Cutter

by Laird, Thomas

  ‘Kelly. Michael. Natalie is going to be my wife. Not your mother, but my wife, and, I hope, your friend. She is a fine person and she wants to love you.’

  My daughter slid over in the booth and embraced my fiancée. Michael sat impassively.

  ‘Come here, Michael.’

  I stood away from the booth. He got around the women and came to me. Now he was the one in tears. We walked two paces away from the table.

  ‘Will you try to be happy for me? I know she’s not Momma. There is no other Momma. But I love her, Bud. I do.’

  ‘I miss Mommy.’

  I choked back my words and there was nothing to say. Suddenly he broke away from me and he went to Natalie and kissed her softly and briefly on the cheek. When he sat back at his place, I sat down next to my future bride.

  I looked over to my twelve-year-old boy. Everyone was quiet.

  ‘You’re a good man, Michael. You make your old man very happy.’

  I took the carafe and I poured everyone a drink.

  ‘I want everyone at this table to be as happy as I am for a hundred years.’

  I took a swallow of wine and then I kissed the redhead fully on her lips. Everyone in the immediate area had been watching all this as if it were some kind of video, and so they applauded us once again. So I was bound to buy them another drink.

  Michael had finally found his appetite, so he began to dig into his lasagna in earnest. The women and my daughter were too busy embracing each other, so finally I had time to cut myself a piece of the food before me.

  I could taste the pasta and the sauce as if for the first time in decades, even though Erin and Celia had only been gone for a few months. A little over a year and a half, I thought it was. The colors were brighter in this room. I could smell the scent of Natalie even though the garlic odor permeated this Italian restaurant. Everything seemed to be pulsing. I was out of the prison I had been in. My incarceration had been self-imposed, but I was out. Past the walls and the restraints. It was something I couldn’t even explain. I could feel the blood moving in my veins. I could hear my own respiration and I could sense everything inside me that was alive. And I thought, ‘Here I am.’ For the first time in a very long time, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  The brand-new police officer, still in dress blues, looked over to me and I was thawing in a luxurious relaxation.

  ‘Let’s run away tonight,’ she whispered in my ear as she bent toward me.

  Chapter Eight

  The herd swerves around the fountain and then makes its bovine way toward the south end of the shopping center.There are sales today.Some of these beeves have been here since dawn,walking the mall.It is their only source of entertainment.There is no sun and sky and landscape other than this.They drive hundreds of miles to Minnesota to arrive at the Mothership of Malls.Sales today!Deals!

  I see a brunette ahead who interests me.She seems to fit the age range.Thirty,thirty-five tops.Maybe a little younger.But she’ll do.

  I won’t be able to approach her here,inside,but it is getting toward closing hour and eventually she’ll make her way to her car.The crowds are beginning to thin.I’m on the second level,so I can see the numbers dwindling rapidly.It is a Sunday night.They have to rush home to watch their Movies of the Week.They have to prepare for another workweek.They put in forty-eight sets of five so they can retire to the fucking Wisconsin Dells in July or August.They mark the days on their calendars at work—perhaps in red ink.All year long they watch the X’s accumulate until the merciful arrival of their four weeks vacation at some resort where their drunken neighbors will roll through the streets waking everyone up before dawn.They’ll go lamely fishing for fucking walleye or some such fish,sitting out in a boat and shivering at sunrise,and they’ll row the rented boat back to the dock,empty-handed.They’re not outdoorsmen anyway.They’re pencil pushers from the city on their four weeks’ break from morbid monotony.

  The brunette turns right and heads down the stairs toward the first level.If she leaves now,the parking lot will be too congested for me to do what I came to do to her.Or to someone a lot like her.She is replaceable.If not her,then someone else.I am adaptable to the situation.It is part of the trade.It is amazing how similar we all are when we’re opened up with a knife.All that cosmetic beauty vanishes.We’re just an ugly series of waterworks,plumbing.

  She stops at a leather-goods outlet.She is not ready to go yet,then.I stop in front of a chain bookstore so I don’t get too close to her.She hasn’t spotted me yet.

  The brunette is in the bootery for twenty minutes.There is nothing left for me to peruse in the bookstore’s window,and the crowds in this mall have thinned almost to zero.It is time she made her move to the lot.

  Which is what happens only two minutes later.The brownhaired woman exits via the front door and makes a beeline for the parking lot.She goes back up to the second level,and I am right behind her.

  This one has her best features behind her.No tits that I can make out.A pleasant enough face,but nothing extraordinary.She’d be workable if I had the time to take pleasure in my job,but the whole scenario of a parking lot puts a number of restrictions on what I can and can’t do.

  When I walk out the door on the second level,right behind her,I see that it has begun to rain.Rain is a sign of good fortune.Poor visibility,nobody fucks around by their cars.They get in,they get out.Which is what almost everyone has already done.The lot is almost deserted as she walks toward her Chevy Cavalier.It is a new model,appears to be black.She is middle-class but thinks of herself as sporty.There’s a white racing stripe across the side of the car.

  She is also all alone in this sector of the lot.The lights are on,but the driving rain keeps everyone’s head down,in the other sections,as they race toward their rides.The brunette is struggling with her keys.Can’t seem to find the lock on the car door.I’m ten paces behind her,and she still hasn’t heard me coming.The rain is now accompanied by thunder.

  Finally she engages the lock and the door is flung open.I’m three paces from her lovely ass.

  She scoots into the driver’s seat,and I’ve got my left hand inside the gym bag I carry with me.I’ve got the ether now,and I’m getting the bottle and the balled-up T-shirt out as she is about to close the door.

  Then the brunette discovers she has caught her jacket.She reopens the driver’s side and sees me.The woman is obviously startled.

  I’ve got the ether-soaked cloth in my left hand,and I’m reaching for the knife.

  Her bulldog roars at my intrusion and lunges toward the driver’s side back window.He almost propels himself through it,judging by the thump he creates as he hits the glass.

  Then the brunette squeals,I see the dog trying to hop over the front seat onto her lap,and I’m turning and running.Running as fast as I can through the monsoon raging down on me.I slip but I don’t fall,and I’m thrashing through the puddles of rainwater,praying that she hasn’t let loose that goddamned dog.

  I’m thirty yards from my own vehicle,on the other side of the mall,when I begin to laugh. AsI reach my ride,I finally turn to see if anyone has followed.But no one has,of course.The brunette is on her way at top speed out of this parking lot.She might call 911 when she gets home.Perhaps she’ll use her cellular from here.In either case she won’t be able to describe me.It was raining,pouring,and lucky for me she never saw my face in the lightning.Only now,as I sit in my vehicle,does the flashing illuminate everything back to daylight.

  ‘Trouble?’ my driver asks me.

  Chapter Nine

  We got a message that a woman had been accosted in a shopping-mall lot by some guy who followed her out to her car. This kind of thing happens frequently, but the item that caught our eyes was the bit about the gym bag. She said he was reaching into a bag for something. Then her doggy cut loose at this figure standing in the rain, and suddenly the guy was a ghost.

  Her name was Stephanie Manske. She works as a secretary for some hotshot downtown — which was why the news about her trave
led so rapidly. The hotshot wanted to know why security was so lax in this mall on the northwest side, and he made a stink, and someone in our department overheard another copper mentioning the particulars, and bells began to ring in this copper’s ears in regards to ‘The Farmer’, and here she was.

  ‘You didn’t see his face very well,’ Doc repeated.

  ‘It was raining real hard. And he startled me. He was just, like,there.’

  ‘You notice how tall?’ I asked.

  ‘About six feet. I think. He was hunched up a little, reaching into that gym bag or whatever.’

  ‘Wearing a hat?’ Doc asked.

  ‘No ... but I couldn’t make out the color of his hair because it was plastered down to his skull ... It might’ve been blond. Maybe brown. I’m sorry I can’t do any better for you.’

  ‘Hey. We’re happy you’re here to tell us anything,’ Gibron told her.

  ‘You think this guy was —’

  ‘We don’t know, Stephanie. We have to take everybody very seriously,’ I answered.

  ‘I thought it might be that guy in the paper, too. He could’ve been reaching for a —’

  ‘Maybe not, Stephanie,’ I interrupted. ‘This could’ve been something absolutely innocent. And then your dog could’ve scared hell out of him.’

  ‘That’s why I keep Longsworth in the car. I got molested when I was a teenager, and it’s never going to happen again.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that ... Is there anything else you remember about him?’ Doc continued.

  ‘All that was left was watching his backside as he beat feet around to the back of the mall. I was so scared I got the hell out. Then I called the police as soon as I got home. And I told my boss, Tony, about it two days ago.’

  She was not pretty, but she was not unattractive, either. And she was twenty-eight. Just about the same age as the first two victims. But Stephanie survived her encounter with him. She saw his face, if only for an instant, and he might have been the way I said it before — just some innocent mook trying to ask for directions to Cicero or some goddamned place.

  But I didn’t think so and neither did Doc. It was him. It washe, Doc would correct me. It was our man. The Farmer. Whatever his name was. He was looking for some more stock. Some more of the stuff I was sure he was peddling. He’d got a body shop opened, and it wasn’t the kind where you need a blowtorch and a welder’s mask to do business. Stephanie was like the steaks and chops behind the glass in the butcher’s shop. This guy was about ready to do business with her, only she wasn’t the customer. She was the product.

  *

  We cased that same northwest side mall for four hours the next day. Went from shop to shop, asking if anyone had seen this man who Stephanie had described generally, and the shopkeepers were just as fuzzy in their memories as our potential victim was. Who could blame them? They saw thousands of faces a day. A number of whom were male, about six feet tall, and either brown-or blond-haired. With a blank for a face, as well.

  ‘I don’t see the attraction of these places,’ Doc lamented. ‘They’re like rows of warehouses of shit.’

  We — Jack and Doc, four uniforms and I — came up empty. There seemed to be no pattern to the killer’s hunting grounds. There were only the women in common. White, near thirty, at least all of them were somewhat attractive. One was raped; one was not sexually assaulted. The third got lucky because of Longsworth the pooch or whatever.

  ‘Who’s he supplying?’ Doc wondered aloud, inside the Taurus. We were still parked at the mall.

  ‘Hospital. Black-market surgeon. Unwitting hospital?’

  He didn’t like my answer.

  ‘It is too dangerous, Jimmy, going to a legit health-care place. They’d lose their asses. You gotta ask yourself if they’d think it was worth it, jumping over the waiting lists for some murderer’s goods.’

  ‘Then who’s he selling to? And how?’

  *

  ‘You are now surfing the Internet.’ Doc Gibron smiled. ‘Holy Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll bet he’s advertizing here, somewhere. Trouble is, these little shits, these cyber motherfuckers, play games with codes. I’m not nearly computer-smart enough to track him through all this. But we’ve got people who are.’

  *

  Matty McGinn was the resident whiz kid for the CPD computer services. He was the guy who caught the hackers who messed with the ATMs and the banks and with anybody else who jacked with machines and man.

  ‘You know anything about computers, Lieutenant?’ Matty grinned.

  ‘I know less than my kids. I know how to turn on and turn off the one my daughter and son use at home. That’s it. So we’re depending on you, Matthew.’

  ‘The FBI has a very fine system, and we work with them and with their people quite often, Lieutenant Parisi.’

  ‘You can call me Jimmy,’ I told him.

  Doc snorted, so I whacked him on the elbow.

  ‘Thank you ... They’ll be using a code on the Internet. The way pornographers and kiddie molesters do. They’ll be aiming at a specialized market, of course, and I think you’re right in assuming that no legitimate area hospital’s involved. But you never know. We’ll try to see if we can find anything strange that’s advertizing some kind of special service or product. This guy might be doing all of his trade outside the city, the state, or even the country.’

  ‘Yeah. The thought had occurred to us,’ Doc snorted.

  ‘He is a geezer. Anti-machines,’ I explained to McGinn.

  ‘I know. My parents are just like that. My dad still corresponds on an IBM Selectric. He has had it for twenty years and won’t give it up even though I bought him a nice Apple PC for his sixtieth birthday.’

  Doc snorted again.

  ‘This was your idea, old man,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I have outlived my usefulness,’ Doc whined.

  ‘No, you haven’t, Detective Gibron. You’re the one who put me onto him, if he’s in here, and you and the Lieutenant will be the ones to arrest him. I just make the machine do our bidding. It really is as simple as that.’

  ‘I’m starting to like this kid,’ Doc said as he slapped McGinn’s left shoulder.

  Matty blushed. It accentuated his orange red hair and freckles. He was a dead ringer for Ron Howard as Opie Taylor onThe Andy Griffith Show.

  *

  Nothing came out of computer services for five days. I called Matty McGinn on the fifth day and he told me it took weeks and months, sometimes, to dig these cockroaches out of the woodwork. They could be very clever about their codes, he reminded me.

  So I reminded myself that it had been detective work that had solved my previous cases, not some damned machine ‘that did our bidding’.

  We had only interviewed one possibility, so far. That cute bastard, Karrios. There were two left to interview. Doc and I were going to round up that pair today.

  *

  Dawson Repzac was our first conversation of the day. He was a two-time loser on molestation charges, but the previous arrests were ancient beefs.

  He was about the right size for the guy Stephanie had seen in the parking lot at the mall. We had his jacket sitting in front of us when we talked to him in the box.

  ‘Do I need a lawyer?’ the sandy-haired ex-molester asked.

  ‘Probably. You got probation coming up?’ Doc teased.

  Repzac was not smiling.

  ‘I am clean. I mean, I am immaculate.’

  ‘You were a war hero. Served in Vietnam twice and in the Gulf War. You were infantry in Vietnam and then you worked as a medic in the Gulf. That right?’ I inquired.

  ‘I carried the litters in the Gulf. That’s all.’

  ‘How come you didn’t carry a gun in the Middle East?’ Doc asked.

  ‘I killed enough people the first time.’

  ‘You were a lifer until after the Persian Gulf thing,’ I said.

  ‘I quit after that pissant adventure. Yeah.’

  ‘You’re well educated,’ D
oc added. ‘Went to Illinois Chicago. Studied biology ... What? You want to teach? Go to medical school?’

  ‘I wanted to avoid Vietnam. Then I changed my mind and volunteered after I graduated — Have you guys had enough fun yet?’

  ‘We’re investigating a double homicide,’ I told Repzac.

  ‘You mean the two women who were cut open? What would I have to do with something like that? I got hauled up for statutory rape. Twice. It was consensual. I tried to break it off because I found out she lied about her age. She told me she was eighteen. Hell, she looked twenty-five. But she was fifteen and she wasn’t getting carded at the bar where I picked her up. What I’m saying iswhy me?’

  ‘You’re not the only guy we’ve talked to. We talk to a lot of people. You know that. You’ve been through the system, so why ask a dumbass question like that?’ Doc groused.

  ‘Okay, okay ... Is there anything else you need to ask me?’

  ‘No. Thanks for coming in,’ I answered.

  Then I opened the door for him.

  When he was down the hall from the box, Doc looked over at me.

  ‘You get the feeling you’ve just been lied to?’

  I watched Doc’s eyes, but neither of us blinked.

  Chapter Ten

  Jimmy Preggio was the third guy on our list. He was the hardcore of the three, so far. Like the other two he was very intelligent, and like the other two he had a record for sexual assault. But his jacket was very short, other than the information on the two crimes for which he’d served four and a half years.

  He was blond, about six one, and he fitted the general description that Stephanie Manske gave us for the mall parking lot thing.