by Jacob Stone
Blount had earlier found a footstool in what had been the wife’s closet. He got it, placed it under Trilling’s limp body, and knocked it over so it would look like the dead man had kicked it out from under him. After that he went downstairs to the study and used letterhead and a fountain pen from the desk to write a suicide note. He had brought along what Trilling had sent to his post office box, and he carefully mimicked Trilling’s small, neat print. The gist of the note was that Trilling was tortured by the knowledge that he could’ve saved his wife from the Nightmare Man if only he had woken up a minute earlier that fateful night, and that he didn’t see the point in living any longer without the only woman he’d ever loved. He didn’t sign the note. Suicide notes were seldom signed.
There was some truth in what he had told Trilling. He had heard whispers that a homicide detective was showing a sketch of the Nightmare Man to mobbed-up guys. This detective would only be doing that if he suspected Trilling of hiring a contract killer to orchestrate the Nightmare Man murders. Even so, the sketch didn’t look like Blount, and even if this detective had been able to get Trilling to talk, the client never knew his name, and Blount had one of those faces that blended into the crowd. In three weeks Blount would be moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to start a new life, and if Trilling had lived, it was doubtful he’d be able to cause Blount any trouble.
A contract killer assumes certain risks, and under normal circumstances Blount accepted that, but not with these Nightmare Man murders. These were different. He would do whatever was necessary to make sure his wife and boys never learned of his involvement. But that wasn’t why he killed Trilling. He did that because the man deserved to die. Blount might’ve carried out the assignment, but Trilling was the one who gave birth to the Nightmare Man and unleashed that evil into the world. What kind of man wants his wife murdered like that? Or agrees to have four innocent women butchered in the same manner? Because his wife might’ve sighed or rolled her eyes one too many times? Blount’s only regret was that he had to make Trilling’s death look like a suicide; otherwise, he would’ve gladly brought the Nightmare Man back one more time.
He’d been wearing leather gloves since entering Trilling’s home, so prints weren’t a concern. He read over the suicide note and was satisfied with it. A minute later he left the house from the same patio door he had entered after picking the lock, and disappeared into the night.
Chapter 39
Los Angeles, the present
“You were right about the guy being a hired gun,” Joe Penza said. “A hard case by the name of Ed Blount. He was a freelancer whose home base was in LA, but he did jobs throughout the country.”
Morris vaguely remembered the name. Back in 2001 he had looked at photos and mugshots of every suspected hitman, but he didn’t remember Blount resembling the 1984 sketch.
“He was arrested for capital murder,” Morris said as he pulled that fact from a deeply stored memory. “A contract killing.”
“That’s right. He was convicted, too.”
“You recognized Ed Blount from the sketch?”
“Forget that drawing,” Penza said. “The only thing that paper’s good for is picking up after your mutt. Ever hear of Vittorio Capotondi?”
“No.”
“That figures. He was well before your time.” Penza’s eyelids lowered and his facial muscles relaxed as he reminisced. “The man was a genius, a true craftsman. He made masks you couldn’t tell were masks unless you were right next to the guy wearing it. Blount would’ve had several made for himself, and he’d be wearing one if he was out doing a hit where he could be seen. So like I said, forget that drawing.”
“So let’s say the sketch is worthless—”
“Which I’m saying it is.”
“Okay, so how’d you know it’s Blount?”
Penza sat back heavily in his chair and began rubbing his thick lower lip with his thumb. “This is all off the record.”
“Yeah, we agreed to that already.”
“I still want you imagining me saying the word hypothetical over and over again so I don’t have to keep saying it.”
“Agreed.”
Penza breathed in deeply, inflating his barrel chest, then letting the air out slowly like a tire that had been punctured. He nodded to himself, as if making up his mind.
“After those ferkakte murders happened, my old man heard from a freelancer who was offered a job to kill a rich guy’s wife.”
Morris said, “The rich guy being Donald Trilling.”
“Yeah. This Trilling character had special requirements for how his wife had to be done. Some real sicko stuff that ended with her having a live rat stuffed down her throat. The freelancer turned it down. It was too sick for him to want anything to do with, but when Trilling’s wife turned out to be one of the women killed by this so-called Nightmare Man, he put two and two together and figured that someone else took on the job.”
“Name of the freelancer?”
“Uh uh. You don’t need it and you’re not getting it.”
“Okay. Forget that. How about you explain why this would matter to your old man or this anonymous freelancer?”
Penza’s jaw dropped as if he were incredulous. “You think we’re savages?” he asked. Anger flashed in his eyes, and his voice sounded strained as he explained, “There’s what’s right and what’s wrong. You want someone iced, okay, that’s your business, but you’re going to torture and kill four other women in a sicko way to hide the hit? That’s just wrong and can’t be tolerated. My old man thought so, and so did I.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “It had to be dealt with.”
“How’d you figure it was Blount?”
“My old man did some digging. I won’t say exactly what he found out, but it pointed to Blount, and it made sense he’d be the guy. I wasn’t kidding before what I said about him being a hard case. A guy with ice water instead of blood. When the client, Trilling, was found hung from his closet to make it look like a suicide, we knew for sure it was Blount.”
“Why was that?”
Penza smiled. “His signature move.”
“So it wasn’t just bad luck Blount got picked up for another hit?”
Penza’s smile stretched another inch. “Like I said, Blount had to be taken care of, but he wasn’t the type of guy you send a couple of boys after. You do that with a guy like him, and there’s a better chance your boys get sent back in pieces. Something else had to be done.”
“So you framed him.”
“Me, personally? Nah. But let’s just say Blount must’ve been surprised when the cops found a gun where they did. Or a shirt buried in the hamper with the target’s dried blood on it.”
Morris remembered something about Ed Blount from his research in 2001. “He died in prison,” he said.
“Yeah, he did,” Penza said. “When those murders started up again that second time, I wanted to see if any freelancers got the bright idea to hide a contract in those killings, because my old man was right. Someone willing to do that needs to be permanently shut down. I can guarantee you none of the women killed in 2001 had contracts on them. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but whoever took over for Blount did so for strictly personal reasons, not business.”
Chapter 40
Morris stopped off at an all-night supermarket on the way home. This detour cost him ten minutes, and it was a few minutes after two a.m. when he pulled into his driveway. Parker consented to let out a soft moan but otherwise didn’t move. Even when Morris got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side so he could open the door, the bull terrier remained curled up on the seat. Morris studied Parker lying like a lump, as if the bull terrier lacked the energy to move as much as a muscle. Morris sat on his heels to put him closer to eye level with the dog and rubbed Parker’s snout. “You look beat,” he said.
Parker opened his eyes, but showed no
intention of budging.
“Too beat to move, huh?” Morris asked. “I can’t blame you. It’s been a long day, and tiring, with you racing halfway up a mountain. If you want to sleep here, that’s okay with me. It’s a shame, though, you’ll be missing out on scrambled eggs and bacon.”
The word bacon did the trick. Parker grunted several times as he pushed himself to his feet and jumped out of the car. Morris got the groceries out of the trunk, and Parker plodded alongside him as they made their way to the front door.
A light was on in the living room. Natalie was waiting up for them, her feet curled under her as she sat on the couch reading a book she had started the other day, an allegorical fable about a man who believed he had to weed a field every day or the world would come to an end. Morris saw that she had his spare .32-caliber pistol on the couch next to her and was glad to see she had taken his warning seriously.
Parker might’ve been worn out, but he worked up enough energy to scamper over to Natalie, his body squirming and tail wagging as she hugged him around his thick neck. Morris bent over her for a kiss, and to retrieve the gun and drop it in his jacket pocket.
“So is the guy crazy or is he really saving the world each day?” he asked, referring to the book.
“I don’t know yet. The author’s being awfully cagey about it. I think he’s going to make me wait until the last page to find out.”
She waved Morris over for a more satisfying kiss than the peck he had given her while she was occupied with Parker, and he complied.
“That’s better,” she said, her eyes half-closed. “Almost worth staying up for. What’s in the grocery bag?”
“It was supposed to be tomorrow’s breakfast, but I promised the little guy I’d cook up some bacon and eggs now.” The word bacon elicited another grunt from Parker, and Morris good-naturedly thumped the dog on the side. “The only way I was getting him out of the car was by bribing him or carrying him, and I didn’t feel up to carrying him. You want me to cook you up some?”
“Sounds good.”
Natalie joined Morris and Parker in the kitchen. She started a pot of chamomile tea for them while he layered strips of bacon into a frying pan. He would’ve preferred coffee, but he wasn’t going to suggest that at this hour and have Natalie throw a potholder at his head. As it was he planned to be up by six so he’d be at MBI by seven, and if he was lucky he’d catch three hours of sleep. While he kept a watch on the bacon, he told Natalie about what Big Joe Penza had told him.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
“He wasn’t intentionally lying.”
“But was he telling the truth?”
Morris said, “Some of it, certainly. My dad was convinced Donald Trilling hired a contract killer for his wife, and what Penza said adds up. Whether he’s right about Ed Blount, I don’t know. We’ll have to look into it and see what we can find.”
“Then what?”
A weariness had crept into Morris’s eyes. “If Blount invented the Nightmare Man, we’ll have to figure out who he told his secret to.”
The first batch of bacon had fried to the crispness Morris and Natalie liked, which was fine with Parker since he wasn’t picky about how the bacon was cooked so long as he got some. Morris used a spatula to get the bacon out of the pan and onto folded paper towels so the paper would soak up the grease. He poured the grease from the pan into an empty coffee can and started up another batch of bacon. Parker was lying on the floor, too tired to bother mooching, and Natalie looked like she was too absorbed in thinking about what Morris had told her to ask any more questions. For several minutes the only sounds in the kitchen were the refrigerator humming and bacon sizzling. Once the second batch was done, Morris poured out half the remaining bacon grease from the frying pan and used what was left, mixed with a pat of butter, for the scrambled eggs.
“The secret of Chef Morris,” Natalie observed.
“It’s what makes them so good.”
“And so fattening.”
Morris said, “You only live once.”
The eggs cooked quickly, and Morris spooned portions for himself and Natalie onto plates and put Parker’s into his bowl. The bull terrier groaned like an old man as he pushed himself to his feet and plodded over to the late-night snack.
“The little guy’s really dragging,” Natalie said, smiling wistfully as she watched Parker. “He’s chewing his food instead of inhaling it.”
“I never thought I’d see that.” Morris fought off a yawn and the urge to close his eyes. The day was catching up to him as well. He probably could’ve had high-octane coffee instead of the herbal tea without it costing him any sleep.
Natalie was looking at him with concern. “You’re going to have another busy day tomorrow,” she noted.
“I expect so,” Morris agreed.
Chapter 41
The moonfaced woman with the mousy brown hair never suspected she was being followed. The freak had waited for her across the street from her apartment building, then shadowed her after she stepped outside. He kept his distance, watching as she hummed to herself, oblivious to the world around her, even to the strangers she passed. Head in the clouds. That’s what his dear departed mother would’ve said. He was being far more careful than he needed to be, and he snickered thinking of how he’d have to poke her in the back before she’d notice him. But he didn’t poke her. Instead, he watched as she entered the bakery four blocks from where she lived.
He had brought along field glasses, and he used them to spy inside the bakery and see that she was sitting at a table facing away from the door. She wouldn’t see him if he were to go in there, and there wasn’t any reason for him not to, especially since a chocolate croissant and cappuccino would really hit the spot right then. He might’ve been a freak, but he liked the niceties of life. He crossed the street, walked into the bakery, and took a table so he could surreptitiously watch her.
A waitress came over. He could see worry lines creeping around her eyes and mouth, and he knew what must’ve been on her mind. He wanted to tell her not to worry about the Nightmare Man, that she wasn’t going to be one of his victims, but it would’ve sounded crazy if he had said that. So he smiled sweetly at her, but it was insulting the way she reacted. It was almost as if he had jumped at her and yelled boo. Outwardly, he didn’t look like a freak. Clean-cut, dressed nicely, some would even say good-looking. But the waitress had somehow seen him for what he really was. Well, that was just too bad. He had tried being nice. No one could say otherwise. He looked away from her and turned his attention to the moonfaced woman he had followed. Rosalyn Krate. The woman who was ordained to be the Nightmare Man’s fifth victim.
Rosalyn was sitting alone. That wasn’t true two days ago. He had followed her that day to the bakery, but it was later in the morning when she got there and the bakery was already crowded. He didn’t think she’d be able to get a table, so he didn’t risk venturing inside, thinking there’d be too great a chance she’d see him. Instead he was content with watching her through field glasses. But she had been bold, joining another woman at a table. When he recognized who the woman was, he laughed so hard that it brought tears to his eyes. The audacity of it was really quite remarkable.
The waitress returned with a croissant and cappuccino. She seemed especially anxious when she dropped the food off at his table, as if she were still spooked by his smile, or possibly what she believed she saw inside him. Women. What are you going to do?
He took a bite of the croissant. Tasty, yes indeed. It looked like Rosalyn had ordered a bran muffin and coffee. Doubtful she’d be finding her muffin as tasty as the croissant. Really a shame. She should be living it up. It wasn’t as if she had that many breakfasts left. By his count, fifteen, assuming she didn’t skip any.
The thought struck him that he knew exactly how and when she was going to die. It was mind-blowing in a way. Sure, there were inmat
es on death row you could say the same about, but some of them would get reprieves, or at least there was a chance the governor of their state would step in and delay the inevitable. And of course, there were those with illnesses or severe injuries whose days, even minutes, were numbered. But this was different. Rosalyn was a healthy, relatively young woman, yet her fate was cast in stone. Late at night on October nineteenth her torture would begin, and sometime in the early hours of October twentieth she would be expiring. After her glorious death, the Nightmare Man would be disappearing once again. Of course, you can’t keep a good man down, and in 2035 the Nightmare Man would be returning. New victims would be chosen and the bloody cycle would start all over again.
The thought of it gave him goose bumps.
He glanced at his watch and was disappointed to see it was already time for him to leave. After all, he was a busy freak with things to do and people to see.
Chapter 42
Extra chairs had to be brought into MBI’s lone conference room, leaving barely any elbow room around the long, oval-shaped table as the occupants finished up their bagels and cream cheese and drank coffee. While it might’ve been a tight squeeze, they at least didn’t have to worry about a persistent bull terrier mooching from them, since Morris had left Parker with Natalie that morning. He didn’t have the heart to drag Parker out of the house, and he figured the dog could benefit from taking it easy and spending a day snoozing by Natalie’s feet. Along with MBI’s full crew and the four LAPD detectives who’d been assigned to the investigation were Doug Gilman, LA Police Commissioner Martin Hadley, FBI profiler Gloria Finston, and chief medical examiner Roger Smichen.
