Chill of Night

24

The next morning, da Vinci’s office: Hot. Stuffy. It smelled as if someone had recently smoked a cigar in there.

The scene on the TV looked like one of those slow dissolves that French directors love to use.

“He stood out of sight and squirted wasp killer on the security camera,” Beam said. “Stuff sprays a stream about twenty feet so you can get outta the way and not get stung when the wasps get pissed off.”

“Hell of a way to take out a camera,” da Vinci said.

“Attracts less attention than shinning up a pole with a can of spray paint. It messed up the lens, but not all the way, so we got some images on tape.”

“Anything that’ll help?”

“It’s doubtful,” Beam said. “Security guy inside the terminal didn’t notice right away that the picture was blurred on his monitor, and when he did, he assumed it was equipment failure.”

“Naturally,” da Vinci said. “Much easier to deal with than vandals or serial killers.”

Both men were silent, staring at the screen.

As Beam had said, the insecticide didn’t do a perfect job. Blurred human figures came and went on the black and white tape, but not many. The light was dim in the parking garage, and the airport hadn’t been busy at that time, so traffic was at a minimum. The upper right part of the screen was where things were less blurred.

“What was that?” da Vinci asked, pointing as a dark, uniformed figure briefly appeared on the screen.

“Airport security,” Beam said. “They patrol the area. Unfortunately, they weren’t at the right place at the right time. Fact is, there aren’t enough of them.” Beam fast forwarded the tape, then slowed it to normal speed. “This is the approximate time of the murder.”

Da Vinci sat forward. “Hell, you can’t even see the car.”

“There!” Beam said. He stopped the tape, backed it up, slow motioned forward, stopped it again. “That’s it.” Beam pointed to a light-colored sedan halfway down a row of parked cars. A figure behind the steering wheel was definitely visible, and so was a dark form in the back seat. The picture blurred again into meaningless patterns like paint splashed on a window.

“That was him?” da Vinci asked. He sounded awed, but also disappointed.

“We think so. He was visible, so he musta been raising up from where he was crouched behind the driver’s seat. And the victim was in the car. This had to be seconds before he looped the wire around her neck. As you can see, the time marked on the tape is eight sixteen. Her ticket’s got her in the lot at seven forty.”

“Thirty-six minutes in the airport,” da Vinci said. “She musta been dropping off someone. Or picking them up.”

“What we managed to piece together, from witnesses and airline records, is she dropped off her husband for a flight to Chicago. Flitt used her maiden name. He’s Martin Portelle.”

“And she musta gone inside the terminal with him,” da Vinci said, “since she was in the short-term garage.” Da Vinci looked thoughtful. “Wait a minute!”

He moved aside the scale model sculpture of the motorcycle he’d ridden as a young cop, then rooted through some papers on his desk. Beam saw on the wall behind the desk a framed photo of an even more youthful da Vinci posed seated in full uniform on an identical cycle.

“Ah!” Da Vinci had found a computer printout. “These are the jury forepersons from ten years of the trials we think might get the killer’s blood up.” He ran down the page with his forefinger, then slapped the desk with the flat of his hand. “I thought it sounded familiar. Here it is-Martin Portelle was the foreman of the jury that let Dan Maddox, the subway killer, walk six years ago.” Da Vinci flipped the paper in reverse across the desk so Beam could read it. “We were concentrating on the victim, not her husband.”

“It looks like our sicko’s changed tactics and is killing family members of forepersons,” Beam said. He not only didn’t like this development, it didn’t make any kind of sense to him, not even twisted sense.

“Not exactly,” da Vinci said. “Read on and you’ll find that Tina Flitt was one of the jurors in the Maddox trial. That’s where she and her future hubby met.”

“So she was an ordinary juror?”

“Uh-huh. Which means our killer’s broken the mold.”

“Only cracked it,” Beam said. “He’s still killing within the justice system. But he’s changed his pattern. It’s happened before. Some serial killers are damned smart, and they read the literature. They know their vulnerabilities, and what the police are looking for, so they deliberately vary their behavior.”

“They can’t vary everything,” da Vinci said. “Not according to our police profiler and psychiatrists.”

“They’re right, generally,” Beam said, “but sometimes picking up the thread isn’t so easy if the killer’s a smart one. And this one is.”

“I don’t wanna make you blush,” da Vinci said, “but you’re smart, too. That’s why I wanted you for the job.”

“There’s something else about the Flitt murder I don’t like,” Beam said, not blushing. “Another reason JK might have varied his method. It seems to me he’s beginning to enjoy what he’s doing.”

“Like he never did.”

“I mean, whatever his original motive is or was, killing’s providing sexual pleasure for him. He took the time to diddle with Flitt’s nipple while dipping for blood to write with.”

“Sexual…I’m not so sure about that. It doesn’t seem to be what motivates this puppy.”

“One way or another, it motivates all of them. Or that’s the way it turns.”

“Sexual is just what the media loves.”

“It motivates them,” Beam said.

Da Vinci thought about it, looked stricken, and spun 360 degrees in his swivel chair so he was facing Beam again. “This is a bunch of shit we don’t need.”

“The possible upside is, he’ll start enjoying killing so much that in his excitement, he’ll make a mistake and we’ll nail him.”

Da Vinci didn’t seem interested just then in the upside. “I don’t mean only his sick enjoyment is a bunch of shit. I mean everything he’s doing different, assuming he’s the one that did Tina Flitt. You understand how this complicates things?”

“Sure,” Beam said.

“I mean the politics of the case?”

“I’m not thinking about politics, just my job.”

“And I’m thinking about my job. Which I might not have if this case goes sour. This city’s justice system’s gonna go bonkers when it finds out all twelve of the jurors might be targets. Nobody’ll wanna do jury duty.”

“Nobody wants to now,” Beam said. “Nobody ever did.”

Da Vinci stared across the desk as if Beam were responsible for everything that had happened. “Have you, for Chrissakes, got any good news?”

“Lab got six human hairs from the back of Tina Flitt’s car,” Beam said. “We’re waiting now for possible DNA matches.”

“That’d be too simple,” da Vinci said, but not without hope in his voice.

“Handles on the garrote he made were probably sections of a wooden broom handle. They’re manufactured in China and sold by the tens of thousands. After looping the wire around Tina’s neck, he used the handles to gain leverage so he could twist harder.”

“I know the method,” da Vinci said, raising his hand in a motion for Beam not to explain further.

“Looks like he got the handles from a broomstick using a fine-toothed saw.”

“Also sold by the tens of thousands. Any fingerprints?”

“No. He wore gloves again.”

“You’re really sure it was our guy?”

“I’m trying to make sure,” Beam said, “but we can’t rule out copycat. We can rule out the husband. Portelle did board the plane, and security cameras did record him and his wife inside the terminal at the passenger checkpoint. And according to the time stamp on this tape, the plane was taxiing for takeoff at the time of the murder.”

“Is he back in town?”

“Flew back from Chicago a few hours ago. Nell and Looper are interviewing him. I talked to Nell. She says he’s an emotional mess.”

The desk phone rang. Da Vinci picked it up, then said, “Put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and dropped it below chin level. “It’s the commissioner. Anything more?”

“No You want me to leave the security tape?”

Da Vinci shook his head no. “Put it in the murder file.”

As Beam was removing the tape from the machine and leaving the office, he heard da Vinci behind him: “Yes, sir. How are you, sir?”

Practicing the politics of the case.

The Justice Killer had ordered lunch at Admiral Nelson’s, a new restaurant in lower Manhattan with an improbable sailing ship theme, and was seated in a booth resembling a cutaway lifeboat, waiting for his food to arrive. He sipped his gin martini and wondered what the police laboratory would make of the wire he’d used to kill Tina Flitt. He’d seen it protruding from an old lamp shade at an outdoor flea market in SoHo, glinting in the sun. The wire had been part of a beading design at the base of the shade, running its entire circumference.

Why the glint of sunlight at the base of the drab yellowed shade had given him the idea, he wasn’t sure. But he realized he’d been considering a different way to kill Tina, a way more…personal than a bullet from ten feet away, or simply fired into her head or the base of her spine from the backseat of her car. After the moment of ice, when she was paralyzed by what was about to happen, he wanted her literally to die at his hands. He wanted to feel her death like a message in the wire.

That was it; he wanted to experience the vibrations of her death, and of his vengeance.

He sipped his drink.

More than vengeance.

So he’d bought the old brass and ceramic lamp for twelve dollars, and a block away deposited it in with some trash at the curb, and kept only the shade. It had been easy, that evening, to cut away part of the shade’s fabric and beading and remove the wire.

The garrote he’d fashioned had worked more efficiently than he’d anticipated. Too efficiently, perhaps. Tina Flitt had died within seconds, and the wire had been so deeply imbedded in her neck that he hadn’t even attempted to remove it.

Still, he’d felt her die, heard her die, even heard the rush of her blood as it spilled from her.

It was like nothing so much as sex.

He pushed away the thought.

Yes, he was enjoying his mission now, but that made it no less a mission. He’d joined the fraternity of serial killers that murdered women for sexual thrall. But it was a fraternity he’d long misunderstood, and one whose members were distinguishable from each other.

He had reasons beyond the thrill of the hunt and the primal satisfaction of the kill. He was meting out justice to a system that had failed and was failing and must be changed. And of course he didn’t always kill women. Jurors were his target, not women, though every jury included women. He didn’t fall into the classic serial killer pattern he’d read and heard so much about. He wasn’t like the rest of them. Not at all.

He had his reasons to kill, and they were good ones.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of his food, brought by an attractive young woman wearing some kind of nautical outfit. Her blond hair was chopped short and she wore one gold hoop earring, pirate style. Her top was horizontally striped red and white and had a square, low-cut neckline.

As she smiled and bent low to place his dishes on the table, the Justice Killer was aware of a nearby booth full of businessmen observing her generous breasts.

He couldn’t stop looking at her neck.