Slaughter

by John Lutz

  All of this, Quinn thought, was apropos of nothing.

  Maybe.

  27

  A slightly hungover Lido arrived the next morning at Q&A and situated himself at the main computer. He had the air of a man who was at home and alone—his world, his house, his investigation.

  Quinn walked over and Lido acknowledged his presence with a languid wave. Two of the computer’s monitors were flashing head shots of males, one of which might be a match with the digital likeness of the suspect. It could happen any moment, suddenly. Or not at all. It was asking a lot of facial recognition software to match a photograph with a police artist’s sketch.

  “Any luck?” Quinn asked.

  Lido shot him a glance. “Not so far. It would be nice if we had a photo to match with a photo. Or, better yet, fingerprints.”

  “In a dreamworld,” Quinn said.

  Lido said, “Isn’t that where we are?”

  “Sounds like a question that could lead to one of those existentialist arguments heard in dorm rooms around the world.”

  “Dorm rooms, did you say?”

  “Around the world,” Quinn affirmed.

  “I been there,” Lido said, “and it’s not so great.”

  The shrill first ten notes of “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” suddenly sounded from the computer

  The frenetic movement on the monitor adjacent to the one that displayed only the artist’s and witness’s still, digital image of the suspect suddenly became motionless. It was as if that entire wall had ceased swaying.

  Lido leaned forward. Quinn stepped forward. Attentions were riveted on the monitor.

  Lido went to a split screen. The sketch of the suspect was next to a black-and-white newspaper photo of a scrawny teenage boy. Quinn wouldn’t say the sketch and photo were like a young and older image of the same person. Still, there was a strong resemblance. Even the cleft chins.

  “This isn’t a mug shot,” Quinn said. “That’s what I was expecting.”

  “If we had that,” Lido said, “we’d probably also have fingerprints we might match.”

  Both men stared hard at the photos.

  “What’s that behind him?” Lido asked, motioning toward the near image.

  “Where the height chart should be?” Quinn moved closer. “Looks like a stairway. Inside somewhere, judging by the light and shadow.”

  “No, that. It looks like a double exposure, or a shot taken with a cheap camera in incredibly bad light.”

  Quinn saw what he meant. On the broad landing before the stairs, several people showed as shadowy forms in the background. A woman in a long dress. Two men, one of whom had his arm around the shoulders of the other. One of them was wearing a white shirt and dark tie. The upper body of another man, without a tie, was visible descending the steps. They were like ghosts.

  “Could be the inside of a public building,” Lido said.

  “Courthouse?”

  “That would be nice. If our gremlin was messed up with the law, there should be an ID and photo of him somewhere. An account of the case—if there was a case.”

  “I’ll narrow the parameters,” Lido said.

  “What will that do?”

  “We’ll be looking for a bigger needle in a smaller haystack.”

  Pearl and Helen entered the office, letting in warm air with the hiss of the street door. Both women slowed down when they saw Quinn and Lido in the rear of the office, at Lido’s computer setup.

  “We got something?” Pearl asked.

  “Maybe,” Quinn said.

  Helen moved closer, then bent at the waist to get a clearer view.

  “Tell you the truth,” she said, “they don’t look all that much alike. I know Mr. Sketch, but who’s the other guy?”

  “Maybe the Gremlin.”

  “No, I mean who is he?”

  “We were hoping he’d be a match with Mr. Sketch,” Quinn said.

  Pearl said, “Good luck with that.”

  “If we get him ID’d we might find a long sheet on him.”

  “If the images match closely enough,” Pearl said.

  Helen had moved very close to one of the monitors. “Can you zoom in on the other guy?”

  “Other guy?”

  “The one most obviously not Mr. Sketch.”

  “Sure,” Lido said.

  As Lido worked the computer like a mad scientist, the figure in the photo became larger and lost more definition. “All I can tell is he looks young,” Lido said.

  “That’s lettering, there in the lower right,” Helen said. She pointed. “I think it’s a name.”

  “I’ll zoom in on it,” Lido said, “but it’s gonna break up pretty soon.”

  Helen reached into her purse and put on a pink pair of glasses. No one had seen her in glasses before.

  She removed the glasses and stood up straight. “That’s okay, I got it.”

  “The photographer’s name?” Lido asked.

  “No, it’s not a photo credit. It’s the kid’s name in newspaper print: Jordan Kray.”

  Lido pressed save and then ran printouts of what was on the monitor. Then he went to work with his computer, immersing himself again in his private digital world. Someday Lido might stay there, Quinn thought. Might even be trapped there in geek land, with all the other brilliant geeks who wear mismatched socks but can work complex equations in their heads.

  “There’s no Jordan Kray that fits the characteristics we’re looking for,” Lido said, after a while.

  “He doesn’t even have a Web page?” Fedderman asked. He had come in with Harold’s partner, Sal. They’d held their silence while Lido was working.

  Fedderman’s wife, Penny, had been coaching him on the computer while trying to create a Web site. She had convinced him that everyone other than the Fedder-mans had a Web site, and that he was a natural. Already he had a tendency to store information on a cloud someplace that he could never access.

  “The guy’s a troglodyte,” Fedderman said.

  “Something like that,” Lido said.

  They stared again at the blown-up digital image. Under Lido’s coaxing it was larger now, in sharper definition. The photo was obviously one of a young male teenager. Or maybe he wasn’t even in his teens.

  “That’s a newspaper photo, so let’s find out which paper,” Quinn said.

  “Small-town rag,” Fedderman said. “Maybe a giveaway. And not recent. You can tell by the print under the photo.”

  “You mean the font,” Harold said knowledgeably. “That’s how they started calling front-page news in the early twenties. In newspaper slang, ‘big font’ meant big news. Since it was always on the first page, ‘font-page news’ gradually became front-page news.”

  “Is any of that true, Harold?” Sal asked.

  “Should be.”

  “Get the enhanced sketch in circulation,” Quinn said, marveling as he often did that his bickering team of detectives could solve anything. What accounted for their success? Unconventional thinking, maybe. “Let’s follow it up with the photograph of the kid. Send both images out to the media, then hit the neighborhoods and shops where the victims lived or worked. Do it on foot, face-to-face, so you can see what reaction you get when they first lay eyes on the photo.”

  “We need to find out more on that photo,” Sal said.

  “More on the kid,” Harold said.

  “It amounts to the same thing, Harold,” Sal rasped in his annoyed tone. Sometimes Harold could be intolerable.

  “Don’t be negative,” Harold said.

  There! Negative. Photography. Was Harold joking, or making fun of Sal? Or making Sal the joke? Or was Harold just plain dumb? Or so dumb he was smart?

  “I’ll drive the unmarked,” Sal rasped, “and I’ll control the air conditioner. Think of me as the captain of the ship.”

  Harold said, “Font news.”

  28

  Iowa, 1998

  For the next several years, after his family’s destruction, Jordan s
tayed with the Millman family, who had a farm a mile west of the Krays’ house that had burned.

  He went to school on the yellow bus as before, but the other kids tended not to talk to him. No one made fun of him; they simply didn’t seem to know quite what to make of him. A kid like Jordan, their classmate, an actual hero. Nobody knew how to approach or talk to him. A kid who in truth had been thought of as something of a dork had miraculously become “awesome.”

  Jordan enjoyed his celebrity status—at least some of it. But after a while he became withdrawn and quiet. He would look around the bus sometimes at his schoolmates and wonder how something that had nothing directly to do with their lives could strike them as so great a tragedy that they seldom knew what to say to him. He thought it shouldn’t be such a problem. Even the nitwits they saw on TV news were always yammering about “getting on with” their lives.

  The Millmans were a nice enough family. The father, Will, had died three years ago in an auto accident. His wife, only slightly injured, became “The Widow Julia.” Their son Bill, also injured, was a little younger than Jordan. He seemed to look up to Jordan, who, while older, was considerably smaller.

  At times Bill would follow Jordan to the burned, partially collapsed hulk of what had been the Krays’ home. The burned smell was still strong, but Jordan was used to it and didn’t mind. He would stand at the edge of the ruin and point things out to Bill. Teacher-to-student mode: “See how the kitchen floor caved in first? That’s because the appliances were so heavy. And the fire almost melted part of the house’s main beam, running the length of the structure. That’s a steel I beam that held up the entire weight of the house,” Jordan told Bill, “but look how it’s bent. Like it’s squishy rubber instead of steel. See over there, where the electrical service was run in and mounted on that wall? That metal box hanging on the wall is full of circuit breakers.”

  While Jordan talked, Bill listened carefully about electric current and circuit breakers. Then they covered the subject of smoke alarms. What kinds there were and how sometimes they worked but sometimes didn’t. Jordan explained about the sprinkler system, and how it was kept dry by air pressure unless one piece of metal melted faster than another, which completed a circuit and triggered an alarm and an indoor cloudburst.

  Bill Millman thought that if someone walked in or listened to them, it would sound as if Jordan was trying to sell him the ruined house.

  What Jordan never talked about was the short time he’d spent after entering the burning house. Before the propane explosion.

  Jordan had learned a great deal observing the fire that morning, not the least of which was how a burned body looked. Kent, he thought.

  Jordan only had to move a few feet to find what must be his mother’s body. Interesting how the blackened corpse might have worked when alive, the bone and muscle and tendon receiving instructions from the brain. Human bodies were simply large gadgets, Jordan realized. Parts working in conjunction with each other.

  How fascinating.

  Especially women’s parts.

  The widow Julia liked to cook. Bill and Jordan liked to eat. Bill became tall and lean, an outfielder on the school baseball team. He was disciplined for using the janitor’s tools to peel a baseball like an onion, unwinding what was inside. He never told anyone that Jordan had ruined the baseball, curious about how and why it behaved as it did when it met the bat.

  The two boys grew apart. Bill became immersed in baseball, and Jordan, more and move aloof, discovered reading. It was rumored that the Cincinnati Reds were going to send a scout to assess Bill’s talent. Bill shagged fly balls and spent extra hours in the batting cage, but the scout never showed up.

  Toward the end of that season, a batted ball shattered Bill’s kneecap. He managed to adapt well to an artificial knee, but that was the end of baseball or any other active sport.

  Bill did, however, learn to walk with the knee so well that unless you knew about the injury, you’d think it was just fine.

  Then Bill got into the habit of spending time in the park, hitting fly balls to slightly younger, more nimble outfielders. Now and then Bill would even break into a run to field a ball that was thrown back in.

  Not a long run, but it was amazing the way Bill could get around with the man-made knee.

  Jordan sometimes watched from the shadows on summer nights when Bill would sit with the widow Julia in the porch glider. With every gentle rock the glider would squeal as if in ecstasy. Jordan mentioned a few times that it would be no trouble to oil the glider’s steel rockers. A couple of drops would do the trick. But Bill told him to leave them alone, he kind of liked the sound. He told Jordan it was more pleasant to listen to than the crickets. Jordan wondered if Bill had ever taken apart a cricket.

  Jordan took to playing solitaire by the light of a yellow bulb, while Bill and the widow Julia rocked. Occasionally Bill would get up and go inside to the kitchen to get a couple of Budweiser beers and bring them outside. He never brought a bottle out for Jordan.

  Jordan got into the habit of ignoring the squeaking sound of the glider. But when the squeaking stopped, he would wait to watch Bill clomp across the porch, then with the slam of the screen door reappear a few minutes later with the two bottles of beer.

  Then one warm night the squeaking stopped. The boots clomped across the dark porch, and there were lighter, trailing footfalls.

  Then the night was quiet except for insect noises.

  That night the screen door never slammed, and the glider didn’t resume its squealing.

  Early the next morning, routine set in again. It was the weekend, and Jordan and Bill had turnips to harvest before the sun got high.

  The widow Julia gave little indication that last night had been different for her and Bill. But occasionally their eyes would meet, then quickly look away. There were small, sly smiles.

  When the turnip harvesting was done, Julia put biscuits in the oven, brewed a pot of coffee, and scrambled some eggs. Everyone behaved in precariously normal fashion. Jordan sat back in his spoked wooden chair and watched Julia move about the kitchen. She was barefoot and wearing a faded blue robe with its sash pulled tight around her narrow waist. Something about her feet with their painted red nails held his attention.

  Jordan and Bill both watched as she bent low with her knees locked to check the biscuits she’d placed in the oven.

  Bill shoved his chair back and stood up to help Julia. It didn’t look as if it hurt him to stand, but it was obvious he was slowed down.

  He stretched and got some mugs and plates down from a cabinet, and Jordan observed how well he moved without his cane. Jordan didn’t know what artificial knees were made of—some kind of composite material, he imagined. The human knee was complicated. There must be lots of moving parts.

  Jordan wondered how they worked.

  29

  New York, the present

  The concrete saw roared and screamed simultaneously. Dan Snyder, who’d been a worker for SBL Property Management for fifteen years, knew how to use the earsplitting tool to section off concrete better than anyone at SBL. He kept a deceptively loose grip on the saw, using its weight to maintain stability, his arms to guide rather than apply pressure. Let the saw do most of the work.

  He’d learned to ignore the noise.

  Snyder knew some older workers at SBL whose hearing had been affected by the noises of destruction and construction. He did wear earplugs, though he didn’t think they’d make much difference. Already he was asking people to repeat themselves. He was particularly deaf at parties, or wherever a crowd gathered.

  Letting people know your hearing was fading wasn’t the best way to stay employed by SBL Properties. Snyder was faking understanding more and more. Definitely there were safety issues, but dealing with them was better than unemployment.

  Snyder was a big man who, when working, wore wifebeater shirts to show off his muscles, not because of an ego thing, but so he would continue to look physically competent well into
his forties. Fifties, in his line of work, might be too much to expect.

  He enjoyed working hard, creating change. Like here at the Taggart Building. It remained mostly offices, with retail at first-floor and lobby levels. The arched entrance had been redesigned and would be decorated with inlaid marble. Wide, shallow steps would ascend on a graceful curve, leading to the lobby entrance. What wouldn’t be darkly tinted glass in the entrance would be veined marble.

  That was what Snyder was working on now, removing concrete that would be replaced by marble. The experts who would install the decorative marble were craftsmen of a different sort, using mallets and chisels. Their art was woven in with history. They cut stone with an eye to infinity.

  SBL didn’t build or rehab structures that wouldn’t last. Most of the work Snyder had been doing for the past fifteen years was still around, and visible, if you knew where to look.

  The Taggart Building was projected to be one of the tallest structures on Manhattan’s West Side. Right now it wasn’t all that impressive. It was stripped of most of its outer shell, and its extended skeletal presence was already taller than most buildings on the block. That basic framework would be strengthened and built upon, and within weeks a bold brick and stone structure would take form.

  At present, the only thing taller in this part of town was the steel crane looming twenty feet above the Taggart Building’s thirty-fifth floor. That would soon change.

  Over the years, Snyder had developed a proprietary attitude toward New York. His city. It didn’t hurt, either, to trade remarks with passing women, unless Snyder’s wife, Claudia, somehow found out about it.

  Claudia never actually snooped. At least, Snyder didn’t think so. He’d never caught her at it, and he gave her the benefit of the doubt. Yet she had a way of somehow knowing things.

  Maybe that was the reason why she’d been so uneasy this morning. She’d had a premonition, she said, and she’d asked Snyder to be particularly careful today.