Lightning

4

Daniel McLaughlin was a rotund little man in his late fifties, wearing dark slacks and brown shoes, a very loud sports jacket, a peach-colored shirt, a tie that looked as if it had been designed by Jackson Pollock (and further abstracted by various food stains), and a dark brown summer straw hat with a narrow brim and a feather that matched the shirt. He seemed out of breath, his face mottled and perspiring, when he came up to the detectives, who were waiting for him on the front stoop. His little brown eyes checked them out briefly, and then flicked to the overflowing garbage cans stacked near the wrought iron railing that surrounded an area below pavement level. He seemed pleased to note that the garbage cans were spilling all sorts of debris onto the sidewalk.

They had learned from Jenny that Marcia Schaffer had moved into her rent-controlled apartment at about the same time Jenny had, more than two years ago when both girls were starting at Ramsey U on athletic scholarships. Before then, Marcia had indeed lived in a small town in Kansas, not Buffalo Dung — as Jenny had earlier remarked when everything was still light and jovial and unclouded by information of violent death — but instead a place named Manhattan, which called itself The Little Apple. Carella and Hawes guessed there really was a place called Manhattan, Kansas.

According to Jenny, the owner of the building — the selfsame Daniel McLaughlin who now stood admiring the shit spilling from his garbage cans — had been trying for the past year or more to get all of his tenants out of the building so that he could divide his big old-fashioned apartments into smaller units and thereby realize greater revenues. Thus far, he’d been largely unsuccessful. Save for a little old lady who’d moved to a nursing home, the rest of his tenants flatly refused to budge from a neighborhood that had suddenly become chic, enjoying rents that were impossible to find except in the worst sections of the city, of which there were many. In an attempt to dislodge lodgers who seemed determined to stay lodged, McLaughlin had first yanked out his superintendent, and then had begun a highly creative personal management that last year had resulted in the water being turned off at odd hours, garbage going uncollected, and heat not being provided by October 15, as specified by law in this city. Today was only the eleventh of October; it remained to be seen whether this year, the heat would be turned on as decreed, although the mild weather made the question somewhat academic. Meanwhile, there was garbage all over the sidewalk.

“You the detectives?” McLaughlin asked, coming up the steps.

“Mr. McLaughlin?” Carella said.

“Yeah.” He did not offer his hand. “I’ve got to tell you I don’t appreciate coming all the way up here to deliver a goddamn key.”

“No other way to get in the apartment,” Hawes said.

They had called him just before they’d gone to lunch in a greasy spoon around the corner, even though the neighborhood was brimming with good French restaurants. Each of them had eaten hamburgers and French fries, washed down with Cokes. During lunch, Carella had meant to ask Hawes why the Indian had bought a hat, but he was preoccupied with the thought that a cop’s normal working-day diet was nothing the great chefs of Europe would care to write home about. It was now one o’clock in the afternoon, and Daniel McLaughlin was complaining he’d had to come “all the way up here” from his office six blocks away.

“I don’t like the idea of her being dead to begin with,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t mind having the apartment back, but suppose nobody else wants to rent it once they find out a dead girl was living in it?”

It seemed not to occur to him that Marcia Schaffer had been very much alive while she’d lived in his precious apartment.

“Homicide can be difficult,” Carella said.

“Yeah,” McLaughlin agreed, missing the sarcasm. “Well, I’ve got the key, let’s go. I hope this isn’t going to take forever.”

“Couple of hours maybe,” Hawes said. “You don’t have to stay with us. If you leave the key, we’ll see that it’s returned to you.”

“I’ll bet,” McLaughlin said, leaving unvoiced the suspicion that every cop in this city was a thief. “I’ll take you up, come on,” he said.

They followed him into the building.

The truth of what Jenny Compton had told them became immediately apparent in the small entrance lobby. A lighting fixture hung loose from the ceiling; there was no light bulb in it. The locks on several of the mailboxes were broken. The glass panel on the interior door was cracked, and the doorknob hung loose from a single screw. Further corroboration of McLaughlin’s attempts to make life difficult for his intransigent tenants was manifest in the worn and soiled linoleum on the interior steps, the unwashed windows on each landing, the rickety bannisters and exposed electrical wiring. Carella wondered why someone in the building didn’t simply call the Ombudsman’s Office. He exchanged a glance with Hawes, who nodded bleakly.

McLaughlin stopped outside the door to 3A, fished in his pocket for a key, unlocked the door, and then looked from one detective to the other, as if trying to measure character in a few swift glances.

“Listen, I have some other things to take care of,” he said. “If I leave the key, will you really get it back to me?”

“Scout’s honor,” Hawes said, deadpanned.

“I’m at McLaughlin Realty on Bower Street,” McLaughlin said, handing him the key. “Well, I guess you know that, that’s where you called me. I want you to understand I’m not responsible for any damage you do in here, case the girl’s relatives start complaining later on.”

“We’ll try to be careful,” Carella said.

“Make sure you get that key back to me.”

“We’ll see that it’s returned,” Hawes said.

“Yeah, I hope,” McLaughlin said, and went off down the hallway, shaking his head.

“Nice man,” Carella said.

“Wonderful,” Hawes said, and they went into the apartment.

As Jenny had suggested, the apartment was larger than those in many of the city’s newer buildings, the front door opening onto a sizable entrance hall that led into a spacious living room. The apartment seemed even larger than it actually was because of the sparse furnishings, exactly what one might expect of a college girl attending school on a scholarship. A sofa was against one wall, two thrift-shop easy chairs angled into it. A bank of oversized windows was on the adjoining wall, splashing October sunlight into the room. A row of potted plants rested on the floor beneath the windows. Hawes went to them and touched the soil; they seemed not to have been watered too recently.

“You don’t think McLaughlin wanted her out of the apartment that bad, do you?” he asked.

“Whoever pulled her up on the end of that rope had to be pretty strong,” Carella said, shaking his head.

“Fat doesn’t mean weak,” Hawes said.

“He look like a murderer to you?”

“No.”

“There’s a smell,” Carella said.

“I know. But he’s sure trying hard to get these people out of here.”

“We ought to make some calls, put somebody on it. I hate to see him getting away with this kind of shit.”

“You know anybody in the mayor’s office?”

“Maybe Rollie Chabrier does.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

They were referring to an assistant district attorney both men had dealt with in the past. They were roaming the living room now, not looking for anything in particular, sniffing the air, more or less, the way animals in the wild will when they enter unfamiliar territory. Technically, this was not the scene of the crime; the scene of the crime was some four miles uptown, where they had discovered the body hanging from a lamppost. But the medical examiner had posited the theory that Marcia Schaffer had been killed elsewhere and only later transported to where they’d discovered her. It was within the realm of possibility that she had been killed here, in this apartment, although at first glance there seemed to be no signs of a violent struggle of any sort. Still, the unspoken question hovered in both their minds. Hawes finally voiced it.

“Think we ought to get some technicians in here? Before we mess anything up?”

Carella considered this.

“I’d hate like hell to touch anything that may be evidence,” Hawes said.

“Better call them,” Carella agreed, and went to the phone. He tented a handkerchief over his hand when he picked up the receiver. He stuck the eraser end of a pencil into the receiver holes when he dialed the Mobile Crime Unit number.

The technicians arrived some twenty minutes later. They stood in the middle of the living room, looking around the place much as Carella and Hawes earlier had, just sniffing the air, getting used to the feel of it. Carella and Hawes hadn’t touched a thing. They hadn’t even sat on any of the chairs. They were standing almost where they’d been when Carella placed his call.

“We the first ones in here?” one of the technicians asked. Carella remembered him as somebody named Joe. Joe Something-or-other.

“Yes,” Carella said. “Well, we’ve been in here a half hour or so.”

“I mean, besides us. You and us.”

“That’s it,” Carella said.

“Touch anything?” the other technician asked. Carella did not recognize him.

“Just the outside knob.”

“So you want the whole works?” the first technician asked. “Dusting? Vacuuming? The twelve ninety-five job?” He smiled at his partner.

“Reduced from thirteen-fifty,” his partner said, returning the smile.

“We’re not sure this is the crime scene,” Carella said.

“So what the hell’re we doing here?” the first technician said.

“It might be,” Hawes said.

“Then take the two-dollar job,” the second technician suggested.

“Quick once-over,” the first technician said. “Superficial, but thorough.” He held up a finger alongside his nose, emphasizing the point.

“Better give ’em some gloves,” the second technician said.

The first technician produced a pair of white cotton gloves and handed them to Carella. “In case you decide to do any detective work,” he said, and winked at his partner. He handed another pair of gloves to Hawes. Both detectives pulled on the gloves while the technicians watched.

“May I have the first dance?” the second technician said, and then they went downstairs to the van, to get all the paraphernalia they would need for tossing the apartment.

On a fireplace mantel on the wall opposite the sofa, Carella and Hawes studied the several trophies attesting to Marcia Schaffer’s running ability — a silver cup, a silver plate, several medals, all earned while she was on her high school’s track team. The engraved inscription on the silver plate recorded the fact that she had broken the Kansas track record three years earlier. There was a framed picture of a man and a woman, presumably her parents, reminding Carella that he had not yet called Manhattan, Kansas. That would have to come later. He did not relish having to make that call.

The technicians were back. The one Carella thought was named Joe said, “You’re not fucking anything up, are you?”

The second technician put his gear down on the floor. “This a homicide or what?” he asked.

“Yes,” Carella said.

“The stiff been printed already? Case we find any wild latents?”

“She’s been printed,” Carella said.

“Any signs of forcible entry?”

“None that we saw.”

“Can we skip the windowsills then?”

“Whatever you think,” Carella said.

“What the hell are we looking for, anyway?”

“Traces of anybody else who might’ve been in here.”

“That could be the whole fuckin’ city,” the first technician said, and shook his head. But they got to work nonetheless. The second technician was even whistling as he started dusting the mantelpiece for fingerprints.

An open doorframe, no door in it, led to the only bedroom in the apartment, large and airy, with a high ceiling and the same oversized windows overlooking the street. There was a bed against one wall, an unpainted dresser opposite it, an unpainted desk angled into a corner. There were Ramsey University pennants on one of the walls, together with framed photographs of Marcia Schaffer in track costume, looking healthy and radiant and bursting with life. One of the pictures showed her with her blond hair blowing on the wind behind her, arms and legs pumping, mouth open and sucking in air as she broke the tape at a finish line. A gray team jacket — with the school’s name lettered across the back of it in purple, and the word TRACK appliqued under the school’s seal on the front — was draped over the chair near the desk. There were open books on the desktop. There was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. Carella glanced at it. Marcia Schaffer had been working on a paper for an anthropology class. Man stands alone, he thought, because man alone stands. Marcia Schaffer would never stand again, no less run. The runner had been knocked down in her twenty-first year of life.

In the bedroom closet, they found a sparse assortment of clothing — several dresses and skirts, sweaters on hangers, a ski parka, a raincoat, blue jeans, tailored slacks, a gray warm-up suit with the university’s name and seal on it. Together, they went through coat pockets and jacket pockets, the pockets of all the jeans and slacks. Nothing. They shook out loafers and high-heeled shoes, track shoes and sneakers. Nothing. They opened a valise on the closet shelf. It was empty. They crossed the room to the dresser, and methodically went through the clothes in the drawers there. Bras and panties, slips and more sweaters, blouses and pantyhose, knee socks and sweat socks. In a corner of the top drawer, they found a dispenser for birth control pills.

They went back into the living room where the technicians were working, and went through all the desk drawers, searching in vain for an appointment calendar. They found a small leather-bound book listing names, addresses, and telephone numbers, presumably of friends and relatives. Marcia Schaffer seemed to have known quite a few people in the city, but most of them were women, and neither Carella nor Hawes believed that a woman would have had the strength to hoist Marcia’s dead-weight body up onto a lamppost some twenty-five feet above the ground. In the S section of the book, Carella found a listing for Schaffer, no surnames following it, no address, simply a telephone number with a 316 area code preceding it. He was willing to bet this was the area code for Manhattan, Kansas. He would have to call her parents. Soon. He would have to tell them their golden girl was dead.

He sighed heavily.

“Something?” Hawes asked. He was rummaging in the wastebasket alongside the desk, studying scraps of crumpled paper.

“No, no,” Carella said.

Most of the scraps in the wastebasket were handwritten notes Marcia Schaffer had made for the paper she’d been writing. There was a grocery list. There was a letter she had started and then crumpled. It began with the words, Dear Mom and Dad, I hate to ask you for money again so soon after... There was a worksheet with a list of figures she had added and then crossed out and added once again, apparently seeking a correct checkbook balance. There was a card from a place that delivered pizzas. That was all.

They went into the bathroom. Several pairs of plain white cotton panties were draped over the shower rod. An open box of super-absorbent menstrual napkins was resting on the sink below the mirror. Carella tried to remember if the Medical Examiner had mentioned anything about menstruation. He felt suddenly like an intruder. He did not want to know about anything as private and personal as Marcia Schaffer’s period. But a soiled menstrual napkin was in the wastebasket under the sink. He opened the medicine cabinet. Hawes was going through the hamper near the scale, pulling out dirty pieces of laundry, examining each article of clothing.

“Bloodstains here,” he said.

“She was menstruating,” Carella said.

“Better have the lab check them out, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Carella said.

Hawes began gathering the soiled clothing into a heap. He went out of the bathroom to ask the technicians about the dirty laundry. They told him to put it in a pillowcase. Carella looked into the medicine cabinet. He did not expect to find any controlled substances, and he didn’t. There was the usual array of nonprescription medications, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioners, nail polish, combs, brushes, adhesive bandages, Ace bandages — presumably because she’d been a runner and prone to muscle pulls and sprains — mouthwash, barrettes, bobby pins, and the like. J. D. Salinger would have made very little of Marcia Schaffer’s medicine cabinet. Carella closed the door.

A robe was hanging on a wall hook.

He took it down. The robe was a winter-weight garment, navy blue with white piping on the cuffs and around the shawl collar. The label indicated that it had been purchased at one of the city’s larger department stores. The words “100 % Wool” were fortified on the label with the universal symbol:

The label was further marked with the letter “L” for “Large.” Carella felt in the pockets. One of them was empty. The other contained an almost-full package of Marlboro cigarettes and a gold cigarette lighter. Carella dropped these into separate evidence envelopes. Hawes was just coming back into the room with a pillowcase printed with little blue flowers.

“Were there cigarettes in her handbag?” Carella asked.

“What?”

“The girl’s handbag. Do you remember cigarettes?”

“No. Why would there be cigarettes? She was on the track team.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Why? What’d you find?” Hawes asked, beginning to transfer the laundry into the pillowcase.

“A pack of Marlboros. And a Dunhill lighter.”

“Is that a man’s robe?” Hawes asked, looking up.

“Looks that way.”

“How tall was she?”

“Five-eight.”

Hawes looked at the robe again. “Couldn’t be hers, do you think?”

“It’s a large,” Carella said.

Hawes nodded. “The lab’ll want it for sure,” he said.

The technicians were still working in the living room when Carella and Hawes came back to return the cotton gloves. Over the hum of the filtered vacuum cleaner, the one Carella thought was named Joe winked at his partner and said, “Half a day today?”

“When do you think you’ll be finished?” Carella asked.

“A woman’s work is never done,” the other technician said.

“Think you can lock up and get the key back to us?”

“Back where?” the first technician said.

“The Eight-Seven. Uptown.”

“All the way uptown,” the second technician said, rolling his eyes. “I got a date tonight. You want to be responsible for the key, John?”

John, that’s it, Carella thought.

“I don’t want to be responsible for no fuckin’ key,” John said.

“Well, can you call when you think you’re almost finished?” Hawes asked. “We’ll send a patrolman down for it.”

“They got pick-up and delivery service, the Eight-Seven,” John said, and again winked at his partner.

“What’s the number up there?” the other technician asked.

“377-8024,” Hawes said.

John turned off the vacuum cleaner. “Let me write it down,” he said. He fished in a coverall pocket for a pencil. He patted his other pockets. “Who’s got a pencil?” he asked.

Hawes was already writing his last name and the precinct telephone number on a page in his notebook. He tore the page loose and handed it to John. “Ask for either one of us,” he said. “Hawes or Carella.”

“Horse?” the second technician said. “We got ‘A Man Called Horse’ here,” he said to John.

“You part Indian?” John asked.

“Mohawk,” Hawes lied. “Full-blooded.”

“How come you ain’t in construction work?” the other technician asked, and both he and John laughed. John looked at the page Hawes had torn from his notebook.

“This how you spell it in Mohawk?” he asked Hawes.

“That’s the way my father always spelled it,” Hawes said. “Running Deer Hawes was his name.”

“What’s your first name?” the other technician asked.

“Great Bull Farting,” Hawes said, and followed Carella out of the apartment.

“That reminds me,” Carella said in the hallway outside. “Why did the Indian buy a hat?”

“To keep his wigwam,” Hawes said.

“Ouch,” Carella said.

In the waning sunlight, he ran.

He had left his apartment at five-fifteen, driven up here in less than ten minutes, and then parked his car on Grover Avenue, outside the park. The park at this hour of the day was virtually empty of mothers with their baby carriages, populated now with youngsters tossing footballs, lovers strolling hand in hand, old men sitting on benches trying to read their newspapers in the fading light. Yesterday at this time, there’d been more people in the park than was usual. Yesterday had been Columbus Day — or at least the day set aside for the official observance of Columbus Day — and many of the shops and offices had been closed.

It annoyed him that they no longer observed a famous man’s holiday when they were supposed to. Columbus Day was October 12, so why had they celebrated it two days earlier? To take advantage of a long weekend, of course. Not that he’d enjoyed that advantage at all. He was his own boss, and he set his own work schedule.

God, what a beautiful day it was!

Still light enough at a quarter to six to see clearly every twist and turn of the footpath along which he ran, a far cry from a cinder track, but better than nothing in this city of concrete and steel. The clocks would go back on the last Sunday in October — Spring ahead, Fall back, he thought — and it would start getting dark around five, five-thirty then, but in the meantime there was still the fading glow of sunshine and a cloudless blue sky overhead, he loved October, he loved this city in October.

He ran at a steady pace, nothing to win here, no one to defeat, not even a clock to race. Exercise, that’s all, he thought, just exercise, running along a park path for exercise, running anonymously, a tall, slender man in a gray warm-up suit without letters, running at an easy, steady pace that soothed and comforted, as did the knowledge of what he’d done and would continue to do.

He stopped running when he came abreast of the police station across the street, visible beyond the low stone wall bordering the park. Even in the late afternoon light, he could make out the numerals 87, lettered in white on the green globes flanking the entrance steps. Two men in plainclothes were entering the building, both of them hatless, neither of them wearing coats — well, on a day like today, who needed a coat? Still, he always thought of detectives as men wearing overcoats. If, in fact, they were detectives. Perhaps they were only citizens coming to make a complaint. Plenty of citizens in this city, all of them with complaints.

He wondered if his little package had arrived yet.

He had mailed it on Saturday, took the subway all the way out to Calm’s Point to drop the package in a mailbox there. Flat enough to squeeze into the mailbox opening, he’d made certain of that. Weighed it at home first, made sure the proper postage was on it. He didn’t want that package to go undelivered because of insufficient postage. There was no way it could be returned to him because he hadn’t put a return address on it. That was why he hadn’t taken it to a post office. He hadn’t wanted to chance some dumb postal clerk telling him they couldn’t accept his package because there was no return address on it. He didn’t know what the exact rules were, but he didn’t want to risk a hassle. Drop it in a mailbox, the letter carrier would shrug and figure if there was enough postage on it, somebody down the line would attempt delivery. The guys who emptied those big mailboxes probably never even looked at what they were picking up, anyway. A post office was different. Clerk might see there was no return address and even if it wasn’t against the rules, he might point it out. No return address on this, you know that? Have to explain that he was sending it as a surprise, something like that, too much explaining to do. Man might remember him later on. Simpler to drop it in a mailbox. Flat enough so that it fit in a mailbox. He didn’t want anyone remembering him just yet. There was plenty of time later for people to start remembering him.

All of the post offices in the city had been closed yesterday, no mail delivery anywhere; he knew for certain the package could not have been delivered yesterday. But today — unless there’d been an unusual pile-up because of the holiday — yes, it should have been delivered today.

He wondered what they’d made of it.

Getting her handbag in the mail that way.

He smiled, thinking about the looks on their faces.

Maybe next time he’d leave identification right at the scene. Make it a little easier for them. Let them know who the victim was right off. Leave the identification right in the street, under the lamppost. Didn’t want to make it too easy for them, of course, not till the thing started building momentum. Friday’s newspapers had barely mentioned the dead girl. Nothing at all in the morning papers, and no front-page headline in the sensational afternoon paper. They’d put the story on page eight, big story like that, girl found hanging from a goddamn lamppost! Next time around, they’d know there was a pattern. The cops would know it, too, unless they were even dumber than he thought they were. Headlines next time around, for sure.

He looked once again at the police station across the way, and then began running, smiling.

Soon, he thought.

Soon they’d know who he was.

The two women were sizing each other up.

Annie Rawles had been told that Eileen Burke was the best decoy in Special Forces. Eileen Burke had been told that Annie Rawles was a hard-nosed Rape Squad cop who’d once worked out of Robbery and had shot down two hoods trying to rip off a midtown bank. Annie was looking at a woman who was five feet nine inches tall, with long legs, good breasts, flaring hips, red hair, and green eyes. Eileen was looking at a woman with eyes the color of loam behind glasses that gave her a scholarly look, wedge-cut hair the color of midnight, firm cupcake breasts, and a slender boy’s body. They were both about the same age, Eileen guessed, give or take a year or so. Eileen kept wondering how somebody who looked so much like a bookkeeper could have pulled her service revolver and blown away two desperate punks facing a max of twenty years’ hard time.

“What do you think?” Annie asked.

“You say this isn’t the only repeat?” Eileen said.

They were still sizing each other up. Eileen figured this wasn’t a matter of choice. If Annie Rawles had asked for her, and if her lieutenant had assigned Eileen to the job, then that was it, they both outranked her. Still, she liked to know who she’d be working with. Annie was wondering if Eileen was really as good at the job as they’d said she was. She looked a little flashy for a decoy. Spot her strutting along in high heels with those tits bouncing, a rapist would make her in a minute and run for the hills. This was a very special rapist they were dealing with here; Annie didn’t want an amateur screwing it up.

“We’ve got three women say they were raped more than once by this same guy. Fits the description in each case,” Annie said. “There may be more, we haven’t run an M.O. cross-check.”

“When will you be doing that?” Eileen asked; she liked to know who she was working with, how efficient they were. It wouldn’t be Annie Rawles’s ass out there on the street, it would be her own.

“Working on that now,” Annie said. She liked Eileen’s question. She knew she was asking Eileen to put herself in a dangerous position. The man had already slashed one of the victims, left her face scarred. At the same time, that was the job. If Eileen didn’t like Special Forces, she should ask for transfer to something else. Annie didn’t know that Eileen was considering just that possibility, but not for any reason Annie might have understood.

“All over the city, or any special location?” Eileen asked.

“Anyplace, anytime.”

“I’m only one person,” Eileen said.

“There’ll be other decoys. But what I have in mind for you...”

“How many?”

“Six, if I can get them.”

“Counting me?”

“Yes.”

“Who are the others?”

“I’ve got their names here, you want to look them over,” Annie said, and handed her a typewritten sheet.

Eileen read it over carefully. She knew all of the women on the list. Most of them knew their jobs. One of them didn’t. She refrained from voicing this opinion; no sense bad-mouthing anybody.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Look okay to you?”

“Sure.” She hesitated. “Connie needs a bit more experience,” she said tactfully. “You might want to save her for something less complicated. Good cop, but this guy’s got a knife, you said...”

“And he’s used it,” Annie said.

“Yeah, so save Connie for something a little less complicated.” Both women understood the euphemism. “Less complicated” meant “less dangerous.” Nobody wanted a lady cop slashed because she was incapable of handling something like this.

“What age groups?” Eileen asked. “The victims.”

“The three we know about for sure... let me look at this a minute.” Annie picked up another typewritten sheet. “One of them is forty-six. Another is twenty-eight. This last one — Mary Hollings, the one last Saturday night — is thirty-seven. He’s raped her three times already.”

“Same guy each time, huh? You’re positive about that?”

“According to the descriptions.”

“What do they say he looks like?”

“In his thirties, black hair and blue eyes...”

“White?”

“White. About six feet tall... well, it varies there. We’ve got him ranging from five-ten to six-two. About a hundred and eighty pounds, very muscular, very strong.”

“Any identifying marks? Scars? Tattoos?”

“None of the victims mentioned any.”

“Same guy each time,” Eileen said, as if trying to lend credibility to it by repeating it. “That’s unusual, isn’t it? Guy coming back to the same victim?”

“Very,” Annie said. “Which is why I thought...”

“With your rapists, usually...”

“I know.”

“They don’t care who they get, it’s got nothing to do with lust.”

“I know.”

“So the M.O. would seem to indicate he has favorites or something. That doesn’t jibe with the psychology of it.”

“I know.”

“So what’s the plan? Cover these victims or cruise their neighborhoods?”

“We don’t think they’re random victims,” Annie said. “That’s why I’d like you to...”

“Then cruising’s out, right?”

Annie nodded. “This last one — Mary Hollings — is a redhead.”

“Oh,” Eileen said. “Okay, I get it.”

“About your size,” Annie said. “A little shorter. What are you, five-ten, five-eleven?”

“I wish,” Eileen said, and smiled. “Five-nine.”

“She’s five-seven.”

“Built like me?”

“Zaftig, I’d say.”

“Bovine, I’d say,” Eileen said, and smiled.

“Hardly,” Annie said, and returned the smile.

“So you want me to be Mary Hollings, is that it?”

“If you think you can pass.”

“You know the lady, I don’t,” Eileen said.

“It’s a reasonable likeness,” Annie said. “Up close, he’ll tip in a minute. But by that time, it should be too late.”

“Where does she live?” Eileen asked.

“1840 Laramie Crescent.”

“Up in the Eight-Seven?”

“Yes.”

“I have a friend up there,” Eileen said.

The friend again, Annie thought. Her lover. The blond cop in the squadroom. King, was it? Herb King?

“Does she work, this woman?” Eileen asked. “’Cause if she runs a computer terminal or something...”

“She’s divorced, living on alimony payments.”

“Lucky her,” Eileen said. “I’ll need her daily routine...”

“You can get that directly from her,” Annie said.

“Where do we hide her, meanwhile?”

“She’ll be leaving for California day after tomorrow. She has a sister out there.”

“Better give her a wig, case he’s watching the apartment when she leaves.”

“We will.”

“How about other tenants in the building? Won’t they know I’m not...?”

“We figured you could pass yourself off as the sister. I doubt he’ll be talking to any of the tenants.”

“Any security there?”

“No.”

“Elevator operator?”

“No.”

“So it’s just between me and them. The tenants, I mean.”

“And him,” Annie said.

“What about boyfriends and such? What about social clubs or other places where they know her?”

“She’ll be telling all her friends she’s going out of town. If anyone calls while you’re in the apartment, you’re the sister.”

“Suppose he calls?”

“He hasn’t yet, we don’t think he will. He’s not a heavy breather.”

“Different psychology,” Eileen said, nodding.

“We figure you can go wherever she was in the habit of going, we don’t think he’ll follow you inside. Go in, hang around, do your nails, whatever, then come out again. If he’s watching, he’ll pick up the trail again outside. It should work. I hope.”

“I never had one like this before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I’ll need a cross-checked breakdown,” Eileen said. “On Mary Hollings and the other two victims.”

“We’re working that up now. We didn’t think there was a pattern until now. I mean...”

Eileen detected a crack in the hard-nosed veneer.

“It’s just...”

Again Annie hesitated.

“These other two... one’s out in Riverhead, the other’s in Calm’s Point, it’s a big city. I didn’t realize till Saturday, after I talked to Mary Hollings... I mean, it just didn’t register before then. That these were serial rapes. That he’s hitting the same women more than once. Came to me like a bolt out of the blue. Now that we know there’s a pattern, we’re cross-checking similarities on these three victims we’re sure were attacked by the same guy, see if we can’t come up with anything in their backgrounds that might have singled them out. It’s a place to start.”

“You using the computer?”

“Not only for the three,” Annie said, nodding. “We’re running a check on every rape reported since the beginning of the year. If there are other victims who were serially raped...”

“When do I get the printouts?” Eileen asked.

“As soon as I get them.”

“And when’s that?”

“I know it’s your ass out there,” Annie said softly.

Eileen said nothing.

“I know he has a knife,” Annie said.

Eileen still said nothing.

“I’d no more risk your life than I would my own,” Annie said, and Eileen thought of facing down two armed robbers in the marbled lobby of a midtown bank.

“When do I start?” she asked.