Lark

by Forrest, Richard;

  “Slightly more than one every two weeks.”

  “If that’s the pattern, there should be more bodies. There are victims out there that we haven’t turned up yet.”

  “Why does he begin in April and stop in September?”

  “He’s got a camper and he uses state and national parks. He probably doesn’t like it outside in wintertime. It fits the fishing season,” Horse said with a laugh.

  “What did you say?”

  “He likes to fish.” His laugh died. “I was only kidding. You can’t work with this stuff for hours on end and not try to make a joke once in a while.”

  “You might have a handle on something. The guy has a rec vehicle, uses parks, and often kills near water. Fishing might fit.”

  “Sure, and he spends winters in Florida.”

  “If he does, he’s not killing down there.” Lark turned away from the map to stare out the window. “If they had all gone back to college, they wouldn’t have been blown away.”

  “What?” Horse was perplexed. “I don’t follow you.”

  “It wasn’t important.”

  Horse cleared his throat. “I thought maybe we ought to cross-index the methods of murder, hometowns of the victims, and other factors. What do you think?”

  “They can’t expect their parents to support them forever.”

  “Huh?”

  “How many of them were living with men?”

  “Do you really think that’s important?”

  Lark bent over the desk with his fists clenched in anger. “It’s goddamn well important!”

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Nearly three dozen dead and we know how they felt during their last hours. We know what that pervert did to them. I’ve seen people die, sometimes in terrible accidents and in pain, but these girls had their last hours in pain. Think of it a moment. They not only died, they had to look into his face and suffer before they died.”

  “You know, Lieutenant, this is really too big for us now. We can turn all our files over to the state. The case is too important for two guys working out of a small office in a rinky-dink town.”

  Maurice Grossman hovered in the door. His bulk blocked the light from the hall like a perched albatross obscuring the sun. “What do you want?” Lark asked.

  “I got another tape, but there’s a problem with it.”

  “Your tapes are always a problem,” Lark said. “What is it?”

  “I played the tape, and when I rewound it, I accidentally erased it.”

  “That’s interesting,” Lark said mildly. “You erased a tape. You do have a broadcast engineer’s license, don’t you?”

  “Sure, it’s required. I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I guess I was nervous.”

  “You were nervous and erased it,” Lark repeated. “You bastard!” He lunged across the room and grabbed Grossman’s jacket with both hands. His rocking motion jounced the disc jockey’s head back and forth against the door. “You idiot! You fucking idiot!”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I’ll bet.” Each sway of their bodies banged Grossman’s head.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  Horse pulled at Lark. “Stop it!” His large fist clubbed down on Lark’s wrist and broke the grip on the radio announcer. He grabbed Lark from behind and lifted him off the floor and carried him across the room. “No more,” he whispered frantically. He pushed him into the desk chair. “Take it easy. You want something, coffee, a beer?”

  “I want it all to stop,” Lark said in a barely audible voice.

  “I got to go.” Grossman scurried from the room.

  Lark stood in the doorway to Frank Pemperton’s office. The chief looked up impatiently. “I told my secretary no visitors. I have a budget to finish.”

  “I beat up a civilian.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard me. I’m putting in my papers.” He unbuckled his holster and put it on the desk. His badge followed. “I’ve had it.”

  The chief looked at the pistol and badge and shook his head. “I never thought I’d see this day.”

  Lark spun on his heel and went toward the door. “I’ll let them know where to send my checks.”

  “Wait a minute, Tommy. What in the hell happened?”

  “Ask Horse. He was there.”

  He drove without thought and was blocks past the turnoff to the machine company and his trailer when he snapped back to reality and slowed for a U turn. It took a few moments for him to realize that he was in the university area near where his daughter lived. He made a right and drove past the three-family dwelling that contained her apartment. Her VW was not parked on the street or in the drive, and then he remembered that Faby had told him Cathy had taken a job at the 7–11 Store on Grove Street.

  Over the last several years, Grove had turned into a testament to America’s lack of culinary sophistication. The streets between the 700 and 1900 blocks were lined with fast-food emporiums and discount stores interspersed with used-car lots. It was typical of a thousand streets in a thousand towns, each identical to the other, regardless of geographical location, and each as devoid of a sense of place as the others.

  He turned into the 7–11 parking lot and stopped in its darkest corner. Through the front window he could see her movement behind the circular counter in the center of the store. She seemed slightly harried as she worked with quick, nervous movements.

  He smiled for the first time that day. Perhaps college would be more appealing after a few months behind the counter of a convenience store. He wanted to go to her and hold her while pretending she was ten years old again, but that would be impossible.

  A dilapidated Chevy with pocked rust holes in the sides pulled to a stop near the store’s entrance. The driver left the engine running when he entered the store.

  There was something about the man’s movements that bothered Lark. It wasn’t the clothing: a leather jacket and jeans were uniforms for many; perhaps it was the fact that the right hand clutched something while the left was jammed into a pocket.

  In one lithe movement he opened the pickup’s door and unzipped his jacket. He ran across the asphalt to the front entrance while his hand fumbled for the missing Python.

  The store was empty of customers except for his daughter, standing wide-eyed behind the counter, and the man in the jacket. Leather Jacket had slipped a ski mask over his head and leveled a pistol at Cathy.

  “Drop it,” Lark commanded from the door.

  Leather Jacket turned to point the pistol directly at him. “Freeze, mister.”

  “I’m ‘the man,’ jerk. Drop the piece and you won’t get hurt.”

  “You a cop?”

  “He’s a cop,” his daughter said.

  “He’s not carrying anything or he’d have it out,” Leather Jacket said. “Come on, girlie. Give me the money.”

  Lark advanced around the counter. “You shoot a cop and you won’t make it to jail alive.”

  “You take one more step, mister, and I blow you away.”

  “Go ahead, punk,” Lark said in a low voice. “I don’t give a damn.” He stepped closer to Leather Jacket. Three more strides and he’d have him.

  “You crazy? I’m going to waste you.”

  “Then shoot, dammit!” Lark lunged and chopped at the man’s gun hand. The trigger finger tightened and the Saturday-night special exploded, sending a bullet through the floor of the store. Cathy screamed.

  Lark’s left hand swept into Leather Jacket’s neck, and as the man gasped and reached for his injured neck, Lark’s knee plowed into his groin.

  “Punk!” Lark screamed. He reached between the man’s legs with one hand and under the arm with the other as he lifted Leather Jacket over his head and threw him through the plate-glass front window. “I’ll kill you!”

  “Daddy!” Cathy screamed again.

  Lark dashed outside. A moaning Leather Jacket, surrounded by a thousand shards of glass, was on his hands and knees.

  “Punk!
” Lark’s foot lashed forward and caught the man in the midsection and flipped him over on his back. “Son of a bitch!” His foot jammed forward again to connect with the chin and snap the man’s jaw. “Scum!” He kicked again.

  “Daddy, stop!” Her hands tugged at his sleeve. “You’re going to kill him. Please, Daddy!”

  He stopped kicking and turned to face her. “What?”

  “You’ve got to stop now.”

  He looked down at the bleeding hulk writhing at his feet. “Yeah, I guess so. Go call nine-one-one.”

  She ran back into the store as Lark whipped Leather Jacket’s belt from his pants and bound his arms behind his back. He walked slowly back to the pickup. Let the uniforms have the collar. There was a siren in the distance as he started the truck and drove back to the trailer.

  He took the army-issue .45 from a locked cabinet over his bed. He hefted its weight in his hand. It hadn’t been used in years, not since that final time by Margaret. They had returned it to him after the inquest, which was dumb, and even dumber he had kept it.

  He activated the slide and let it slam forward with its reassuring clunk. He dry-fired it. This weapon of death worked as well as it ever had. He had shot a woman with it in combat. He could see her again as she rose from the rice paddy with the grenade in her hand and a look of hate on her face. Without thought, he had fired, and the heavy slug had caught her in the center of the chest and flung her backward into the shallow murky water.

  It was later that they discovered the baby strapped to her back. The .45 projectile had also pierced the child’s body. His sleep had been fitful for a long time after that.

  He walked back through the trailer with the automatic dangling from his hand. In the kitchen he noticed the calendar with the exercise days carefully noted. He tore it from the wall and flipped it into the garbage. There would be no more exercise.

  He sat on the divan. The .45 lay on the coffee table in front of him. He checked the clip and rammed it back into the butt before activating the slide to force a shell into the chamber.

  His personal affairs were in order. The will had been changed after Margaret’s death to leave everything to Cathy. He reached for the weapon.

  The door to the trailer slapped against the wall. “Put that down!”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Are you going to put her through that? Do you think she’s strong enough to survive another time, another parent going that way?”

  “Leave, Faby.”

  “You selfish bastard.” She entered the trailer and sat across from him, her knees pressed tightly together. “After what you did at the Seven-Eleven Cathy called Frank Pemperton. She knows there’s something wrong with you.”

  “Do I have to throw you out the door?”

  “Macho bastard, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “You’ve crossed over the line, Lark.”

  “Don’t preach to me, Faby.”

  “I’m not going to allow you to destroy your daughter.”

  “There’s nothing between us.”

  “More than you possibly realize.”

  “I’ve known that Frank’s wanted my paper for two years; now he’s got it. That’s one less problem, and I won’t have to jack around bodies in Portland, Springfield, and Laconia.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s thirty-one of them, and Grossman has another tape, even if it is blank.”

  “So you’re getting out. Good. The state police can probably do a better job.”

  Lark stared off into space. “Portland, Spring-field, and Laconia …” He began to pace the narrow corridor in the trailer. “Portland and Springfield … clumped in state and national parks, and he accidentally erased a tape.…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jesus Christ, Faby! I think we’ve got our first real lead.”

  12

  Lark cut the headlights partway down the block that contained the Grossman house. He let the truck drift toward the curb and slowed to a stop one house down from the suspect’s ranch home. He removed the ignition key and leaned back in the seat to orient himself.

  He wanted a cigarette. He always wanted a cigarette.

  The house under surveillance was a modest six-room affair with a Big Wheel toy canted on its side alongside the front walk. A large vehicle, obscured in dark shadows, loomed under the carport. One low lamp burned in the living room and a flickering pattern of light on the front lawn indicated that the television was on.

  He knew the neighborhood. It contained a mixture of young couples with starter homes, and skilled blue-collar workers who bought above-the-ground canvas pools on their MasterCards. The street was peopled with many small children.

  The Grossman house was so serene that Lark couldn’t help but think of “the banality of evil.” Halfway up the front walk he was able to identify the vehicle under the carport as a camper.

  He crossed over to the rear of the camper and tried to peer though its large rear window. A heavy curtain had been drawn and he couldn’t see inside.

  The front door bell chimed a three-note melody. Footsteps. A muffled “Who is it?” from behind the locked door.

  “Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg police.”

  The lock clicked and the chain fell away from its bracket as the overhead light switched on. She stood behind the screen door and looked out apprehensively. “Maurice has spoken of you, Lieutenant.”

  “Is he home?”

  She hesitated. “No, he isn’t. Won’t you come in?” The screen door opened and Lark stepped inside. “I’m Sylvia Grossman,” she said, and extended a limp hand.

  He judged her to be twenty-eight. Her once-attractive face had turned into a caricature of itself through massive overeating. She wore a long housecoat that stretched to the floor, but that didn’t hide the ample proportions of her figure. He could see over her shoulder into the living room, where a huge bowl of California Dip squatted next to a half-eaten bowl of potato chips. She smiled at him in a way that showed she once must have been a coquettish flirt.

  “Is Johnny, ah, Maurice somewhere he can be reached?”

  “He should be at the station. He often works at night recording some of his comic bits. He’s very talented, you know.”

  Lark was tempted to retort that sophomoric humor of that kind … He dropped the thought. “Could I use your phone to call him?”

  She looked at him with pinched eyes that were nearly hidden by ballooning cheekbones. “I guess maybe he isn’t there.”

  “Perhaps he’s with a friend?”

  “We have two lovely children. Sherwood is eight and Heidi is six. Maurice really adores them. You should see how he protects them and plays with them every chance he gets.”

  “Mrs. Grossman, I really do have to locate Maurice.”

  “Then find him!” She plunked down on the couch in front of the coffee table and swirled two large potato chips in dip and stuffed them in her mouth. “I don’t know where he is.” More chips sank into the dip only to return to the surface in her fingers.

  Lark sat across from her and watched the flickering light of the silent television play across her face. “Does my memory serve me correctly? Did Johnny … Maurice work in Portland, Laconia, and Springfield before he came to Middleburg?”

  “Yes. A young disc jockey has to start out anywhere he can and move up when he can.”

  “I’m sure that’s the case. Do you know the license number of your car?”

  “We have a vanity plate and it’s G-R-O-S-S.”

  “What make and model?”

  “This year’s Ford Escort.”

  Lark dialed headquarters from an end-table phone. He spoke in a low voice, but knew she could overhear him as he ordered the dispatcher to put out an APB on Maurice Grossman’s car. The occupant was not to be picked up, but the car’s location phoned to Lark. He saw that Sylvia Grossman was frightened. “Maurice has some important evi
dence that I need. Could I look through your camper?”

  He knew she was puzzled at his request, but she silently led him through the kitchen and out a side door that entered directly under the carport. She turned on an overhead light that illuminated the body of the camper.

  The door was unlocked and Lark entered the vehicle. Two heavily upholstered seats were perched in front of the dash, behind them were an eating area and divans that made into beds. He quickly searched through the closets and compartments in the camper. His cursory search didn’t turn up anything that would tie Maurice into the murders, but a detailed lab inspection would be necessary for a fabric and sweepings check.

  He left the camper and returned to the living room, where Sylvia Grossman sat before the silent television eating the last of the chips. She didn’t turn.

  “Do you want me to turn off the TV?”

  “Yes, I guess so. I’m not really watching it. The sound is off and all.”

  Lark snapped the set off. She avoided his eyes. “Does Johnny, I mean, Maurice ever hit the kids?”

  She looked shocked. “Hit the children? Heavens no. That would be the last thing in the world he would ever do. In fact, he’s too much the other way. Sometimes we have spats over him spoiling them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He overprotects them. He only lets them ride their bikes on the sidewalks when the other kids go in the street. Last summer we went to an amusement park and one of the rides was scaring the kids, so Maurice made the man stop the machine in the middle of the ride so they could get off.”

  Lark crossed his legs and tried to appear nonchalant. “How did you two meet?”

  “We both were students at Boston University. Maurice was in the school of communications and I was a soc major. We met through a mutual friend.” She kept her gaze focused on the blank television screen. “I wasn’t always fat, you know. I had a real good body when I was young. I think it was having the babies that did it. I could never seem to get enough to eat when I was pregnant.”

  “I wouldn’t think you’re that old now,” Lark said. He was constantly amazed at what people would often say to police officers about their innermost feelings. It seemed to be an occupation akin to priests and psychiatrists.