Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  The second photograph showed a side shot of the woman from the waist up. She had the flushed look of a woman fresh from lovemaking, but her face was once again turned away. Of the ten photographs, only one showed any degree of the woman’s face, but even that shot was a profile, and she wore a thin, black-lace mask over her eyes.

  There was one photograph taken outdoors, in a wooded area, a side shot of the woman with her white camisole pulled to her waist, her hands bound to a tree with what looked like electrical cord.

  Tommy was not to be found in any of the pictures.

  Paris turned the photographs over, one by one, looking for any writing that might have been on the backs. There was a faint pencil mark on one, something like a check mark, but nothing decipherable. He was about to flip two at a time when something caught his eye, and he had to go back a few. There, written in pencil at the bottom right-hand corner, printed in a rather childlike manner, were three words. It looked like: ‘Saila does qualify’.

  Saila does qualify?

  What the hell did that mean?

  Paris looked around for some sort of magnifying glass and saw that Nick had a swing-arm magnifier attached to a small table against the wall. Paris switched on the light and ran the photograph beneath the glass.

  ‘Saila does quality,’ he corrected himself immediately. And who the hell is Saila? And quality what?

  He turned over the photo with the writing and found that it was the one picture that didn’t seem to be of anyone or anything in particular. It was a photograph of a slightly opened closet door, with just the hint of something that looked like a white shoe – a white high-heeled shoe, maybe – visible at the bottom.

  Paris placed the photos into his pocket, and searched the remaining boxes, finding little else of relevance, if any of this was indeed relevant. Certainly nothing to match the impact of the photographs. There were, to Paris’s surprise and dismay, no financial records of any kind.

  ‘You want this down there?’ Nick asked, calling from the top of the steps.

  ‘No, I’m coming up,’ Paris said. ‘I’m finished.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t forget to close the light.’

  Close the light, Paris thought, smiling. Was it just Italians, or did other people say close the light? His own grandfather, Angelo Parisi, who had somehow managed to lose the i on the end of his name in the noise and confusion of Ellis Island, had said close the light.

  Although it was past the middle of April, winter still roamed the streets of Cleveland. When Paris had driven to Garfield Heights, the sky had dusted the city with a light powdering of snow. Now there was blinding sunlight. Paris headed into town up I-77, getting off at the Broadway exit. He came to a stop at a red light, directly in front of the entrance to the old McCrory’s five-and-dime.

  Saila does quality.

  He held the photograph up to the sunlight. It had been perched on the front seat beside him since he left Nick’s house, taunting him, begging his glance at every stop light. This one was a low-angle, dominatrix-type shot of the woman.

  Saila does quality.

  I’ll bet she does, thought Paris, wondering about the where, the who, the what, the why and the when of it all. Who was this woman? Where did she come from? Why did he have a nude photograph of her in his hand? When did she—

  The man who suddenly appeared at his window and the sound of the car horn from behind him registered at the same instant.

  It was the hulking gray shadow to his immediate left that unnerved him more.

  Paris turned quickly and saw that it was a homeless man, part of the Broadway squeegee brigade. It looked as if the man had come over to approach Paris about a quick wipe job, but he must have seen the photograph in Paris’s hand decided to just enjoy the view. As Paris pulled away he looked in the side mirror and saw the man shake a finger at him and display a wide, toothless smile.

  Quality, he thought as he cut the engine.

  How about ‘quality’ as in Quality Inn?

  Emily Reinhardt had been killed at the Quality Inn.

  ‘Sorry about your friend,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Paris replied. ‘But it’s not like, I don’t know like I can say I knew him now, you know? It’s still pretty hard to believe.’ Paris sipped his coffee. ‘My friend.’

  John Q’s was jammed with the lunch crowd, the impending spring giving license to everyone to speak a little more loudly, a little more animatedly than they had all winter. On this day, for Jack Paris, it was just an annoying wall of noise.

  But Rita the Barmaid had left a rather urgent-sounding message on his voice mail and said that she would be at this table, at this restaurant, at this time, and if he wanted to talk …

  He knew exactly what was on her mind.

  ‘I’m afraid I was as fooled as everyone else,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t sound too convinced, if you ask me.’ Rita gave her hair a quick toss over her shoulder and bit into her sandwich. As she continued to speak, Paris noticed a drop of mayonnaise that had made its way on to her chin. He was going to point it out to her but he already knew enough about Rita Weisinger to wait until she had made her point. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is, that’s not the guy. The guy in the picture that was in the newspaper and on TV? The cop they say did it? Tommy …’

  ‘Raposo.’

  ‘Raposo,’ she said, rolling the r. ‘Anyway, I don’t know how to put this. It’s just not the guy I saw with the Burchfield woman. Definitely not.’ She paused, placing her sandwich on her plate, waiting for Paris’s reaction to this case-breaking bit of evidence.

  ‘I know,’ Paris said. He absently waved his finger near his mouth, hoping Rita would catch the vibe and wipe her chin. After a few beats of silence, she did.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, number one, why else would you ask an old flatfoot like me out to lunch unless you had something you wanted to add to the Pharaoh case? And two, if you look at it with any objectivity, the sketch doesn’t look like Tommy. It could be him, but it could also be a hundred thousand other guys in this city.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But the bad news is that all the evidence was there, Rita. It was way too pat for me but it was still a grand jury’s wet dream. The hat had bloodstains tied to two of the victims. The make-up kit was found in the trunk of his car. And the patches of skin, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I don’t know. It just isn’t in your friend’s eyes, you know? I mean, I can tell a lot from looking into a man’s eyes. And even in that shitty photo they published in the newspaper, I could tell.’

  ‘Well, the case is frozen shut. Captain Elliott is happy, the prosecutor’s office is happy. Tommy Raposo was this unknown, up from Summit County four months ago, nobody really knew him well. A real department outsider.’

  Rita shook her head, new to the machinations of institutional politics. She asked a few more why-not-and how-come-there-isn’t-type questions as they finished their lunch. Halfway through coffee, Rita waved for the check.

  ‘So, what are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Now? Well, I’m going to go back to work, Rita. I’ve got three unsolveds on my plate and I have no partner,’ Paris said. ‘Anything I do about the Pharaoh case is going to be off the meter. And probably very stupid. Not to mention a huge waste of time.’

  Rita looked at her watch, stood up to leave. ‘Well, if you need any help with any after-hours sleuthing, you let me know. I’m really good when it comes to these sorts of things.’ She reached into her purse and dropped a pair of twenties on the table. Then, anticipating his reaction, held up a hand to deflect Paris’s protest about her paying the check. ‘By the way, this is the last time I’m going to fling myself at you like a wanton woman. Ball’s in your court, officer.’ She swung her bag over her shoulder, the early afternoon sunlight rushing through the windows, painting her hair with highlights of gold.

  ‘And me with this wicked fore
hand,’ Paris said, surprised at his burst of wit, his sports reference. He had never played a game of tennis in his life.

  Rita leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek, then smiled as she thumbed away the lipstick. ‘Call me.’

  She turned, left the restaurant, trailing a long wake of rubber-necking men – young, old, and those of Jack Paris’s rather ill-defined vintage: somewhere in between.

  The Homicide Unit was beginning to recover from the media blitz that began about twenty minutes after Tommy’s body hit the freezer and didn’t even begin to abate until two weeks later. But now, despite the best efforts of the tabloids, the cop-haters and the loyal political opposition, the story was being eclipsed by other, more pressing problems facing the Best Location in the Nation. The Unit averaged about eighteen homicides per month and usually maintained no more than twenty detectives at any given time. So, given the average daily shitfall in a city like Cleveland, the shitstorm eventually passed.

  And then there was a threatened garbage strike which, in a purely sensory capacity, eclipsed everything.

  Yet any time a police officer is directly involved in a big-time felony, or some kind of sex crime, it was always a huge embarrassment for the department. When you combine the two, the fallout is devastating and, considering the longevity that sex gossip usually has, politically far-reaching.

  After a few thousand missiles from all corners, the department’s new whiz-kid spin doctor, a PR flack named Teddy Dahlhausen, had somehow managed to put the Pharaoh case into manageable media blocks. The grand jury was satisfied with the evidence that linked Sergeant Thomas Anthony Raposo to the deaths of Emily Reinhardt, Maryann Milius, Karen Schallert and Eleanor Burchfield, and that seemed to be that.

  Paris reached his desk and was relieved to find only three messages waiting for him: Diana, Cyndy Taggart, and Beth.

  Three women. Could be much, much worse, he thought as he picked up the phone, then pecked out his wife’s number. Could have easily been three guys named Rasheed, Nunzio, and Hector.

  He left a message on Beth’s cell phone, then dialed Cyndy’s number.

  ‘Got some stuff of yours,’ she said. ‘You must have left it in my car that day we staked out the Versailles.’

  Paris hadn’t touched base with Cyndy Taggart since the debriefing. Cyndy worked out of the Fourth.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll pick it up at the station.’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paris answered. ‘Barely.’

  ‘If you say so, Jack. Anyway, maybe I’ll drop it all off to you tomorrow. I’ll be up around Eighty-five and Carnegie after dinner.’

  ‘Okay,’ Paris said, distracted. He decided to trust her. ‘Hang on, Cyndy.’ Paris looked into the duty room, into the adjacent offices. The floor was very light with detectives and other personnel. Greg Ebersole was in his office with his feet up, sawing logs. Paris closed his door, picked up the phone.

  ‘You know I’m not happy with how fast this was all shut down.’

  ‘I know,’ Cyndy said.

  ‘I’m going through Tommy’s things at his father’s house, and I found these photographs of a woman. And it’s wild stuff.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s sadomasochism. Costume stuff.’

  ‘Tommy is in them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you identify the woman?’

  ‘No. Can’t see her face in any of them. But believe me, you sure can see everything else.’

  ‘And why do you think this woman is tied to the murders?’

  Paris wasn’t sure. He told Cyndy that.

  ‘Tommy did get around, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, but there wasn’t any S&M stuff in his belongings,’ Paris said. ‘No magazines, videos, books. No whips and chains. Certainly nothing like this.’ Paris fell silent for a few beats. ‘So tell me, Cyndy. Why can’t I shake the idea that there is a woman involved?’

  ‘Because now you’ve got photographs.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Okay, Jack,’ Cyndy said. ‘I have a few minutes. Gimme the list.’

  ‘Okay. One, the make-up kit. Just doesn’t fit with Tommy Raposo, does it? He’s cutting up women, wiping their faces clean and putting make-up on them like he works a cosmetic counter at Macy’s? Make sense to you?’

  ‘Nope. Next.’

  ‘Samantha Jaeger.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Paris hadn’t told anyone about the Jaeger woman’s bedroom. He wasn’t going to start now, either. The Jaeger woman’s death was ruled accidental, so there was no homicide investigation. ‘I know her death was an accident, but the older woman next door said she heard a man and a woman arguing the night Samantha took the fall.’ Paris heard someone walk by his door. He waited a few seconds. ‘I don’t know. There’s a woman around here somewhere.’

  Paris went on to tell Cyndy about the ‘Saila does Quality’ message on one of the photographs. Cyndy said that the name held no significance for her either, but was much quicker to pick up on ‘quality’ as meaning a possible location.

  ‘You think “Saila” is the woman’s name?’ Cyndy asked.

  ‘Don’t know. But I’m going to run it anway.’

  ‘Okay. Anything else?’

  ‘Well, last but not least, of course, is the fact that we have no razor. If someone was setting Tommy up, why not leave the murder weapon? I mean, with all that neatly placed evidence in Tommy’s apartment, why not give us the weapon? You can pick up a straight razor for twenty-five bucks. Why not leave it?’

  ‘Unless.’

  ‘Unless you weren’t done with it.’

  ‘So …’ Cyndy began, knowing full well the answer, but playing the game all detectives played: Saying It Out Loud. ‘What’s the next step?’

  ‘Next step is to revisit the Quality Inn and see if the photo matches up with the guest room where Emily Reinhardt was killed. If we get a match there, I think we can get the DA to consider reopening the case. We’ve got an accomplice.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ Paris said as Bobby Dietricht knocked on his door and then entered anyway.

  ‘All right,’ Cyndy said. ‘But now you’ve got me thinking.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ll stop by with your stuff tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll go with you to the Quality.’

  ‘Even better,’ Paris said, and hung up the phone.

  After Dietricht left, Paris called Diana.

  ‘Are you going to make it to the Home and Flower Show with us?’ she asked.

  ‘Us,’ Paris repeated.

  ‘Melissa and I are going tomorrow? Remember? We talked about it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Paris said. ‘I remember. I just don’t think I can go, Diana. I’m buried down here.’

  ‘Are you sure this is going to be okay with Beth? This strange woman doing something like this on a Saturday afternoon with her only daughter?’

  ‘Believe me, if you’re okay with me, you’re okay with Beth. I’m a cop, remember?’

  ‘You’re right. I just get a little paranoid. There’s three people I want to like me now and it’s too much.’

  ‘You’ll wow her,’ Paris said.

  ‘Kowloon Garden afterwards? On me?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Paris hung up the phone, awash with Dad-guilt. He hadn’t seen Melissa for more than a few minutes in the past two weeks, although it was certainly understandable in the light of the Pharaoh case aftermath. He had caught the last five minutes of Missy’s play, but when he went backstage afterwards he immediately saw that he wasn’t fooling her into thinking he had seen the whole thing. If pressed, she would have asked him specifics anyway, and he would have caved.

  Missy was a very bright girl, very worldly for her age. She read the newspapers and she watched the local news and she knew full well what had happened where her father worked. She knew that the man who ha
d killed those women had worked with her father.

  The information, unfortunately, was not lost on some of Melissa’s schoolmates, either. ‘M. P. is a pervert’ showed up written on the blackboard in her homeroom one morning. Another creative young artist had ripped an illustration of an Egyptian mummy out of a school encyclopedia and drawn a rather obscene appendage between the figure’s legs, then taped it to Missy’s gym locker. The ‘Pharaoh’ aspect of the case had been well publicized.

  Paris put his feet up and attempted to catch a nap.

  He tried to remember if there really was a time when art class meant white paste, construction paper, and safety scissors.

  29

  IT WAS FRIDAY and this glorious stranger stood a few fragrant inches away from me. We were in a quiet, multi-roomed nightclub called Whitney’s.

  Saila and I knew that we shouldn’t have been out playing so soon, but spring was in the air, I guess.

  ‘You look like a very young Jeanne Moreau,’ I said. ‘Around the time she made Five Branded Women, I’m thinking.’

  The edges of her mouth turned up slightly, but she wasn’t quite ready to release the smile just yet. Her eyes betrayed her, telling me that my reference was not lost on her. Nor were my looks. She was dressed conservatively in a burgundy tailored suit, cream blouse and navy heels, yet there was no concealing the fullness of her breasts, the firmness of her upper thighs. She was a working woman, a citizen, and the very idea sent my blood to steam.

  The fact that Saila was standing right behind me, sipping her drink at the bar, made the moment all but unbearable.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Oh yes. But sexier,’ I replied, moving closer to her. She didn’t flinch or pull away in the slightest. ‘Jeanne Moreau was so, how should I put it, two-dimensional.’ My knee touched hers, a delicious shiver. ‘You, on the other hand, are flesh and blood.’

  Her hand trembled a bit as she reached for her nearly empty glass, betraying her resolve to remain in complete control of the situation. I was intimidating her somewhat and, as always, that pleased me.

  I imagined her to be about twenty-eight or so, probably married, probably a suburban mommy, although she wore no wedding ring. Her blond, permed hair was obviously a wig, but perhaps that was part of her appeal for me. She was out to play. She fancied herself the conquering bitch, and for the moment, I let her believe it.