Dressed to Kill

by Campbell Black

  Elliott nodded. “So far as I could tell. But then I didn’t follow her out of my reception room.”

  Marino stared at the guy a moment. “What was she seeing you for?”

  Elliott hesitated. “I have a confidence to protect, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Marino said. “And I’ve got a fucking murder to solve—”

  Elliott sighed. “She was having some marital difficulties. She was troubled by recurring dreams.”

  Bobbi. He felt some panic rise inside him, something he had to fight against to keep down. Bobbi. How could it be?

  “What kind of dreams? What kind of difficulties?” Marino asked.

  “Are you married?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see—”

  “Kids?”

  “Two sons, but I still don’t see—”

  “When was the last time you slept with your wife?”

  “I don’t see it’s any of your business,” Marino said.

  “Which is exactly how I feel about your questions concerning Kate Myers,” Elliott said.

  Marino smiled. He felt a surface of sweat, a filmy sheet, across his brow. He wiped it with the palm of his hand. He said, “Okay. I take the point. But I’m not asking the questions because I’ve got some weird hangup, Doctor. I’ve got a brutally murdered woman on my hands, and she’s past the point of being embarrassed by anything you might tell me about her.”

  “I’m not accustomed to discussing my cases, any of my cases, with outsiders,” Elliott said.

  Shit, Marino thought. The brick wall. The fence. And something frosty lying behind it all. “Look, I’m a cop. I’m trying to find something out here. I’m not asking for the hell of it, you know.” He looked at Elliott, remembering now other cases where shrinks had been involved, or where even some ordinary physician had played a part, and the difficulties in getting anything out of them. Blood from turnips, he thought. “I’ll ask in another way, Doctor. Was she looking to get killed?”

  “You mean was she suicidal?”

  “Right.”

  “No. She wasn’t.”

  “Why do you think she picked up this Lockman character? She didn’t know him from Adam. He might have been a homicidal nut.”

  Elliott said nothing.

  Marino, sighing, placed his hands square on the desk. He looked at his own plump fingers. “So he didn’t kill her. But the next one she picked up might have—”

  “Are you saying she might have wanted to get killed?”

  Marino shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s cruising around for some action. She allows herself to get picked up by a total stranger. Doesn’t that spell out some careless disregard for her own safety?”

  Elliott was silent again.

  Marino got up from his desk. He felt frustrated. He walked to the window of the office and stared out across the darkened alley. The questions, the pulling of teeth—he wished he could make other people understand how much he was drained by the whole process. It was like lighting damp candles in a black room, seeing only a shard of light before the wick failed you again. Okay, this Elliott has some oath of confidentiality, but to Marino it seemed that the priorities were wrong. The woman is dead, goddamn it, and if Liz Blake is telling the truth then there’s a loony out there, maybe ready to kill again. He turned, staring at the back of Elliott’s head.

  “So she runs into some psycho in an elevator,” Marino said. “Is that just by some great fucking coincidence?”

  “I don’t know,” Elliott said.

  “Or is this woman waiting for Kate Myers for some reason?”

  Elliott turned around, shrugged, lightly touched the tip of his chin with a finger.

  “Do you know any psychos, Doctor?”

  “I do some work in a clinic for the criminally insane,” Elliott said.

  “Could she have met one of these nuts in your office? Some kind of weirdo she turned on that followed her?”

  Elliott smiled for the first time. “All my dangerously disturbed patients are confined. They don’t come to my office.”

  “Is there any kind of chance? How about a new patient, for example? Do you always know they’re nuts when you see them at first? Can you always tell?”

  “You can’t always tell, of course . . .”

  Marino went slowly back to his desk. He sat on the edge of it, swinging one leg back and forth. “Are you protecting a patient, Doctor?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Isn’t it possible that maybe one of your patients this morning saw Kate Myers come in, then followed her when she left? Isn’t that possible?”

  “I think you’re going in quite the wrong direction, Lieutenant,” Elliott said.

  “Maybe my eyewitness should take a look at the patients you saw before Kate Myers. That way we could be sure my psycho isn’t your psycho, right?”

  Elliott shook his head. “I’m sorry. I have to protect—”

  “Yeah, the confidentiality of your patients. I know, I know. It’s a shame, because it means I’m going to have to waste some time getting a court order to check out your appointments book for this morning. Too bad we can’t cooperate together a little more readily . . .”

  “You can take my word,” Elliott said. “I’m not protecting anybody.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t take anybody’s word in this game, Doctor. It’s hard to believe, I guess, but sometimes people don’t always tell the truth.”

  Elliott got up. For a time he didn’t move from where he stood, inclining his head slightly as if he were listening for something. Marino watched him. It was a drag to go through the form-filling process of getting a court order for the appointments book, and it probably wouldn’t lead anyplace, just another vague possibility to be eliminated. He stood up and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  Elliott went out of the room.

  Marino sat back with his eyes closed, letting his mind go momentarily blank. But what came back to him, time and again, was the sneaking, nagging feeling that he’d accomplished nothing, that there were too many holes he’d failed to fill.

  His door opened. Niven stood there awkwardly in a uniform that seemed one size too small for him.

  Marino looked up.

  “Miss Blake didn’t recognize anybody,” Niven said. “What do you want me to do with her now?”

  “She can go home,” Marino said. He wanted to say: We can all go home. Instead, he shut his eyes again and leaned back in his chair, trying—as he always tried—to understand the mind of the killer. But this one was strange to him, a locked room he just didn’t have a key for, a door he couldn’t get to open. Eighteen different incisions, he thought.

  Eighteen.

  What kind of frenzy was that?

  5

  A police car took them home, Mike sitting hunched in the back near the window, his face bleached of color, his breathing heavy as if he might at any moment break down and sob. Peter sat close to him, wishing there was something he could say, something they might say to each other—like creating a bridge, a link, across the space of grief. He glanced at his stepfather, then he stared out of the window at the darkened city, at the neon lights that punched brilliantly colored holes through the blackness like distended stars. LEROY’S BAR & GRILL. A red sign hung in a window, advertising a beer. A couple of dark shapes stood outside, passing something between themselves. A joint maybe or a brown-bag of booze. ZUM ZUM—closed for the night. Then they were passing Madison Square Garden, where the sign advertised an equestrian show. Across the way a line of cabs waited outside a hotel. Funny how in the streetlights they looked more gray than yellow, gray and ghostly. The boy shut his eyes. He heard Mike sigh, then mutter something to himself. I don’t understand, I don’t understand . . . And then he’d taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was holding it up to his face in a strange way, as if he wanted to keep his grief hidden.

  Peter glanced again at his stepfather. For a moment he wanted to tell him what he’d heard Marino and Elliott tal
k about, but he knew it would hurt, it would hurt real bad.

  He remembered Elliott going inside the office, the door closing. He remembered how desperately he’d wanted to hear what was said between the two men. But he didn’t have anything in his satchel that would help, nothing he could press against the wall, so he’d gone to the toilet to look for a glass, only he couldn’t find one—just battered dixie cups, which he knew were useless. Then he’d noticed on one of the cop’s desks a dirty glass that, to judge from its appearance and smell, had contained milk several days ago. It was better than nothing, he thought. So he’d surreptitiously swiped the glass and pressed the open end of it to the wall of Marino’s office—sitting in such a way, his hand held to his head, that anybody passing would have assumed he was dejected, depressed—but he was listening, listening to the echoing sounds of Marino and Elliott, not understanding all of it, not liking the bits he did understand.

  Cruising around for some action . . .

  His mother! It didn’t sound like his mother, more like a stranger . . . Blonde with black glasses . . .

  Then something about a guy called Lockman, somebody that had just picked her up. How could she have let that happen?

  There was more stuff he couldn’t catch. The acoustics were bad, too many telephones ringing, a lot of vibration, too many people talking around him.

  Could she have met one of these nuts in your office?

  Some kind of weirdo . . .

  Some kind of weirdo that followed her?

  After that Mike had come back and there was a cop ready to drive them home. Now, beside him, Mike had taken the handkerchief away from his face. He turned towards Peter as if he wanted to say something, but his mouth opened and closed silently. Peter looked out just as the car was turning into the street where they lived. The apartment buildings appeared unusually dark and silent in the night, the lights that fell against curtained windows muted—like the whole world is mourning, he thought. Some kind of weirdo.

  The car slid to a stop. Mike didn’t get out immediately. Instead he sat staring at Peter, and the boy waited for something harsh to come from his stepfather’s mouth, recriminations, dead possibilities thrown accusingly up in his face: If you’d gone with her to the museum, if you’d met her and gone to lunch, it wouldn’t have happened. But there was nothing. Only a hollow expression on the man’s face, pale as the color of the handkerchief that lay in his fist like some huge crumpled flower.

  6

  Elliott switched on his desk lamp and sat down, gazing at the surface of the desk, not really seeing what lay there, not noticing the red light of his answering machine. It was wrong, he thought, wrong not to tell Marino about Bobbi, but even now he couldn’t make the connection between Bobbi and Kate Myers, as if the relationship were one last hurdle he wasn’t prepared to leap.

  How could he fail not to make it?

  A razor. A tall woman, blonde hair, black glasses.

  Wearily, he rubbed the side of his jaw, then he rose and crossed the floor to the window, which he pushed open. The night air was chill, refreshing, cleansing his damp skin. He looked at the sweat on his fingers. Wrong, he thought again, even under the circumstances of confidentiality, even given that ethical protection. A priest, he wondered, what would a priest do with a killer in his confessional? He wouldn’t talk. The same standards applied, didn’t they?

  He raised his hand to the windowpane, conscious of a vague tremor in his fingers. One couldn’t imagine such an event, such a tragic occurrence as that of Kate Myers dying under the savagery of an attack; nor could one imagine Bobbi doing it. He wondered if Marino had noticed anything, if some vague facial expression had given him away. Wrong, he thought. Was it wrong?

  He shook his head. He turned from the window and, taking a key from his pocket, opened a case under the bookshelf. Inside there was stacked a series of tapes. He flipped through them quickly, found the one he wanted then went to his casette machine and put it on. He pressed the fast-forward button, stopped it, then punched the PLAY key. The voice was garbled, indistinct, broken by sobbing and sighing. He leaned against the edge of his desk, listening. There was something eerie about hearing it now in this half-lit office in a silent building. It was almost as if he expected the door of the reception room to open, then footsteps, then Bobbi standing in the doorway . . .

  I don’t know what I ever did to you, I never did anything to you, I mean, maybe you just don’t give a shit, is that it, Elliott? Maybe . . . you don’t care about anything, maybe there isn’t a goddamn thing inside you that resembles anything human and kind . . . I asked you . . . how many times did I . . . beg you . . . ? You can’t count the times, then those nights when I wanted to die because you always refused me . . . You don’t know what I go through, nothing in all your goddamn books gives you any idea, does it? Nothing you read or hear lets you know what this kind of fucking hell is like, Elliott . . . I can’t keep begging and begging . . . I don’t have any fucking dignity left . . . You know what I think of you, Elliott? You know what name I call you . . . ?

  He pressed the STOP button. He tried to close the hysteria of the voice out of his mind. I did right, he thought. I did the correct damn thing. I didn’t make a mistake. He moved away from the desk, crossed the floor, rubbed the palms of his hands together. He heard some inner voice contradicting him now: You did wrong, Elliott, on two counts. You denied Bobbi what she wanted. Then you denied Marino his information. What does that make you?

  No, he thought.

  Close your eyes. It goes away. You can make it go away.

  Trembling, he picked up his address file. Somewhere there had to be a number for Bobbi. He couldn’t find it. Why couldn’t he find it? Damn. He pushed the file aside.

  What are you? On the same level as a priest?

  He pinched the skin at the top of his nose tightly.

  A headache. Nervous tension.

  He went into the bathroom. He found some Equanil in the medicine cabinet, swallowed two, lidded the bottle and put it back. They’d help for a time . . .

  Help what? he wondered.

  Help ease your feeling that Kate Myers died because of one of your patients? Because you failed that patient?

  No.

  Some other way.

  He sat behind his desk. I could call Marino, he thought.

  I could tell him I’m holding something back.

  You don’t know that for sure, do you?

  You’d have to be blind not to know.

  He leaned back in his chair. The room, the shadowy bookshelves, and the pale light from the lamp and the faint glow of the leather sofa, the room pressed in on him.

  He sighed. Kate didn’t die because of me. Didn’t die because I made a bad decision about Bobbi. Didn’t.

  But the accusing inner voice wasn’t going to be silenced easily. Now it seemed like the harsh ticking of some old clock inside him, reverberating in the skull, vibrating along the bone. You didn’t help Bobbi. You should have helped Bobbi. Now Kate is dead.

  He stared at the red light on the answering machine, reached forward, pressed the playback button. Beep. Doctor Elliott? This is Franklyn Harris, I’m stuck in Chicago, I can’t make our appointment tomorrow . . . Beep. This is Anne . . . I didn’t mean to be so abrupt before. Calling to say I’m sorry. Beep. But the tape was silent after that. Anne’s English accent stuck in his mind, an accent of the South Coast, the Home Counties, smoothed and polished and precise in its vowel sounds. He reached for the telephone, picked it up, began to punch out his home number. Then he stopped and dropped the receiver back in place.

  No message from Bobbi, he thought.

  No gloating insane message from her.

  Like what I did with your razor, shrink?

  He leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly. He knew that she would call, sooner or later she’d come through, sooner or later he’d hear that deranged voice laughing at him. He put his hand up to his forehead. Perspiration. A touch of pain. How could I tell Marino?
he wondered. How could I do that?

  He rose, walked to the bookshelf, picked up the Manhattan Yellow Pages. He flicked through them to the section he wanted, running his finger down the page . . . There was only one Levy listed as practising psychiatry in Manhattan. He wrote the address down in his notebook, closed the book. Tomorrow morning, he thought. Tomorrow morning he would go and see Levy about Bobbi.

  And say what?

  Say what exactly?

  He wasn’t sure.

  He went over to the sofa and sat down. Fatigue coursed through him, a sense of impending dark, but he knew he wouldn’t find sleep an easy thing.

  He knew, too, that it would be filled with dreams, dreams as involuntary as muscular spasms. The last thought he was conscious of, the last flicker that went through his mind, was the question of how far and how long you could protect a patient.

  He didn’t know the answer.

  FOUR

  1

  She had changed her clothes, but somehow she felt that the dead woman’s blood clung to her still, that even as she sat in the bar holding a glass of scotch between her hands other people could see stains on her. But that was stupid, she thought. Nobody saw anything. Nobody could. Even if there were still stains, it was too dark, too dim, for anybody to see anything. She sipped the scotch and smoked a cigarette, trying to relax. She told herself: Don’t spoil things. Don’t even think of Elliott now. He would be in deep trouble soon enough . . .

  She turned her head, tossing her hair lightly, and looked around the darkened room. Only last night she’d sat here with Walter, but why did it seem so long ago now? Walter was probably back in Pocatello by this time. She finished her drink, called for the bartender, ordered a second. There was a dryness at the back of her throat, but she wasn’t nervous the way she had been last night. Funny the way things change, she thought.

  And yet something bothered her.

  It was a small thing; it was like a piece of lint at the back of her mind. Like a faint distortion in a mirror.

  She smiled to herself.

  How easy it had been, how utterly simple to destroy, how weirdly fascinating to watch the way the razor had slipped through the folds of skin, slashing to bone, to sinew, slicing through the tuft of pubic hair in one wild downward swing. (No underwear. The cunt had no underwear.) A certain look in the eye, one of some inconceivable misunderstanding, one that turned to disbelief, then to pain, fear, and finally emptiness. She thought of that emptiness now. She thought of Elliott missing his razor. What will you tell the cops? she wondered. What will you say to them, shithead? Dipstick asshole. No. She’d promised herself. No Elliott.