"That's enough, boy." Charlie Spinks caught and held his arm, then reached across to cover the body again. "Whiz already took pictures for later." His voice was gentle. "Now, let's just go sit down."
Outside, Lehane ended up with his face buried in his hands. Charlie sat next to him on the bench and fired up another smoke. He waved the match out and rested one palm on Lehane's back.
"Okay," Lehane said, "first, how did he get in?"
"Broke a window in the part of the building still under construction and crawled in some time last night."
"No alarm?"
"Nope, and it seems that the parking garage guard is in a coma. Our perp whacked his head into a concrete wall hard enough to tenderize his brain. He took the guard's uniform and walked right through the lobby, came down the elevator to the freezer, checked the records and rolled Heather out."
"What then?"
"My guess is he did his business, changed into a nurse's uniform because he was all messy and walked back out again."
"Any of the staff's uniforms gone?"
"No, it's worse than that. LVPD just found out that one of the staff members is missing, some male nurse named Steve Kramer. He showed up at midnight but he never clocked out."
"Security camera footage?"
"Miles of it. Vegas homicide will be poring over tapes from all over the morgue and the attached hospital for the next several days. Nothing out of the ordinary yet."
"Jesus, Charlie," Lehane said. His face showed his shock and grief. "Who would do something like this?"
"Some kind of pervert."
"But why Heather?"
"Who knows?"
"Fuck you, Charlie." Lehane sat up, leaned back against the wall. "That's not good enough."
Charlie inhaled smoke. "Aw, hell. I know. I didn't think it would be."
"And have you ever known a garden-variety sexual kink to commit a couple of murders just to act out his fetish?" He finished his own thought. "Only a sexual psychopath does that, Charlie."
Spinks nodded. "But here's what I can't get. He didn't do her, right?"
"The man who shot Heather is dead."
"Right. So if he's a psycho, why go to all this trouble to get to her body if he didn't kill her in the first place?"
Lehane closed his eyes again. "Charlie, the fucker chewed her flesh. He ate her. I want him dead."
"I know."
"Give me some staff and a budget," Lehane said. He turned to look his friend in the eye. "Let me track him down."
"You just got in a brawl, man. You need some rest."
"I need to get back to work."
"No."
"Why?"
Charlie shook his head, gently. "You're retired, Jeff. You told me so yourself. I'll put somebody neutral on to help Vegas homicide."
"Okay, I just came out of retirement."
"You're too personally involved."
"Damned right I am. That's why I have to do this."
"Leave it to the cops. We'll help out, but they'll handle it, I promise."
"What do you want to trade?"
Spinks blinked and sat back. "You're really serious."
"Damned right I am. Look, I'll take another assignment once I wrap up who did this, okay? You can set the fee, too. I'm not even going to bargain."
"Let me think for a minute," Charlie said. "I'll have to move some people around. What do you need?"
"Give me Whiz, Pops and Guri for a few days to a week. Maybe Sandy Hammer, too, in case I need a woman. And keep the cops away."
"I said, let me think." Charlie took his cell phone from his belt. He walked to the end of the hall, flipped it open and started barking orders. Lehane sat quietly, trying to force some ugly pictures from his mind.
NINE
"Talk to me."
"I've been here all night. Watch, nothing but net." Whiz crumpled his paper cup of water and sailed it into the waste paper basket. "I have downloaded a ton of shit on serial killers, necrophilia, sexual psychopaths, cannibalism, and lots of appetizing stuff for your perusal. It should save you plowing through a ton of reference books." He rolled his wheelchair back to the computer console.
Lehane closed the door behind him. He stretched his sore muscles and grunted encouragement. "Go on."
"As for your team, Guri is working the morgue to see if the cops missed anything, Pops Keltner is digging into the backgrounds of the comatose guard and the missing nurse to see if there is any connection to Heather, or even each other. Sandy is online in her room at the Wagon Wheel waiting for an assignment."
"Email her to pull up everything she can find on Heather before any of us knew her. Compile a database of names and contact points like universities, towns, businesses and assignments and start cross-referencing with the other names. You know, the guard and the nurse and the asshole that shot her."
Whiz typed rapidly. "Done."
Lehane dropped down into a plush executive chair. "That's it for everyone else, at least for now. So you give me a crash course in cannibalism."
"Surprisingly enough, it's debatable that such a thing exists on any significant scale," Whiz said. He began scanning his notes. "The Aztec thing about eating the hearts of enemies might be just a myth, and there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence that 'anthropophagi,' as it is formally known, has ever been an accepted cultural practice."
"Urban legend?"
"More or less. There is a book by somebody named Arens called 'The Man Eating Myth' that seems to cover things pretty well. I've ordered copies for the both of us, and they should be here tomorrow."
Lehane furrowed his brow. "Okay, but what about sexual psychopathology? Serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and the like?"
"Even there anthropophagi is somewhat rare, although there was a recent case that's pretty nauseating where some German guy killed and ate his lover."
"I remember something about that."
"And the lover, some idiot named Juergen, was still alive when the two of them fried and ate his dick."
Lehane moaned. "I could have gone all day without hearing that."
"That would be closer to what we're probably looking for, though." Whiz said. "Meaning the psychological underpinnings of eating human flesh. Shrinks say that it is all over our culture—the Catholic ritual of transubstantiation, the eating of Christ's flesh and the drinking of his blood, for example."
"The popularity of vampire literature."
"Exactly. I talked to a shrink named Markoff who says those rituals are oral-sadistic. He thinks the whole concept of cannibalism or vampirism probably has its roots in a stage of nursing where the baby gets angry and wants to bite off a nipple. Hell, some serial killers do exactly that to their victims."
Lehane closed his eyes. "Whiz, if you had seen her…"
"I'm glad I didn't."
"Anyway," Lehane said, opening his eyes. "He didn't touch her nipples or her sexual organs, but he ate part of her thighs and stomach. What would your shrink friend make of that?"
"I'll ask him, Boss."
"Ask him how often that happens, especially when the perp has not murdered the victim and feels no personal connection. Because the way I'm starting to see this, the motive can't have been personal or sexual. And that just doesn't make any damned sense at all."
Whiz lifted a stack of index cards. "Want me to run this down?"
"Go."
"One, we have an airline employee name of Roger Gordon, who hails from Paris, Texas but spoke to you with a foreign accent. He has no motive for being at the concert. He acts like a crazed fan of Enrique's who is out to shoot him, but kills Heather instead. You think he taunted you personally before he died."
"Check."
"Two, we have somebody who kills a security guard, breaks into the Vegas morgue and eats part of Heather. He or she apparently causes a male nurse named Kramer to disappear and walks out of the joint, probably in his uniform."
Lehane rubbed his temples. "Who is on that again?"
"Pops.
" Whiz checked his watch. "He should be calling in pretty soon."
"Go on."
"That's about it, Jeff. No logical connection between Roger Gordon and Heather, Roger Gordon and you. Likewise, no links to Kramer or the security guard."
"What was his name?"
"Who?"
"The security guard."
Whiz looked down at his notes. "Perry Whittaker. Last I heard he was still in a coma at General."
"What do we know about him?"
"Young guy, in his early twenties. He is a weight lifter and personal trainer during the day. The garage guard thing is just something he does for extra money."
"Any chance he's going to come out of the coma?"
"Let's try Pops." Whiz speed-dialed his cell phone, plopped it into a fixture on his computer console to set it for speakerphone. After three rings Pops Keltner answered with an annoyed grunt.
"Yo, Pops. It's Whiz. I've got Jeff with me."
"Bad news, Boss. The security guard kicked the bucket maybe five minutes ago."
Lehane swore under his breath. "Did he ever say anything?"
"Not a fucking word."
"Any new information on him?"
"I spoke to his room mate earlier this morning, a big kid who dances at one of those Chippendale joints. He said the guy was trying to get the money together to leave town. He wanted to try his luck as an actor in LA. Already had an apartment leased in West Hollywood."
"He seem gay to you?"
"Not if you mean feminine, but he did drop a lot of hints in case I missed it. I got the distinct impression Perry Whittaker was too, so I started asking about boyfriends and clubs. I found out he frequented a gay bar over on West Baltimore called the Gym Rat. It's in a strip mall near Tamm Drive. I'm on my way there right now."
"What about Kramer?"
"Divorced, maybe two years, no kids. He lived alone in an apartment where a lot of newly single folks hang out, hoping to get laid."
"Did the two know each other somehow?"
"Other than the fact that they worked on different floors of the same building, there doesn't seem to be any connection between them. Hell, Kramer even parked in what the staff called the'1099' lot, half a block away, because he wasn't a full employee with benefits."
"Keep looking."
"I will. I'll call you after I check out that gay bar."
"Good work, Pops. Thanks."
Whiz Ligotti broke the connection, speed-dialed another number. Guri answered on the first ring. "I was just about to call in."
"What have you got for me?"
Guri cleared his throat. "I wish I had good news. The crime scene guys have been up and down the guard post looking for fingerprints, but you can imagine how many people pass by every day and night."
"What about his uniform?"
"There is our first break. Everyone who works in the hospital and the morgue has been fingerprinted. The killer may have left some partials on the name plate and the buttons when he dragged the body out of sight. Hopefully, we'll get a match, or at least be able to rule out the other employees."
"Has Charlie been able to speed things up?"
"Boss, you must have really yanked his chain. Charlie is all over it with both feet and handing out cash and favors like a politician in deep shit."
"How soon, then?"
"Any minute, if we're lucky. We're getting some help from a computer the local FBI guys use."
"And no trace of the nurse, this Kramer guy?"
"Not a damned thing."
"Okay, call me."
Whiz dialed a third number. Sandy answered. "Jesus, Jeff," she said, teasingly, "gimme some time, will ya?"
"Sorry, all out," Lehane said. "That's one thing we don't have available."
"I'm pulling everything I can. I've got requests in for transcripts, newspaper clippings, and some personal letters from her parents, even which classes she took at UCLA."
"I need to know if Heather's death was the central event or just collateral damage, Sandy. Keep looking."
Whiz rolled away from the console. "You up for some brunch?"
"No, not hungry."
"You know, Boss," Whiz said, softly. "We may not find any answers at all. Shit happens."
"Not like this, it doesn't."
Whiz went back to work, his nimble fingers rapping the keyboard. Lehane sat quietly, thumbing through the notes Whiz had taken earlier in the morning. What he read simply deepened his conviction. Unless the cannibal knew Heather in some way, or at least felt connected to her, none of this made sense.
An odd chirp sounded. Whiz reached for the still-cradled cell phone and touched the button. "Incoming."
"Yo, guys. It's Pops. I just spent a very odd period of time in the Gym Rat, talking to a bartender named James."
"Why odd?"
"I'm used to meat markets, but not when the shoppers are all guys. Anyway, he recognized Perry Whittaker. Said he came in fairly often, and after I slipped him some green he admitted the guy was a sometime hustler, too."
"Okay," Lehane said. "That's good information. Did you find out where he went out trolling?"
"Yeah, and the Gym Rat was his home base."
"Did he have any regular customers?"
"Let's just say he got around."
Lehane sighed. "All right, then. Did you show him Heather's picture?"
Pops paused for a long moment. "No. Should I have?"
"We're looking for connections here," Lehane said, annoyed. "Show him all the photos we have, damn it, even the shooter from Texas."
"Now?"
"Now. And then report back."
Whiz terminated the call. "Calm down, Boss. We're on your side here, remember?"
Lehane nodded. "Maybe I am hungry after all. What have you got in the fridge, Whiz?"
The younger man rolled his wheelchair to the right and reached down behind the long console. "Couple of bachelor sandwiches."
"That sounds ominous. What's in them?"
"Something sort of blue and green with lettuce and tomato."
"I'll have a soda."
Whiz opened a heavily sugared soft drink and a diet drink for himself and returned. Lehane opened the can. He drank deeply and belched. "Whiz, you need to get married one of these days."
"For the joy of losing half of everything I don't own yet?"
"No, so you eat something."
"Look who's talking."
Whiz looked down at the pile of papers Lehane had been reading. "Did you learn anything new?"
"No, but thanks for getting it all together. When are you going to talk to that shrink again?"
"Relax, Boss. I emailed him a few minutes ago. He'll call."
Pops called back. His voice had a thin and nervous edge. "Good call, Boss. We've got a hit."
"Who?"
"The missing nurse, Kramer? The bartender recognized him, too. Says he starting coming in to the gay bar just a couple of weeks ago, so he and Perry may have known one another. Any idea what that means, though?"
"Not a clue."
TEN
Jeff Lehane dreamed about the tall man with the gun and the way Heather Randall died. In the dream he was moving through a clear thickness, limbs weighted down and concrete-heavy; struggling to get his own body into the line of fire. He saw the gun come up, the flash of orange light from the steel-blue barrel, the bullet trailing a wisp of smoke as it lazily vectored in on Heather's pretty face. Lehane tried to scream, but couldn't. His heart shrieked and babbled nonsense in a faint voice…
Lehane grunted, opened his eyes. He looked at the clock and saw that he'd only been asleep for an hour. He turned on the bedside lamp and looked around the barren hotel room. His pants lay over the back of a chair near the table. He slid out of bed and padded across the carpet. He groped in his briefcase and opened the book. He allowed the wisdom in the first section he found to wash over him:
The eyes grow + chooses this…
Later: "A dream told me."
"
Excuse me?"
"Whiz, just go with it, okay? I had a dream about Heather's murder, and it told me what to do."
"Okay, Boss. And that would be…?"
"Find the security video again. I want to pick it apart, frame by frame."
"Okay, I'll get on it."
Later still, Lehane opened a plastic bottle of water, drank deeply. "Mark the first time Roger Gordon appears at the foot of the stage. We'll go over it from there."
"Let me fast forward, then." Whiz had amazing hands. The computer jumped the film forward and stopped a few moments ahead of the killer's appearance. His voice hardened. "There you are. That's the motherfucker."
"He's staying low and out of sight of the audience. Can you zoom in a bit?"
"Sure. There."
"Okay, he looks like he's going for the stage, for Enrique."
"Check."
"Can you bring up Heather and I on the other screens, so we can see everything as it happened?"
"Give me a couple of minutes."
Lehane massaged his temples. He stared at the grainy black and white image of Roger Gordon, the mysterious airline employee who had murdered Heather and suddenly decided to speak with a strange accent. I'm going to find out why you did this, no matter how long it takes.
"There."
"Now let it go in real time, Whiz."
On one screen, Roger Gordon crept along the edge of the stage, just out of sight below the bottom rim of the wooden set. He moved eerily, almost side to side as much as straight ahead. Lehane assumed the gun was tucked in the band of his trousers. Suddenly Gordon rolled over. He extracted the weapon from his trousers and bared his teeth.
"What was that?"
"What?"
"His face. I never noticed that before."
"Noticed what?"
"Back up ten seconds and get closer to his face. There, see? It looks like the bastard is grinning at the security camera."
"I don't know, maybe."
"Okay, let it go ahead."
Heather appeared, moving rapidly in response to word that someone was approaching the stage armed with a handgun. She edged around the curtain, sought cover behind a pillar. Lehane watched as she used part of the set to hide herself from the audience. Heather aimed. Her lips moved as she ordered Gordon to drop his gun and surrender.
Daemon: Night of the Daemon Page 8
