The Boyfriend

by Thomas Perry

  When Holly disappeared, he said, “Would you like to join us?”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t. I have other plans today—a late lunch. Besides, Holly and I are the whole shop today until two.”

  “We won’t be long,” he said. “By the way, is Holly still doing okay?”

  “She’s doing great. A sense of color is like an ear for music. You have it or you don’t. She’s a worker, and it’s hard to be around her without being cheered up.”

  Till tried to ignore the fact that she was so attractive, with her black hair, her blue eyes, and her graceful movements as she stepped around the small store getting things for the arrangement in the front window. He knew she was a widow, but that didn’t mean she would be interested in him.

  Holly appeared with the vase; set it in the refrigerator case with a tag that said, “Sold”; and went to the door. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said.

  “See you later,” he said, and Mrs. Carmody gave a little wave as they left the shop.

  They walked for a block before either of them spoke, because that was Holly’s rule. She didn’t want to be caught walking away from people and saying something about them. As soon as they had crossed the first street, she said, “You should take her out.”

  “Mrs. Camody?”

  “Jeanne. If you take her out you can call her Jeanne.”

  “What makes you think she’d want to go out with me?”

  “She asks about you sometimes, and she looks at you when you aren’t looking at her. At your butt, mostly. All the signs.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Till said. “If we didn’t get along it might make things awkward for you.”

  “No problem,” she said. “Mrs. Carmody and I are adults. We’ll ignore anything like that.”

  “Well, I’m going out of town tonight, so I can’t ask her out right now anyway.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Boston. I’d like to be home in a few days, but it could take longer.”

  “When you come home, then. That gives me more time to get her thinking about you, so she feels butterflies when she hears your voice. You need a girlfriend.”

  They went to lunch at a restaurant that was too far to walk to from the shop, so it wouldn’t be a place she got to go to often, and he watched her eat a hamburger and a piece of pie, then drove her back to the store. On the way, he said, “Will you have enough money if I’m gone for a while?”

  “Dad,” she said. “I’m not a child.”

  A few hours later he got to the right gate at the airport just before boarding began, settled himself in his seat on the plane, watched the flight attendants’ safety pantomime, and waited for the plane to taxi out to the runway. The plane was aloft in a few minutes, and the lights went black. He closed his eyes and slept. There were so many people on the ground who wanted an old homicide cop like Till dead that sleeping had sometimes been a risky activity for him, but in an airplane he was anonymous to the people around him, and all of them had been screened to be sure they were unarmed. He always slept peacefully on airplanes.

  Daylight streaming in through the scratched plastic windows woke him. He stretched his muscles and looked at the GPS map on the screen in front of him. Many of the passengers around him were waking up too. The others looked worn and dazed as though they had worked twenty-four hours, but he felt rested. Till reached under his seat, took his sport coat out of the plastic bag where he’d kept it, put the plastic bag in the pocket, and waited serenely for the plane to land.

  When it had bounced once and rattled to a stop, the plane made its way to the gate. When the lights all came on again and there was a ping sound, the passengers all stood, rifled the overhead compartments, and slowly lockstepped down the aisle and out. Till rode the shuttle bus to the car rental lot, then drove to his hotel. He checked in, put his bag in the room, and went into the restaurant for breakfast.

  As he ate, he tried to figure out everything he would need to know about this killer. It was obvious that as soon as he murdered and robbed his current prostitute in a month or so, he would be off again. He would travel a significant distance to another city and find another girl who looked like the one before. He would shortly be so tight with her that he was—practically or actually—living with her. But what made him decide when to kill her? What made him choose the next city? Why were these girls all so willing to have him around?

  After breakfast Till went to his room, took out his laptop, and signed onto the hotel’s wi-fi network. He went to a couple of sites to see the escort ads posted for today. For this day, at least, Kelly was still alive, feeling well enough to advertise for work. He hadn’t killed her yet. Till wrote down the phone number she had posted.

  He decided it was late enough to call Ted McCann in Los Angeles. He dialed his cell with his thumb and waited.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ted. It’s Jack Till.”

  “What can I do for you today?”

  “I’m making some headway on the Boyfriend.”

  “That’s what you call him—the Boyfriend?”

  “It’s what he is. Or one of the things he is. He forms relationships with these girls. Each one seems to last a month or two. Then he kills her, takes whatever she’s got that’s valuable—cash and jewelry, mostly—and he leaves. He’s been in Boston recently, and I’m guessing he’s still here because the girl here is still alive.”

  “How did you trace him?”

  “Catherine Hamilton had some distinctive pieces of jewelry on in some of her pictures. Jewelers have all told me it was custom-made. It wasn’t listed among her belongings by the crime scene people, so I figured he took it with him when he left Los Angeles. Next time I saw it was in the photo of a girl named Kyra in Phoenix. He killed her too.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “Me too. I think what bothers me most about this guy is that he’s happy to end somebody else’s life for no discernible reason. I know he’s nuts, picking out girls that look the same. But I’m not detecting rage or a thrill or even regular greed. And it can’t be a challenge. When he leaves he kills the girl and turns out the lights.”

  “What makes you think he’s in Boston now?”

  “There’s an ad for an escort named Kelly. She’s the same type as the other girls, and she’s wearing the same two pieces of jewelry. It’s definitely the same—a gold oval with a big diamond in a kind of off-balanced spot, and a lot of little ones around the edge.”

  “I’m sensing there’s a problem. What is it?”

  “He’s here in Boston, but I don’t know why he’s here. I can’t figure out why he chooses one place over another. I want to know if there’s something going on in these cities that makes him come or makes him leave.”

  “Too bad you can’t ask him.”

  “That’s what I’m here to do.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I’ve got a feeling about this guy. He’s got the skills, and he’s cold. If he gets me, I want you to know what I know about him. Anthony and her partner are worse than useless. All they do is think up reasons why no lead is good enough. I know you can’t go after him. But I’d hate to die and leave nobody alive who knows what I’ve found out.” He paused. “I also wondered if you know anybody with the Boston police.”

  “I know a guy,” said McCann. “Met him at a vice cop convention in Las Vegas a few years ago. We talk now and then. His name is Alan Rafferty. Let me get you his number.” He read the number aloud twice.

  “Thanks, Ted,” said Till. “I won’t presume on him too much.”

  “Presume away. This is what the bastard’s there for. He’s a cop. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Till disconnected. He sat for a moment, then got up to leave. He had to find out mor
e about Kelly as quickly as possible. Every minute was moving her closer to the moment when the Boyfriend would put his gun to the back of her head.

  15

  Kelly’s ad included a phone number. When Till called, a girl’s voice said she couldn’t take a call at that moment. It also gave her address: 909 Main Street in Woburn. He took the address down and drove there. Woburn was in the northwest district outside Boston. Her apartment was in the center of a lot of roads with the names of the places they led to—Bedford, Cambridge. Main Street went right into Boston. It was a long series of one- and two-story brick buildings that housed cafés and sushi bars and other businesses, so he could see it wouldn’t be hard for him to find places to loiter.

  The afternoon when Till drove into Woburn he was already looking for a place to stay. He parked on Main and walked to number 909, the address on Kelly’s ad. It was a gray two-story apartment building. He went to the front door and tried to enter the lobby, but the door was locked. He could see a bank of eight brass mailboxes inside. There was an intercom beside the door, so he pressed the button that said “Manager.” A man with a thick Russian accent answered. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

  Till said, “I wondered if you had any vacant apartments.” While he talked, he looked at the names on the list of buttons. The only one that wasn’t male or a couple was K. Allen in apartment 5. That had to be the second floor.

  “Not right now,” said the manager. “Maybe in a few weeks. If you want to leave your name and number, stick it in the mail slot.” Till could see, looking past the lobby, that the door of apartment 1 was on the left in front.

  “Thank you,” Till said. “But I need something right away.” On his way back to the car he considered what he had seen. If apartment 1 on the first floor was in front on the left side of the hall, then probably apartment 5 on the second floor would be on the left side in the front also.

  He drove half a block to an old-looking but clean hotel with about forty rooms, and went to the front desk to ask about renting a room by the week. It had to be on an upper floor and it had to have a clear line of sight to Kelly’s apartment building. He asked for a room high on the north side, and got it. He could look out the balcony window, up the street, and see a side view of Kelly’s building; a parking lot behind it; and a small patio with several round tables painted black, where tenants would sometimes sit to smoke.

  He told the people at the front desk he had business in Boston and needed to stay two weeks before he returned to Los Angeles. He drove into Boston and bought several items: a night vision scope, a sixty-power spotting scope, and a plug-in microphone that he could listen to by telephone. The microphone was small and made of white plastic and looked as though it was a plug-in receptacle. He had no idea whether he would use any of these things, but he was determined to have whatever edge was available.

  He began to walk the town late that afternoon. It was a cool afternoon for summer, but still sunny. He wore black sunglasses, a baseball cap, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a pair of black sneakers. Even if the Boyfriend had seen Till in a car while he was being followed in Phoenix, he would never recognize him in Woburn, Massachusetts. But Till had decided not to bet against the capabilities of his adversary this time, so he walked without coming close to Kelly’s apartment. Instead, he got to know the downtown section first, then widened his walks to both Interstate 93 and Interstate 95. He got to know the residential neighborhoods, and the convenient entrances and exits to the highways.

  He slept in the hotel for the next two nights. Each night after dark, he would venture into the area closer to Kelly’s apartment building. He found a small market on Main Street and bought snacks and newspapers there because carrying them served as an explanation of what he was doing out on foot.

  Every time he passed the apartment building he would concentrate on learning something. He would use his phone to take pictures of the parking lot and the front and sides of the building. When he returned to the hotel, he would download the pictures onto his computer, magnify them, and study them for information.

  After two evenings he had photographed the same eight cars twice. He had taken photographs of the lobby and the row of mailboxes on the inner wall. He had photographed the windows of each apartment several times, and had a good start on knowing who inhabited each unit.

  He had passed by at random times between seven p.m. and two a.m. and determined which apartments never had lights on after eleven, and which had glowing windows at two. He had eliminated all four ground-floor apartments, and two of the second-floor apartments. There were a couple of toddlers in a third apartment on the second floor, and that left the one on the south side in the front. It had to be Kelly’s.

  Till also set up his spotting scope. It was about four feet back from the window of his room, set up on the dresser, with the curtains closed except for about four inches that allowed the lens to see out. With the lights off he could watch the apartment at the front of the second floor without being visible. On the second night at a few minutes after midnight, he saw the curtains in the second-floor window part. A girl was at the window in a white bathrobe. She reached up with both hands to lower the window and lock it. But in the three seconds while she was visible, he had seen the reddish hair against the white robe. It had to be Kelly. He watched for the rest of the evening and studied the cars in the lot, but he saw no car that he hadn’t seen before, and he never saw a man leave the building. Either business was slow or she was taking the night off.

  The next morning he drove to his hotel in Boston, accepted the four packages he had mailed to himself from Los Angeles, and then checked out of the hotel. He drove back to his hotel in Woburn, arranged the pieces of the two identical Ruger LC9 pistols on his bed, and assembled them, wiping each part off with his handkerchief so he left no fingerprints on any internal part. Then he wiped off the bullets, loaded the magazines, and inserted the magazines into the pistols. He cycled each one to put a round into the chamber, then put the pistols into the side pockets of the sport coat he intended to wear, then draped the sport coat over the desk chair in the center of the room where he could reach it quickly.

  He resumed his observation of the apartment building. By the end of the third day he had still not seen a woman who could be Kelly leave the building. He had not spotted anybody he thought was the Boyfriend either. He supposed it was possible the Boyfriend used a disguise of some kind, but that seemed unlikely.

  Till decided he couldn’t wait any longer to talk to her. He couldn’t just watch the apartment until the Boyfriend killed her too. The curtains were open, so he aimed his spotting scope and dialed the phone number from her ad. The voice was soft and feminine, but utterly false. “This is Kelly.”

  “Hi,” he said. “I saw your ad online.”

  “Hi. What’s your name?”

  “Jack,” he said. “I wondered if there was a way you and I could get together.”

  “That’s what the ad is for, Jack. But you should know that I have to charge for my time. If anything happens between us, that would be up to us, since we’re both grown-ups. But I’m not offering or contracting to perform any illegal acts. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I understand.”

  “An hour of my company is two-fifty, and four hundred for two hours.”

  “Okay. Do you have any free time tonight?”

  “You pick the time.”

  “How about eight o’clock?”

  “Eight is fine. My address is 909 Main Street in Woburn, apartment five.”

  He repeated the address. “You’re independent, right? There won’t be some big guy standing by the door?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I work alone.” Her throat held a laugh captive so it couldn’t escape. “If you want a big guy too, you’ll have to be the one to call him.”

  “See you at eight.”

&n
bsp; “I’ll be waiting,” she said.

  After she hung up, she called Joey’s cell phone.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hi, baby,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m working in the office I rented, trying to get it ready. What’s up?”

  “I’m working tonight. I just made a date for eight o’clock.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t be in your way. I’ll be here in the city until nine or so anyway. Should I bring some take-out dinner home with me around ten?”

  “Could you? That’d be great.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “You got it.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you.” Joey hung up, set his phone alarm for nine to remind him, and put the phone back into his pocket. Then he looked out the window into the distance.

  Joey Moreland was working on the Luis Salazar problem. When he had first seen the name on the list it had meant nothing to him. There had been all sorts of names on the Broker’s lists from the beginning—Italian, English, Polish, German, Spanish. The Broker’s contacts—­according to Dick Holcomb a collection of lawyers, fences, fixers, and go-betweens—were in all kinds of businesses and neighborhoods in lots of cities, and he would never know who they were. Moreland had the impression that some of them were people who had done an occasional hit themselves. Some of them were probably still willing to take on a really easy job, but they passed the hard ones to the Broker.

  It wasn’t until after he had taken the job that he learned Salazar was worse than a hard one. He was a foreign government official. Moreland had to assume that Salazar would arrive with at least a few Mexican bodyguards. They would be hard little guys with black, suspicious eyes scanning the crowd for threats. There would also be some kind of American law enforcement, spread wider than the Mexicans because only the Americans would be expected to deal with the American public. The officers that Moreland would need to fear most were the ones who would be stationed far from Luis Salazar, probably up high to control the area with sniper rifles and radios.