by John Lutz
“Those are the ones.”
“I’d like to help you, but you’re too late.”
“I’m not even forty,” Pearl said.
The clerk ducked her head and looked embarrassed. “No, ma’am, I didn’t mean that.”
“I know,” Pearl said, then dipped into her purse and flashed her shield. “My job infects people with a strange sense of humor.”
“You think mine doesn’t?” the clerk said, glancing at the badge before Pearl put it back out of sight.
“Point taken. What about those vibrators?”
“We haven’t handled them for a few months. Not that they didn’t sell, but we got a few customer complaints. Some people thought they’d also bought functional phones.”
“Yuck,” Pearl said.
“I thought the phone-vibrators were a great idea for the shop. They let you travel without being embarrassed by some security or customs character rooting through your luggage and coming across a vibrator he just knew wasn’t for your stiff neck.”
“Seems like an item that’d be right up your alley,” Pearl agreed.
The woman frowned.
“A discreet, intimate item,” Pearl explained.
The sales clerk seemed satisfied that Pearl hadn’t been exercising cop humor.
“So you returned them to the manufacturer?” Pearl asked.
“Not actually. We sold them at wholesale price to Nuts and Bolts. It’s a lounge on East Fifty-second. A pickup place but respectable. Lots of single professional women hang out there, the sort with jobs where they have to travel. The boss knows the lounge’s owner, so that’s where the cell phone vibrators went.”
“How many?”
“Oh, two cases and a partial, about fifty of them. I bought one myself before we let them go. I think they’re such a super idea. And they really do look like cell phones.”
Just in case, Pearl showed the clerk photos of the first two victims, then the gruesome morgue shot of Ida Ingrahm, and asked if she recognized any of the women.
“I don’t think so,” the clerk said, swallowing. “But the first two look vaguely familiar. This last one, is she…?”
“Dead,” Pearl confirmed. “They all are.”
The clerk’s puffy features registered dismay. Was she about to cry? “God! That’s horrible!”
“They’re all victims of the same killer.”
“That’s why the first two look familiar. I must have seen them in the paper or on television news.”
“Are you sure they never came in here? Maybe bought mock cell phones.”
“Oh, I’m positive. I’m here during all our open hours, so I sold all the phones.”
Pearl slid the photos back in her blazer pocket and thanked the woman for her time.
“May I interest you in anything else?” The clerk was suddenly very professional, a reaction to distance herself from the Ida Ingrahm photo by grounding herself in the normal world. “We have all sorts of products that aid in relationships with men.”
“Thanks anyway,” Pearl said. “I already carry a gun.”
But as she left the shop, she glanced again at the display-window mannequin in the transparent nightgown and thong underwear.
She thought she could bring it off. Probably.
Nuts and Bolts was on the ground floor of a gray stone office building, flanked by an office supply store and a maritime insurance agency. It was closed, but it served food as well as booze, and Pearl could see through the tinted glass door that several people were bustling around inside in the dimness, preparing for the lunch crowd.
She rapped on the glass with the cubic zirconium ring on her right hand, making a lot of noise. The last guy she’d dated had given her the ring, telling her it was diamond. It turned out to be as genuine as he was.
A chubby, bald kid peered curiously through the glass at her. He made exaggerated shrugging motions while he shook his head back and forth violently to signal that the restaurant-lounge was closed. He held up all his stubby fingers, then two, indicating that she should return at noon.
As he turned away, she rapped on the glass again and pressed her shield to it.
He turned back, stared at the NYPD detective’s badge, then faded away in the dimness.
A few seconds later, the door was opened by a potbellied man in a white T-shirt, wearing a stained white apron over jeans. He was about forty, balding, jowly, and with a double chin. Pearl guessed he was gaining middle-age weight steadily and it would eventually catch up with his beer belly. He looked somewhat like the kid who’d answered Pearl’s knock, and she wondered if they were father and son. His tired blue eyes moved up and down, taking in all five-foot-one of Pearl and registering nothing.
Thanks a lot.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“You tell me.” Pearl smiled when she said it, trying to steer the guy from neutral to friendly. Why make things difficult?
He did smile back, making him look younger and less fleshy, a glance at an earlier version that wasn’t the kid who’d first come to the door.
“I don’t think we’ve broken any laws,” he said, wiping his hands on the apron and stepping back so she had room to enter.
“Maybe the soup yesterday,” the kid said. He was leaning on a broom about ten feet away, grinning. He was wearing a black Mets sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, baggy stained chinos, and looked as if he had an erection. Pearl felt alternately amused and flattered.
“Get back to work, Ernie,” the potbellied guy said wearily.
Ernie kept his dreamy smile trained on Pearl for a full five seconds, then turned away and began sweeping. Pearl decided she kind of liked him.
“Is the owner around?” Pearl asked.
“I’m him,” potbelly said. “Lou Sinclair.”
“Good. I want to talk to you about vibrators that look like cell phones.”
Ernie continued to sweep, but was moving toward them now so he could hear better.
“I bought those phones from somebody I know,” Sinclair said. “Somebody honest. If they’re stolen, neither one of us knows about it.”
“Me, either,” Pearl said.
“We get lots of traveling businesswomen in here. I let Victoria, my female night bartender, tell the ladies about the phones. If they’re interested, she shows them one and maybe makes a sale.”
“You sell a lot of them?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna try and get some more. Damned things really look like phones. You wouldn’t believe it, but we had a woman here thought she could make a call and—”
“I believe it,” Pearl said.
“Get busy, Ernie,” Sinclair said. Ernie began sweeping harder, moving away from them this time.
“Victoria your only night bartender?”
“Her and me,” Sinclair said. “She comes in at eight, and I’m here from nine to closing.”
“How can I get in touch with her?”
“Easy. She’s in the kitchen.”
“She works days, too?”
“As well as nights? No, only the owner works those kinda hours. She came in to get her paycheck.”
“Ah, my lucky day.”
“Is it hers?”
“Far as I know. She’s not in any kinda trouble. I just want to show both of you some photographs, see if you recognize any of the women in them, then talk to her about the phones. Maybe Ernie, too.”
“Ernie goes home after we close for lunch and he’s done busing tables. He’s my brother’s boy. A teen klutz. Knows from nothing.”
“He’s gotta grow up sometime,” Pearl said.
Sinclair gave her a curious look, then said, “Wait here and I’ll go get Victoria.”
Pearl sat at the end of one of the booths, looking around. The floor was carpeted except where Ernie was diligently sweeping. There were round tables with white cloths, crystal chandeliers, a long bar inlaid with polished brass, fancy stools with high, curved backs. It wouldn’t be a bad-looking place if they turned up the light
s. Probably they didn’t want passersby glancing in and seeing them cleaning up. Pearl couldn’t read the lunch menu behind the bar, but it didn’t look like much.
Sinclair returned within a few minutes with a tall, dark-haired woman in a tight tan pantsuit. Or maybe she wasn’t so tall. She looked as if she’d just had her hair done, or overdone. It was piled improbably high and made her look as if she were about to play a country-western singer in a bad movie. When she was closer, she gazed with charcoal dark eyes from beneath dense bangs at Pearl.
Pearl introduced herself, then removed the photographs from her blazer pocket. “Ernie,” she said, “put down your broom for a minute and come over here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Still with the spacey smile. Did the kid ever stop grinning?
Pearl found the brightest spot on the table and spread out the photos. “Do any of these women look familiar?”
Ernie stopped smiling and pointed. “That’s one’s dead, ain’t she?”
“She’s dead, Ernie.”
“Cool.”
“Those two,” Victoria said immediately, and pointed with a long red fingernail. “Janice and Lois. I don’t know their last names. They come in here all the time.”
“They who I think they are?” Sinclair asked.
“Depends,” Pearl said.
“The women the Butcher killed?”
“Huh?” Victoria said.
“That’s what people call him,” Sinclair said, “the Butcher. Because of the way he carves up his victims and puts their parts on display. The meat. Don’t you read the papers or watch the news?”
“No, I spend most of my time dealing drinks here. That’s the only way I know Janice and Lois. They work in the neighborhood and come in sometimes in the evening.”
“Together?”
Victoria wrinkled her nose, thinking. “No, I can’t recall ever seeing them together. Or even here at the same time. But I could be wrong.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them,” Sinclair said.
“Ernie?” Pearl asked.
“I don’t know any of ’em,” Ernie said. “That dead one’s gross.”
“Yeah. There oughta be a law.” Pearl looked at Victoria. “Ever sell either of them a cell phone?”
Victoria appeared startled behind her bangs. She glanced worriedly at Sinclair.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“I sold both of them cell phones,” Victoria said. “One to Janice about two months ago. Then, maybe six weeks ago, one to Lois.”
“Was either woman ever here with a man?”
“Not that I can recall. Not that they weren’t flirted with. They’re—they were—both real attractive. And for all I know they left with somebody from time to time. That’s the kinda place this is at night, a social spot for people to meet one another.”
“Do you recall either woman saying anything unusual?”
“We didn’t have those kinda conversations. I mean, I only knew them from when they ordered drinks and we exchanged a few words. Then, when we began pitching the cell phones, I talked to them some more, but only about the phones.” Victoria looked worried. “I’m not gonna have to go to police headquarters and make a statement or anything, am I?”
“No, we’ll send somebody around. Nothing to it.”
“It’ll be okay, Vicky,” Sinclair said, resting a hand gently on her shoulder in a way that made Pearl wonder. It could be a small, intimate world.
Pearl scooped up the photos and returned them to her pocket. “I want to thank both of you. You’ve been a big help.”
She left them the way she left most people she interviewed, looking slightly confused and concerned. Pearl guessed everyone had something to hide.
As she was going out, she heard Ernie say behind her, “Phones? I never knew we sold phones.”
9
Before the papers, even City Beat, had a chance to break the news about Ida Ingrahm, local TV had it. It had been leaked to them by one of their many sources at the NYPD, an organization that fortunately wasn’t a ship.
Florence Norton saw it first thing when she got home from work, kicked off her shoes, and lazily clicked on the remote.
The TV was still on NY1, from when she’d checked the temperature this morning before leaving for her job as sales rep for Best of Seasons salad dressings. Florence was good at her job, and had just about convinced one of the hottest restaurants on the West Side to increase its weekly order of special ranch with bacon and beef bits. She was over forty and had bad feet, and the calls she had to make, along with the subway rides where there were no available seats were taking their toll. She had to lose weight, she knew, but she also, deep down, knew she was only fighting a holding action.
The volume came on slightly before the picture on her old TV: “…the Butcher again…”
Then there was the pretty blonde anchorwoman, Mary something, looking concerned but still sexy, as if someone were pinching her slightly too hard.
Florence watched and listened as the woman explained how police thought it possible that the Butcher was murdering women whose last initials spelled out the name of the lead homicide detective assigned to catch him, a guy named Quinn. Of course, police reminded, this could be a coincidence, and there was no need for public panic. Still, it was wise to take precautions.
“Victims Q, U, and I have already been found,” Mary said with pained concern, which means—”
Holy Christ!
It suddenly occurred to Florence that she was an N.
A potential victim. All of a sudden, the Butcher didn’t sound simply like a corny name for a killer on television news.
For a while her feet stopped hurting, and she was infused with so much nervousness that she almost got up from the sofa.
Calm down…Calm down…You’re not some flighty ingenue. You’re a grown-up, self-sufficient woman. Maybe even too self-sufficient. So Dad always said.
The police were right; there was no need for public panic.
Unless maybe you were a woman and your last initial was N. Unless maybe you were Florence Norton.
She turned up the volume and sat forward on the sofa, while the pretty blonde woman reminded viewers that the Butcher killed slim, attractive brunettes.
Reassuring, Florence thought, with bitter irony. She was breathing easier. While she had mousy brown hair, it was a comfort to know she was middle-aged, dumpy, and nobody had ever thought of her as attractive. Passable at her younger, thinner best, but that was years ago.
Directors would hardly cast her as the delectable prey of a psychosexual serial killer.
Florence had long ago stopped worrying about not being a beauty. Despite being overworked, she was quite happy doing her job, going to art exhibits, and dining out with friends of both sexes. It was a narrow life, perhaps, but she found it a contented one.
She used the remote to switch channels. The national news. Now here were people with real problems. In some city where there were palm trees, flames and smoke were curling into the sky above a fire-ravaged building. Several cars parked nearby were also on fire.
The picture cut to a helicopter shot of a distant white van speeding the wrong way along a freeway; apparently the vehicle contained the arsonist who’d set the fire. This was something, Florence thought. She peered at the screen, trying to read the crawl without her glasses, and figured it all had to be happening in LA.
The intercom buzzed, and she muted the TV and rose from the sofa. It took her several seconds to cross the room on her sore feet, press the painted-over button, and ask who was there.
She felt not the slightest sense of danger when the voice from the lobby fifteen stories below told her there was a Federal Parcel package to be delivered to her address.
A present? Something she’d ordered from a shopping channel and forgotten?
Whatever, it was sure to brighten her mood.
Pearl had removed her practical cop shoes and sat with her feet propped on the coffee table, watching TV
news. Another California car chase. Was that all they did out there, when they weren’t hauling in junkie celebrities?
Maybe that was what she should do, she thought, watching the white van being pursued by an orderly procession of LAPD cars with flashing lights. Leave New York and become an LA cop, join the parade of police cars. Forget about Quinn and the NYPD and this noisy, dirty city with the accelerated heartbeat. Forget about all her frustration. LA looked clean and sunny and sparsely populated—at least compared to New York. It looked manageable. Being a cop in la-la land might even be fun.
She took a sip from her can of diet Pepsi and watched the driver in the white van slow down and cut across a grassy median, then wave at the cops and lead the pursuit in the opposite direction. Police cars on the other side of the highway politely got out of the way as the van passed.
The hell with that, Pearl thought, and wondered how far the asshole in the van would get in some good old New York traffic with NYPD radio cars on his tail.
As she watched, two cops by the side of the road stood helplessly with hands on hips as the van sped past.
Pearl shook her head.
The hell with that!
If it hadn’t been her TV, she might have thrown the soda can at it.
10
Bocanne, Florida, 1979
Darkness had fallen.
Nine-year-old Sherman Kraft lay on his sagging mattress in his bedroom in the ramshackle house on the edge of the deep swamp. His door was open about a foot, and he’d scooted over on the bed so he could see out into the hall, where from time to time his mother appeared and peeked into the bedroom of their boarder, Ernest Marks.
His mother’s hair was darker than the shadows, unkempt and hanging to beneath her shoulders, exaggerating the eager craning of her neck as she opened Marks’s door a few inches to peer in. Sherman knew what she was looking for, waiting for.
He was a skinny boy but with a good frame, and as handsome as his mother was beautiful. He had his father’s blue eyes but his mother’s firm jaw, her high forehead. His thin lips were a slash that curled downward slightly at one corner, like his mother’s. Maybe like his father’s, too. Sherman had no idea what his father looked like, only that his name was George, he was what Sherman’s mom called a con man, and he’d deserted them both five years ago and been shot to death by a woman’s angry husband in South Carolina.
