by John Lutz
If it wasn’t close enough, it might send the investigation off in the wrong direction.
The Gremlin laughed out loud. He was sure no one had gotten a good enough look at him—or indeed any look at all—so far in his New York adventures.
He didn’t think it unlikely that Minnie Miner would cooperate with the police in trying to manipulate the public, but she was in over her head with this one. He not only wasn’t worried, but he was anxious to see this “likeness” of him. It should help to put a picture in people’s minds that looked little like him. It should be a help to him, having all those wannabes swarming the police with their worthless confessions.
He settled back in his tan leather sofa to watch the rest of Minnie Miner ASAP. It was a phone-call or tweet-in program. Maybe someday he’d give Minnie a call or a tweet. Or maybe he’d even surprise her and meet her personally. People still did that, didn’t they?
When he tired of watching television, the killer removed robe and slippers and ran a hot bath. He shampooed his hair with a product that gave it body, then pleasured himself with images of Margaret Evans.
After a while, the images were replaced by mental snapshots of an elevator packed with dark blood, red meat, glistening white bone, and expressions of horror. It was something that the great painter of Hades, Hieronymus Bosch, would be proud of, and see as among his best work.
Wouldn’t it be something, the killer thought, standing up and showering down, if that was what people saw when they opened their doors on Halloween?
Better stock up on those treats.
After dressing in designer jeans, a Yankees T-shirt, and soft-soled leather moccasins, the Gremlin unpacked the blue gym bag in which he kept his knives, tape, and various other instruments of his obsession, and replaced them with half a dozen books on the subject of elevators. Their history, variations, uses, and safety features. He’d bought the books at the Strand bookstore, where aisle after aisle was packed with used books covering everything fictional or factual. He paid cash so there would be no charge record of the purchase.
He had learned virtually everything about elevators, from their invention to their present state. They got progressively safer, but still, there were occasional accidents. And there was human error in construction, installation, usage, performance.
When the bag contained the books, along with a few other contents, he saturated them with bleach. Then he carried the bag out to the deserted hall and to the chute to the building’s basement compactor.
He fancied that he heard it hit bottom. Even heard the sound of the compactor’s harsh welcome. Trash pickup was scheduled for tomorrow.
So much for incriminating books, or bag. Other evidence the killer wiped clean and placed in cabinets, drawers, or toolbox.
Soon everything was where it might reasonably be found, or not found at all because it could be easily replaced. The killer could always buy another, different color bag, different rope, cigarettes of another brand. Different knives.
Helen the profiler could have taken the elevator up eleven floors to the rehab-center gym, but decided instead to take the stairs. She told herself it was because the building was cool and she needed the exercise. Sure.
Charlie Vinson was using an aluminum walker to get around, but his therapist said he’d soon be graduating to a cane. He’d come through the operations better than anyone would have thought, since what looked like serious injury in the MRI images turned out to be congested blood.
He was on a treadmill, wearing knee-length shorts, an untucked sleeveless shirt, and worn-out-looking jogging shoes. The outpatient rehab center was in a brick and stone building that also housed apartments and a corner deli. The exercise room was on the eleventh floor. On the tenth was a rooftop garden area with small, decorative Japanese maples in huge concrete pots. Beyond the pots, bright red geraniums lined the roof. There were a few webbed chairs. Sometimes, when it wasn’t so hot and the roof garden was in the shade of taller buildings, it was pleasant to sit outside.
It was ninety in the shade this afternoon, and no one at rehab was sitting in the garden. In the bright light streaming through the window, a shapely woman in tights was bicycling to nowhere. Helen was pretty sure it was Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife. An attractive Asian woman was on a nearby stationary bike, pedaling almost as fast as Emma Vinson but seemingly with less effort. She looked over now and then at Emma, as if she’d like to challenge her to a race.
Emma didn’t look up as Helen walked over to Charlie Vinson. She might have been taken for an instructor, with her six-foot-plus frame and muscular legs. She was wearing a lightweight green dress today that somehow made her look even taller.
Helen got closer and could hear the rasping breathing emitted by Vinson. They had an appointment to meet with a police sketch artist today. She hoped he hadn’t forgotten.
When she was only a few feet away she glanced at the complex instrument cluster on the treadmill, and saw that several wires ran to Charlie Vinson’s ears, and to what looked like a blood pressure cuff on his left arm. What appeared to be the treadmill’s odometer read 1,055 miles.
Pointing to it, Helen, who wasn’t the athlete she appeared to be, said “If I’m going that far, I’m taking the bus.”
“That’s the past week,” Vinson said.
“Impressive,” Helen said. “All your miles?”
“Well, no.”
Vinson smiled and pressed a button on the treadmill, and the thing slowed down. He slowed with it, and didn’t step off until it had come to a complete stop.
“I didn’t forget,” he said breathlessly, “about our appointment with the sketch guy.”
“He’s on his way. I thought he’d already be here.”
The elevator door opened and Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, stepped out. He was a small man holding a cardboard contraption with three steaming paper cups. A broad strap across his right shoulder supported a leather attaché case. It was the scent of doughnuts that commanded attention.
“Since I was taking the elevator up,” he said, “I thought I’d stop and get us something from that place around the corner.”
Vinson looked at Helen with a superior half smile. “You took the stairs.”
“You know me,” Helen said, though he didn’t. “An athlete.”
“You certainly look like one,” a woman’s voice said.
Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife, had dismounted her bicycle and come over to them.
“How have you been, Mrs. Vinson?”
“Okay. Compared to how I could be.”
“Charlie looks like he’s well on the road to recovery.”
“The road’s a steep hill sometimes,” Vinson said. “The leg’s not all the way back. Arm’s almost there, though. I’m a tough guy, except for when I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Helen’s taking me to see the sketch artist,” he said.
“You don’t have to go far to see him,” Helen said. She put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. She looked as if she might dribble him. “This is Richard Warfield, our best sketch artist.”
“She’s being polite,” Richard said. Helen thought that in the bright light he looked about twelve years old.
She said, “Richard’s modest.”
“Well, I am that.”
Everyone took a cup of coffee except for Emma, who said water wasn’t on her diet, and coffee was almost a hundred percent water.
Helen said, “What do you do for . . . liquid?”
Emma smiled. “It’s everywhere, in everything we eat. We’re even mostly composed of liquids.”
“So I’ve heard,” Helen said. Somehow without burning her tongue, she finished her coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and tossed it halfway across the room into a wastebasket.
“I thought so,” Emma said. “Basketball.”
“I could have kicked it in, too,” Helen said, hoping she hadn’t used up the next six months of good luck.
“I’d like to be there,” Emma said.
Helen looked at her. “In the wastebasket?”
“No. To see Richard do his work.”
“Your husband will be doing most of the work,” Richard said.
Half a dozen women entered the room and dispersed to various exercise machines. Seeing who could laugh the loudest seemed to be part of their regimen. They wore exercise outfits of various colors and fashion, all of it designed to make them look thinner.
“They look like starving cheerleaders,” Emma Vinson said, in a tone somewhere between jeering and jealous. “’Specially the ones with those boobs.”
Her husband, Charlie, seemed to view the exercisers in a different light altogether. He was leaning forward on his aluminum walker, and the expression on his face was so fixated it was almost comical. Helen wondered if there had been breast augmentation going on here.
Helen and company had come here to observe Charlie Vinson and hear what he had to say. They wanted to know how certain he seemed, or if there were any contradictions in whatever he said in conversation. While he was searching his memory to recall how someone looked, something he heard might bob to the surface of his thoughts.
“I have a department car in front of the building,” Helen said. “We can drive over to Q&A and get Richard set up. The air-conditioning’s been repaired, so it will be cooler there, and Quinn might have something to add.”
“Quinn has been wonderful through all this,” Emma said.
“Black Chevy,” Helen said, “parked near the corner.”
Everyone filed into the elevator, including Charlie Vinson. Excluding Helen. Vinson used his aluminum walker to help create standing room.
Helen stayed back.
“Are you taking the stairs?” Emma asked in disbelief.
“I’d prefer it,” Helen said. “That athlete thing. Builds endurance in the legs.”
Charlie Vinson, leaning on his walker, smiled at her. “We’ve got to learn to face our fears, Helen.”
Helen said, “Why?”
26
After the brief drive to Q&A it didn’t take Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, long to get set up. Quinn sat back and watched.
Warfield borrowed a small card table and two chairs. He placed the chairs so two people sitting in them would be directly across from each other. Then he removed two small laptop computers from his leather attaché case. He placed the two computers in the center of the table, their screens facing away from each other.
The two people in the chairs would be facing each other. Warfield and Charlie Vinson would be looking at identical screens.
“So this is what sketch artists have come to,” Vinson said, understanding how this process was going to work. Warfield could not only get information from Vinson about what the perpetrator looked like; he could also watch Vinson on PIP react as the likeness on the screen before him took shape and went from pixel to person.
“This and a stylus are much more effective than a sketch pad and pencil, or a lot of false mustaches,” Helen said.
“It takes the same sort of talent and expertise,” Warfield said.
Helen could see that it would. She’d observed Warfield work several times and been impressed.
“I’ll use the stylus directly on my screen,” Warfield said. “And I’ll use it much as I’d use charcoal or pencil on a sketch pad.” He peered around his up tilted laptop screen. “I might ask you to do some basic drawing to get across what you’re trying to describe.”
“I can’t draw anything but water,” Vinson said.
“That’s okay. The process will concern your memory rather than any artistic talent. And mostly, I’ll be responding to your descriptions. I’ll fill in when I think you’ve been too light, but other than that, it’s your show. Then we’ll discuss what we have and hone and sharpen the likenesses.” He glanced around. “Is everybody comfortable?”
Everyone said that they were. No one switched chairs or positions. The only change was that two people asked for bottled water, which was supplied.
Warfield booted up and adjusted both computers. Their monitors showed blank backgrounds.
Warfield picked up his stylus and held it lightly, as he would a piece of chalk, or a flute he was about to play.
“Remember,” he said to Vinson, “what will be happening on my screen will be happening on yours. Much of what I say will be determined by the software. Don’t use your stylus unless I tell you.” He touched stylus to screen. “Ready?”
Vinson said that he was.
Warfield said, “We’ll begin with a perfect oval.”
Vinson watched a black line appear on his TV screen.
“Now I’m going to make it more egg-shaped.”
Before Warfield, the oval on the monitor became slightly smaller at the bottom. More like a real egg. But a perfect egg.
“That about right?” Warfield asked.
Vinson, knowing the figure was to be the basic shape of the killer’s head, said, “Maybe a little smaller at the base.”
“Okay. Pointed chin?”
“Yes!” Vinson said. “Now that you mention it. Definitely pointed. One of his ears was pointed, too.”
“One of his ears?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah. The right one, I think. It looked like he’d done some boxing. Or he mighta been injured or something when he was a kid. Like some bigger kid had him in a headlock and messed up the ear. Broke the cartilage.
“What about his left ear?”
“Nothing. I don’t recall exactly, though. He did have hair long on the sides, so maybe it was covered.”
“Show us.”
Vinson did some crude sketching, then Warfield neatened it up.
“Somebody said he was wearing a baseball cap.” Quinn said.
“Might have been, but I don’t recall it. He was just some little guy in a hurry to get downstairs, trying to get on the elevator.”
Warfield played with the keyboard, mouse, and stylus. The shape on Vinson’s monitor changed slightly. Then he gave the subject longer hair on the sides, and a pointed cauliflower ear, and it underwent a definite alteration.
“That it?” Warfield asked Vinson.
“We’re getting there. The hair on the sides was still a little longer, like wings.”
The digital image on Warfield’s computer changed again. The face on the monitor was looking more familiar. Still, there should be a definite click of recognition. That hadn’t happened yet.
Vinson was getting a better idea of how this was going to work. It was going to be a grueling job. Already his back was getting sore from sitting leaning forward in concentration.
“I do feel like there are things swimming just beyond my thoughts, but I can’t get to them,” Vinson said, looking at Quinn.
“That’s okay. Memory’s like that.”
“What about his nose?” Warfield asked Vinson.
“Long and pointed.” No hesitation there.
“Like Pinocchio’s?”
“Good Lord, no. The guy wasn’t a freak.”
Quinn thought, Not on the outside.
Warfield sketched in a smaller nose. “That it?”
“Not quite. There was a little hump in his nose. Know what I mean?”
Warfield brandished his stylus. “Like so?”
“No. Not quite that big.”
Warfield made minor adjustments.
“No, no, no, better, better, too much—that’s it! Now, can you make the eyes closer together?”
“Sure.” Warfield accommodated. He seemed to be having fun now.
“Perfecto!” Vinson said.
“Eye color?” Quinn asked.
Vinson shook his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Captain.”
“Sure.”
Quinn smiled. Civilian, actually.
“Did he have any facial hair?” Warfield asked.
“Like a mustache or beard?” Vinson asked.
“Or anything else,” Quinn said.
“Not as I c
an recall, Cap’n.”
Cap’n.
Was Vinson messing with him? Quinn stared at the man, detecting no irony. So Vinson wasn’t another Harold.
“Tattoos, warts, scars, anything noticeable?” Warfield asked Vinson.
“He had a chin with a line in it.”
“Vertical?”
“Up and down.”
“Cleft chin?” Helen asked.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What was he wearing?” Quinn asked.
“Like I said a couple dozen times, he mighta had on some sort of work outfit. Green, gray, blue. One of those colors that changes a little according to what color room they’re in.”
“What color are the forty-third-floor walls and carpet?”
“By the elevators?”
“Yes.”
“Tell you the truth, I’d be guessing,” Vinson said.
That, Quinn thought, probably was the truth.
Warfield did a little touching up. Then he stood and finished with a flourish. Quinn thought he might kick his chair away like a rock star to share and express his enthusiasm, but he merely stepped back.
“Not a spittin’ image,” Vinson said, “but I don’t think anybody could do it better. It captures the essence.”
“You an art critic?” Harold asked seriously.
Quinn knew it was one of those seemingly unrelated questions that Harold sometimes asked, and sometimes led somewhere the other detectives hadn’t known existed. Harold’s World.
“In my spare time,” Vinson said.
It turned out that Vinson had a blog, Splatter Chatter, that specialized in cubism and the impressionist masters. He gave everyone his card, on which was his blog’s web address and a tiny portrait of van Gogh with his ear bandaged.
