hairpieces and color sprays. A person could walk out of this place another woman, she thought. Denisha reached into the window and pulled out a blond, shoulder-length, spiral-curled wig.

  Andie tried it on.

  At first she thought the wig made her look like a streetwalker and, at first, that was a negative. Because Andie Heller always took the traditional road to fashion: Pringle sweaters, Burberry coats, Land’s End polos and espadrilles. But when Denisha spun her around in the chair and held a mirror up behind her, and she saw the soft, golden curls splayed out against the black of her blazer, Andie Heller was another woman. Even her friends might not have known her from behind.

  Even Matt.

  There was something about it that seemed to transform her. Perhaps, she thought, as Denisha rang up the sale, it had something to do with the fact that although she spent most of her time at the high end of the cosmetics industry – lunching in the best restaurants, cocktailing with the international fashion crowd – there was something about this end that excited her. Something about the chalky scent of the cheap powders, the look of the outrageously colored eye-shadows and the low gloss of the waxy lipsticks.

  Andie left the store wearing the wig, her collar up, her huge sunglasses snugly in place, standing guard between her and the daylight world.

  All through dinner Matt had stared at her in something that approached wonderment. Like a kid at his own birthday party. She knew that, beneath that boyish fascination with her admittedly outrageous prank, Matt was very excited. She knew she was turning him on.

  During dessert, when she reached over and felt the measure of Matt’s erection beneath the table, she had her answer.

  ‘I’ve got this idea,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you think.’

  They drove to Painesville and she sent Matt into the bar first, alone. She waited in the car, and even though the alcohol was hammering at her to just do it, to take this all to the next level, she still had second thoughts.

  But when she walked through the lobby of the Painesville Sheraton and drew the stare of every man in the room, she was energized again. And terribly aroused.

  She sat a few stools to the left of her husband and ordered a White Russian. A hooker’s drink, she thought. It didn’t take long for the men to swoop.

  The first man to hit on her was named Geoffrey Faragut, Jr. He said he was an attorney with Sanders and Zoldessy and that, no, he didn’t come to the Painesville Sheraton all that often, but yes, he sure would like to buy her a drink.

  There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with Geoffrey Faragut, Jr, in Andie’s eyes – he was pleasant-looking enough and he had a certain boyish joie – but she met a lot of Geoffreys in her line of work. Average-looking men. No spark, no flame. And none could hold a candle to Matt Heller, of course. Andie sighed a few times, and when the conversation lapsed into a coma, Geoffrey Faragut, Jr, got the hint and took off.

  She had glanced over at Matt as the deejay spun out of a sequence of slow songs and into a heavy reggae tune. Matt’s face was a mixture of lust and loss; like he wanted this to go on for ever and he wanted to leave. Andie saw him lean over just as another man stepped between them. He was taller and far better looking than the first.

  The man didn’t introduce himself right away, but instead made a comment about the extraordinary resemblance between the recently departed Mr Faragut, Jr, and one Opie Taylor of Mayberry. Andie laughed, partially because she saw it was true and partially because she was somewhat overwhelmed by the man’s looks.

  They chatted for a while, but Andie would later be hard-pressed to say about what. The man asked her to dance as the deejay swung back into a slow number.

  Andie said yes.

  She slow-danced with the stranger as Matt moved to the edge of the dance-floor and sipped his beer, running his eyes over the two of them, watching her hands, his hands. Andie could not believe that she was in the arms of another man in front of her husband. The thought, as much as the alcohol, had an intoxicating effect.

  She had no idea what to do next, or what Matt wanted her to do next.

  So she did nothing.

  She thanked the man for the dance, walked briskly past her husband, grabbed her blazer off her stool and walked out of the bar. She was spooked but she was also pretty damned proud of herself. And wet as hell.

  They had come in separate cars and they took different routes home, both dallying along the way for their own reasons. After they got home they didn’t speak much and, after undressing silently, they climbed into bed. Their lovemaking seemed a bit tentative at first, as if Matt wasn’t quite sure how he felt about any of it, even though he had carefully planted the seed of an evening such as this years earlier. After a few minutes they began to pick up steam, as they always did.

  Midway, Matt asked Andie to put the wig back on.

  She did, and more than once wondered if Matt imagined he was having sex with another woman. If he thought she was—

  The shadow nearly made her jump. The water had cooled considerably, and she wondered how long she had been in the shower. Matt’s fleshy, distorted image on the other side of the frosted glass threw a bolt of excitement and fear down her back. In the instant before he pushed the glass door to the side, Andie looked down and was somewhat surprised to find her hand between her legs.

  Her husband stepped into the shower. ‘Hi,’

  ‘Hi.’

 
; Matt was already half-erect. He had been watching her. ‘Need any help here?’ He cupped her breasts in his hands.

  ‘I might,’ Andie said.

  ‘So do we go out or stay in tonight?’ Matt asked with the makings of that lascivious smile.

  ‘I have an appointment tonight,’ she said. ‘I have to leave in a little bit.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Sorry, honey,’ Andie said. ‘But we’ll go out and play soon, okay?’

  ‘Soon?’ Matt said softly as he closed his eyes, holding on to the top of the tub enclosure.

  ‘Yes.’ Andie dropped to her knees. ‘Soon.’

  10

  HER NAME WAS Eleanor Burchfield and she was late.

  She had called Paris back almost immediately, probably with the intention of cancelling, but Paris had talked her out of it. At least, he hoped he had. In an attempt to explain it all over the phone, she said that she had met the man, they had danced a few dances, tossed a few drinks back, then gone to his motel room in Solon, nearly twenty miles away. Paris asked her if she hadn’t thought it strange for the man to have met her at a hotel bar and then to have taken her to a motel. Eleanor Burchfield replied that that was only one of the things she felt pretty damn stupid about regarding that night.

  Paris posted himself at the end of the bar, near the entrance to the lounge at the Beachwood Radisson, hoping the woman hadn’t been spooked.

  ‘Can I get you another?’ the barmaid asked. She was young, petite, athletic-looking, wearing a tight red vest over a white shirt, short black skirt.

  ‘Sure,’ Paris said.

  According to her tag, her name was Rita. When she put Paris’s beer down in front of him she knocked twice on the bar. ‘On the house,’ she said. ‘Officer.’

  They stared at each other for a few seconds, exchanging resolve, until Paris broke away and sipped his beer. ‘What makes you think I’m a cop?’