by Judith Gould
“Just in case,” Fred Koscina muttered, although he didn’t harbor any real hopes of finding a single fingerprint. Not after Billie Dawn had told him the guy had been wearing surgical gloves. Still, you never could tell. Maybe he’d even left an intentional clue somewhere. Psychos were hard to figure.
“You’re reaching, boss,” Carmen Toledo told him. “Our guy is too smart for that.”
“Yeah, but at this point I’m ready to reach for the goddamn moon,” Fred growled. “C’mon. Let’s see how our eyewitness and the sketch artist are doing. We’re about due for a break.”
“Yeah, and I believe in the Easter Bunny,” Toledo muttered under her breath.
Billie Dawn was here, but she wasn’t here. Everything around her seemed to be happening in a slow-motion fog. Duncan had wanted to give her a tranquilizer, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“No. I’m fine,” she had told him shakily. “It’s Ermine who isn’t.” And she’d buried her face in his chest and cried and cried until no more tears would come.
She had stared blankly as the body bag containing Ermine Jeannot was carried out.
Then detectives Fred Koscina and Carmen Toledo had arranged for a police sketch artist to come over.
Sketch artist? “What for?” Billie had asked dully.
Detective Koscina had said, “So we know what the bastard looks like.”
She’d rubbed her long slender hands in agitation. “It’s no use,” she’d told him bleakly, shaking her head and frowning. “It . . . it all happened so fast, and . . .”
“And what?” Koscina had prodded gently.
She had lifted her face to his and stared. “He didn’t look human! Or maybe I should say, he looked human but that he didn’t have any distinguishing features. It’s almost as if . . .” Knitting her brow and frowning, she’d nodded to herself. “It was as if the getup he was wearing had rendered him entirely featureless.”
Koscina and Toledo had exchanged sharp glances.
“Please, try anyway,” Carmen Toledo had urged her. “A lot of times, witnesses don’t realize how much they really saw.”
So she tried to be of help. She must do anything in her power to help catch this maniac on the loose.
Round heads.
Narrow heads.
Square heads.
Rectangular heads.
How many head shapes could there possibly be?
Long noses.
Short noses.
Wide noses.
Skinny noses.
Flat noses.
One nose merged into another; one face looked just like all the rest.
Now, her eyes blurring, Billie Dawn looked at the most recent full-face sketch and shook her head mournfully. “It’s no use.” She sighed and slumped back on the couch. “It looks like him, but . . . but that’s the trouble, don’t you see? It could be almost any Caucasian. I’m sorry. Truly I am.” She felt like sobbing.
Duncan put his arms supportively around her. “Come on. Let me put you to bed and give you something to make you sleep.”
Koscina cleared his throat. “There’s just one more little thing.”
“Please!” Duncan looked up at him angrily. “Hasn’t she been through enough for one day?”
Koscina’s expression did not change. “This won’t take long,” he promised. “But I was thinking. There just might be a way we can flush this bastard out after all.”
They all stared at him.
Billie Dawn’s face had gone hard and determined. “How?”
Koscina pulled up a chair opposite the couch and told them.
“No!” Duncan said angrily. “No fucking way. I refuse to allow Billie to be used as bait. And that’s that!”
“My gut instinct tells me our guy will try again,” Koscina said grimly. He was leaning back, his hands in the pockets of his coat.
Duncan’s cold eyes flashed. “You heard me the first time. No . . . fucking . . . way.”
“Please, Dr. Cooper. I know this isn’t easy, but—”
“You’re damn right!” Duncan was steaming.
He couldn’t believe it! How dared they! And how stupid did they think he was? No way was he going to let them dangle his precious Billie like some carrot in front of a rabbit—especially not when the rabbit was a psycho maniac!
Couldn’t they understand? Billie Dawn was the love of his life— his to protect and cherish. If that maniac managed to get his hands on her, there would be nothing left to cherish—nothing but memories.
And memories weren’t enough.
They would just have to use somebody else. Somebody trained for this kind of job. A policewoman decoy, maybe.
“Look, Dr. Cooper,” Koscina said in his most reasonable tone, “don’t you want the maniac who was here in your home, who was after the one person who means the most to—”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Duncan yelled, jumping to his feet. “Don’t you realize what you’re asking of her?”
“Yes, Dr. Cooper,” Koscina said wearily, “unfortunately I do. And also unfortunately, I realize what we’re up against. We need your help. If we had any other choice, believe me, we wouldn’t be asking.”
“No harm in asking,” Duncan said sarcastically. “Except you already have your answer.” He flopped onto the sofa and seethed.
Koscina wasn’t known for backing down. He kept on staring at Duncan. “Well?” he asked after a while.
Duncan reached for the drink he had poured himself earlier and took a slug. “You bastard,” he said tonelessly.
It was like flinging balloons at a brick wall.
“Why her?” Duncan searched Koscina’s face. “Why does it have to be Billie?”
Koscina sighed heavily. “Because, Dr. Cooper, we know he’s after her.”
Duncan finished his drink. “Let him go after somebody else.”
“We’ll guard her around the clock.”
Duncan gave a humorless bark of a laugh. “That’s supposed to help us sleep better?”
Billie laid a hand on his arm. “Doc . . .”
Turning to her, Duncan reached up and gently touched her face. “Billie, I won’t let them. I won’t let them use you.”
“Darling,” she said softly, “please. Listen to him! If we don’t help them catch him, he’s . . . liable to come after me again anyway. Don’t you see? We have to help them catch him and put him away. For my sake, if no one else’s.”
Something desperate and pleading shone in her eyes.
He just sat there, too stunned to argue anymore. Even in her shock, Billie had put her finger unerringly on what hadn’t even occurred to him. Maybe he was losing it. Because if he had been thinking straight, he’d have figured that out for himself already. Hours ago, in fact.
His body went stone cold.
My Billie. My lovely Billie.
Shadowed and guarded day and night.
Until the creep comes around again.
Because he will come again sometime. He has to.
He’s got unfinished business to take care of.
Unfinished business by the name of Billie Dawn.
Oh, God!
I don’t think I can bear it.
But it has to be done.
Same World/Same Time
In the Realm of Miss Bitch
From the wig stands on the vanity the faces of the sacrificed seemed to mock him.
Failed!
Miss Bitch paced agitatedly, pulling at his hair until his scalp burned. His chest was heaving and tears of frustration stung in his eyes. He had failed! Just when everything was going so beautifully, just when he had her, the prize bad been snatched right out of his hands.
Volleys of high-pitched laughter rang out in his ears. He clapped his hands over them, trying to drown out the sound. But it kept on coming in rising waves.
“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut up, all of you!”
He whirled around. The laughter abruptly stopped. The face
s of the sacrificed were mute.
Grabbing up the switchblade and holding it straight out with his arm extended, he advanced threateningly upon the vanity.
“You were laughing at me!” be screamed accusingly at the magazine faces pinned to the wig stands. “You were making fun of me!”
There was no response. The achingly beautiful cover girls, glossy lips parted in smiles or laughter under their glossless hair, stared soundlessly at him.
“Which of you started it?” he demanded shrilly. “Which of you bad girls was making fun of me?”
No response.
“Answer me!” he screamed, stamping his foot in fury.
Still no response.
Miss Bitch heaved a deep sigh. “Well, then, you leave me no choice, my pretties.” His lips curled slowly into a grim twisted smile. “You are all going to be punished! Do you hear me? Then, maybe next time you’ll know not to play these silly games with me!”
Firmly grabbing the first Styrofoam wig stand, be raised his other arm and brought the blade flashing down. He stabbed and gouged and slashed until the paper face was shredded, until lumps and pellets of Styrofoam were flying all over the room.
Without pause, he moved on to the next one. And the next.
When he was finished, the horror of what be had done washed over him. With a moan he dropped the blade and staggered backward.
“0h, my pretties! My pretties!” be wailed, flinging himself from wall to wall, wildly tearing at his hair.
And then he rushed over to the mutilated faces and dropped heavily to his knees. “Look what that bitch made me do!” he sobbed. “Look at the trouble she’s caused all of us!”
“I’m going to get her!” he promised them all. “You just wait! That bitch is going to pay! And soon!”
Part Four
The Great Decorator
Showcase Showhouse Showdown
February-May 1990
Chapter 59
The chauffeur-driven Town Car dropped Edwina at a new high-rise on East Eighty-first Street. It had a circular drive and a doorman dressed like one of the Queen’s Guards: plumed chrome helmet, chin strap, and patent-leather boots that came up over the knee.
“Go right on in, ma’am,” the phony Queen’s Guard told her, and showed her a private elevator just inside the acre-sized lobby. “There’s just that one button to push. It’ll take you straight up to the penthouse.”
The door slid closed at once. It was one of the new high-speed elevators. Still, the ride took a full half-minute. The penthouse was on the seventy-second floor.
The elevator let out directly into the apartment, and Leo Flood was waiting there, smiling.
“Hi!” Edwina said brightly, breezing off the elevator in a rainbow palette of dyed sheared mink. She smiled at him and pecked his lips.
He kissed her back and kept on smiling. Took both her hands and held them gently. “You’re a vision,” he said, holding her away at arm’s length.
She loosened her colorful mink and opened it. Under it she wore a strapless short black dress shot through with rainbow sequins. It hugged her figure. Her earrings and necklace were clusters of glass stones—obvious costume-jewelry versions of king-size rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Her stockings were sleek and black, and she wore four-inch spike heels.
“You likee?” She laughed, and turned a fashion-runway pirouette.
“I likee.”
She laughed again and looked at him. He was simply dressed. Wore a collarless white silk shirt, baggy black trousers, monogrammed velvet slippers. The shirt was unbuttoned halfway to his waist, and the long V of the neckline showed a hairless, tightly muscled chest. “You don’t look bad yourself,” she told him huskily.
He led her into the loft-size living room. “Welcome to my fantasy,” he said.
Her mouth dropped open as she looked around.
Like his downtown office, his uptown living room was carved out of two entire floors, and two walls of virtually seamless sheets of glass gave the impression that the double-height room was actually floating in midair, an effect amplified by the twilight sky in that hour between sunset and nightfall.
Twilight was reflected in the expanse of black granite floor on which Lucite-legged leather couches and chairs and ottomans appeared to float; twilight seemed to be absorbed by the collection of Bronze Age Cycladic art—faceless marble heads, smooth cups, and stylized figures—which were displayed on built-in lacquered black shelves; it seemed to glow from within the two-story-high, banisterless Lucite spiral stairs which wound their way up to the roof; it bathed the two giant bronze sphinxes on waist-high marble plinths like mysterious moonlight in the desert; it shimmered on the brushed steel of the ovoid chimney that hovered over a sleek black granite block that had been slightly hollowed; it bounced back off the glass tables and mirrorlike aluminum ceiling; it made the textured raw-concrete walls, into which fossil-like patterns had been pressed, a soaring space-age cave.
The room was unearthly silent, the city sounds kept at bay by multiple glazing. Only lulling Japanese koto music playing softly in the background could be heard.
“Whoo-ee!” was all Edwina could say. She was otherwise rendered absolutely speechless.
“Here, let me get your coat.”
“My co . . . Oh, of course.” Dreamily she slipped it off, her eyes everywhere at once.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, folding the fur over his arm. “I’ve got to check on something in the kitchen. Drinks and ice are over there.” He nodded toward a concrete counter that ran the length of one interior wall. “Help yourself.”
She walked toward it, her spike heels clicking on the mirrorlike granite. Two Lucite sinks were set into the concrete, with purposely exposed plumbing snaking into the wall. A celadon bowl, Yuan dynasty from the looks of it, served as an ice bucket. There was heavy Daum crystal and an open bottle of perfectly chilled Cristal.
She poured herself some champagne and looked around. “This place is something else,” she told Leo when he returned.
“Do you like it?” he asked, still smiling. “I designed it myself. That’s one of the advantages of putting up your own building. It gives you the freedom you need to get exactly what you want.”
“You own this building?” She didn’t know why that should surprise her, but it did.
“Since it’s a condominium, I guess you’d have to say everybody who lives here owns a part of it. But I built it, financed it, and put it up. And one of my companies sold the apartments.”
“And naturally you kept the best one for yourself,” she added slyly.
“That I did,” he admitted with a laugh, and went to get himself a glass of champagne.
A half-smile crept to her lips. “Tell me, Leo,” she said. “Is there any pie you don’t have your fingers in?”
“Sure.” His grin blazed whitely. “Whatever’s unprofitable.” He raised his glass and looked at her solemnly. “To the most beautiful woman in the world.”
She blushed. “To the world’s handsomest liar”—she held up her own glass—”and to everything that makes all of this possible.” The sweep of her glass encompassed the room.
“Amen. That I don’t mind drinking to.”
They sipped their champagne, their eyes on each other.
Edwina set her glass down. “Mind if I snoop? This place is fascinating.”
“Be my guest.” He gestured.
She wandered about, admiring the Cycladic art and the brilliant yin-and-yang mixture of modern furnishings and antiquities. “What’s upstairs?” She leaned her head back to stare up at the towering Lucite spiral.
“A sculpture garden. I’ll show it to you after we’ve eaten.”
They ate in the living room, casually curled up on a long glove-leather sofa. The platters were Chinese—exquisitely glazed Song dynasty dingyao plates. The food was Japanese—sushi he’d prepared himself with a bamboo press. And the wine was French—another bottle of vintage Cristal.
“Oh,
by the way,” she said casually, scooping up a mirugai with her chopsticks, “don’t get ticked off, but I donated twenty thousand dollars to the Southampton Showhouse.” She ate the giant clam fastidiously.
He stared at her. “Twenty thousand, did you say?”
She nodded and swallowed. “Don’t worry,” she said, motioning with her chopsticks. “It’s coming out of the public-relations budget, and it’s all tax-deductible.”
“Yes, but . . . a decorator’s showhouse? I thought we were peddling rags.”
“We are,” she said smugly, “but they’re planning a benefit fashion show to coincide with the showhouse opening. I know it’s still a long way down the road, but as soon as I found out about it, I jumped at the opportunity. The twenty thousand paved the way. Unbelievable, what money, all those beautiful, beautiful dollars, will do.”
“When’s the show supposed to take place?”
“That’s the beauty of it. Would you believe—over Memorial Day weekend?”
“You’re kidding!” He was incredulous.
“I kid you not. Just days before our official grand opening. It’ll tie in perfectly. However, you still haven’t heard the best of it.”
“There’s more?”
“Oh, a lot. Now, get ready. Here’s the real doozie.” She paused for dramatic effect.
“Yes?” He waited.
“Anouk de Riscal is the decorator showhouse chairperson!” she crooned.
“Then how on earth did you ever get her to agree to show your clothes? I mean, knowing how little love is lost between the two of you, I would have thought she’d fight it tooth and—”
Edwina smiled smugly. “She couldn’t, because you see, she doesn’t know—at least, not yet she doesn’t. Anouk left town for two weeks.”
“And you just happened to take advantage of the opportunity? By approaching the other committee members? Is that it?”
“All I did was drop a few vague hints.”
“About donating the money?”
“That’s right. And as thanks, they voted on it right away. Without waiting for Anouk to get back!”
“I can just see her returning to that bit of news!” He laughed. “You know,” he said admiringly, “you never cease to amaze me.” He shook his head wonderingly. “I don’t know how you do it. The publicity this event will generate couldn’t have been bought for ten times the donation you made.”
