Ladykiller Read online

  Martino squatted by Billy Ray, reading him his rights. From time to time, she prodded him and he moaned a response. Safir and Wise were the first detectives on the scene. They wore the same brown Florsheims, kept the same dour expression on their gray, wattled faces, stayed tuned to the same telepathic band.

  “You got him,”Wise said.

  “You got him good,” said Safir.

  “You brought down the Ladykiller,” Blitzer breathed.

  Knees against chin, eye oozing blood, Billy Ray lay on his side with his cheek against the dirt-caked floor and drew unsteady gusts of breath.

  Martino stood up and nodded. Dave kneeled next to Billy Ray. “Testing, one, two.”

  “Was that incredible?” Blitzer asked no one in particular, staring at Dave.

  “When he twisted the .45 around, I could see it was unloaded. He showed me the empty handle. He had no clip,” Dave said over his shoulder. “And I was pretty sure that model .45 can’t release the one in the chamber if there’s no clip.” Pretty sure.

  He leaned close to Billy Ray and said quietly. “You’re not a very smart serial killer, are you, Billy Ray? Testing, one, two.”

  Billy Ray lowed like a felled bull.

  “Nice eye you got, Billy Ray,” Dave continued. “Or should I call you Ladykiller, huh?”

  Billy Ray managed a nod.

  “When you shoot them in the eye, which eye is that?”

  “Don’t matter.” Billy Ray wheezed in pain. “Shoot the bitches in any damn eye I want to.”

  Blitzer was scribbling furiously in his notepad. “I got that,” he crowed. “A confession.”

  Dave straightened up and walked out of the store. Safir and Wise followed.The crowd parted for them. Safir and Wise had parked their unmarked car at a right angle to the curb.A portable strobe pulsed red from its perch on the dashboard. The two older detectives got in the front. Dave slumped in the backseat.

  Safir called in the bad news to Blake on the task force’s restricted band — restricted because they didn’t want the freaks who monitor police radios to hear. Wise drove off fast, down the mad, flashing, neon-drenched street. No one said a word.They let the cool promise of spring air play over them.

  “He was carrying the weapon for show,” Dave finally said wearily, giving voice to their frustration, as if that would exorcise it. “He didn’t know how to use his own gun. And he didn’t know which eye the Ladykiller shoots his victims in.”

  “You hit him in the right eye on purpose,”Wise said.

  “You had your reasons,” said Safir.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Dave muttered.

  Then Blake came back over the radio, instructing them to head up to a parking lot off Tenth. From his tone, they could tell a woman’s right eye was involved.

  THREE

  A crime scene, by night, has a festive and eerie majesty. At this one, police car roof lights flashed with the abandon of a crazed Mardi Gras celebration. Already, the uniforms had cordoned off the parking lot, keeping at bay the ragtag crowd that murder always attracts. The moonscape of the parking lot was empty except for the cluster of cops that circled around its one small building like guests at a macabre cocktail party.

  Dave bobbed under the yellow crime-scene tape and jogged up to the site. Safir and Wise ambled behind in their thick-soled Florsheims, confident that the body would still be there when they arrived.

  Detective Jamie Loud saw them coming. She stepped away from the corpse to watch Dave’s determined advance. Jamie looked young and fresh and cool, her close-cropped hair accentuating the elegant shape of her skull, her off-the-rack pleated pants and unconstructed jacket hanging on her lithe frame with the slouchy grace of the Armani originals they were copied from. Since Dave Dillon had joined the Ladykiller task force, Jamie dressed especially well for work — even when summoned from her apartment for a late-night homicide. Her face, with its high, polished-ebony cheekbones, betrayed only a slight tightening as she turned back to the corpse.

  Lt. Blake mistook Jamie’s turning away as a reaction to the dead woman. He gave Jamie a penetrating stare, as if searching for a special, sisterly angst. Jamie returned his stare impassively, the way she always did. Some day, she would tell him this murder series wasn’t a chick thing. Dead was dead, and all gender problems were over for this poor bitch in the garbage heap.

  In fairness, Blake was extremely nice to her for an old-school cop on a force where women still weren’t wholeheartedly welcome. A study in gray-templed avuncularity, he never made snide comments insinuating that her race or sex had landed her this plum assignment. He seemed to genuinely appreciate her skills, especially with the computer. She loved this job. Unfortunately, she also loved Dave Dillon. Both involved mysteries.

  Dave strode up to the corpse, oblivious to Jamie, as usual. “Nobody’s touched her?”

  “Not yet,” Blake said.

  The guys from the Crime Scene Unit hovered nearby and waited for Dave to complete his examination. These forensic technicians, picked by Blake for the Ladykiller case, knew that the lieutenant wanted Dave to give the body the once-over before they so much as touched it. Blake felt that they needed the continuity of one cop — one good, intuitive cop — making the initial exam in each instance of the series of killings. Dave himself was convinced that the smallest act — even scraping under her fingernails for samples — would disturb not only the evidence, but the psychic rhythms of the murder scene. It was his father’s influence again, although the old man would never have put it like that.

  Dave squatted beside the dead woman. Already, the flies were congregating, as thick as sports fans despite the cold. It didn’t help that she had fallen in a pile of trash. He waved the insects away and, with the help of a tiny flashlight, peered into her cratered right eye. He shined the light slowly around her face. Next, he slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and turned her head to the side. The exit wound, several inches behind her ear, was larger still: a volcano mouth from which blood and brain had erupted. He felt under the body’s armpit. Some warmth remained.

  He got to his feet and, as he slowly peeled off the gloves, nodded to Blake. “All right, Loo,” he said, using the cop nickname for lieutenant.

  “What do you make of this one?”

  Dave turned to the corpse. “Nothing new. Like the others, she died where we found her. Her blood lividity shows she hasn’t been moved. Judging by her body heat, she hasn’t been gone long. Maybe an hour or two. The M.E. will know better. The killer’s .45 was fired from the usual close range: There’s the stippling effect of gunpowder burns on the skin. And once we find it, I’ll bet he used his usual copper-jacketed slug. As usual, it tore out the entire right hemisphere of her brain.”

  Safir and Wise stooped to check out the corpse, a task they performed with their typical ghoulish relish. In life, the victim had been an attractive woman. And although death made the most comely into ugly nightmares, they enjoyed delving into a female victim’s most private matters.Wise checked her pockets. Safir opened her purse.

  “No ID, no drugs, no apparent needle marks.”Wise reeled off the tired litany as if reciting a catechism. “No visible bruises on her arms or anywhere else.”

  “She’s a hooker,” Dave said.

  To anyone else, Jamie would have been openly indignant. “Oh, you can’t assume that,” she chided gently. “That long coat covers her legs. She’d be strutting her stuff.”

  “The shoes,” Dave said.

  “A lot of women wear shoes like that,” Jamie insisted.

  “She’s got condoms in her purse,” Safir said.

  “Big deal. I have condoms in my purse and that doesn’t make — How many?”

  “About two hundred.”

  “Three different types.”

  “Oh.” Jamie raised her eyebrows a fraction and opened her notebook. Blake suppressed a very small, tired smile.

  “Who found the body?” Dave asked.

  “It was a 911 call,” Blake said. “From th
e sound of the tape, the caller was an elderly black woman. Barely coherent. She gave the address and hung up.” He signaled for the crime-scene crew to move in and start scraping and bagging.

  “The crime scene is always the same,” Dave mused. “An outof-the-way place. Nobody around. No signs of a struggle, of the victim being taken to the site against her will.You have to assume the victim knew the perp and trusted him enough to go with him to the site or meet him there.The victim is shot precisely in the right eye at close range, every time. That means she trusted the perp to get that near. Trusted him enough to hold still, maybe in shock, when he brought out his piece. If she were moving, dodging, or whatever, the bullet would have hit somewhere else in the head. If she had tried to run, he’d have to shoot her in the back first.”

  “Very, very nice theory,” Safir said.

  “But only a theory,”Wise said.

  “An interesting one, though,” said Blake, who aside from allegiance to Dave’s father, had brought Dave to the task force for his drive and analytical powers. He had picked Safir and Wise because they were methodical, old-time detectives, content to do the plodding grunt work of gathering evidence and — if any existed — witnesses. Wise resumed his litany. “Well, we’ve got dick. Four homicides with the same MO. All done in Manhattan, but not in the same neighborhood. No witnesses. No suspects. No pattern to the victims. Zip.” Jamie, her voice now the same professional monotone of her colleagues, ticked off points on her fingers. “A housewife. A cheerleader. A stockbroker. And now a probable hooker. No discernable connection. Families of the first three say they can’t imagine any link.” Safir took up the recitation. “Probable perp: a white male in his late twenties or early thirties. A loner. Possible sexual problems. Comes from a broken home. No obvious signs of psychosis.” Jamie gave a throaty chuckle. “Sounds like half the guys on the force.”

  “So that’s it,” Safir concluded. “As I’m sure our wonderful chief of detectives, Big Dick Mancuso, would love to hear, we have nothing. No pattern. Nada.”

  Dave suddenly banged his fist against the corrugated metal of the lot attendant’s shack, making a noise loud enough to startle his colleagues and the crime-scene techies, as well. “No, goddamn it. It isn’t that way. It isn’t random.There is a pattern.”

  Safir and Wise exchanged a knowing glance. Jamie looked worriedly from Dave to Blake, who regarded his detective with a deep frown.

  “The logic exists,” Dave went on. “It has something to do with the victim knowing and trusting the shooter. We just haven’t found the pattern yet.” He stalked off, his shoulders hunched.

  “Touchy,”Wise said.

  “Like his dad,” said Safir.

  Jamie watched Dave stomp toward the street. She suppressed an impulse to run after him.What would the others say if she did?

  “He’s a fine detective,” Blake said. “His father was, too.”That put an end to all further discussion of the Dillon family.

  “Too bad the redneck wasn’t our man,”Wise said.

  “Too bad,” Safir echoed.

  Blake snapped his fingers. “Get on this. I want her IDed, and I want everything on her entered into the computer. And I want it yesterday. I’ve got to talk about Victim No. 4 to Mancuso. It will be big news.” And once again, he would have to defend Dave, whom Mancuso referred to as “that hotheaded maniac.”

  The detectives murmured tiredly and started to disperse. Wise touched Jamie’s arm, and she turned to him. “Just one thing, detective.”

  “Yeah,Wise.What is it?”

  “About those condoms in your purse?”

  “Not for you, pal.”

  Jamie smiled to take the edge off her retort. Underneath, however, she resented the banter. Old-school cops for you. On the other hand, at least they noticed her as a woman. That was more than she could say for Dave.

  “How about me, doll?” Safir could always be counted on to extend Wise’s jokes. Jamie smiled tiredly but didn’t bother to answer.

  She did carry condoms in her purse, a recent purchase. She had been watching Dave from the day he had joined the task force. At first because he was handsome.Then because he was smart.Then it was his intensity, how the work consumed him. Catching this serial killer was like a holy quest for him. Personal.

  Unfortunately, Jamie’s few tentative overtures went by him unacknowledged. As far as she knew, nothing stood in the way. No wife. No girlfriend. No black-white problems; her radar on race was very sharp. They got along okay professionally. Outside of work, however, he remained oblivious.

  At the edge of the crime scene, the uniforms at the tape barrier still had a throng of late-night rovers to keep back. Dave shouldered past a bear-like man with an enormous, veined nose, who craned his neck to check out the action deep within the parking lot. Reuben Silver took a lively interest in crime.

  Nearby, a young vagrant slithered along the nether reaches of the crowd. He almost stepped into Dave’s path and gave a small yip. Dave scowled briefly and considered pulling him in to question about Billy Ray. But he was tired and Billy Ray didn’t matter any more. Dave kept going.

  Ace was jacked up, wired, mumbling to himself. Searching for something. Anything. “You think I’m nobody, don’t you?” he muttered after the detective had passed out of earshot. “Wrong, Dillon. Big-time wrong, Dillon.Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  He licked his lips nervously and whispered to the long-clawed demon that burned bright behind his eyes, “Wrong.”

  By the time Nita got to work, Megan was sitting at her desk, coat hung up, breathing back to normal. When Nita entered the dingy room, Megan jumped up impulsively, then sat back down, controlling the urge to rush over and help Nita out of her coat, hover around her, fuss. Nita hated fuss.

  She was drinking in Nita’s careless, heart-seizing, elegant beauty when she read the tension in the brow, the tightness in the lips.

  She got up slowly. Nita was slipping her coat onto a hanger. “Are you okay? You look awful.”

  “Why thank you,” Nita laughed. “I’m fine. Really.”

  Amid the depressing squalor of the West Side Crisis Center, Nita’s smile bouyed Megan’s spirits disproportionately. Megan found herself telling Nita about her own misadventure with the wino.

  “Never show fear,” Nita admonished her. “I don’t care if you’re in a cage of tigers.You’re the boss.” She was only half kidding.

  Megan agreed enthusiastically and followed Nita to her desk, trying not to hover. Nita sat down, shoved the overflowing in-box to one side, and turned on her desk lamp. The big room was poorly lit by high, dirty fluorescent fixtures, but each desk had a lamp.The ones on the only two desks occupied tonight cast yellow pools of light as comforting as beacons in the wilderness. Outside the cozy ambits of their desk lamps, the lone outposts of civilization were the coffee maker and Nita’s aquarium, almost identical to the tank she maintained in her own home.

  “I sent Tim home and changed the log,” Megan told her.

  “Thanks,” Nita answered absently, starting to sort through the in-box.

  Depressing even in daylight, this room spoke of human suffering. Wall posters addressed an entire spectrum of disaster, from AIDS to drugs to child abuse to rape. On one bulletin board, an ancient AT&T ad advised the world to “reach out and touch someone.” Beneath it was a handwritten amendment: “And then be sure to wash your hands.”

  “Do you think, if we get a minute, you could help me pick out courses for next semester?” Megan asked.

  Nita looked up from her paperwork. “Sure.”

  The hotline phone buzzed. Nita picked up the receiver. “Crisis center. Can I help you?” But the phone went dead. They got a lot of hang-up calls. From the suffering urban damned who got an attack of reluctance at the last minute.

  Megan sank into her chair and looked at Nita dreamily. Nita was a true warrior against the scaly monsters of human degradation. Alienation, despair, apathy, anger. Nita had rescued so many. She had reshaped wrecked liv
es and sent them back into the urban jungle stronger. Megan wished she could do the same. Wished she weren’t weakened by doubts, fears, inchoate desires. Wished she could trade her frail timid heart for Nita’s relentless dynamo.

  Shrugging, Nita hung up the phone. “They’ll call back. They always do.” She shot Megan a look of mock disapproval. “Hey, let’s sharpen up. Magic hour’s coming.”

  Megan sat forward in her chair. Social workers who man hotlines in the small hours, like cops and ambulance workers and reporters, know that between one and five A.M. is the time of the wolf, the time when society’s translucent fabric shreds.That’s when most people die. From heart attacks and aneurysms. And also from violence. That’s when they climb onto ledges, stab their wives, shoot too much junk into their veins, drive their cars into bridge abutments. That’s when they call the hotline.

  The phone sounded again. Megan listened to a hysterical woman whose drunken husband had just caved in her front teeth and staggered into the bedroom to pass out.

  “What do I do?” the woman wailed. “If I call the cops, he’ll lose his job. How can we take care of the kids then?”

  When Megan hung up, having urged the woman to call the battered wife service in the morning, Nita commented dryly, “They’re too dependent on the brutes.Testosterone overloads. Mandatory castration isn’t a bad idea.”

  “They aren’t all bad,” Megan protested, laughing.

  Nita laughed, too. “That’s not what I hear.”

  Before Megan could reply, Nita answered another call.

  Megan poured them both coffee and went back to her desk. She was about to grab the call sheet to start the evening’s paperwork, when she heard the muffled thud of the building’s heavy front door slamming shut.

  Alarmed, she looked at Nita, who was still on the phone and didn’t appear to have heard. No one else was supposed to be here tonight.Tensed, Megan eyed the door to the room, very aware, suddenly, of their own vulnerability.Two isolated women in the middle of a large, shabby room with help far away.

  Footsteps, heavy and slow, came from the hall beyond the door. Megan reached slowly for her phone.