Chill of Night

by John Lutz

  Minskoff, the little ME with the glasses and bushy mustache, was standing alongside the limo, near the dead judge, writing something with a blunt pencil in a small black notebook. He was concentrating on what he wrote, the tip of his tongue protruding slightly from the hairy corner of his mouth.

  Beam approached him while Nell and Looper went to find the uniforms who’d taken the call and were first on the scene. Apparently the driver had gone into the station for the paper while the tank was still filling. The gas pump nozzle was still stuck in the limo; it and the hose reminded Beam of a snake that had sunk its fangs into the big car and wouldn’t release it. Beam stood patiently, the sun starting to get hot on the back of his neck, until Minskoff finished writing and closed his notebook.

  “What’s the preliminary?” Beam asked.

  “Looks like one gunshot wound, center of the forehead, bullet entered the frontal lobe of the brain at a slight leftward, downward angle. No exit wound. Death immediate.”

  “Thirty-two caliber?”

  “Could be. We’ll know when we remove the slug.”

  “Has the body been moved at all?”

  “Lividity indicates not in the slightest.”

  “I mean since you arrived to make your preliminary examination?”

  “The good judge is exactly as he was when I got here. I haven’t even opened the car door. No need to, considering the location of the fatal wound.”

  Beam leaned down so he could peer into the car without touching anything. It appeared that the door where the judge sat was unlocked, as was the driver’s door.

  He straightened up, then walked alongside the car to the windshield, where the sheet of paper with the red J on it was still wedged beneath the wiper blade. He didn’t have to remove the paper. The letter J was plainly visible, and looked like the others left by the Justice Killer.

  Minskoff had walked along to join him. “Appears to be your man again.”

  “Hardly a man at all,” Beam said. “Sick slugs like this killer have given up being part of humanity.”

  Minskoff shook his head. “Nobody resigns from the human race. But he’s sure a part of us we don’t like.”

  “When you arrived, was the rear door where the judge sat unlocked?”

  “Yes. I saw that it was, but I didn’t open the door. Didn’t have to, so I tried to help keep the scene frozen.”

  “Window already down?”

  “Yes, it was open just as it is now.”

  “The judge is facing forward,” Beam said. “If someone approached the car from the side and tapped on the window, and he opened it and turned his head to speak to whoever it was, then was shot, would his head turn to face forward again?”

  “It very well could. Probably would, as his body slumped back. I don’t rule out the possibility that he was shot by someone inside the car, but how we found him is consistent with what you just hypothesized, being shot by someone standing alongside the car. The apparent angle of the entry wound indicates that also.” Minskoff looked mildly irritated, like a man who’d drawn a bad card at poker. “It’d all be easier to reconstruct if we had an exit wound and could examine blood splatters.”

  “Messier, though,” Beam said.

  “Oh, I don’t mind that.”

  Beam left the M.E. as he saw Nell and Looper walking toward him. They stood out of earshot of the crime scene unit techs and watched the ambulance arrive to transport the body. It’s flashing emergency lights were lost in the bright sunlight, like those of the police cars.

  Too nice a day for a murder, Beam thought.

  “A bigshot judge,” Looper said, glancing over at the body in the limo. “Not good for our side. Da Vinci’s liable to show up here with his nuts in a knot.”

  “Most likely,” Beam said. “Maybe we can be gone. What’s the story?”

  “Uniforms got the call and arrived no more’n ten minutes after the shot was fired. Nobody heard the shot. Nobody saw anything.”

  “Busy intersection,” Beam said, glancing around. “Where was the limo driver through all of this?”

  Nell said, “He stopped here for gas, then while the tank was filling went inside to get a morning paper for the judge. It’s the judge’s regular limo service, and his regular driver. Since the tank had been almost empty, the driver chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. Then he paid for the paper and went outside. He thought at first the judge was dozing, then noticed the window was down and saw the hole in his forehead. He said he opened the door, gonna try to help. Then he saw it was no use and shut the door, came back into the station, and called the police.”

  “You sure he said the window was down?” Beam asked.

  Nell gave a little smile. “Yeah. I specifically asked. The chauffeur’s a sharp guy. After phoning the police, he went back outside and stood by the car, made sure nobody touched anything. He paid by company credit card, but he still hasn’t even touched the receipt sticking out of the pump.”

  “Did he see anybody leaving the scene?”

  “No one. And he said he looked in all directions. Nobody saw anything. It’s a slow morning, and the next people to arrive at the station were police.”

  “What about the clerk?”

  “No help there,” Looper said. “She didn’t even know anything was wrong until the driver went outside with his paper and came running back in.” He felt his shirt pocket. “Christ, I need a smoke.”

  “That’d be smart,” Nell said. “Don’t you smell the gas?”

  “Yeah. It makes me want a smoke.”

  “You addicts.”

  “Any other customers inside the station?” Beam asked. “Somebody wanting coffee or shopping around for junk food?”

  “No one,” Looper said. “Just the driver and the clerk. It’s quiet in there, but you can hear the traffic. Seems to me that if neither of them heard a shot, there was probably a sound suppresser on the piece. And I got a glimpse of the entry wound, most likely a thirty-two. Our guy.”

  Beam nodded. “That how you see it, Nell?”

  “Unless that letter J is different from the rest.”

  “It isn’t,” Beam said.

  “Then the shooter was our guy. This was a regular stop for the judge, usually just so the driver could buy a paper. But this time the limo needed gas, so opportunity presented itself. Way I see it, the killer musta moved fast when the driver went inside. Walked over to the limo and knocked on the window. The judge pressed the power button so the window’d glide down and he could talk to whoever’d knocked, and pop!”

  “Sounds right,” Looper said.

  Beam looked again at the scene. There was another set of pumps beyond where the limo was parked, so visibility wasn’t good from the street. Probably no one driving past would notice someone standing alongside a vehicle gassing up, or think anything about it if they did. As for the black limo, they were common as roaches in New York; it wouldn’t have attracted any attention.

  “A judge this time,” Looper said, tapping his barren shirt pocket again. “Da Vinci’s gonna shit a brick.”

  They stood silently for a few minutes, watching the ambulance pull away with the judge’s body. A white and silver tow truck, belching noxious diesel exhaust, vibrant bass notes, and gleaming in the sun as if it had just been washed and waxed, arrived to transport the mayor’s limo to the police garage. The limo would be dusted for prints, black-lighted, vacuumed, and partially disassembled.

  Beam didn’t think it was a waste of time. It was always possible the killer had left something, even if he hadn’t gotten inside the limo. We all leave a wake as we move through life.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

  Da Vinci hadn’t waited long to get into a frenzy. “You at the Parker scene?” he asked Beam, over the cell phone.

  “We’re here,” Beam assured him. He filled in da Vinci on what little there was to know.”

  “So we’ve got the red letter J tucked under the wiper, and it looks like the judge was shot with a
thirty-two caliber slug.”

  “Could be a thirty-two. We’ll know soon as they do the postmortem, then ballistics can see if we’ve got a match with the other JK shootings.”

  “It’ll match,” da Vinci said glumly. “Remember Raymond Peevy?”

  Beam didn’t have to search his memory far. “The shitbird who shot up a van full of kids on the Verrazano Bridge about five years ago?”

  “Yeah. It was six years. He lives in California now and grows grapes. The late Judge Parker refused a prosecutor’s appeal on a verdict that set Peevy free on a technicality.”

  “Can’t think of a better way to become the late Judge Parker.”

  “Why we’ve got us another JK killing, Beam. You and your team have gotta nail this bastard before the commissioner nails me. I’m the one talked you up, Beam, and I told it true. You’re the best one to get inside this freak’s mind, anticipate him, be where he is, and stop his evil heart. Are you working toward that goal?”

  “You know damn well I am.”

  “Okay, okay. “Da Vinci seemed to calm down.

  “Why do you think he uses a thirty-two?” Beam asked.

  “It’s what he has. Scumbags like JK usually don’t go out and buy weapons. They use what’s at hand.”

  “He doesn’t use a twenty-two, like some pros,” Beam said. “Three or four in the head at close range. A thirty-two’s got more punch, but it isn’t as sure as a thirty-eight, forty-five, or nine millimeter.”

  “It’s had enough punch so far.”

  “True. But this is such a careful killer, you’d think he’d want to make sure his shots counted.”

  “They can count, with a thirty-two.”

  “If the shooter knows how to use one. Or increases the load.”

  “So you’re saying he’s a gun nut and a good shot, but not a pro?”

  “Or he knows guns and is a good shot trying not to look like a pro.”

  “Hmm. Could be you’re overthinking this.”

  “Could be,” Beam admitted.

  “And at this point I’m more interested in results than in theory.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I’m asking, Beam, please don’t disappoint me.” He sounded as if he thought Beam really had a choice.

  “I’m trying not to disappoint anyone,” Beam said.

  “Aren’t we all?” da Vinci said.

  Sometimes Beam wondered.

  He slid the phone back in his pocket and watched the glowing taillights of the truck towing the limo disappear around the corner like the watchful red eyes of some retreating animal.

  The city was full of predators.

  Gina had always thought Carl Dudman was the one most responsible for setting Genelle’s killer free. It wasn’t only that he was jury foreman. She’d watched him in TV interviews after the trial, a big man with sandy hair and an easy smile. He had charisma and confidence and it was obvious that things came easy to him. What would it be like to be a man like that in this world, instead of a helpless young girl like Genelle?

  Gina had some idea, only she wasn’t as helpless as Genelle had been. She was four years older than when her twin sister died, and she was wiser. She was also more determined. She’d always been more determined than Genelle, and obviously the stronger of the two. They’d both known it almost from infancy, and their parents had reinforced the knowledge. Their father had loved them both, but he was fond of saying Gina had self-confidence coming out of her pores. Of course, he was right. And now Gina had a mission. A celestial responsibility that only a surviving twin could understand. She had a duty to her dead twin.

  With that duty had come sudden opportunity. Dudman perfectly fit the profile of the Justice Killer’s victims. All Gina would need to do after shooting him was leave the red letter J near his body. She’d seen reproductions of it in the press after the murders where the letter had been scrawled on paper, and once with lipstick on a bathroom mirror, and she’d practiced and could duplicate it precisely.

  Could she do it? Actually squeeze a trigger and put a bullet in Dudman? There was no way anyone could know something like that for sure until the time came. She’d know it when she was looking down the barrel at him.

  But she had confidence.

  And in her purse she had the hard, cold thirty-eight caliber semiautomatic Reggie had sold her. He’d smiled as he counted her money, and he’d casually told her that if she did use the gun she should wear gloves and she could drop the weapon anywhere—and she should as soon as possible—because it couldn’t be traced to her or to anyone else.

  But she wasn’t going to drop it anywhere. The Justice Killer didn’t leave his gun where the police might find it.

  She straightened up from where she’d been leaning against a building and eating a knish she’d bought from a street vendor at the corner. Her eyes narrowed against the sun reflecting off a windshield. There was Carl Dudman, emerging from the building across the street, where his real estate agency was located.

  Gina hadn’t seen him since the trial, and he looked slightly older and heavier. But he still made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. If she were a different sort of person, not as careful, less determined, she would have simply gone into the real estate agency offices and shot her way to where he was and then killed him. The way those people did on the news almost every week somewhere, and for less reason than Gina’s. Newscasters often described them as “disgruntled.” Sure they were disgruntled.

  But Gina was more than disgruntled, and she knew that indiscriminate blasting away left too much to chance. Besides, she didn’t plan on being apprehended or to kill innocent people.

  There would be no direct and easy way to kill Dudman, not even one involving wholesale slaughter. Dudman was no fool. He must know he was in danger and was being careful. She’d have to bide her time.

  A tall, hefty fellow, with a buzz cut only a little longer and gray in front, and wearing a tight blue suit, was right behind Dudman, looking this way and that. He strode with a step surprisingly light for such a big man. He reminded Gina of nothing so much as a bull getting a feel for the ring and a matador. A dangerous looking guy.

  Gina took a bite of knish and smiled as she watched the giant usher Dudman through the orange scaffolding in front of the building, then into a waiting limo. As he moved, he let his gaze slide up and down the block, over her like cool water. Satisfied but obviously still wary, he lowered himself into the car after Dudman.

  It wasn’t surprising that a rich businessman like Dudman would have a security system, including bodyguards. That meant extra planning for Gina, and extra work and time.

  Gina didn’t mind putting in the hours, and she did have some advantages. A bodyguard with the Justice Killer on his mind wouldn’t be suspicious of a pretty young woman with a smile just for him. Or a college student applying for an internship. Or a naive young girl new to the city and lost and needing directions.

  The possibilities were almost endless, and one or more of them would work. The trick was in the choosing. Then in the execution.

  Someone clever, patient, and determined, could breach any security system.

  Gina truly believed that a genuinely determined person could do just about anything.

  43

  “You home, Beam?” Nell asked him on his cell phone.

  Beam glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Ten fifteen.

  “Yeah, I’m home.”

  He tried to hide the thickness in his voice. He’d been sitting in the darkness of his den, sipping Glenlivet eighteen-year-old scotch to relax, letting his mind roam over the landscape of the investigation. He liked to do that, give his unconscious free reign from time to time. It had worked before, and he was willing to try anything to nail the Justice Killer.

  Trouble was, he kept finding himself thinking about Nola. Nola cocking her head to the side the way she did when she listened to him. Nola standing behind the antique shop counter as if in judgment of him, her lingering look and
the graceful line of her back and shoulder as she turned away from him in calm dismissal.

  “Beam? You near a TV?”

  “Not one that’s on.”

  “Better turn it on to the Matt Black Show.”

  Beam knew who Black was, a young guy with a late-night local talk show on cable. He had tightly curly hair, wore snappy double-breasted suits, and had a space between his front teeth like Letterman. But there the resemblance ended. Black was lots of things, but funny wasn’t one of them.

  “Beam, you there?”

  “Here and moving toward the television.” Feeling my way in the dark. Ouch! Stubbed toe. Teach me to sit around in my stocking feet.

  “You okay?”

  “Okay, Nell.”

  “You won’t be in a minute. Black’s guest is Adelaide Starr.”

  Beam groaned as he found the remote and switched on the small-screen TV in the bookcase.

  “I’m hanging up,” Nell said. “I don’t want to miss a cute word.”

  In the soft light from the TV, Beam carried the remote back to his desk, sat down, and sipped more scotch as he turned up the volume.

  Adelaide Starr had on a lacy black and white low-cut dress and was wearing her blond hair in pigtails. She looked like Little Bo Peep, minus the sheep but with great bazooms.

  “But we’re celebrities,” Black was saying through his gaping grin. “We deserve special treatment.”

  Studio laughter.

  Adelaide was smiling innocently while leaning forward to display cleavage, pretending to be listening hard to her host. “If I really thought that,” she said, “I’d move to France.”

  “You wouldn’t have to do jury duty there,” Black said. “They just whoosh!—off with your head.”

  “I’m being serious,” Adelaide said. “I don’t want to do jury duty.”