by John Lutz
“You think?” Pearl asked, glancing at Fedderman.
“Looks that way,” Helen said. “The dismemberments were neatly done, but apparently not by someone with a medical background. He might have practiced on animals. Possibly on family pets.”
“Jesus!” Fedderman said. He swiped his shirtsleeve across his mouth. “Will I never get used to these assholes?”
Helen smiled at him. “It’s good that you don’t.” She sat back as best she could in the rigid chair.
“That’s all you can give us?” Renz asked.
“I’m afraid so, at this point. It would be good to have entire bodies, maybe a witness or two. Oh, there is one other thing. He wants you to know both women were killed by him—that’s why he used the same gun.”
“And the stake?”
“I don’t know about the stake. Especially after death. Some of this doesn’t yet add up. There’s something especially creepy about this killer.”
“They’re all sickos,” Pearl said.
“That’s not the medical term I’d use, but it’s fairly accurate,” Helen said. “This guy, though—and we all know the killer’s almost certainly a guy—promises to be particularly interesting. His mental processes might be unfathomable, even after he’s caught and studied. For instance, he hides the torsos, but not so well that he doesn’t want them found.”
“Trophies,” Fedderman said.
“No. More like his calling card. But trophies aren’t uncommon. Maybe he’s keeping the heads as his trophies.”
Pearl took a noisy gulp of her coffee, burning her tongue.
“This guy” Helen crossed her legs tighter—“one thing’s for sure about him, he’s a very special case.”
Tonight he’d just arrived home after a weekend of doing business in London. Whenever Shellie asked David about his business, she got the same vague answers, but she was less and less concerned. She was convinced now that David was a good man. Whatever he was involved in was sure to be benign and legal. He was simply one of those men who wanted a firewall between home life and business. Between love and the real and ugly world outside of love. Shellie understood that. She felt the same way herself.
Her wardrobe had grown and improved since she had moved in with David. She had on the navy blue dress she knew he liked, bone high-heeled pumps, a double strand of pearls around her neck. Her hair was artfully mussed, the way he liked it. The top button of her dress was undone to reveal a glimpse of cleavage, the way he liked it. Later they would make love, the way he liked it. She was the way he liked her, and she was happy. She was sure David was happy, too. They each had an interest in the other’s happiness. It had kind of surprised Shellie, the way she’d come to feel. Nothing in life pleased her more than pleasing David.
“Italian tonight?” he asked. Her favorite dishes were Italian. “I thought maybe Randisi’s.”
Randisi’s was a five-star restaurant on the East Side. Some thought it was the best Italian restaurant in the city.
“Sounds wonderful.”
He smiled. “Good. I made a reservation.”
At the restaurant Shellie heard David tell the maitre d’ there was an eight o’clock reservation for Clyde. Shellie smiled. David always used the name Mr. Clyde when he made reservations, or simply the first name Clyde when asked to leave a name on a waiting list. It wasn’t a bad name, but it certainly didn’t fit his handsome, assured, and debonair presence. She looked at him, so well tailored in a dark blue suit, white-on-white shirt, gray silk tie. Not your usual Clyde. She felt a swell of pride. Her David.
“Mr. and Mrs. Clyde” were almost immediately shown to a good table near a wide window with a view of the East River.
They had martinis, then ordered antipasto and cannelloni. David asked for a good red wine. “To celebrate,” he said.
“What are we celebrating?” Shellie asked.
“My arrival home.”
“You’ve only been gone a weekend.”
“It’s always a cause for celebration when I return to you.”
“Am I not worth champagne?”
He grinned. “Shellie, Shellie. You must know you have me in your spell.” He leaned over the table, looking serious. “Do you want champagne?”
She shook her head no, feeling ashamed. “No, darling. I was only testing you.”
“Do I pass?”
“A-plus,” she said. They were talking like two people in a sophisticated play, she thought. This amused her and made her feel slightly silly simultaneously. The swank surroundings must be affecting them. Role playing again. Well, so what? That was all everyone actually did, when you came right down to it. She didn’t see what was wrong with that when she could see so much of what was right with it.
The food, as usual at Randisi’s, was wonderful. As was the wine. David knew how to choose.
Outside the restaurant, they were both a bit tipsy. Shellie leaned against David for support.
He was about to hail a cab when a gleaming dark car pulled to the curb near them. It was a big car, a Chrysler. They were on a one-way street, and the driver’s side was only a few feet away from the sidewalk. The window glided down.
Shellie assumed the driver would be with a service and he’d try to talk them into taking the car instead of climbing into a cab. She was surprised to see an attractive, hard-faced woman about forty with a gray buzz cut and no makeup. She wore a black pullover shirt with the collar turned up. Her arms were slim but muscular, and Shellie saw that the hand resting on the steering wheel was gloved. Driving gloves, she assumed. Maybe this was a professional driver and the big Chrysler was a car for hire.
“Need a ride, bro?” the woman asked, looking at David.
“I’ll be damned,” David said. “What are you doing here, Gloria?”
“I was on my way home and happened to see you. New York’s not so big that coincidences don’t sometimes occur.”
“Obviously not,” David said.
“Anyway, this is my neighborhood. Or at least I regularly drive through it.”
Now the woman looked at Shellie. She had dark eyes, deeply set and intense. “You must be Shellie.”
David squeezed Shellie’s arm. “This is my sister, Gloria, Shellie. The only person in New York I’ve told about us.”
“David and I always share the good things,” Gloria said. Her dark eyes took on a glitter in the reflected red light of the restaurant’s illuminated sign. “That’s the way it’s been since we were children. I know my brother well, and I haven’t seen him fall so hard for a woman in years. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
“Same here,” Shellie said. She moved forward, one foot off the curb, and shook the leather-gloved hand proffered through the open window. Gloria smiled at her, an unexpectedly beautiful smile that caused Shellie to smile back.
“Listen,” Gloria said, her dark glance darting from one to the other, “why don’t you two come up to my place and have a drink? Afterward, I’ll drive you home. I really do want to get to know you, Shellie. Everything I hear is so positive. Like, finally, you’re the one.”
Shellie felt a warm rush. That was always what she’d wanted to be to some man, what she was now—special, the one. She could hear David saying it to his sister. “She’s the one, Gloria.”
“Maybe some other time,” is what he was saying to Gloria now.
Shellie tugged at his arm. “It’s okay, David. We have time.”
He was shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“What are you, ashamed of me?” Gloria asked. She seemed amused by the idea.
“You know better than that, Gloria.”
“Then don’t be so damned secretive, David. The way you’ve been bragging about this woman to me, I should think you’d want us to get to know one another.” Her dark eyes fixed on Shellie. “I mean it, Shellie. This brother of mine is gaga for you. We really should talk about him for a change.”
“She has a point, David.”
He mo
ved closer and looked down at Shellie. There was a strained expression in his face she hadn’t seen before. The wine, maybe. They’d certainly had enough of it. “You’re sure?”
“It sounds wonderful. Your sister!” Family. “We really should get acquainted.”
After a slight hesitation, he smiled. “Okay. As long as you two don’t gang up on me.”
He opened the big sedan’s rear door and let Shellie enter first. Then he took a seat beside her. There was over a foot of space between them on the seat. It was as if David didn’t want to demonstrate his affection for her in front of his sister by sitting too close.
As Gloria pushed the selector to “drive” and the car pulled away from the curb, Shellie noticed a pungent, brackish smell.
“Do you smoke?” she asked Gloria, without thinking. “Not that I mean to pry.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“I’m afraid so. Unless somebody else who smokes has been in the car recently.”
Shellie saw Gloria’s right cheek change contour in the shadows, maybe a smile.
“I thought you might be asking for a cigarette,” Gloria said.
“No, I don’t smoke. Not that it’s any of my business whether or not you do. I wasn’t meaning to be judgmental.”
Gloria laughed, concentrating on her driving and looking straight ahead. She had the long neck and erect posture of a ballet dancer, as if an invisible string were attached to the top of her head and constantly tugging her upright in case she even thought about slumping. “That’s okay. You caught me. Tobacco’s my only vice. I’ve been trying to quit. David will tell you, I’ve tried off and on for years.”
“Those damned things are going to kill you, Gloria,” David said.
Gloria managed to shrug her narrow, hard shoulders as she spun the steering wheel to make a sharp right turn.
“That’s okay,” she said. “If they don’t, something else surely will.”
10
Life could be so good it almost hurt. It prompted Shellie to nestle close to David as Gloria jockeyed the big Chrysler north on Broadway. The car drove smoothly and seemed to glide over the potholes that dotted the street. The evening had cooled, but the warmth of the car’s interior, and of the wine she’d earlier consumed, made Shellie deliciously drowsy.
The sound of a blaring horn jolted her alert. She opened her eyes and realized Gloria had been the one leaning on the horn.
A cab that had pulled past the Chrysler was swerving in front of it, seemingly inches off its front bumper.
“Jerkoff!” Gloria said softly but vehemently.
“New York cabbies, that’s all,” David said lazily. “You oughta be used to them.”
“Being used to them doesn’t mean I don’t hope they should all come down with the plague.” She raised her voice. “Lord, deliver to them locusts and fire and sickness, and let them drive fareless through eternity.”
David chuckled and held Shellie closer in the softly upholstered backseat. “Did I mention to you Sis has a bit of a temper?”
“I hope it isn’t hereditary,” Shellie said. She saw with relief that the cab had pulled a safe distance ahead.
“David fights a constant battle with his genes,” Gloria said, from the front seat. “Not to mention the devil. Or maybe it’s all the same thing.”
The cab’s brake lights flared and it slowed abruptly, causing Gloria to stand on the brakes and the big Chrysler to cant forward. “Now that this asshole’s ahead of me, he doesn’t wanna go fast,” Gloria said. “The guy’s a great argument for the legalization of hand grenades.”
“Ease up,” David said. “You don’t want to attract attention now.”
Shellie thought that was an odd thing for him to say, but she was too comfortable and drowsy to give it much thought. She decided her life was fully in Gloria’s hands and there wasn’t much she could do about it, so she closed her eyes, rested her head against David’s warm shoulder. There were times when the wisest and easiest course was to be a fatalist.
Shellie came awake when the car stopped. She heard a low rumbling louder than the engine. She’d dozed off, but had no idea how long she’d been sleeping.
David’s arm was around her. He realized she was awake and gave her a comforting squeeze.
They’d reached their destination. Through the wide front windshield Shellie saw a gray steel overhead door rising. Beyond it, headlights illuminated a dark area with some barrels and boxes stacked on one side. About fifty feet beyond them was a brick wall, obviously very old. The wall bulged inward. The bricks were no longer aligned and ledges of broken gray mortar protruded from between them like too much icing between layers of cake. There was an old wooden workbench with what looked like tools stacked on it in the shadows near the wall.
“Apartment’s upstairs,” Gloria explained, nudging the accelerator so the big Chrysler glided inside. “It’s furnished better than the garage.”
“Much better,” David said. “And it doesn’t smell like petroleum products.” He bowed his head and kissed Shellie’s just above the bridge of her nose.
The overhead door descended with a clatter and closed behind them. Gloria turned off the engine, and the garage was suddenly very quiet. The headlights were on time delay and stayed on. They deepened the shadows not directly in their twin beams.
In the dimness of the car’s interior, Gloria glanced over her shoulder. “Be careful getting out and walking. There’s a plastic drop cloth on the floor because the car leaks oil.” The Chrysler’s interior light came on, and before David or Shellie could move, Gloria climbed out of the car and threw a wall switch.
The light from two bare overhead bulbs didn’t cheer up the garage at all. The carelessly stacked fifty-gallon barrels were rusty. The cardboard boxes were taped, unlabeled, and coated with dust. Leaning against them was a tall roll of something opaque, maybe more plastic sheeting. There were no windows.
David got out of the car before Shellie and held the door open for her, like a gentleman. She was still a little drowsy, unsteady, and needed his support.
“Before we go upstairs,” he said, “I have a present for you.”
“Present?” Shellie saw Gloria get an unfolded black umbrella from where it was leaning in the shadows by the boxes and lay it on the car’s hood. The cooling engine began to tick.
“A surprise. Before we go upstairs for our drinks.”
For a wild second Shellie thought he might mean the umbrella, but that didn’t make sense.
The car’s headlights winked off, making the garage even gloomier. Shellie glanced around and didn’t see an elevator. No stairs, either. There must be a door somewhere leading to an elevator or stairwell.
“Let’s go upstairs and get comfortable and you can surprise her,” Gloria said. She was smiling at Shellie, her dark eyes intense. Whatever light there was in the garage, they reflected.
“Better right here,” David said, and again he kissed Shellie on the forehead. His lips felt cool.
“Stubborn,” Gloria said, shaking her head. “I guess that’s why you love him.”
“One reason,” Shellie said. She really did love David. More than anyone or anything at any time in her life.
Stepping back, David smiled down at her and reached into a pocket of his suit coat. Beyond him, Shellie noticed Gloria reaching for the umbrella as if to open it.
She didn’t open it. Instead, she withdrew a long, pointed wooden shaft that had been concealed inside it.
“Close your eyes, darling,” David said.
But Shellie didn’t. Even through her wine-induced drowsiness and love and trust for David, the feeling of security she always had in his presence, she realized something was very wrong. A tingle of fear played up her spine.
Foolish. Why should I be frightened? He’s here.
His hand emerged from his pocket not with a piece of jewelry or a gift box, but holding a small gun.
“David?”
He shot her through the heart.
Gloria tossed him the pointed shaft so it remained vertical in the air, as if she were a dancer tossing her partner a cane. Matching her stagecraft, he snatched it neatly with one hand. He felt the point with his index finger, testing for sharpness.
Gloria walked around closer to stand next to him over Shellie’s dead body.
“Look at her face,” she said. “She was surprised. You didn’t disappoint her.”
“I never disappoint the ladies,” David said.
He bent low with the sharpened section of broomstick, and then slowly straightened up without it.
Gloria was breathing hard as she stared down at the foot or so of wood protruding from Shellie.
“Don’t you ever wonder, David, how it would be if you didn’t wait until they were—?”
“Grab the other end of this plastic sheet and let’s move her so we can get busy.”
“For everything there is a purpose under the heavens,” Gloria said, still staring at the protruding section of broomstick. “Sometimes more than one purpose.”
“Aside from your cynicism, this is no time to go biblical on me.”
“It’s exactly the time,” she said, grinning. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
11
“Only an arm,” medical examiner Dr. Julius Nift said, kneeling alongside the pale object before him on the wet bricks. “Yet look at the attention it’s attracted. Some show. I wish somebody would give us a hand.”
Pearl despised Nift and his callous sense of humor, but she said nothing, because, sick jokes aside, she agreed with him. A hand would mean fingerprints. She wasn’t sure how much this arm that had been fished from the East River would be able to help them.
Nift continued to probe and examine the arm. He was a short, chesty man inflated by self-importance who dressed more like a banker than a doctor who spent a lot of time with corpses. He wore his black hair combed forward, resulting in sparse bangs that made him look Napoleonic. That was how Pearl thought of him, as a crude, cynical Napoleon. It was lucky the little bastard didn’t have an army.
