Dancing with the Dead

23

Seattle had changed things.

Morrisy sat before his half-finished eggs Benedict at Brennan’s and stared at the fax sheets he’d been carrying around in his pocket. The similarities in the Roundner and Verlane homicides couldn’t be discounted, and it did seem that ballroom dancing figured into whatever psychosis the killer carried in his sick mind. Morrisy had seen Schutz about it, and Schutz had agreed, but he’d said there wasn’t enough data or insight to determine just how the dancing fit in, or even if it did for sure.

Fingering the smooth meerschaum pipe in his shirt pocket, Morrisy thought about how he hated to dance. Bonita had dragged him out on the floor a few times, forcing him to do his awkward box step. Finally he’d deliberately stomped on her toe and she’d believed he was no dancer. It took something like that with a woman like Bonita.

The waiter wandered by and refilled his coffee. At the next table another waiter had touched flame to liqueur and some kind of fancy breakfast dish blazed. It had always struck Morrisy as ridiculous to set food on fire. He enjoyed eating at a place like Brennan’s, though, with its high-toned atmosphere and its lush garden; it was one of the perks of his position and if he continued to put on weight the hell with it.

He stared into the flames until the waiter extinguished the fire. Then he gazed into the dark depths of his coffee cup, thinking. The Roundner woman’s body had been decomposed to the point where determining time of death was difficult, but she was probably killed on a weekend. Rene Verlane claimed to have spent that time at home, but it was possible he could have taken a flight to Seattle under an alias, committed the murder, and returned home. Only his wife, Danielle, would know for sure, and Danielle was dead. Maybe that was why she was dead.

And Verlane was in Seattle now, had even announced on TV he was going there. Snooping around, as if an amateur could uncover something the police had overlooked. Like goddamn Rockford or something. It was all an act, anyway, Morrisy thought. Verlane was playing the bereaved husband to the hilt, trying to get the media on his side and divert suspicion away from him. The guy did have brass nuts, Morrisy would give him that. But that’s all he’d give him other than a shitpot full of trouble.

Morrisy sipped coffee, wondering about the dance connection. Maybe there really wasn’t any except for the fact the killer figured women wrapped up in ballroom dancing were kind of natural victims from the beginning. They literally yearned to be swept off their feet, to give themselves up to music and whoever they were dancing with. Vulnerable romantics of the sort who made work for Morrisy. At least that was how Morrisy saw it. He figured most men regarded that kind of dancing as nothing more than an opportunity to cop a feel, find out where they stood for the rest of the night with their partners when the dancing was over.

Either way, he’d continue to downplay the dance angle with the media. That was the kind of strategy that boosted career chances. Why shoot himself in the foot by looking like a second-guessing fool for maybe no reason?

But women who danced, maybe they did have something meaningful in common. He’d have to ask Schutz about that. And ask him about how Verlane might feel about dancing, the way his dead wife was so hung up on it. Schutz still had the idea the killer might be doing these women and then not remembering any of it afterward. And Morrisy still didn’t see how that was possible. How could anyone who’d seen the Danielle Verlane crime scene think whoever’d been responsible could ever forget it?

Schutz had come to believe that Rene Verlane didn’t necessarily fit the profile of the guy they were looking for, but Morrisy didn’t buy into that notion, either. He was 90 percent sure about Verlane. Instinct, maybe, but it was instinct that had gotten him to where he was in the department, so it wasn’t something to be ignored. He only wished he hadn’t gone public with his stand against a dance tie-in, because his instincts were sure beginning to whisper something different now, especially since there’d been a dance competition in Seattle around the time of the killing.

He wondered if Waxman would come up with anything on whether Verlane had registered at a hotel in Seattle during the time frame of the Roundner murder. He doubted it. The airlines had no record of him flying out of New Orleans; if he’d used an alias for that, he sure wouldn’t register at a hotel under his own name then go out and do the Rounder woman. But then killers could be unpredictable in small ways. They were a quart of oil short to begin with, so who could tell how they might think, especially if they were the compulsive type, which Schutz said this character was. At least Morrisy and Schutz agreed about that.

Morrisy looked up and saw Captain Bill Quirk easing his bulk between the white-clothed tables, nodding to people he knew. Important people.

Quirk had said he’d meet Morrisy here to discuss the Verlane case. Morrisy wasn’t crazy about that idea. The news media had been laying it on thick, even national news, so the pressure was on and Morrisy knew he figured to get his ass reamed for not coming up with a suspect that could be brought in and booked. When that happened, the media would briefly go spastic, then they’d calm down and concentrate on something else for a while and things would ease up.

Morrisy smiled. The media thought they knew it all, now that it had been made public the two women were humped after they were dead. But they didn’t know it all, only thought they did.

Quirk had assumed Morrisy was smiling at him and smiled back.

The way a shark might smile at a smaller shark.