Kiss Of Evil

50

Mercedes Cruz has taken on the waxy pallor of the newly deceased. All the ghastly visual details of the murders of Fayette Martin, Willis Walker, Isaac Levertov, and Edith Levertov are displayed in front of her in brilliant, living color. Forty-eight photographs in all.

Paris feels for Mercedes. He knows her well enough to know she has a good heart and this is something she had not anticipated.

The task force meeting begins promptly at eight o’clock with every available detective in the Homicide Unit sitting in the room. Four of the eight unit commanders are also in attendance, as are the coroner and deputy coroner.

In addition to the crime-scene photographs of the victims, there are two photographs of the cardboard strips found on Isaac Levertov and Fayette Martin, as well as two photographs of the shoeprints found in the Levertov apartment. Also, a pair of computer-generated composites are tacked on the board. One is of a young blond woman, the woman last seen with Willis Walker. The other is really two composites side by side. The bearded, bespectacled young man at the hot dog cart on the left; and a clean shaven, glassless version of the suspect on the right.

During the past twenty-four hours, the net had widened to include law-enforcement agencies at the county and state levels. Images of the hot dog vendor had been distributed to police and sheriff’s departments all over northeastern Ohio, some already to Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The image had also been uploaded to a dozen law-enforcement websites.

The task force had also rerun the digital file taken from Carla’s hidden camera at the party. Poor quality, terrible lighting, absolutely unusable.

In the past few days, the buzz that had flowed through the department regarding the Paris Is Burning evidence had taken on a far more serious tone than if the rumor that a police officer might be targeted by a killer had not been prematurely floated. There are about eighteen hundred men and women on the force and more than once, over the past days, a few more vests than usual had been quietly removed from lockers and strapped into place.

The investigation had also confirmed what they already knew; that DVD rental businesses, including the big ones like Blockbuster, do not rent the original plastic packaging with the movie. In the past forty-eight hours, the factory packaging of all thirty-one rental DVD copies of Paris Is Burning in the greater Cleveland area had been examined and cleared. Not one of them had a missing label.

Greg Ebersole begins. “There were no usable prints from the motel room. Most of the surfaces were wiped down rather thoroughly, but there were traces of Willis Walker’s blood found on the nightstand and the inside door-knob, indicating that the killer wiped the bludgeoning weapon first, which was most likely the toilet tank cover, then proceeded to wipe down the room with the same cloth. A towel with what looks like blood on it was found in a culvert along I-90 last night. Lab’s got it now.

“SIU has also lifted no fewer than fifty prints and partials at the Fayette Martin crime scene. Of the twenty on file, eleven were incarcerated at the time of the murder, three no longer live in the area and have provided work alibis. Two are over seventy, being a pair of pensioners who routinely visit the building looking for aluminum cans. That brings us to one Jaybert Louis Williams, thirty-four, whose sheet begins and ends with a pair of shoplifting charges in North Randall, and one Antoinette Viera, thirteen years of age.”

“Thirteen?” Paris asks. “Why the hell are her prints on file?”

Greg scans his notebook. “She stole some supplies from her junior high school.”

“And she went through the system for that?”

“Computer supplies, Jack. As in four brand-new laptops.”

Everyone in the room absorbs the information, then discards it. There is nothing there.

“Any reason to like the shoplifter?”

Greg holds up the man’s photograph. Jaybert L. Williams is black, no less than three hundred pounds. He is certainly not the hot dog vendor. But it doesn’t rule him out as an accomplice or accessory.

Carla asks, “And what’s his excuse for being on someone else’s property?”

“Actually, he copped right to it. Said he was in there getting a blow job. Said it was so good he had to hang onto the counter.”

A collective sigh skirts the room, buttressed by some boisterous laughter.

Paris asks, “Did he say when this blow job of a lifetime occurred?”

“Last summer,” Greg says. “The lab supports that. It’s an old print.”

Dead end. Elliott turns to Carla.

Carla begins. “The shoeprints found in the Levertov kitchen are from a man’s hiking boot, size eleven and a half. Unfortunately, it is an extremely popular model, available everywhere: Macy’s, Nordstrom, Saks. The material on the floor was mostly water, with particulate matter consisting of mud, soot, road salt. Another shoeprint matching these was found in a small snow bank near the entrance to the stairwell. Everything on the stairs themselves is too smudged.”

As he had the first time he had seen it, Paris looks once again at the sketch of the young blond woman, as described by the regulars at Vernelle’s Party Center, and sees Rebecca.

Why?

Granted, the cheekbones and eyes are familiar, as is the hint of a dimple, but that’s about it. Beyond that, it doesn’t look like her at all.

Does it?

Or is it just this spell he’s under?

Job, Jack.

Everyone concurs that their suspect had to have listened in on Paris’s and Carla’s radio traffic and known that Carla would be buying the hot dog for Paris, which is one of the reasons why Paris had phoned the Second District to move in and not radioed Carla. There had been no time to establish a scrambled command frequency. They had, of course, found the hot dog cart abandoned and currently had it in the lab.

It still didn’t nail down the Paris Is Burning connection, but there was no longer any doubt that Paris is the subject of this psychopath’s attentions. He’s not just baiting the department, the system, the city.

This is personal.

Paris holds up the composite of the hot dog vendor, sans spectacles and beard, says: “No one at the party looked anything like our actor. As far as we know, he wasn’t even at that party. Now, if he is some kind of rent-a-cyber-stud for this NeTrix, Inc., he might show up at the big New Year’s Eve bash. In fact, he may not have any idea that we made the house in University Heights yet, or established any kind of connection. Just because he has some kind of thing for me doesn’t mean he knows anything about the last party.”

Elliott asks: “How do you know that someone at the party didn’t tell him about you and Carla?”

“Believe me, nobody looked at me. Carla’s the only reason we got in the door in the first place. They know us as Cleopatra and John. I don’t think he has any idea we would come at him from this side. I vote for hitting that party tonight.”

Elliott looks at Carla Davis. “You agree?”

“Absolutely,” Carla says. “If we bring in Herb now, or whoever actually lives in that house, and sweat him, we tip our boy for sure. We lose the possibility that he shows up at the party. He’s in the wind. I say we raid the party at midnight.”

“What time does this thing start?” Elliott asks.

“Ten o’clock,” Carla says. “Herb sent me an e-mail this morning.”