A Clean Kill

by Mike Stewart

  When I finally stood and crossed the tiled floor, young Billy Savin’s face greeted me through the tiny, double-glass window in the insulated door. He was wearing a demonic grin and holding the door closed. Billy had watched too much bad TV. I reached over to the left and pushed the round red help button. The club had followed the common practice of installing one—like the ones you see in garage elevators—to assist older members who sometimes have a tendency to stroke out in the sauna.

  Then, resting on the assumption that I had summoned someone from somewhere, I sat back down to sweat some more. Maybe thirty seconds passed before the deep voice of Harvey, the doorman, echoed through the locker room. He was yelling at Billy.

  “Heah, now! Young man! What you think you’re doin’ there?”

  “I’m Judge Savin’s guest.”

  The waiter didn’t look as though he believed me. “Judge Savin has left the club, sir.”

  “Thanks.” I tried smiling. “But I’m still here, and I’d like some coffee, please.”

  The waiter smiled, but he didn’t mean it. He went to get coffee.

  I was alone.

  The judge had disappeared immediately after our semi-naked conversation, taking Chuck with him. Then, when Harvey freed me from steamy incarceration, Billy Savin had run like a kid caught smoking in the boys’ room.

  Now the waiter appeared and placed a cup and saucer on my table. He added my own little stainless steel coffee pot. I had planned to order a late lunch—something expensive—and charge it to the judge, but just then Dr. Laurel Adderson walked in and sat down across the table from me.

  She smiled. “What can I do for you?”

  I tried to read her. “What do you mean?”

  “Luther Savin told me you were looking for me.”

  A faint bulb warmed a corner of my brain. “That’s interesting. Is Luther a friend of yours?”

  A light blush crept up the powdered cheeks of fifty-ish, unflappable Dr. Adderson. “Why, yes. I … I’ve known Luther Savin for years.”

  “Is he staying with you while he’s down here?”

  Now her eyebrows arched, and the old Dr. Adderson reappeared. “I can’t see where that’s any of your business. Luther said you wanted to see me. Please get to the point, Tom.”

  “We’re at the point, Laurel. We were at the point as soon as you walked in.”

  “You may still need to see that psychiatrist, Tom.” Laurel Adderson pushed back from the table, but as she stood, curiosity got the better of her. “So, what is the point I made by walking into my own club’s dining room?”

  I was growing angry, and I wasn’t precisely sure why. “He’s everywhere. That’s the point, Laurel. Your friend, Judge Luther Savin, is everywhere. And there’s nowhere for me to turn that he hasn’t gotten to ahead of me. That’s what your friend used you to convey.”

  Dr. Adderson’s cheeks blushed a deeper red. “I think you may be crazy, Tom. I really do.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s sure starting to look that way.”

  Twenty-three

  Close now to the shortest day of the year, I drove through a deepening lavender dusk from Daphne to Point Clear. Inside the beach house, Sheri had lit the tree and lit herself a little with a “holiday cocktail”—something in a mug with steam that smelled of rum and cloves. Kai-Li was holed up in my study, staring intently into some corner of the Internet.

  Being the host, I wandered into the kitchen with the vague idea of whipping up something for dinner. I opened the refrigerator. Nothing volunteered to be eaten. I closed it again, found a mug, and poured myself a little holiday cocktail of my own from a boiler on the stovetop where Sheri had concocted the stuff. The first two sips were good—the heat helped, and the spices screwed up the muscles at the points of my jaw—but that was enough. The drain got a holiday cocktail. I poured some scotch over ice and ordered a pizza.

  As I wandered through the living room, Sheri looked up from a Stephen King novel to say hello.

  “I ordered pizza.”

  She smiled. “Sounds good.”

  I was almost out of the room when I decided to open my mouth. “Sheri?”

  She looked up, her eyebrows raised in an open and helpful way.

  The club chair next to the sofa was empty. I sat in it. “Mind if I ask you a few questions. Some … some personal information?”

  Sheri marked her page with the dust cover and dropped the book on the cushion next to her hip. “Shoot.”

  “Did you get along with your mother and father?”

  Her medium brown eyes scanned the room and came to rest on a charcoal seascape over the fireplace. “As well as most people get along with their parents, I guess. When I was little, I thought they were the most perfect people on earth. When I was a teenager, I decided they were idiots. Starting in college, I concluded they were probably somewhere in the middle with the rest of us.”

  “Nice noncommital answer.”

  She shrugged.

  I took in a mouthful of scotch and swallowed hard. “What’d they think of your relationship with Bobbi?”

  Sheri’s cheeks and forehead, even her neck, blushed red. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’d Mom and Dad think of their lesbo daughter? Is that what you’re asking me?”

  The question was on the table. Nothing to be gained by taking it back now. “I guess it is.”

  My client turned on the hateful smile I’d seen in my office. “Are you telling me that’s relevant to the case?”

  My fingers were numb from the ice. I switched the tumbler to my left hand and swirled the whiskey so I’d have something to look at besides an angry houseguest. “Could be.”

  “Look at me, Tom.”

  I met her eyes.

  “I am not sleeping with Bobbi.”

  I nodded. I didn’t believe her, and I was pretty sure it showed.

  Sheri’s angry grin faded. She picked up the lukewarm remnants of her own drink, killed it, and cleared her throat before speaking. “I’ve known Bobbi all my life. Her father wasn’t there much when she was growing up, and he tended to be a bastard when he was. My father wasn’t like that. Bobbi figures all men are evil. I don’t.” She tried to take another pull on her toddy and found it empty. “I really don’t know if Bobbi likes women so much as she hates men. Maybe she’s in love with me. I don’t know about that either. But it’s not like that, and she knows it’s not ever going to be like that.”

  I nodded and got to my feet. All I could think to say was, “Sorry. I’m trying to figure some things out.”

  She pushed forward onto the edge of the sofa. “You do believe me, don’t you, Tom?”

  And I realized that I did. “You haven’t lied to me yet.”

  My bland young client smiled wanly, picked up her mug, and went in search of alcohol. I went in search of Kai-Li.

  Across the room, the study door was open. And, through the doorway, Kai-Li looked much like she had the first time I’d seen her. She wasn’t sitting on the floor, but she did have her head bowed over the laptop on my desk, holding her head in her hands and gently massaging her temples.

  I interrupted. “What are you working on?”

  She glanced up with an expression devoid of comprehension. Kai-Li rubbed at her eyes and stretched her arms over her head, cocking her jaw to the side and shuddering a little. I was beginning to believe the professor’s depth of concentration approached another state of consciousness.

  “Thomas.”

  That, I thought, is new.

  She smiled. “How was your meeting with Judge Savin?”

  “Threatening, informative, vague. Pick one.” “I need details.”

  I gave her the three-minute version. She asked some questions I didn’t have answers to.

  I asked, “Are you doing anything that can’t be interrupted?”

  “No.” She pushed away from my desk and stretched again. “Just running searches on Judge Savin and Zion Thibbodeaux.”

  “Find anything?”


  She shrugged. “Everything and nothing. Like most public officials, the judge’s name brought up reams of news articles, campaign stuff, important legal decisions he’d penned. Mr. Thibbodeaux’s activities, on the other hand, have not penetrated the World Wide Web.”

  I walked around the desk. “Let me try something.”

  Kai-Li got out of the desk chair and propped her right buttock on the edge of the desk as I took her place. All she said was, “What?”

  “Tummy bugs and backdoor trots.”

  She laughed. “Sounds like cockney.”

  I clicked on favorites and went to Yahoo! In the search box, I typed Black Angel of Death and hit enter. Kai-Li scanned the screen over my shoulder. She didn’t ask questions or wonder out loud or even fidget. She sat and concentrated on the listings.

  A small, unpolished nail bumped the screen. “Try that one.”

  I clicked on serialkiller.com. As the site opened, the pumping rhythm of a heartbeat pulsed through the speaker. Black-and-white mug shots filled the screen. The rush of labored, obscene-caller breathing and the muffled footfalls of someone running on pavement mixed with the thumping heartbeat. I turned off the speaker.

  A graphic designed to look like blood on concrete spelled out: WELCOME TO SERIALKILLER.COM—HOME OF THE WORLD’S BEST.

  As the page loaded, Kai-Li pointed again. “Oh, my Lord. Look at that. There’s a place to order mug shot trading cards. Who would want …” Her voice trailed off.

  “I don’t think I want to know. Look.” I pointed to a link at the bottom of the page: EXTREME TORTURE AND SADISM—ADULTS ONLY. In the search box at the top of the page, I repeated my query. Seconds passed. “Slow,” I said.

  “Must have lots of traffic.” Kai-Li shuddered and walked around the desk to sit on the tufted leather sofa. “I’ve seen enough of that.”

  The page popped up. This time, the same finger-dipped-in-blood font spelled out the title on a black background: BLACK ANGEL OF DEATH.

  I started reading. Seconds passed.

  Kai-Li broke the silence. “What’s it say? I mean,” she hesitated, “does it say anything useful?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is it about Zion Thibbodeaux?”

  “Oh.” I realized Kai-Li had the wrong idea. “No, no. This is something Dr. Adderson mentioned early on when she was, I think, just kind of grasping at straws to explain what had happened to Kate Baneberry. When I asked how Mrs. Baneberry could have died without anyone knowing it was murder, she said to read up on the Black Angel of Death.”

  “So.” She sat up straight and searched my eyes. “What’s it say?”

  “You want the details?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, then. What it says it that some limp-dick nurse in New York murdered at least ten hospital patients by injecting something called Pavulon—whatever the hell that is—into their IVs.”

  Kai-Li stood. “It’s a paralytic agent.”

  “Yeah, it says here they found one of his victims gasping for breath.”

  She grimaced. “Paralyze the muscles, and the patient suffocates. The really hideous thing about that particular drug is that the patient remains mentally alert and fully aware of what’s happening.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh,” she said. “And there’s a variation on the theme. Sometimes the killer gives a paralytic agent to the victim and then administers a potassium push so the death looks more natural.”

  “What’s a potassium push?”

  “A syringe of concentrated potassium solution. The idea is that the paralytic agent—some of which are absorbed by the body with no trace—keeps the victim from convulsing when the potassium is administered.”

  “But the potassium …”

  “Is a naturally occurring substance within the body and would not set off alarms during the autopsy.”

  I logged off the Internet, shut down the laptop, and closed the cover. As I shoved the laptop away from me, Kai-Li motioned at the computer with her chin. “Are you going to burn it, too?”

  I hadn’t thought about what I was doing. “Maybe just hose it off.” I stood up. “Look, you seem to know about this stuff.”

  “Just what I’ve read.”

  “Well, tell me this, what does this potassium push—which I guess is what actually kills the person—what does it do? I mean, I understand the killer is giving the victim too much of the stuff. But what is the actual cause of death?”

  “Oh. I thought you got that from the web page.” Kai-Li turned toward the living room. Over her shoulder, she said, “The flood of potassium causes cardiac arrest. You know, a heart attack.”

  Endless dreams of floating, serial-killer trading cards had filled the night, leaving me feeling a little grumpy—and a little ridiculous. You never know what’s going to get to you.

  “I want someone inside Russell and Wagler.”

  Joey had come over with a handful of paperwork on a Mr. Zion Thibbodeaux and ended up joining Kai-Li and me for breakfast. Sheri was still sleeping off her holiday cocktails. When the food was gone, the three of us had wandered into the living room to talk things over.

  Kai-Li said, “I could do it. Law firms have a huge turnover in secretaries. I could just walk in …”

  I interrupted. “And say, ‘Hello. I have a Ph.D. in behavioral psychology and can type eighty words a minute.’ ”

  Kai-Li sat up a little straighter. “Well, as a matter of fact, I can. And I wouldn’t have to give them the right name.”

  Joey sat his mug of morning coffee on the end table and leaned forward. “Wouldn’t work. If we’re right about what they’re doin’, these folks are breakin’ the law seven ways to Sunday. They’d be bein’ careful, and they’d check you out and find out you volunteered evidence at Tom’s hearing that they been buyin’ juries.”

  Kai-li said, “I wouldn’t have to give them my real name, I could …”

  Joey was shaking his head.

  “Who then?” A note of aggression had crept into Kai-Li’s voice. She wanted to play undercover cop and wasn’t happy about Joey’s attitude.

  Joey answered her with two words. “Loutie Blue.”

  Kai-Li asked, “Who is Loutie Blue?”

  Joey was on to something. I said, “Can she type?”

  Kai-Li asked again, “Who are we talking about?”

  Joey looked at me. “Yeah, she can type. Used to work some as a temp after she stopped stripping.”

  Kai-Li stood up and raised her voice. “Who the hell is Loutie Blue and why was she stripping?”

  Joey looked amused. “You don’t know Tom that well, but he dates a lot of strippers. Poor bastard proposes marriage to one about once a month.”

  I told Joey to shut up and then explained that Loutie Blue was Joey’s best operative, his girlfriend, and someone who once took her clothes off for a living.

  Kai-Li crossed her arms. “And I guess it doesn’t matter if she can type because she’s such an unbelievable babe that they’ll hire her just for office decoration.”

  I looked at Joey, and he nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  Kai-Li turned to leave the room. On the way out, I’m pretty sure I heard her utter the word “neanderthals.”

  A few minutes later, Joey left to make arrangements for Loutie Blue to wear something short and tight to the offices of Russell & Wagler Monday morning. Knowing Kai-Li was smart as hell and wanted to be useful, I handed over Joey’s research on Zybo and asked her to take another whack at the Internet.

  An hour later, when my sleepy and slightly hung-over guest, Sheri Baneberry, stumbled into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, I carefully explained to her exactly why she was going to fire me. To her credit, she thought it was a hell of an idea.

  Twenty-four

  Freezing rain had fallen the night before. Now, as Sheri Baneberry bid us farewell, a light snow blew in from the bay, spreading a perfect white sheet across slick roads and crystalized winter grass.

&nb
sp; Back inside, Sheri’s lighted tree filled the house with some kind of hope. Logs crackled in the fireplace. I walked into the study, unlocked the gun closet, and pulled out insulated boots and a heavy Marmot ski coat with fleece lining. I grabbed a hunting cap off the top shelf.

  Kai-Li stuck her head into the room as I was dressing to go out. “You look like Elmer Fudd.”

  “I was thinking more Jeremiah Johnson.”

  She propped her hip against the door frame, crossed her arms, and smiled. “I’m sticking with Elmer.”

  “I’m going to check outside.”

  She didn’t ask a lot of questions. And she didn’t lecture when I pulled my Browning nine-millimeter out of a drawer, loaded the clip, and seated it in the gun. She simply nodded.

  As I walked through the living room to the front door, I spied my twenty-gauge over-and-under leaning in one corner. It was stupid, really. I’d relied on the bird gun for protection—carrying it from downstairs to upstairs at night, keeping it empty, carrying shells in my hip pocket—instead of arming myself properly.

  My father told me as a kid, “If you’ve got a handgun, you’ll be tempted to use it when you could better talk your way out of trouble. Or when a bigger guy takes a swing at you, it’s easier to reach for a gun than take a beating. But,” he said, “the prisons are full of people who would rather’ve had a hundred ass whippings than to’ve pulled a trigger and ruined their lives.”

  Sam was never a font of fatherly advice, but I’d always remembered that one. And, truth be told, up until now I hadn’t worried about getting shot by the Cajun. He could have done that any time he wanted. Instead, the man had locked into my fears with waking nightmares—what my mother used to call “day-mares”—of vile poisons and blind-alley attacks and, worst of all, horrible mental pictures of my disabled form lying in a hospital bed at the mercy of shadowy strangers.

  But now, things were beginning to come together. Loutie Blue would, with any luck, be in one camp with Russell & Wagler and their ties to Judge Savin; Sheri would be in another, sitting by her father’s side where she could keep an eye on Jonathan Cort and company; and it would be up to Joey to find out enough about the final point of the triangle, Zion Thibbodeaux, to give us the edge and the opportunity to fold one of the triangle’s points in on itself.