Fatal Exchange

by Russell Blake

  Here was a perp perennially addled by meth, whose dwelling was unkempt and disorganized and whose body was ravaged by signs of addiction, and yet he’d been able to pull off four murders in public places within two weeks of each other using wildly innovative techniques for the killings, without slipping up anywhere.

  It was possible, but it didn’t fit the scumbag he’d interviewed and the shithole he’d spent most of yesterday searching. The apartment was clearly the abode of a meth user who was high most of the time, who lacked self-awareness and consequently also lacked attention to fine detail.

  The killings had been the work of a ritualist, someone who placed importance on repetition and minutia, whose internal world was highly organized and rich in imagery. He’d kept to an aggressive schedule, hadn’t made any mistakes, and had obviously aroused no suspicion in his victims. Turbo looked exactly like what he was—a fuck-up on the edge, propping himself up with chemicals.

  The killings just didn’t feel like Turbo to Ron once he’d seen his place and gotten more sense of his character. It was a nuance, but an important one.

  “You’ve been doing it a long time, Ron; if this isn’t lining up for you, dig some more,” Tess advised. She didn’t want to push him, but she also wanted to tell him what she’d remembered. “Loca mentioned having a dinner date with someone from Red Cap, but never said who or when, just that he was different away from work. That doesn’t sound like Turbo, does it? I can’t see her going anywhere with a scumbag like that, or him being different off-hours.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “I just remembered yesterday. It didn’t seem like anything until you told me it was Turbo, and then it didn’t fit and it became important.”

  “I’ll say. As far as I can tell, he was a junkie dirtball 24/7.” The little voice in his head that was singing “maybe you’ve got this wrong” was quickly becoming a Greek chorus. “I just don’t buy it in my heart, you know? I feel like I’ve been played by an intellect far more developed and malevolent than Turbo—not that he wasn’t a wrong number.”

  “Ron, you’ve got an algorithm you’ve developed for these serial killers based on input you’ve accumulated over time. Now you’ve fed the facts of the case into that algorithm, and what comes out the other side isn’t Turbo. Am I missing something?” Tess had distilled it; if the algorithm came up with someone different, then the serial was someone different, and Turbo was a set-up.

  Simple.

  She had a rigorous and logical way of viewing situations that reminded him of Amy, except Tess was wearing board shorts and a tank top this morning and looked like his wildest fantasy. That was a pretty important distinction from where he was sitting at the moment.

  He reluctantly went into his office after they were done, and she went for a ride around the island. The day was cool for late summer, and she planned on taking advantage of it; she still had a lot of thinking to do. A ride was useful for processing and bringing things into perspective.

  She was glad Ron was the type of guy who’d stand by his principles and stay on something everyone else had put to bed. She didn’t know why she gave a shit, but she did. Tess realized she was enjoying their time together far more than most of her time with her boyfriends. He looked at her in a way she found engaging, and spoke to her as if their interactions really mattered, a lot, all the time. He was far more intense than she’d originally thought, which intrigued her. Tess was still dealing with all the killings and wasn’t anxious to jump into anything, but there was something palpable between them. She wasn’t prepared to devote any more thought to it at the moment, though.

  For now, she just needed to ride.

  * * *

  Ron pored over his notes on all the Red Cap employees again, looking for holes in their histories or stories. It seemed none of them had been with the company for more than a couple of years. Even Frank had initially been there for a decade but then dropped off the map, reappearing in the city two and a half years ago and resuming with the company. It was an odd industry where transience was the norm, where you were dealing with people who couldn’t even keep fast food jobs on a steady basis.

  When he’d considered following the women instead of the men, one of his thoughts had been that the serial could have been one of the females. Very unlikely, but he considered the absence of any sexual molestation, and thought the removal of the breasts and hair could have been a way of expressing anger at other girls. He’d also calculated the number of officers required to follow the fifty-something male employees all night and concluded it was far too large a project—especially now, given they had no evidence that Turbo wasn’t the perp. Ron had a hunch, but the NYPD didn’t mobilize hundreds of officers on hunches.

  He was the only one in his section working, reading the backgrounds probing for anything suspicious—or rather, more suspicious—than he’d seen before. He’d discounted Frank as a possibility due to his age, but his recollections about the Zodiac killer had gotten him thinking—that one had never been caught, and would be about Frank’s age now. He idly wondered if Frank had lived in the Bay Area in the late sixties–early seventies. Many had, since Haight-Ashbury had been the center of the flower-power movement, so Ron made a note to ask him if he’d ever been there.

  Stu was not particularly suspicious, sort of a non-entity in terms of personality, although he’d been detached and quirky in the interview. He’d been in and out of jobs in New York for the last two years, settling at Red Cap a year ago. Before that he’d drifted around, spent some time in Milwaukee six or seven years ago judging from a few traffic violations, but other than those he didn’t have a record, so he’d managed to keep his nose clean.

  Luis was a definite maybe, in that he had a lot of anger and was skittish during his meeting. His background had big gaps in it as well, and there was no accounting for two of the last four years. He’d shown up on the employment rolls in New York a couple years ago but had been off the radar for a long stretch before that. Having spent time in jail, he’d naturally be anti-social to members of law enforcement, so it didn’t necessarily mean much, but Ron got a creepy feeling from him, like he was ready to jump across the table and start swinging. He also looked like a crackhead—had that slightly manic thing going.

  Tiny made him uncomfortable. There was something off about him. He seemed like he had some kind of inner dialogue going while Ron interviewed him, and gave the impression of being not quite present during the interview. When Ron and Tess had been discussing his A-list of suspects, she’d told him Tiny was well-known in the crew for enjoying psychedelics and being “loco,” in the parlance of the street. It didn’t make him a serial, but it did bear looking into his story a little closer. He was also an ex-con and had gaps in his background from before two years ago.

  Tess had told him Dirter was just bugfuck crazy, but probably harmless, in her opinion. He was always going on about his latest adventure being high or getting into a fight—the punk rock ethos in action.

  That brought him up short. The punk rock ethos. Punk rock.

  There was something he hadn’t considered carefully enough. What if there was a connection between his current serial and the punk rock murders? He flipped open that file and went through the case history, reading carefully.

  The girls had all overdosed on heroin prior to being mutilated—a drug killing prior to the butchery, and no sexual assault. Those were some strong coincidental similarities, and Ron had learned to be skeptical of coincidences. He decided to check and see if any of the lads had been in Pennsylvania at that time; it wasn’t proof of anything, but it would sure go a long way to pointing him in the right direction if one of his boys had been there when the punk chicks were being slaughtered.

  His line rang, and Amy’s voice greeted him.

  “I thought I was the only one working today. What are you doing in?” she asked.

  “I’m going over some files. I still don’t feel a hundred percent about Turbo being
the serial, Amy.”

  “Well, it won’t sway you either way, but I got a return on the screen for the substance that killed him. It was meth, but much stronger than you’d see on the street. This was super meth, uncut. It wouldn’t necessarily have killed anyone snorting it, but the odds are high it would have at least caused a stroke or blackout. He couldn’t have known what he was snorting.” Amy was also a little suspicious.

  “It’s possible he was sampling something new, didn’t know how pure it was—or he could have been committing suicide, couldn’t live with his evil deeds. Or he was slipped something guaranteed to incapacitate him if not kill him, and given a hot shot later. He did have track marks in with all the tats.” Ron had learned Turbo had been on the needle when he’d gone over the body. Full sleeve tattoos made an effective cover for casual intravenous drug use.

  “So we’re back to having no reason to doubt he’s the bad guy, but small hints he might not be. The chief won’t like continuing an investigation that’s already closed, not on data this iffy, Ron.”

  She had a point. Still, a little background checking never hurt, especially if he was doing it on his own time.

  “Are you doing anything for dinner tonight?” Amy asked.

  Damn. He hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Actually I am, Amy. I have a houseguest for the weekend, and I’m tied up. I really appreciate your thinking about me. Can I take a rain check for next week?”

  “Sure, Ron, sure.” And then the left hook. “That houseguest… It wouldn’t happen to be a former witness who needs a strong shoulder to cry on, would it?” What was she, psychic? How could he answer that one without looking like a complete predator?

  “Come on, Amy, do I strike you as that kind of guy? Seriously? I just have other obligations. Let’s do it next week, okay?” That seemed like a good feint. Use the opponent’s energy to pull them past you, grasshopper; their strength becomes yours.

  “Okay, Ron, next week.” She sounded a little hurt. “I noticed you didn’t answer my question. Good luck with the investigation.” She hung up.

  Ron felt bad, but he had nothing to be ashamed of—Amy and he weren’t in a relationship, hell, they hadn’t even had a first kiss. What right did she have to take a proprietary stance with him? He was a free man, and could do what he wanted.

  He tried to work up his righteous indignation, but couldn’t generate enough lift to get it off the ground.

  Resignedly returning to the Red Cap files, he reviewed all their histories again, with a new perspective now that he was considering the possible punk rock connection. Scanning them, he felt his heart flutter for a second. One of the suspects had been in Pennsylvania at the right time.

  Now all he had to do was come up with even a shred of proof for an alternative theory. Amy was right—once a case was closed it was likely to stay closed unless something very big came along. And hunches didn’t qualify.

  He wanted to bounce it off of someone, but all his colleagues were gone today. Shit.

  He called Tess. Why not?

  She sounded out of breath when she answered.

  “Hey, Ron. What’s up?”

  “You still out riding?”

  “Yeah, it’s a beautiful day.”

  He told her about his suspicion.

  “Wow. That’s…it sounds unbelievable. Really. So what are you going to do?” Tess sounded strange, but it could have just been the exertion of carrying on a conversation while pedaling the pavement.

  “I don’t know. Right now, barring a miracle, he might get away with committing the perfect crime. He doesn’t strike me as the sort who’d crack under interrogation, so getting a confession’s unlikely. And the commissioner won’t reopen a case like this on a coincidence, won’t throw any resources at it. I might be hosed.” Ron sounded dejected.

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with something, Ron.” She sounded unconvinced.

  “Yeah, well, I hope so. I don’t have anything solid to go on, but I’ve got a bad vibe about this.”

  “I know what you mean. It was awfully convenient how everything came together. I mean, you didn’t even really nab Turbo, did you? He was sort of delivered on a platter,” Tess said. Good point.

  “That’s the problem. But I’m the only one that thinks so.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have your job.” They talked for another minute and then disconnected.

  * * *

  Tess considered the call. It all fit. In fact, now that she had all the pieces, she was sure of it. Candy would have been stupid enough to hook up with him if there was enough of a chemical incentive, although she still didn’t see what Loca could have been thinking. Maybe he transformed into something completely unexpected after work. Who knew?

  One thing she did know was she was still in danger—she’d noticed the way he looked at her, and understood that a sick fuck who butchered girls for fun wouldn’t be able to stop. It was a matter of when, not if, he started again. And she had a feeling she’d be one of the next targets. Couldn’t say how she knew, but she was one hundred percent sure of it.

  As she rode, a plan began to form. If Ron couldn’t protect her, then maybe it wasn’t safe to depend on the police for anything. So far they hadn’t protected anyone; not Loca, not Candy, not the girl from the other courier company, nor the girl from the club. Hell, the only thing they’d done well was throw a press conference after finding an OD’d junkie.

  No, she couldn’t expect much from that direction.

  The glimmering of a strategy took shape. It would be hard, but not impossible, and could solve several problems. She’d have to make some calls when she got home—or rather, to Ron’s—and see what she could organize. Her days of waiting for the hammer to drop on her were over. She was going to have to stay proactive on all fronts to stay alive. It was time to go on the offensive and fight back—eat or be eaten.

  * * *

  The Asians were watching Tess’s loft from a nearby coffee bar, patient, sure of themselves. Headquarters had secured an address within a few hours of identifying her, so all they had to do now was wait. They’d been there since 6:00 am and they knew she’d eventually appear. Breaking into her loft had been discussed, but dismissed as unnecessary—there was no rush, and she had to come out or come home sooner or later.

  The taller man was in considerable pain from the surgery and dental work. The tongue would eventually recover, although the Burmese doctor who worked on him had warned he would have permanent numbness and loss of smell and taste. He’d sutured him and given him two bags of plasma to help with the blood loss, and then the dentist had gotten involved.

  That had been a mess. Dental care was non-existent in Myanmar, so his gums were in terrible condition and wouldn’t stop bleeding, making the repairs difficult. They’d had to extract one of the damaged teeth, but they were able to do primitive caps on the other few. Still, he was in pain, and the Percodan made him fuzzy, which he knew was dangerous. Then again, she was a twenty-eight-year-old bike messenger—this wasn’t guerrilla warfare. She’d caught him off guard with the headbutt using the helmet; that wasn’t going to happen twice. He’d make sure she paid ten times over for every twinge of pain he’d endured.

  His companion sat outdoors with him, smoking and sipping an espresso. The taller man was sucking down fruit juice with a straw for his nutrition—he wouldn’t be eating solid food for some time. It was another hot day, and the streets weren’t busy, so they had no concern about missing her. The taller man just hoped they would have enough time and privacy to fully savor their work, perhaps enjoy some fringe benefits from their interrogation. He had always had a spot in his heart for the ladies; this one would receive the full treatment.

  If only his goddamn mouth didn’t hurt so badly.

  * * *

  At around 4:00, both men came alert—the girl was walking down the street towards the loft, carrying a bright red satchel and accompanied by two men, both black, and very big.

  The smaller man
looked at the taller one. It would be hard to take these two out with him in a weakened condition. The best they could do was observe and hope for a break of some sort. At least they had her in sight.

  That changed when she entered her loft with one of the men, the bigger of the two, dreadlocked and menacing looking. The second man loitered outside radiating street danger. The girl and the larger man emerged in five minutes holding the satchel, now obviously full, bulging—perfect size to fit a million dollars in, the two thought to themselves simultaneously.

  They didn’t know what to make of this; was it possible the girl had removed the cash from the box, and was planning on moving it or exchanging it for something? It certainly seemed odd she was being flanked by two thugs, although that could have been as a result of the attack at the shop. They exchanged glances, and got up casually to follow the trio as they made their way down the street.

  * * *

  Duff’s phone went off as they walked.

  “Yeah, what up,” he answered.

  “You got two on ya booty, my man. ’Bout a hundred yards behind you.”

  “Got it.” He disconnected, and told Tess she’d guessed right; they had company. She looked tense but determined.

  So far, so good.

  * * *

  The Asians followed at a discrete distance as the three walked block after block, until they stopped in front of a run-down turn-of-the-century brownstone. Most of the buildings were covered with graffiti, and the stink from accumulated garbage was overwhelming—the residents had taken to piling up bags of refuse on the sidewalks as the garbage strike persisted. They watched as Tess and the two men walked up the stairs to the front door, loitering on the stoop while the girl made a call.