Eye of the Beholder

by David Ellis

  Hands. Hands. He knows it. Prints. No time to clean up. He left his prints. Prints on the door. They’ll know now. They’ll know it’s me.

  All right, Paul Riley. You’ve made your choice.

  I know how to hurt you.

  “BRANDON,” I say, fighting to wipe the darkness from my eyes. I struggle to my feet, staggering toward the cries in the front room of the condo. I find him in the fetal position, blood squirting between his fingers, which are covering his face.

  “Tell me where he cut you,” I say.

  “My cheek,” he shouts, his voice muffled with his hand. “Help me!”

  “Ambulance is coming. Hang on, Brandon, you’ll be okay.” I manage my way back to the kitchen and find a damp rag, resting in the sink. I bring it to Brandon and press it against his face. He tries to sit up, pressing the rag against the wound, blood all over his shirt and the rug. I squat over him, examining him. Looks like it’s just the cheek. Shouldn’t be fatal, but the face has a lot of blood vessels and you bleed like hell. “Keep the pressure on it.”

  “Oh, my God,” Brandon mumbles, gripping my sleeve with his free hand. “Oh, my God, thank—thank you.”

  “Do you know him?” I sit on the couch near him.

  “A—cop,” he manages, spitting the words out, unable to control his breathing.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s gone now, Brandon, okay? You’re safe. This guy was a cop? Or he said he was?”

  Brandon nods, his body shivering, both hands now on the rag against his cheek. This guy must have pretended to be a cop. I look back at the door, then around the place.

  “He wasn’t wearing gloves,” I say.

  “He knew about—he knew about the fa—the—”

  From outside the opened front door, I hear footsteps pounding up the staircase.

  “He knew about what, Brandon?” I ask, my face close to his. This doesn’t look fatal, but this may be the last chance I get to talk to him. “Brandon, this is important. He knew about—”

  “The father,” he says, as two uniformed police officers burst through the door.

  33

  You DON’T BARGE into the offices of Harland Bentley unannounced,” the commander says. ”Not based on your gut, Detective.”

  McDermott grips the phone, looking at Stoletti and shaking his head. It was her call—a good one—to get clearance before bursting in on one of the wealthiest men in the world. If something went south, the governor would hear about it, the mayor would hear about, the commander would hear about it, and McDermott would hear about it.

  “Sir, this is about his daughter—”

  “I understand what this is about. You can interview him, and you can do it fast. But you set it up. You don’t barge in. You tell him it’s urgent, but you show him every courtesy.”

  McDermott stays quiet. He’s afraid of what might come out of his mouth.

  “Listen, Mike—you tell me he’s a prime suspect, I give you a different answer. You may be onto something with what you’re telling me. But you might be dead wrong. This might be some psychopath who wants to bring back Terry Burgos’s crusade.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Set it up, Detective. Handle it right.”

  The line goes dead.

  “Shit.” McDermott hangs up the phone. “Christ on a bike, he wants me to stop a serial killer, but only if I mind my manners. Set it up,” he says to Stoletti. “We have to set it up.”

  He checks the message on his cell phone. A call from the morgue. Susan Dobbs returning his call.

  “Working late, Susan?” he says when she answers the phone.

  “I’m eating dinner, Mike. You called my cell phone. Don’t tell me it was an accident.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “I don’t know why I ever gave you that number.”

  “Because you’re a dedicated public servant.”

  “You were calling about the Ciancio autopsy?”

  “Yeah, it says there was an incision between the—hang on.” He grabs the autopsy report. “A postmortem incision at the base of the fourth and fifth tarsal phalange.”

  “Right. The fourth and fifth toes. There’s a web of skin between the fourth and fifth toes. He sliced it. After the guy was dead.”

  “Why you think he did that?”

  “You’re the cop. But it was deliberate, I’ll say that. You’d have to go out of your way to separate the two toes and make the incision. You don’t do that accidentally.”

  She’s right about that. Ciancio was wearing socks when he was found, tortured and murdered. The offender went to the trouble of making that incision after everything else he did to Ciancio and then putting the sock back on.

  Deliberate, like Susan Dobbs said. This offender isn’t doing anything by accident. He’s doing everything he wants to do. And he’s doing it well.

  PART OF THE JOB. It never goes as planned. You improvise. It’s what makes you good.

  The adult video store is boarded up, seemingly abandoned, but Leo knows that it’s open. He pushes through the door, walks past two aisles of magazines and videos, and heads directly to the counter.

  The man sitting behind the counter is thick through the neck and shoulders, reading a newspaper and mumbling under his breath.

  “Menja zovut Leonid,” Leo says, introducing himself.

  The man peeks over his paper with disinterested eyes. “Leonid?”

  “Da.”

  The man speaks through the newspaper, still poised over much of his face. “Kogda?”

  “Sejchas,” Leo answers. Now.

  The man directs him down the street, but Leo already knows. The warehouse has no sign, just a single unmarked door along the alley. Leo knocks on it. After several locks are opened, another oversized man, with a belly fighting to get out of a dirty white shirt, opens the door, turns his deeply set eyes past Leo, and lets him in.

  He smells bad. Like grease and booze. Booze and grease.

  Inside, stolen cars are being stripped for parts. The sounds of the equipment at work echo off the high ceiling. Even with the wide-open space, the smells of body odor and tobacco fill the air. Another reminder of Lefortovo. Men smoked continuously to pass the time. Time was meaningless, but it was all they had.

  The man takes him into a small room with a round table.

  “Skol‘ko?” Leo asks.

  “Dvesti.”

  Leo nods, turns his back on the man, peels two hundred dollars from his roll, and sets it on the table. The man picks up the money and leads him through the warehouse. Leo doesn’t look at the men working on the cars. He listens to the drumming of his heart. He listens to the blood coursing through his head.

  The man opens a large door with a key. Inside, over a dozen women are springing to attention, seated on beat-up couches and chairs. The room is warm. The women—girls, some of them—are scantily dressed, halter tops and hot pants or tiny shorts. Cheap perfume and cigarette smoke fill the air. Some pop music is playing on a small portable stereo.

  He surveys them. Some of these girls are teenagers. Most of them have damaged skin, bruises, in one case. Their eyes are dispassionate. Most of them are skinny, though not toned. He finds the one he wants and nods to her.

  “Skol‘ko vam let?” Not that he expects her to reveal her true age.

  “Dvadcat’ odin,” she says. Twenty-one. That’s a lie, closer to thirty, liar. He asks her for her name, so she can lie again, that’s all they know, lying—

  “Dodya,” she answers. He points to her. She’ll be fine.

  The room upstairs is small, dim, and dirty. It takes him back yet again. Lefortovo held eight to a cell, and the ceiling was much higher, but the confined feeling is the same.

  He thinks of Kat, even pictures her face. He closes his eyes as if that will erase her. When he opens them, this one, “Dodya”—

  —He knew a Dodya in Leningrad, a chubby, sad girl, with orange-blond hair, who they teased, made Leo feel sad because he knew what it was like
, but he didn’t do anything, let them tease her and make her cry—

  Dodya wiggles out of her shorts and removes her top. Her body seems undeveloped; her breasts are flat and her ribs are prominent. She looks at him for direction, but he says nothing, does nothing. She approaches him and reaches for the buckle on his pants.

  “Nyet,” he says. Shakes his head slowly.

  She steps back. “Ja ne ponimaju.”

  But she understands just fine. He uses the back of his hand, to avoid any significant bruising. She falls to the hard floor. Touches her cheek. Looks back up at him for direction.

  He unzips his own pants. She watches him, unsure at first if she’s supposed to watch or look away. Soon she understands: She is supposed to watch.

  When he’s satisfied, he zips up his pants and draws near to her. He notices that she winces as he approaches her. Also notices that she doesn’t try to move away.

  On his way out, he stops at the same room where he first negotiated the deal. The fat guy has his feet up, reading a magazine about automobiles.

  “Ja hotel by kupit Dodya,” he says.

  The man stares at him a moment, his thick eyebrows meeting in confusion. Then he bursts into laughter. He enjoys the moment, then looks at Leo, a man, he seems to understand, whom he should not regard lightly.

  “Skol‘ko?” Leo says. “Odna tysjacha?”

  The man grows serious. He thinks about it a moment.

  They settle on eight thousand.

  I WANDER AROUND THE hospital, holding an ice pack to the back of my head. They say it’s going to be some time while they work on Brandon Mitchum. A plastic surgeon is being called in to sew up the side of his face. Turns out he had a number of other superficial wounds, too, on his torso, but nothing life-threatening.

  The cops told me to stick around. I gave them McDermott’s name, and he’s presumably on the way. But they’re letting me wander. Mitchum couldn’t say much by the time the cavalry arrived—he may have been going into shock—but he managed to describe me as the hero, not the villain, in the story.

  So I walk outside, enjoying some fresh air and the chance to use my cell phone. First call is to Shelly. We were going to see each other tonight. I assure her I’m no worse for the wear, and, no, there’s no point in her coming to the hospital, I’m just going to be tied up with a bunch of cops who—this part I leave out—aren’t viewing me in the most favorable light right now.

  “Lock your doors, baby,” I tell her. “No kidding.”

  “What about you?” she says to me.

  A natural response, but it gets me to thinking. This guy had his way with me. No doubt, he could have taken me out. But he let me go. Throw in Amalia Calderone in the alley on Monday night, and that’s twice he’s let me live.

  You, he said to me, like of all the people in the world, he never expected to see me.

  Those letters he’s sent me. I need to see those letters again.

  “I love you, Shelly,” I tell her. My heart does a flip, circumstances notwithstanding.

  Second call is to Harland Bentley’s cell. He’s out at some restaurant, probably with a new cover girl. I impress upon him the importance of the call, and he says he’ll call me right back.

  He does, and I can tell from the traffic sounds that he’s outside now. I give it to him quickly, everything that’s happened. He lets me finish, and then says, “The police want to interview me tomorrow.”

  “Harland, did you hear everything I just said?”

  Silence. Someone is laying on a horn in a big way in the background. The sound effect feels aOppropriate.

  “I heard,” he says.

  “Brandon mentioned ‘the father.’ The guy from the photograph almost just killed me. Again. You want to help me out with any of this?” A near-death experience brings out a lot of things, but one of them is not diplomacy, not even for your multimillion-dollar client. Plus, I’m beginning to feel like I was left out on a story back then on one of the murder victims.

  “Not over the phone,” he says. “Call me when you’re done there.”

  “It could be a while.”

  “When you’re done,” he says firmly, “call me.”

  McDERMOTT AND STOLETTI show up about five minutes later. The responding officers are there, a man named Wilson and a woman named Esteban. Riley is sitting in a chair down the hallway, holding an ice pack against his head.

  Esteban gives them the rundown, the call from dispatch, the response to the building, Riley holding Brandon Mitchum in his arms when they burst in, the things they learned afterward.

  “Looks like Riley saved Mitchum’s life,” says Esteban, nodding in his direction.

  McDermott looks over at Riley, who sees them but stays where he is. “You believe that?”

  “Yeah, I do. The vic, Mr. Mitchum, he was clutching Riley, thanking him.”

  “Riley says the offender was ‘the guy from the photo,”’ says the other cop, Wilson. “He said he had a scar. That mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah.” McDermott feels a chill course through him. The guy in the photograph, behind Harland Bentley and the bank of reporters.

  “We’ve got the CATs there,” Esteban says. “This guy Riley kept telling us to look for prints.”

  That makes sense. If the offender was posing as a cop, he couldn’t very well be wearing gloves. And he wouldn’t have had time to clean up. This might be a break.

  Stoletti says, “That’s very helpful of Riley.”

  Wilson and Esteban don’t get it, of course. McDermott does. He makes his way over to Riley, who gets up.

  “You okay?” he asks Riley.

  “I’ll live.”

  Yes, you will, he thinks to himself. That’s twice now. “What were you doing there?”

  “Brandon Mitchum was Cassie’s and Ellie’s friend at Mansbury. The three of them were tight. I thought if anyone might know something about Cassie being pregnant, he would.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell us?” Stoletti says. “You’re playing cop now?”

  “I thought someone should.”

  “All right, pal.” McDermott steps closer to Riley. He’s no fan of lawyers but he doesn’t have a real problem with Riley, not on a personal level. Still, things are starting to get real coincidental. “Tell me what you can about this. Leave out the damn commentary.”

  Riley gives them a story that sounds a lot like what they just heard from the responding uniforms. It gets interesting when he reaches the part about confronting the offender.

  “You,” McDermott repeats. “Like he knows you. He’s surprised to see you.”

  “Or, like he couldn’t understand why you were stopping him,” Stoletti adds. “Why would he do that? Why would he think of you as an ally?”

  Riley doesn’t know. “I’ll say this much. I had some height on this guy, but he handled me like I was nothing.”

  “He was strong.”

  “Yeah, I suppose he was strong, but that’s not what I mean. He knew what he was doing. I tried to get this guy in a headlock from behind, and, in about two seconds, he’d slipped out, spun around, and pushed me against the wall. Seemed like he had some training.”

  McDermott deflates.

  “He had an accent,” Riley adds. “Eastern European, seemed like. Let’s talk to Brandon, he might know more when he’s sedated.”

  McDermott puts out a hand.

  “Oh,” Riley says. “I’m not invited?”

  “You’re not invited. You’re lucky I don’t take you into custody.”

  Riley eyes them a long moment, then puts out his hands for the handcuffs.

  “Oh, cut the fucking drama.”

  Riley drops his hands. “By the way, you’re welcome. I’m leaving.”

  Riley brushes past him. McDermott looks at Stoletti. Neither of them is entirely sure what to do with Riley. Under certain circumstances, the play might be to lock him up. Clearly, they could claim his prints on the tire iron for justification. But Paul Riley’s not s
omeone you lock up unless you have a good reason.

  “He was sloppy tonight.”

  They turn to Riley, who hasn’t gone far.

  “His first two kills,” Riley explains. “Perfect planning. In and out without a trace. Clean kills. He messed this one up.”

  “How so?” Stoletti asks.

  “The front door to the building,” he says. “Security door. It’s busted. I walked right in. But this guy didn’t. Brandon buzzed him up.”

  McDermott thinks about that. “If this were well planned, he would have known the security door was busted.”

  “And he would have ambushed Brandon. Like he did with Ciancio, and probably with Evelyn, too.”

  “So why is this different?” Stoletti asks.

  “I don’t know. You’re the cops. Figure it the hell out.” Now he walks away.

  McDermott calls out to him. “Stick around town, in case we need you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  This guy. The problem with lawyers, they know their rights. McDermott can’t stop Riley from doing anything, not unless he arrests him, and Riley knows that better than anyone.

  But he made a good point, about the attack on Mitchum. Why was it different this time? The well-planned, cold-blooded executioner is suddenly improvising.

  “Let’s talk to Mitchum,” he says.

  34

  THE SIXTY-THIRD FLOOR of BentleyCo Tower is reserved exclusively for its CEO, Harland Bentley. Taking up the entire south side of the floor is Harland’s personal office, a palatial job with an interior conference room and a private bathroom and spa. There are large and small conference rooms on the north, east, and west sides, and then the gratuitous luxuries that Harland affords himself, including an entertainment room with embedded stereo and speakers, a sixty-inch plasma television and leather chairs; an exercise room with a stair-climber, treadmill, stationary bike, and assorted weight-lifting equipment; and sleeping quarters on the north side, too, though I haven’t seen them, and I doubt there is much “sleeping” going on in there.

  But tonight, I am led into what Harland calls the “Green Room,” where my client stands over a golf ball and knocks it wide of the hole on the putting green. Instead of cussing, he simply uses his putter to tap another orange ball in front of him, and says, “You’re late.”