Smokin Seventeen

THIRTY-EIGHT

I DROVE THE SHORT DISTANCE to Morelli’s house, parked behind his green SUV, and used my key to open his door.

Morelli was on the couch, watching a Two and a Half Men rerun. He looked me up and down and smiled. “Is it Christmas morning?”

“Not nearly,” I said. “I have raging heartburn. I stopped for whatever it is you’re currently using.”

He pointed to a large bottle of Tums on the coffee table. “My reflux was doing great until someone started gifting you murder victims.”

I reached for the Tums. “You want to have more reason for reflux? I just had dinner with Dave.”

“Again? In that dress?”

“The dress is a whole long, complicated story that has nothing to do with Dave. Except that he told me it was a killer dress.”

“It is,” Morelli said. “It’s a killer dress.”

“He said it like it had special meaning. And he winked at me.”

“Any man in his right mind would wink at you in this dress.”

“He said think about it.”

“I have the feeling I’m missing an important ingredient in this conversation.”

I told him how I watched the video and thought I recognized the killer. And how tonight I had the revelation that it was Dave when I saw him run around the car. And then Dave pretended to choke me at the dinner table.

“Interesting and creepy, but not exactly damning evidence,” Morelli said. “And we need to take into consideration that the man is willing to teach you to cook.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“I’m taking it very seriously. I’ve gone through half a jug of Tums since Gordon Kulicki turned up dead. It’s just that Dave seems an unlikely killer. What’s his motive?”

“Finding out his motive is on your side of the division of labor. I already did my part. I recognized him in the video.”

Morelli nodded. “Recognizing him in the video is good. What was it you saw? A tattoo? A scar? Did you recognize his shoes?”

“It was just a feeling. It was the way he moved.”

“This is like going out in the field with a clairvoyant.”

“Does that ever work?”

“Sometimes,” Morelli said. “How comfortable do you feel with this? On a scale of one to ten with ten being a positive identification … how would you rate this?”

“If I was rating gut instinct it would be a nine. When I temper that with rational thought it goes way down. Maybe to a five or six.”

“Five or six is still pretty strong.”

“I would much rather Nick Alpha turned out to be the killer.”

“I’m not going to discount Alpha, but it wouldn’t hurt to dig around in Dave’s life.”

“How do we begin?”

“There’s no we. This is a police investigation.”

“I didn’t come over here to talk to a cop. I came here to talk to …”

I stopped because I didn’t know what to call Morelli. Friend sounded lame. Boyfriend was too high school. We weren’t engaged, married, or living together.

“I don’t even know what to call you,” I said, hands in the air. “What kind of a relationship is this?”

“It’s a relationship that sucks. Who had the brilliant idea we should be free to date?”

“You did.”

“I don’t think so,” Morelli said.

“I distinctly remember. You said we needed to explore other possibilities.”

Morelli reached for the Tums. He shook out two for himself and two for me.

“How’d it go in south Jersey?” I asked him.

“We found the fifth car. We also found a sixth that had been torched. It looks like there might be the remains of two bodies in the torched car.”

“More poker players?”

“No one else is missing. The guys who only played occasionally are all accounted for.”

“Maybe it’s an unrelated car.”

“Hard to believe. It was found in the same area.”

I held my hand out. “Give me two more Tums for the road. I have to go home.”

“You don’t have to go home.”

“I’m getting a headache. I need to go home and put a pillow over my face.”

“Will that help?”

“It worked this afternoon.”

He gave me the bottle of Tums. “Take the whole bottle. I’ve got more. You know where to find me when the headache goes away.”

• • •

It was dark when I reached the lot to my apartment building. I rode around looking for Regina’s car, Dave’s parents’ car, and Nick Alpha’s car. I didn’t see any of them, so I parked and crossed to the back door. I was talking to myself again, getting into the elevator.

“This is getting old,” I said. “I’m tired of looking for people who want to kill me. It’s exhausting. And what am I supposed to do with Morelli, and my missing sex drive, and my job that’s not bringing in any money?”

I popped a couple more Tums, rode to the second floor, and unlocked my door. I stepped in, closed and locked the door, and realized Dave was in my kitchen.

“Surprise,” he said.

I turned to leave, and he put himself between me and the door.

I stepped away from him and narrowed my eyes. “Get out.”

“I just got here.”

“How did you get in?”

“I took a key out of the drawer last time I was here cooking.”

I walked into the kitchen and took the lid off the cookie jar. No gun.

“I have the gun,” he said. “Not that I need it.”

I threw the lid at him, and he ducked away. I grabbed the cookie jar and whacked him on the side of his head. He staggered back, and pulled himself together.

“You should stop hitting me,” he said, snatching the cookie jar out of my hand, throwing it across the room. “What did I ever do to you?”

“For starters you broke into my apartment.”

“I didn’t break in. I walked in. I have a key … like Morelli.”

“I gave Morelli a key, and you stole yours.”

“That’s not all I’m stealing. I’m stealing you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just like Morelli stole my girl back in high school. I took her to the prom and Morelli took her to bed. She was wearing my class ring and my corsage. She was my date, and he seduced her in the school parking lot.”

“He seduced every girl in the school in the parking lot. And one in a bakery. You can’t take it personally.”

“The hell I can’t. I’ve got his girl now. And I’m going to even the score.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dead or alive,” Dave said. “Your choice.”

Okay, that was scary. I was doing pretty good up to that point, but that took my breath away.

“You killed Lou Dugan, didn’t you?”

He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out. I ran around the car just for you tonight. I knew you’d watched the tape from the crime scene. Pretty cool, right? And the bodies I addressed to you. Did that freak Morelli out?”

“Yeah.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “I’ve had really crapola luck lately. My life hasn’t been a lot of fun. Lost my house, my dog, my car, and my job. Lost my wife, but good riddance to that one. Went to jail for a while. Not a good experience. And to add insult to injury I had to move in with my parents. So I’m feeling pretty down. I’m working at a shit job. Had to kill my cousin to get it. Plus I’m busting ass killing all those fucking poker players. And one day, like a gift from God, my mother presents me with you. She meets your mother in the checkout line at the market, and it’s ordained from that moment on that you’re mine. And life is fun again.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might be crazy?”

“I don’t feel crazy.”

“You killed five people!”

“Actually it was seven. No wait, there were two in Georgia. Nine.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No. It was easy. I guess I just have a talent for killing people. I’m good at it. I snap their necks. No blood. Okay, sometimes they spit up a little, but it’s not like getting shot.”

I’d faced down my share of crazy killers, but never someone this cold. I did my best to keep it together. I didn’t think Dave was the sort of guy who would respond well to drama. “Ick!”

“The hard part is getting rid of them. I buried the two in Georgia in a cornfield. No one’s found them. I drove my cousin and her boyfriend down to the Pine Barrens and set the car on fire. I was worried about DNA, but honestly I don’t think DNA is all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You did it to get a job?”

“Yeah. Smart, right? Not only did I get her job, but she’d lifted money from the company safe, and I got the money, too.”

“And Lou Dugan?”

“I was sort of in business with Dugan. I went to school with his son, and I was over to his house a lot when I was a kid. When I moved to Georgia I stayed in touch with Lou. He was a sharp businessman. I learned a lot from him. I was making foreclosures at the bank, and Lou saw a way to make money on them. I’d foreclose on some loser’s house, and Dugan would buy it for way under market value through one of his holding companies. And then we figured out how we could get creative, and by manipulating some paperwork we could snatch houses right out from under people. Problem was we yanked a mortgage from some whiner who didn’t just roll over when he lost his house.”

“That’s when you went to jail?”

“I was only in jail until my bail bond was set. I got out and started cleaning house. I got rid of the two men under me who knew what was going on. They could have testified, and I would have been sent away for a long, long time.”

“The cornfield?”

“Yeah. And then Lou got nervous. I got my kickback from him in cash, but he was sitting there with all these hot properties in his holding companies.”

“Do you still have the money?”

“The lawyers have the money. Trial lawyers and divorce lawyers. I should have been a lawyer. The only money I have came from the stash my cousin stole.”

“So you killed Lou because he was nervous?”

“He’d transferred a load of money into a Buenos Aires bank, and he was getting ready to disappear. Asked me to drive him to the airport. He was taking a red-eye. I had a feeling he was going to kill me, so I killed him first.”

“Just like that.”

“Yep. Came up behind him, choked him, and broke his neck. And then I had the same stupid body problem. I was driving him around in his car, thinking it was like that movie Weekend at Bernie’s. And I drive down Hamilton Avenue and see the backhoe sitting out in the bonds office lot. It’s three in the morning. No traffic. As dark as a witch’s heart. And there’s a backhoe waiting to dig a grave.

“My mistake was that I didn’t dig it deep enough. I buried Lucarelli deeper, but they found him anyway. Then I decided to have some fun with Juki and Kulicki. I knew the security people installed video. What did you think of the Frankenstein mask? Good touch, right?”

“I understand why you killed Dugan. I don’t get the other murders.”

“I had to clean house. Lucarelli was the lawyer who processed all the paper, and Kulicki moved a lot of the transactions through his bank. Sam Grip worked for Dugan and knew everything. Grip knew when Dugan passed gas. Juki was sleeping with Grip, and she knew everything he knew. The whole thing is just so fucking complicated. Who would have thought? It’s like a sweater that starts to unravel. I mean, I can’t kill people fast enough.”

“So it didn’t have anything to do with the poker game?”

“What poker game?”

“They all played poker together. Except for Juki.”

“I didn’t know that,” Dave said.

This is why we didn’t connect the dots to Dave, I thought. We were in the right neighborhood, but we were on the wrong road.

“What about the cars?” I asked him.

“When I kill someone I like to leave my car out of it to cut back on the DNA potential. After I burned Francie’s car I realized burning a car produces a lot of smoke that could attract attention, so I stopped burning cars. And after I drove the car into the woods and burned it I had no way to get home. So I started using one of Harry’s moving vans to drive the car to the car graveyard. I’d just drive the victim’s car in, close the van doors, and drive the car out when I got to the barrens. The more you know, the more impressed you are, right? Morelli’s no match for me. I’ve been making him look like an idiot.”

“Why did you leave Sam Grip in the trunk?”

“I was in a rush. I killed him in the afternoon, and I was making pot roast for dinner.”

I popped two more Tums. I’d been saving the big question for last. “So are you done killing now?”

“That depends on you,” Dave said. He took a white envelope from his jacket pocket. FOR STEPHANIE was written on the outside of the envelope. “This will get us to Thailand. The plane leaves at six o’clock tomorrow morning. We can stay at an airport hotel tonight, have some fun, I’ll snap a couple intimate pictures of you for Morelli, and we’ll start a new life together. Or I can kill you now, have some fun with you after you’re dead, and go to Thailand by myself.”

“That’s gross.”

Dave shrugged. “Life is gross.”

He’d been calm through all of this, showing some animation when he talked about the killings, showing some checked anger when he mentioned Morelli. I’d been working hard to contain my fear and revulsion, and I think I was successful. My plan was to do whatever I could to buy time, and look for an opportunity to make an escape. I suspected he had only one ticket to Thailand. He’d kill me on the road or at the airport hotel. He knew it was only a matter of time before forensics discovered it was Francie in the trashed car. And Francie was the clue to his undoing. So Dave was anxious to get out of town. He wanted to complete his revenge on Morelli, but he was feeling pressured.

“I’ve never seen Thailand,” I said, taking the envelope.

“Smart girl.”

“Let me throw some things in a suitcase, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Not necessary. I have a bag already packed for you. The rest you can buy when we land.”

“I need my makeup.”

“You need nothing. Get your purse. And just so you know, I’m capable of shooting you if it becomes necessary.” He wrapped his hand around my neck and moved me to the door. “Behave yourself,” he said, guiding me out the door and down the hall to the elevator.

His hand never left my neck, and I could feel his fingers gripping hard. The elevator doors opened, and he walked me through the empty lobby.

“We’ll take my car,” he said. “Third row, toward the back of the lot.”

“Does your mother know you’re going to Thailand?”

“No. No one knows.”

He pushed me forward, out the lobby door, onto the short sidewalk that led to the parking area.

“Why Thailand?” I asked him.

“Why not?”

We were halfway across the lot when a stocky guy stepped from behind a parked car. He came into the light, and I saw it was Nick Alpha.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said to Dave, “but you need to step away. I have business with Ms. Plum.”

“Your business will have to wait,” Dave said.

Alpha drew a gun. “My business won’t wait.”

Dave took my gun out of his pocket and aimed it at Alpha. “I don’t give a crap about your business. I got here first.”

I could feel Dave’s fingers tighten around my neck. I could barely breathe. I had two guys fighting over who was going to kill me. Could my life possibly get any worse?

“Put the gun down,” Alpha said.

Dave narrowed his eyes. “You put your gun down.”

I heard a car engine catch from the back of the lot, and I caught a glimpse of the black Lexus as it crept forward, out of its parking space. And here comes the rhinoceros, I thought. Now three people were trying to kill me. This had to be some sort of record.

The tires on the Lexus chirped when the accelerator went down to the floorboard, and the car jumped into motion. Dave turned toward the sound, loosening his grip enough for me to jump clear. A fraction of a second later there was a round of gunfire and the sickening thud of a car slamming into a body. The Lexus careened around a row of cars and roared away. I peeked out from behind Mr. Molnar’s Chrysler and saw both men lying motionless on the pavement.

I suppose I should have gone to see if I could help them, but I didn’t. I ran back to the building, up the stairs, and down the hall as fast as I could in my red spike heels. I was shaking so bad I had double vision, and I had to two-hand the key to get it into the lock to open my door. I rushed inside, flipped the deadbolts, and bent at the waist to breathe. I was gasping for air and sobbing, and I dialed two wrong numbers before I was able to tap in 911. I reported the gunfire and car massacre, disconnected, and called Morelli and Ranger.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and red and blue strobe lights flashed against my window as cop cars and EMTs swept into my lot. I went to the window and looked down. It was dark and difficult to see, but I could make out the two bodies on the pavement. When I saw Morelli’s SUV and Ranger’s Porsche pull into the lot I took the stairs to the lobby.