Authors: Stephan Talty
“Taped to the underside of the chair.”
“The desk chair?”
“There was only one chair in the entire room, Mills.”
Silence.
“That’s impossible.”
“Impossible? How can you say—”
“I checked the chair, Kearney. It was flipped over when I entered the hotel room. I remember staring directly at the bottom of the seat when I walked in.”
Abbie froze.
“I’m coming up there,” she said.
“Bring the monkey.”
When she got to Niagara Falls PD, Mills came out to meet her. He was slim, wearing a nicely cut blue suit, was a hair taller than her, with light brown hair, penetrating green eyes, and a nose that looked like it had been broken on several occasions. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he looked like someone you hoped would pull over when you were stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire. He stopped when he saw her.
“Kearney?”
“Yes?”
“I, uh …”
She lowered her head as he stuttered, his eyes growing wider.
“Not what you were expecting?”
“Buffalo cops named Kearney usually look like they’re on their third heart bypass. Even the female ones.”
“Glad I could surprise you.”
He nodded, seemingly lost for words.
“Let’s go,” he finally got out.
“Where to?”
“Tim Hortons.”
They got into Mills’s Chevy Impala and drove for five minutes before pulling into the parking lot of the doughnut shop. Inside, Mills ordered coffee and a French cruller, Abbie just hot chocolate. The place was emptying out after the morning rush, and they grabbed a table by one of the plate glass windows that looked out onto Ontario Avenue.
“Did you bring it?”
Abbie pulled the baggie out of her pocket and laid it on the table. Mills took a sip of his coffee, winced.
“Why do they keep coffee at two hundred degrees in this place?”
Abbie pushed the baggie closer to him. “You’re sure you couldn’t have missed it?”
“No way. The underside of that chair is a light tan color, right?”
Abbie nodded.
“It would have stood out. I’d have been staring right at it.”
“Who else was in that room?”
“The tech, Johnson. He’s been with us two years, solid record, no reason to suspect him but I’ll see what I can find out. My partner—” He made a face. “Who I read the riot act to about one hour ago.”
Abbie smiled.
“Least I could do,” Mills said. “As far as the crime scene, that’s about it. The motel owner came by but we kept him out of the room until we’d cleared the scene. He was too cheap to hire one of those crime scene cleanup outfits.”
Abbie blew thoughtfully on her hot chocolate.
“Could the killer really have come back to leave the toy? And why?”
“Who knows? But if I were you, I’d put an extra deadbolt on your door.”
She nodded. “I did that this morning.” She’d gone to the local hardware store, bought a solid York that weighed about eight pounds and installed it herself.
Mills frowned and looked over her shoulder. “Let’s assume that Decatur was his first. He kills him,
doesn’t
leave his signature, then moves on to Jimmy Ryan. Leaves the toy on the victim. Then he tracks you to your apartment, leaves a memento, then doubles back and places one at the Lucky Clover. It’s bizarre.”
Abbie looked at him. “He wants the cases connected.”
“Or he’s focused in on you for some reason. He’s leading you along.”
Their eyes met.
“What about checking cameras on the street outside where Ryan was found? Maybe he was lurking outside, saw you go in, got excited that such a—”
“A what?”
“A hot-looking detective had been assigned to his case.”
Mills smiled crookedly, a little abashed. Abbie gave him a dubious look. He was cute, but she had no time for a boyfriend at the moment.
“I checked the tapes. Nobody stood out. All locals. And besides, my name was on the newswire five minutes after I got there.”
“The newswire?”
“That’s what we call the gossip mill in the County. It’s world class.”
Mills shook his head. “I hate those police geeks. If you want to talk to a cop, don’t murder someone to get our attention, y’know?”
Abbie nodded. “He may not have been watching me at the church. But we do know he was back in that motel room. He couldn’t have been stupid enough to rent the room, but he got in there somehow. Video?”
Mills took a long pull on his coffee, then set it down. “Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later they were in the motel’s back office.
The Lucky Clover owner had repaired the camera that looked down the long part of the L-shaped motel. Abbie told the desk clerk to start with Wednesday afternoon, after she’d been seen walking into St. Teresa’s. They ran the tape, the time signature in the corner flicking by so fast you could hardly read it.
Business at the Lucky Clover was clearly slow. The camera looked down a row of six doors, with a corner of the parking lot visible in the upper right of the picture and a portion of the side street next to the motel. Occasionally the lower half of a passing car flashed by, but there were no pedestrians walking this part of Niagara Falls. Number 15 was second from the end, but there were so few human figures in the videos that mostly what they watched was the light grow and fade until dark descended and the fluorescents in the canopy flickered on. It was like some kind of art film on desolation, Abbie thought.
They were on to Thursday night when Abbie saw it.
“Stop,” she said.
The clerk hit the mouse and the tape slowed.
“Go back.”
He rewound and a human figure flicked into the screen in backward motion, disappearing into number 15.
“Now run it.”
The clerk hit Play and the tape showed an empty row. Then a figure slid into the frame, hugging the wall of the motel. He had on jeans, white sneakers, and a green-and-black-checked jacket. He wore black gloves and on his face was a dark ski mask.
“Smart,” Mills said.
“He knew we’d be watching.”
The man turned to face the door on number 15 and squeezed up against it, like he was inserting a key.
“He’s slipping a credit card or something into the door crack,” Mills said.
“How good are the locks in this hotel?” Abbie asked the clerk.
“Are you kidding me? The owner barely pays for soap, you think he’s going to shell out for a good lock? A retard could get in there.”
Abbie marked the time he entered: 8:42 p.m. The door closed and the seconds swept by on the clock in the corner of the screen.
Two minutes thirteen seconds later he was out. He closed the door behind him, with his back to the camera.
“Not a big guy,” Mills said.
“I’d say about five foot nine. And he’s right-handed.”
The killer stood in the flicker of the fluorescent lights, hands by his side, his back to the camera. Abbie brought her face closer to the screen.
“What’s he doing?”
The suspect began to turn, almost robot-like, until he was facing toward the office and the camera mounted in the ceiling at the corner of the L.
“See how he’s moving?” Mills said. “He looks drugged. Downers?”
Suddenly, the killer lifted his head until he was staring straight into the camera. The steam from the killer’s breath funneled out from the hole in the ski mask. The man stood there, arms straight down by his side. He seemed to be leaning toward the camera. Then he raised his right arm and gave a little wave.
Abbie stood up suddenly. A chill had run from her feet up through her spine. She folded her arms over her chest to stop it before her body shook.
Something had spooked her, something almost familiar in the way the killer moved.
Do I know him? Was he at the Ryan scene or am I imagining things?
When she looked away from the screen, she found Mills staring at her. “Run it again,” he said to the clerk, never taking his eyes off Abbie.
They watched the tape three more times, always pausing on the killer staring at the camera, seemingly hypnotized.
“It’s like he’s trying to send you a message, like he knows you,” the clerk said, looking up at Abbie.
“Thanks for the analysis,” Abbie said.
Mills followed her out of the office.
“Where are you going now?” he asked her in the parking lot of Niagara PD, where her Saab sat waiting under a light coat of snow.
“Home.”
He nodded.
“You?”
“Couple of biker bars.”
“Oh, right, the Outlaws massacre.”
“No, I just like to hang out in biker bars. Care to join me?”
“Are you asking me out on a date, Detective Mills?”
“Call it anything you like. Just come have a beer with me.”
Abbie smiled. “I’d only talk shop and bore you half to death.”
“It’s you or my asshole partner. Have a heart, Kearney.”
“Another time. You have a good night, Detective.”
She got in the car, started it up, and began to pull out of the lot. Mills came walking toward the car. She lowered the passenger window and he leaned his arms on the sill.
“I know you know this already, but you don’t want this guy taking a personal interest in you.”
“I’m a big girl, Mills. But thanks.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but only nodded and stood up.
In the rearview, she saw him watching her until she turned a corner three blocks down.
The ride home took her along the Niagara River, high now as it surged toward the Falls, powering the lights of Buffalo from the enormous power stations built into the banks farther up. This was where the daredevils and the hapless boaters who went over the Falls in barrels would first become aware of the power of the Niagara, the jetting bursts of white water erupting across it above the boulders that dotted the riverbed like teeth. Now the water’s surface was only a few feet from the level of the road, and the river threw lashes of spray across her windshield as it surged past.
The windshield wipers worked back and forth as she reviewed each piece of evidence, returning obsessively to a few relevant facts. The pieces didn’t fit and Abbie knew it. Jimmy Ryan and Gerald Decatur, if they were setting up some kind of drug deal, were so far out of the majors that the deal couldn’t have been worth more
than a few thousand dollars. Neither had the contacts or the money to shift more product than that. And what kind of a drug connect works his victims over for what is walking-around money for even a medium-sized distributor? And then comes back to leave a souvenir to taunt the lead detective?
Abbie had the feeling that she hated most as an investigator: of walking along a path, feeling that she was getting closer to the truth but slowly realizing that her trail of small clues and inferences isn’t leading her to the killer, but running parallel to his path. The gnawing sense that the killer wasn’t walking ahead of her, running for his life, but was actually right beside her, just over her shoulder, watching, confident of outwitting her.
Maybe the County has intimidated me without knowing it
, she thought.
Maybe I’m being too
nice.
I’m respecting the old neighborhood too much. I’ve been approaching this case like I owe the County something
.
“I don’t owe it a goddamn thing,” she thought, then realized she’d muttered the words into the humming silence of the car.
Someone had carved up two human beings, and the source of that rage lay within the two-mile-square radius of the County. She was sure of it. But the residents had been strangely silent. Where were the phone calls demanding progress on the case? Patty Ryan refused to answer her calls. Where were the other cops hanging by her desk, asking for tidbits they could feed the grieving widow?
“Patty, they have someone they like. Just be patient.”
Or:
“Patty, I spoke to Kearney and this one is going to be solved. I can’t say anything more, but trust me.”
No one had called, no one had come by. The County had buried Jimmy Ryan in some corner of its ancient memory, in an unmarked plot, or a plot known only to a select few, and Abbie didn’t even know why.
And where did the Gaelic Club fit? The little murder wave could have its roots in the back-room stuff that Billy Carney had gotten a glimpse of. But they could have been cooking up anything: political
deals, corrupt business schemes, new drug routes. Untangling the lines would be like cutting wires on a bomb. You never knew which one would blow the whole County wide open.
She checked the speedometer—92 mph—and eased her foot off the pedal. The black, light-spangled arch of the Peace Bridge passed by on her right, the steel struts black against a gray-black sky. She pushed the button for the passenger window and let some of the water-choked air that swept across the river blow through the car. The spray—beaten to a near-mist by the rocks and the surge of the river—woke her up. Abbie breathed in a gulp of the cold northern air and then hit the button again. Soon she was sealed tight in the car as it headed south, listening to Depeche Mode sing about love and silence.
T
HE NEXT MORNING, AS
A
BBIE WALKED INTO
R
OBBERY
-H
OMICIDE
, P
ERELLI
looked at her from under his thick black eyebrows like she’d stolen his kids’ lunch money.
“You have anything you want to tell me?” he said.
“I left you a report on the Decatur case. There’s a connection.”
“Drugs?”
“We don’t know yet. I’m not ready to call it a drug deal yet.”
“Well, get ready to call it something. It sounds like the killer is practically begging you to catch him. These guys in the County aren’t international arms dealers with Lear jets and three passports. They have limited means, limited connections. They’ve barely been out of Buffalo their whole lives. The list of suspects has got to be a short one.”
Abbie took a deep breath, clenched her right hand and released it. “I know that. When I have the guy, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”
He looked at her, his lips pursed. “I’d better be.”
As she walked to her cubicle, she could feel Z examining her from behind.