Sigma Curse - 04

by Tim Stevens

  “It’s a little late at night, Fil,” said Venn.

  “For an update?” Fil sounded surprised.

  “No. For dumb questions.”

  “Ah. Right, boss.” Fil sounded so chastened that Venn almost regretted his touchiness. “Well, here’s the thing. The first victim, O’Farrell, the subway ticket office clerk, was morbidly obese, with significant health problems as a result. Diabetes, heart disease, and so on. The next guy, the homeless John Doe in the alleyway, was in the end stages of alcoholism. A physical wreck.”

  “Okay,” said Venn.

  “Then we have Dale Fincher,” Fil continued. “He had old scars on his wrist. He was a self-harmer.”

  “But the fourth victim, Alice Peters,” said Venn. “She was an upstanding citizen. A healthy specimen.”

  “Not always. She’d been a working girl, remember? And a heroin addict. Even though she turned her back on all of that.”

  Venn thought about it. Something was dragging at his awareness, something vague and half-formed but growing.

  “And now Special Agent Rickenbacker,” Fil said. “A smoker. She stank of the stuff. I noticed it when she came up to the office here. And there was that footage of her on TV, outside police headquarters when Teller was working the reporters. She was puffing away like a steam train.”

  “So it’s about self-harm, in some way,” said Venn. “Abusing your body.”

  “It looks that way, yes.”

  Venn whistled softly through his teeth. “I don’t know, Fil. It’s pretty tenuous.”

  “But it’s the only link we’ve come up with so far.” Fil paused a moment. “And I get the sense, boss, that you think I’m right.”

  “Yeah,” said Venn. “It feels... like it fits, somehow.” He braked, because the traffic was getting heavier, slowed by the snow, and he didn’t want to risk skidding on the slippery road surface. “Okay. So maybe this sigma symbol has something to do with this aspect. Like, is it a symbol for healthy living or something? Maybe it represents some organization dedicated to body purity or whatever?”

  “I’m checking that right now,” Fil said. “So far, nothing. There are plenty of businesses in the US with the word ‘sigma’ in their names, but there’s no apparent connection with what we’re talking about. They’re all IT firms or haulage companies or ad agencies. I’m looking into all of them, but the words needle and haystack come to mind.”

  The thing that had been hovering in the shadows of Venn’s consciousness appeared briefly, and he grasped at it. Something Colonel Masterson had said on the phone earlier.

  Then he got it.

  “Fil,” he said. “Franklin Gray’s commanding officer said the guy had expressed an intention to travel after he quit the Army. To see Europe. How about widening your search? Checking if there are any European companies using the Sigma brand, and which might have a connection with bodily purity or health fanaticism, stuff like that?”

  “Yeah,” said Fil. “That’s a good idea.”

  He said he’d call back.

  “I may not answer right away,” said Venn. “In fact, it’s better if you text me.” He didn’t want his phone to go off while he was in position at the hospital.

  Up ahead, the snow continued to tumble from the brooding sky.

  Chapter 30

  Frank’s voice was weary, but with the relief of nearing the end of a long journey rather than with dejection.

  “You did good,” he said.

  “No.” Sally-Jo stood naked before the full-length mirror in the bedroom. She’d arrived at the garret apartment fifteen minutes ago and had immediately stripped off and stood under the shower, relishing the stinging, scalding blast as the water sluiced away the sweat and grime and gasoline stink. She’d ignored Frank to begin with, and was only now acknowledging his presence.

  “I didn’t ‘do good’,” she said, gazing at herself in the mirror. “You did.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “That’s what they’re all saying.” She didn’t usually get angry in his company. In fact, it was normally the other way round. But now her eyes flashed with fury. This was supposed to be her moment, dammit.

  “But you and I know the truth.”

  She turned from the glass. “That’s not enough. Don’t you see?” Sally-Jo felt the helpless, pleading tone creep into her voice and fought to suppress it. She was her own person now. She no longer needed Frank. It meant she was going to have to toughen up. Man up. “As long as you’re the prime suspect, the only suspect, I’ll always live under your shadow.”

  “It’ll pass.” Frank sounded calm, reasonable. More so than she could ever recall him being. “And look at the advantages. While they’re hunting for me, you’ll be invisible. They’ll never catch you. And they’ll never catch me, obviously.”

  She turned back to the mirror. Stared at her face, this time. Studied the blade-like cheekbones, the wide eyes, the perfectly sculpted Cupid’s-bow lips.

  “But,” said Frank, “I know you. And I know you’re not going to be able to get over this if you just walk away. So you’ll have to do what you have to do.”

  “Yes.” She’d known he would agree.

  “Make the woman tell the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll be under guard,” said Frank.

  “I know,” said Sally-Jo. “But I’ll find a way. Access won’t be all that difficult.”

  “I have an idea,” said Frank. “Something that’ll improve your chances.”

  He told her.

  *

  Sally-Jo regarded Special Agent Rickenbacker as her final target, so when she killed the crankhead in the South Village, just off Canal, she didn’t really count it.

  He was alone, a shivering, mumbling figure barely recognizable as human as he huddled in a piss-reeking doorway with a ratty blanket pulled around his scrawny frame and a tin cup at his feet. The cup was no doubt there to collect spare change from passers by, but was now half-filled with dirty snow.

  It was four o’clock on a January morning with the snow coming down, lightly now but unceasingly. There was nobody else visible on the street. Sally-Jo had been a little worried that she wouldn’t find anybody at all, but she knew this part of town and had seen the meth users and the junkies congregating here even in the most appalling weather. She’d lucked out, finding somebody who was on his own.

  This time, because he wasn’t a deliberate target, she dispensed with most of the ritual. She didn’t show him any photos, not that he would have been able to focus his bleary eyes on them in any case. Instead, she crouched before him in the doorway and grabbed his spongy hair through the filthy wool beanie he was wearing and tipped his head back on his pencil neck and inserted the icepick. All before he had the chance to make a sound.

  His legs jerked spasmodically and the stale smell of urine in the doorway was replaced by the sharp aroma of freshly voided bladder and bowel contents. Quickly, Sally-Jo took the branding iron from her rucksack, and the lighter, and heated up the end. She was thankful she hadn’t yet disposed of the items after her encounter with Rickenbacker.

  She stood up when she was done, and let her gaze rove over the slumped dead guy and the immediate environment.

  She needed somewhere she could leave an unambiguous print.

  Her eyes settled on his tin cup. Picking it up by the rim, she placed it against his body where the snow wouldn’t reach it.

  Quickly she rinsed her bloodied hands in a pile of snow she scooped up from the sidewalk. She strode away, not looking back.

  Now all she needed to do was make sure somebody found the body soon.

  Chapter 31

  Venn had borrowed an orderly’s uniform, and now he pushed a gurney idly up the corridor past the ICU.

  He was bored and tense at the same time, an unpleasant combination he remembered from stakeouts as a junior beat cop in Chicago. He needed to remain vigilant, but he had no idea for how long.

  Finding an orderly’s uniform which wou
ld fit a man of his size had been difficult. Teller had persuaded the hospital superintendent to permit a number of FBI agents and undercover cops, Venn among them, to be positioned on the floor of the ICU. The superintendent didn’t like it at first.

  “Why undercover?” he said. “A visible police presence, sure. But I’m not prepared to allow my hospital to function as the setting for a sting operation.”

  Teller explained that Harmony Jones’s life was in danger, not just from her injuries but from the shooter, who might return to finish the job. They knew the killer was cunning, and that a uniformed police presence might not be enough. Eventually, the superintendent relented.

  Venn had chatted with the head ICU nurse earlier. She’d explained that now was a relatively quiet time for the unit. Things would get busier if there was suddenly some kind of major incident, a motor vehicle accident with multiple casualties, for example. Something that was a distinct possibility now that the snow had started to come down in earnest. In any event, the unit was going to get busier at around seven in the morning, when the new shift of nurses came on duty and the night staff handed over.

  Venn looked at the clock on the wall for the twentieth time. Four o’ clock. Maybe three hours of relative quiet before the bustle started. If he were the killer, he’d time his arrival for when the nurses’ shift changed over. There was less chance of being spotted in the general hubbub.

  Then again, that would be a time when the police were likely to be at their most vigilant. So an earlier approach might be the best.

  Venn wished he had Beth around to talk to. They’d had a cup of coffee together an hour ago, but she’d been worked off her feet all night and needed to catch some shuteye during the lull in her duties, so she’d gone off to bunk down in the on-call room.

  He glanced at his phone from time to time. And, as sometimes happens when you’re doing something out of habit, he saw a text message arrive just as he was looking at the screen.

  It was from Fil. Call me when you get a chance. Maybe nothing, but a piece of info’s come up.

  Venn walked to the end of the corridor where he still had a clear view of the elevators. He called Fil.

  “There’s a franchise in Europe called Sigma,” said Fil without preamble. “Private clinics. They’re based in Zurich, Switzerland, but they have branches in Germany, France, Italy and Luxembourg. The website’s elegant and snazzy, but doesn’t say much about what they actually do, other than that they provide top-quality specialist healthcare for a variety of conditions.”

  Venn thought about his last encounter with a private clinic, the Bonnesante in Upstate New York. That hadn’t ended happily, and the clinic was now shut down, its director serving a long prison sentence.

  “You’re looking into it, I guess,” said Venn.

  “Yep. I might need a little help from your FBI friends, though, if I need to throw my weight around with them.”

  “Let me know,” said Venn. “I’m sure Teller will be more than happy to cooperate.”

  He squeezed the phone in frustration. It felt as if the answer to all of this was there, dangling before his eyes, but with a mist obscuring it so that he glimpsed only bits of it here and there.

  A half hour passed. Venn covered the length of the corridor with his gurney, over and over again. He took a stroll into the ICU itself to check on Harmony – no change – and to exchange a word or two with the pair of uniformed cops sitting by her bedside. He’d identified the two plainclothes FBI guys already, one in a male nurse’s uniform, one posing as a somber relative sitting beside another patient’s bed. Neither of them acknowledged Venn, which was as it ought to be.

  At the soda machine out in the corridor, Venn decided he was too wired for more caffeine and chose a Snapple instead of Coke. He was popping the tab when his phone rang.

  Teller.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” said the FBI man. “There’s been another one. A Sigma killing.”

  *

  The dead kid had a bank card on him which identified him as Lawrence Mykels. A check with the bank revealed it wasn’t stolen, but did in fact belong to him.

  “An obvious methhead,” said Teller. “Nothing but skin and bone, and crappy teeth. He probably would have died of exposure tonight even if he hadn’t been killed.”

  At a little after four a.m., forty minutes ago, an anonymous and hysterical-sounding woman had called 911 to report what looked like a dead body across the street from her. The call had been traced to a public booth. When the cops arrived, they found Mykels’ body in the doorway opposite. Forehead branded, and the wound beneath the chin. There’d been a lot of blood, but it had coagulated rapidly in the subzero conditions.

  “I figure two possibilities,” said Teller. “One: the killer’s feeling the net closing in, and that he, or she, or whoever it is, is caught up in the end game. They’re going out in a frenzy, a spree. In which case, there may be more of these attacks tonight.”

  “What’s the other possibility?” said Venn.

  “This is a copycat killing,” said Teller wearily. “Which is all we goddamn need.”

  “Yeah,” said Venn. “I’ll need to think about this. Call me with updates.”

  “You’re staying there at the hospital?” Teller sounded mildly surprised.

  “No point in me rushing down to the crime scene,” said Venn. “You guys will have it covered. Call me with updates, will you?”

  There was a third possibility, he thought, as he stared at the blank phone. One teller hadn’t mentioned.

  This was a ruse. A random killing to draw the FBI and the cops away from the hospital and concentrate their efforts out on the streets. The woman who’d called 911 might even be the one they were looking for.

  Which was why Venn was staying right where he was.

  Chapter 32

  Sally-Jo parked her car six blocks from the hospital – she didn’t think there was any way it would arouse suspicion, but there was no point taking any unnecessary chances – and walked the remaining distance.

  The cold felt alien on her neck, as if she’d stepped onto the surface of another planet. Back there in the Village, when she’d killed the methhead, she hadn’t felt any different, because she’d been wearing a ski mask which had covered her nape completely. Now, with a gap between her wool cap and scarf, she was for the first time fully aware of what she’d done to herself.

  She’d almost sobbed as the waves of rich chestnut hair had gone tumbling to the floor in her bathroom. Four years, it had taken her to grow that beautiful mane. And now it was gone in a few minutes, hacked off crudely with a pair of scissors. Still. She’d come to accept that there were priorities to be made. Besides, she had the rest of her life to grow her hair back.

  And she had to admit, gazing at her newly shorn head in the bathroom mirror, she hadn’t done a bad job. Her cropped head had a spiky, punky look which took a few years off her age. Maybe she’d consider shorter hair in the future. For now, it altered her appearance satisfactorily.

  As she hurried through the frozen streets, hunched against the pitiless cold, she thought that her height, always a source of pride to her, was now a drawback. She wasn’t abnormally tall for a woman, by any means, but her five feet ten inches made her stand out just that little bit. Unlike many taller women, she didn’t stoop to lose a few inches, and so that was what she would do now. She was also wearing what the British called ‘sensible’ shoes, flat-soled and rather ugly but great when you were on your feet all day, so those would help her to look a little shorter.

  She reached the glass façade of the hospital. The street outside was lined with police cars. Four of them.

  Sally-Jo peered nervously at them, hoping she looked like a normal law-abiding citizen registering concern at the presence of so many police and what it might suggest. But she didn’t falter. Just hurried up to the doors and pushed through.

  Two uniformed cops stood around by the reception desks. A couple of the hospital’s own sec
urity guards were by the doors, no doubt feeling sidelined by the cops muscling in on their turf. One of the guards recognized her and nodded.

  “Shift starting early?”

  Henry was his name, she recalled now. She smiled ruefully.

  “They needed an extra pair of hands, and I need the overtime.”

  “Don’t we all.” He raised a hand as she headed for the elevators.

  On the way, Sally-Jo slipped off her overcoat and hat and folded them over her arm. Her uniform underneath made it less likely anybody would look twice at her.

  She rode the elevator to the third floor, one down from the ICU. The doors opened and she stepped apologetically past a janitor who was swabbing the floor with a mop and pail, and merely grunted in response to her greeting. Quickly, but without haste, Sally-Jo walked down the passage to the bank of lockers set into a recess beside the entrance to her ward.

  She took a key from the pocket of her uniform and opened the locker marked Sally-Jo Summers. From inside, she removed a thick, creased paperback textbook: titled simply Physiology: A Nurse’s Guide. She stuffed her overcoat and hat into the locker.

  As she closed it once more, a voice behind her said, “Sally-Jo! What the hell are you doing here?”

  She jumped, but managed to conceal it, she thought. Turning, she forced a smile on her face. Ellen stood there, hands on hips, a look of genuine astonishment on her face.

  “It’s five a.m.,” said Ellen.

  Sally-Jo held up the textbook. “Couldn’t sleep. And I realized I left this here. So I figured, my shift starts at seven, so why not come in early and do a little studying?”

  Ellen shook her head again. “Crazy girl.”

  “I’m going to pass this diploma course if it kills me,” said Sally-Jo.

  “You don’t need no diploma,” said Ellen. “What you need is a man, honey. Like I keep telling you. You got a nice warm body to snuggle up to, there ain’t no reason to get up in the cold and come to work at such a godforsaken hour.”

  Sally-Jo smiled once more. “One day, maybe. Right now, I need to get through this.” She brandished the textbook again. “So out my way. I’m heading for the canteen.”