Lightning

8

Detective First/Grade Oliver Weeks said, “Well, well.”

It was very rare that you saw a white person up here. The white people up here in Diamondback were either cops or mailmen or garbage collectors or somebody come uptown to get his ashes hauled by a hooker. It was also rare to see a white person up here who was also a white woman. The neighborhood had a lot of what Ollie called “high yeller girls,” but they weren’t white, of course. If you had the teensiest drop of black blood in you, you weren’t white, not the way Ollie Weeks figured it, anyway. So it was rare to see a white girl up here at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning, and it was even more rare to see her hanging from a lamppost. The Homicide dicks thought it was rare, too. They were all commenting how rare it was when the man from the Medical Examiner’s Office arrived.

The M.E. told them it wasn’t so rare at all, the girl hanging from the lamppost. He asked them didn’t they read the newspapers or watch television? Didn’t they know two other girls had been found in similarly compromising situations within the past two weeks, hanging up there on lampposts where everybody could look up under their dresses? The assembled crowd of policemen all looked up under the dead girl’s dress. She was wearing red panties under her red dress.

“Still,” Ollie said, “it’s rare up here in the Eight-Three you find anybody dead but a nigger.”

One of the patrolmen setting up the barricades and the Crime Scene signs was black. He made no comment about Ollie’s derogatory remark because Ollie outranked him in spades (the patrolman actually thought this, without recognizing the Freudian association) and besides Fat Ollie Weeks didn’t know that the word “nigger” was derogatory. If Fat Ollie Weeks had been Secretary of the Interior, the now-famous line would have read, “I got a nigger, a broad, two kikes, and a crip.” That was simply the way Fat Ollie Weeks talked. He meant no harm. He was always telling people he meant no harm, that was just the way he talked. “Some of my best friends are niggers,” Fat Ollie Weeks was fond of proclaiming. In fact, Ollie thought the best detective on the Eighty-third — other than himself, of course — was a nigger. He was always telling anyone who’d listen that Parsons was one of the best fuckin’ nigger cops in this city.

When they cut the girl down some ten minutes later, the detectives and the M.E. gathered around her as if they were in a floating crap game.

“Did a nice number on her beforehand, didn’t he?” one of the Homicide dicks said. His name was Matson.

“Knocked half her teeth out,” the other one said. His name was Manson. This was a bad name for a cop, and he was always getting ribbed about it.

“Broke her nose, looks like.”

“Not to mention her neck,” the M.E. said. “Whose case is this?”

“Mine,” Ollie said. “Lucky me.”

“Your cause of death is fracture of the cervical vertebrae.”

“That blood on her dress?” Matson asked.

“No, it’s gravy,” Ollie said. “What the fuck you think it is?”

“Where?” Manson asked.

“Across the tits,” Matson said.

“Nice little Jennifers,” Manson said.

“I never heard that expression before,” Matson said.

“Jennifers? It’s a common expression.”

“I never heard it in my life. Jennifers? That’s supposed to be tits, Jennifers?”

“Where I grew up, everybody called them Jennifers,” Manson said, offended.

“Where the fuck was that?” Ollie said.

“Calm’s Point,” Manson said.

“Figures,” Matson said, and shook his head.

“You might want to cross-check on the other two,” the M.E. suggested.

“She’s got two more?” Manson said, attempting a bit of humor after the put-down following his use of the word “Jennifers” that when he was growing up was a common word used to define tits, even big tits — well, no, those were Jemimas.

“The other two victims,” the M.E. said.

“You guys want this?” the black patrolman said, walking over.

Meyer was sitting at his desk, wearing his wig and typing. The wig kept slipping a little, which made him look devil-may-care. He saw a huge bulk standing outside the slatted railing that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside. For a moment, he thought it was Fat Ollie Weeks. He blinked. It was Fat Ollie Weeks. Meyer immediately felt like taking a shower. Weeks usually smelled like a cesspool, and anyone standing close to him wondered why he did not draw flies. Weeks also was a bigot. Meyer didn’t need him in the squadroom today. He didn’t need him in the squadroom ever. But here he was, as big as Buddha, at 10:00 in the morning.

“Anybody home?” he said from the railing, and then opened the gate and walked in. Meyer was alone in the squadroom. He said nothing. He watched Ollie as he approached the desk. Little pig eyes in a round pig face. Fat belly bulging over the belt of his trousers. Wrinkled sports jacket that looked as if it had been slept in for a week. Big Fat Ollie Weeks floating toward the desk like a barrage balloon.

“Detective Weeks,” he said, flashing his buzzer. “The Eight-Three.”

“No kidding?” Meyer said. What the hell was this? Ollie knew him, they had worked together before.

“I been up here before,” Ollie said.

“Oh, really?” Meyer said.

“Yeah, I know all the guys up here,” Ollie said. “Used to be a little bald Jewish person working up here.”

Meyer did not mind being called “bald” (not much, he didn’t) which was what he was when he wasn’t wearing his wig, nor did he mind being called a “Jewish person,” which was also what he was, but at a bit more than six feet tall he did not think he was “little,” and anyway when Ollie put all the words together as “a little bald Jewish person,” they sounded like a slur.

“I am that little bald Jewish person,” he said, “and cut the crap, Ollie.”

Ollie’s little pig eyes opened wide. “Meyer?” he said. “Is that you? I’ll be damned!” He began circling the desk, studying Meyer’s hairpiece. “It’s very becoming,” he said. “You don’t look Jewish no more.”

Meyer said nothing. I need him, he thought. I really need him.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” Ollie said.

I’m glad you didn’t, Meyer thought.

“Didn’t some guy write a book using your name in it one time?”

“Some lady,” Meyer said.

“Used the name Meyer Meyer for a person in her book, right?” Ollie said.

“A character in the book,” Meyer said.

“That’s even worse,” Ollie said. “Reason I mention it — you familiar with ‘Hill Street Blues’? It’s a television show.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Meyer said.

“I caught a rerun last week musta been. They had a guy on it I think they stole from me.”

“What do you mean, stole from you?”

“This cop. A narc cop...”

“You’re not a narc cop, Ollie.”

“Don’t I know what I am? But I been on narcotics cases, same as you. First time I met you guys was on a narcotics case, in fact. Some guys smuggling shit inside little wooden animals, remember? That was the first time I worked with you guys up here.”

“I remember,” Meyer said.

“That was before ‘Hill Street Blues’ was even a dream in anybody’s head.”

“So what’s the point, Ollie?”

“The point is this guy’s name was Charlie Weeks. On the show. Charlie, not Ollie. But that’s pretty close, don’t you think? Charlie and Ollie. With the same last name? Weeks? I think that’s very close, Meyer.”

“I still don’t see...”

“This other guy — they got a Jewish person on the show, too, his name is Goldblume, one of your paisans, huh? This guy Goldblume, he’s telling the boss up there, this Furillo, that Weeks is trigger-happy... especially when the target is black. What Weeks says at one point is, ‘Freeze, niggers, or I’ll blow your heads off.’ Also, he manhandles suspects. I mean, he’s a regular shithead, this Charlie Weeks.”

“So?”

“So am I a shithead?” Ollie asked. “Is Ollie Weeks a shithead? Is Ollie Weeks the kind of cop who goes around mistreating suspects?”

Meyer said nothing.

“Is Ollie Weeks the kind of cop who has anything but respect for niggers?”

Meyer still said nothing.

“What I’m thinking of doing,” Ollie said, “is suing the company makes ‘Hill Street Blues.’ For putting a cop on television has a name sounds exactly like mine and who’s a prejudiced person goes around shooting niggers and roughing up guys he’s interrogating. That kind of shit can give a real cop a bad name, never mind they call him Charlie Weeks on their fuckin’ T.V. show.”

“I think you have a case,” Meyer said flatly.

“Did you sue that time?”

“Rollie advised me against it. Rollie Chabrier. In the D.A.’s Office.”

“Yeah, I know him,” Ollie said. “He told you not to, huh?”

“He said I should be flattered.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t so fuckin’ flattered,” Ollie said. “There’s such a thing as goin’ too far, am I right or am I right? Matter of fact, I been meanin’ to talk to Carella up here, ’cause I think he’s got a case, too.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, don’t Furillo sound a lot like Carella to you? I mean, how many wop names are there in this world that got three vowels and four condiments in them, and two of those condiments happen to be the same in both names? Two l’s, Meyer! Carella and Furillo, those names sound a whole lot alike to me, like Charlie Weeks and Ollie Weeks. Does Carella wear a vest all the time?”

“Only when he’s expecting a shootout,” Meyer said.

“No, I mean a regular vest, like from a suit, a suit vest. ’Cause this guy Carillo... Furillo, I mean... he’s always wearing a vest. I think Carella oughta look into it.”

“Wearing a vest, you mean?”

“No, the similarity of the names, I mean. You think those guys out there ever heard of us?”

“What guys?”

“The ones out in California who are putting together that T.V. show and winning all the Emmys. You think they ever heard of Steve Carella and Ollie Weeks?”

“Probably not,” Meyer said.

“I mean, we ain’t exactly famous, either one of us,” Ollie said, “but we been around a long time, man. A long fuckin’ time. To me, it ain’t a coincidence.”

“So sue them,” Meyer said.

“Prolly cost me a fortune,” Ollie said. “Anyway, Steve and me’ll still be here long after that fuckin’ show turns to cornflakes.”

“Cornflakes?”

“Yeah, in the can. The celluloid, the film. Long after it crumbles into cornflakes.”

“So is that why you came up here?” Meyer said. “To ask me...”

“No, that’s just somethin’ been botherin’ me a long time. The way ‘Hill Street Blues’ looks like us, Meyer. Even their fuckin’ imaginary city looks like this one, don’t it? I mean, shit, Meyer, we’re real cops, ain’t we?”

“I would say we’re real cops, yes,” Meyer said.

“So those guys are only make-believe, am I right or am I right? Using names that sound like real fuckin’ cops in a real fuckin’ city. It ain’t fair, Meyer.”

“Where is it written that it has to be fair?” Meyer said.

“Sometimes you sound like a fuckin’ rabbi, you know that?” Ollie said.

Meyer sighed heavily.

“Why did you come up here?” he asked. “If you don’t plan to sue...”

“I got a stiff hanging on a lamppost this morning. Found this at the scene,” Ollie said, and tossed a tape cassette onto Meyer’s desk.

From where Annie Rawles sat at her desk, she could see most of the lower part of the island that was Isola. The sky outside was blue and clear, causing the buildings towering into it to appear knife-edged. She wondered how much longer the good weather would last. This was already the twentieth of the month, usually a time when November’s imminent presence was at least suggested.

The Rape Squad’s offices were on the sixth floor of the new Headquarters Building downtown, a glass and steel structure that dominated the skyline and dwarfed the lower buildings that housed the city’s municipal, judicial, and financial institutions. Before the new building went up — God, she couldn’t remember how many years ago, and she wondered why everyone still referred to it as “new” — the Rape Squad had been based in one of the city’s oldest precincts, a ramshackle structure midtown, near the overhead ramp of the River Highway. Rape victims were reluctant to report the crime of rape to the police, anyway; they suspected, correctly in many cases, that the police would give them as difficult a time as the rapist had. One look at the decrepit old building on Decatur Street had dissuaded many a victim from entering to discuss the crime further with specialists trained to deal with it. The new Headquarters Building did much to calm such fears. It had the orderly, sterile look of a hospital, and it made victims feel they were telling their stories to medical people rather than to cops, who they felt — again correctly — belonged to a paramilitary organization. Annie was grateful for the new offices in the new building; they made her job easier.

So did the computer.

She had told Eileen Burke that she was running a computer cross-check in an attempt to discover whether the same man had serially raped more women than the three victims about whom they were already positive. She had also told her that they were working up a cross-check on the victims themselves, trying to zero in on any similarities that may have attracted the rapist to them.

For the first cross-check, she had asked the computer operator — a man improbably name Binky Bowles — to go back to the beginning of the year, even though the first of the already positive victims had reported the offense only last April, six months back. The files on every reported rape, anywhere in the city, were already in the computer. Binky had only to press the appropriate keys to retrieve the name of any woman reporting a second, third, fourth or even fifth occurrence after the original one. Much to Annie’s surprise, there had been thirteen serial rape victims this year.

The first of these was a woman named Lois Carmody, who’d reported the initial assault to the 112th Precinct in Majesta on March 7. Her name came up three more times, each time for the same precinct in Majesta. The most recent serial victim — a woman named Janet Reilly — had been raped for the second time only last week, four days after Mary Hollings had reported her rape to the 87th Precinct. Both of the Reilly rapes had been committed in Riverhead. Their man — if indeed the same man was responsible for the serial rapes of thirteen women — had been very busy. He had also chosen his victims seemingly at random in each of the five sections that made up the greater city; Annie ruled out location as a unifying factor.

Binky’s job got a bit more difficult after that.

Retrieving the files on each of the thirteen women, he isolated the descriptions they’d given of the man who’d assaulted them, and further broke down those descriptions as to race, age, height, weight, color of hair, color of eyes, visible scars or tattoos, and weapon used (if any) during the commission of the crime. Annie debated asking him to feed in descriptions of the clothing each assailant had been wearing, but decided this would be irrelevant. Clothing could easily change with the seasons; the earliest of the reported serial rapes went back to March. Binky asked the computer to spew out the victims’ names in the order of the dates on which each had reported the first rape. The breakdown that came from the dot-matrix printer looked like this:

Annie automatically eliminated any victim who had been serially raped by obviously different men — a black man and a white man, for example, or any two men of widely divergent descriptions — chalking these off as coincidental occurrences in a city populated with mad dogs. She was able to cull out four of the possible thirteen victims in this way, and held in abeyance a decision on Angela Ferrari, who’d been raped four times, but who’d described her last assailant as someone different from the others, whom she’d described identically. This left eight strong candidates and a relatively strong ninth.

Each of the nine women had described the multiple rapist as white. Each had reported that he had brown hair and blue eyes, no visible scars or tattoos, and had used a switchblade knife as a weapon.

Three of the women had said the rapist was five-feet ten-inches tall.

Four of them had said he was an even six feet tall.

Two had said he was six-feet two-inches tall.

The descriptions from the various women indicated that the rapist weighed somewhere between a hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds, with the majority — five women — saying he weighed a hundred and eighty.

As for his age, he had been variously described as twenty-eight by one of the women, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty by another, thirty by three of the women, thirty-two by two of them, and somewhere between thirty and thirty-five by the remaining two.

It seemed to Annie that she was reasonably safe in assuming their man was white, thirty years old, six feet tall, and weighing 180 pounds. There seemed no doubt that he had brown hair, blue eyes, and no visible scars or tattoos. There was also no doubt that he was carrying a switchblade knife — or that he had used it on at least one occasion, the third time he’d raped Blanca Diaz. She left Binky to the onerous task of checking through the computerized Known Rapist files, hoping he’d come up with a man or men who answered the composite description and whose M.O. included threats with a switchblade knife.

At her desk now, she went through the initial D.D. reports and subsequent profiles on the victims themselves, searching for any similarity or similarities that may have singled them out as victims. She prepared her notes on a scratch sheet, and then worked them up in the form of a chart, again listing the women’s names in order of first reported rape.

Studying the chart, Annie made some notes she planned to have Binky put into the computer later. According to her calculations, most of the victims were white: six as against two black and one Hispanic. All of them were Catholic. Three were married, four were single, and two were divorced. Five of the victims were childless. One of them had four children. Another had three. The remaining two had two children each. The women’s ethnic backgrounds were varied, with the largest number of them — three — being Irish. Their ages ranged from a low of 19 in the case of Janet Reilly to a high of 46 as concerned Blanca Diaz, the only Hispanic victim. Discounting these two extremes, Annie came up with an average age of about thirty — the same age as the rapist.

She looked at the chart again.

It seemed odd to her that all of the victims were Catholic. It seemed further odd that none of them had been sodomized. That simply didn’t jibe with the M.O. of most rapists. Would Binky Bowles — she smiled every time she thought of his name — come up with a knife-wielder who matched the description the women had given and who further specialized in rape alone? Was he afraid one of them might bite it off? Put the son of a bitch out of business forever. Serve him right.

She didn’t have enough data.

She looked through the D.D. reports and profiles again, taking notes, and then prepared another rough chart she would later ask Binky to feed into the computer for a more sophisticated evaluation than her own.

A mixed bag if ever there was one. Housewives, students, a blue collar worker (literally, since she was a postal clerk), a domestic, a translator, and a former travel agent now living on the proceeds of alimony. Three natives of the city, the rest from all over creation. Education ranging from elementary school to a master’s degree. Clubs and organizations, sports and hobbies ranging from — God, what a woman this Angela Ferrari seemed to be! Only thirty-four years old, married and with two children, she’d still found the time to get her masters degree, and was presently engaged in more activities than a colony of ants. And how about Janet Reilly? Nineteen years old, in her first year of college, and already involved in enough extracurricular pursuits to keep the entire freshman class busy. So the son of a bitch rapes them. Caught Janet twice and Angela four — no, wait a minute. Angela was the one who’d described one rapist differently: twenty-one years old, five foot seven, a hundred and sixty pounds, blond hair and green eyes, no weapon. Had she been hysterical on that occasion? Or had another son of a bitch decided to take advantage of someone he knew had already been raped repeatedly? The way so many lunatics will jump on a bandwagon once it starts rolling, to cash in on the notoriety of the originator.

She looked at the computer printout again.

Lois Carmody: raped four times by the same man. Blanca Diaz, a forty-six-year-old housewife with four kids: three times. Patricia Ryan: three times. Vivienne Chabrun: three times. Angela Ferrari: three times for sure by the same man, yet another time by someone else. Cecily Bainbridge: twice. Mary Hollings: three times. Janet Reilly: twice.

Why the same women again and again?

Why?

She went back over the original D.D. reports, trying to find a pattern, trying to zero in on the link. Each of the women had been raped at night. Even in the case of Mary Hollings, the last time the rapist had struck — coming into her apartment this time — it was still dark, even though it was technically Friday morning, October 7. She traced back through the D.D. reports on Mary. The first reported rape was on June 10, a Friday. The next was on September 16, another Friday.

Well, coincidence maybe.

She looked at the D.D. reports on Janet Reilly.

She had been raped for the first time on September 13, a Tuesday night. And she had been raped again little more than a week ago, on October 11 — another Tuesday night.

Okay. Okay, Annie thought. Take it easy now. Do them in order, check off the dates on all the D.D. reports against the computer printout of names. I need a calendar, where the hell’s a calendar?

She opened the top drawer of her desk, rummaged around for a calendar, found one already marked with appointments, and then opened her notebook to the first several pages, where there were blank calendars for both this year and next. She carried the notebook to the copying machine in the corner of her office, and then made a dozen copies of this year’s calendar — one for each of the victims, three spares for errors. Back at her desk again, she headed nine of the calendars with different names, and then — referring to the D.D. reports on each woman — began circling dates:

She hesitated. The three dates she had just circled were the dates for identifications of the same man. The man Angela had described differently — the wild card, so to speak — had raped her on June 28. On the calendar, Annie marked that date with an X.

On a separate sheet of paper, she listed all nine names again, and then — referring to the calendar entries for each name — made yet another list.

Lois Carmody: March 7, April 4, April 25, May 9. All Monday nights.

Blanca Diaz: March 15, April 12, May 3. Tuesday nights.

Patricia Ryan: March 23, April 20, May 25. Wednesday nights.

Vivienne Chabrun: March 31, May 19, June 2. Thursdays.

Angela Ferrari: April 11, May 30, and June 13 for description of same man. All Monday nights. June 28 for the wild card. A Tuesday night.

Terry Cooper: May 1, June 19. Both Sunday nights.

Cecily Bainbridge: May 7, June 4. Saturday nights.

Mary Hollings: June 10, September 16, October 7. Fridays.

Janet Reilly: September 13, October 11. Tuesdays.

She studied the list.

Okay. Same woman on the same night of the week. But what the hell did it mean? His choice of a night for any given woman may have been premised on a study of her habits. Maybe Vivienne Chabrun went to a meeting of L’Alliance des Femmes Françaises on Thursday nights. Maybe Lois Carmody played tennis on Monday nights. Maybe Janet Reilly sang with the chorus on Tuesday nights. Who the hell knew?

She leafed through the calendars.

Vivienne Chabrun had been raped for the first time on the last day of March, the second time seven weeks later on May 19, and then again two weeks after that on the second of June. All Thursday nights. Terry Cooper had been raped on the first of May, and then seven weeks later, on June 19. Sunday nights. Patricia Ryan had been raped on March 23, again four weeks later on April 20, and then not again till May 25, five weeks after the April date. Wednesday nights. There seemed to be no discernible pattern until Annie went back through the calendars again, and studied the one for Lois Carmody, the first of the serial victims.

First rape: Monday, March 7.

Second rape: Four weeks later. Monday, April 4.

Third rape: Three weeks later. Monday, April 25.

Fourth rape: Two weeks later. Monday, May 9.

Annie looked at the calendar again. Four weeks, three weeks, two weeks. If he’d raped her again after that, would there have been an interval of only one week?

She looked at the calendar for Angela Ferrari.

Hit for the first time on April 11. Four weeks after that would have been May 9. Nothing on that date. Three weeks after May 9 was May 30. Yep, he’d hit her again on the thirtieth. And two weeks after that was — right on the nose! He’d raped her again on June 13.

Okay, hold it, Annie thought, take it easy.

Cecily Bainbridge: First rape on Saturday, May 7. Next rape four weeks later on Saturday, June 4. Blanca Diaz, right on schedule: First rape on March 15, next one four weeks later on April 12, the one after that — when he’d cut her — three weeks later on May 3. Mary Hollings... well, this was a tough one.

Raped for the first time on Friday, June 10, and then not again till Friday, September 16. Annie started counting off weeks on the calendar. Four weeks after June 10 was July 8. Three weeks after that was July 29. Two weeks after that was August 12. A week after that was August 19. Starting the cycle all over again, four weeks after August 19 was September 16, the exact date Mary Hollings had been raped for the second time. And three weeks after that was the seventh of October, the date of the most recent attack on her.

Janet Reilly: Raped on the thirteenth of September and then again exactly four weeks later, on October 11.

But if this was a pattern — four weeks, three weeks, two weeks — then how did it tie in with the seemingly patternless calendars for Vivienne Chabrun, Terry Cooper, and Patricia Ryan?

Vivienne Chabrun: First rape, March 31. Four weeks after that was April 28. No circle on her calendar for that date. But three weeks after the twenty-eighth was May 19, and he’d hit her on that date, and again two weeks after that, on June 2!

Okay. Okay now.

Terry Cooper: Hit for the first time on May 1, nothing four weeks later on May 29, but hit again three weeks after that on June 19!

Come on, Patricia, Annie thought, and looked at the last calendar.

Patricia Ryan: Raped on March 23. Four weeks after that was April 20, marked with another circle on the calendar. Three weeks after that was May 11... nothing. But hold it. She’d been raped again on May 25, only two weeks after the May 11 date.

Maybe it didn’t matter whether the intervals were exactly spaced so long as...

Was it possible?

Was he trying to make sure he got each of them at spaced intervals of a week, never mind how the intervals fell provided that he didn’t duplicate any week? If not, why rape each of them on different nights, the same night for each woman? Had the son of a bitch worked out a calendar for each of his victims? Hit them at specified intervals, so long as he didn’t duplicate the weeks one, two, three, four as indicated for any given woman? Skip a week, skip two weeks, six weeks, it didn’t matter. All he had to do was count off the weeks to make sure he picked up the cycle again.

But why?

What the hell kind of freak were they dealing with here?

Annie made up one last calendar, listing all the dates of the multiple rapes, and labeling it “Cumulative.”

The attacks had started in March, four that month, spaced eight days apart on successive nights of the week. Lois Carmody on March 7. Blanca Diaz on March 15. Patricia Ryan on March 23. Vivienne Chabrun on March 31.

In April, he’d hit Lois Carmody again on the fourth, added Angela Ferrari as a new victim on the eleventh, hit Blanca Diaz again on the twelfth, Patricia Ryan on the twentieth, and Lois Carmody yet another time on the twenty-fifth.

Two new victims in May, Terry Cooper and Cecily Bainbridge, for a total of seven hits that month.

Another frenzy of activity in June — five hits that month with Mary Hollings added as a new victim and Lois Carmody dropped from his calendar after a total of four consecutive hits spaced four weeks, three weeks, and two weeks apart.

Nothing in July or August.

Or at least nothing reported.

In September he’d hit Mary Hollings again, and had added Janet Reilly to his list.

In October — so far — just Mary and Janet.

Why nothing for July and August?

And would he soon pick up again on the victims he’d only raped two or three times? Was four his goal? Why four? Or had they not yet heard the last of Lois Carmody?

Too many questions, Annie thought.

Plus the big unanswered one.

Why these particular women?

Why?

In the October stillness of the squadroom, the windows open to a golden wash of late morning sunlight that seemed more fitting for August, the four detectives stood around Meyer’s desk, listening to the tape cassette. Ollie Weeks had heard it before, but he was listening intently nonetheless, as if trying to memorize the words. Meyer, Carella, and Hawes were hearing it for the first time, and separately trying to recall what the Deaf Man’s voice sounded like.

There were two people on the cassette.

Darcy Welles and the man they knew only as Corey McIntyre.

“Sounds a little nervous there, don’t he?” Ollie said.

“Shhh,” Carella said.

“Nervous as hell, you ask me,” Ollie said. “Kid called her mother to tell her who she’s having dinner with...”

“You want us to listen to this, or you want to talk?” Hawes said.

“This is all bullshit, anyway,” Ollie said, “this part of it. She talks about her brother, she talks about how terrific running makes her feel... here, right here.”

“Guy knows how good it makes her feel,” Ollie said. “Knows all about running.”

“Will you please shut the hell up?” Meyer said.

“This is just shit where the waiter comes in with the drinks and asks them if they want to see menus... here’s what I mean, listen to this. The guy keeps agreeing how good running makes you feel, listen. It’s yes, yes, yes, all the way down the line.”

“He turns it off here,” Ollie says, “and he don’t turn it on again till later. But most of the stuff is just Q and A about running, and once she calls him ‘Mr. McIntyre,’ who you say was in L.A. at the time, huh, Steve?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“I marked a place we ought to listen to, unless you really want to hear what kind of training a runner does, which to me is all bullshit,” Ollie said. “Can I run it ahead a bit?”

Without waiting for an answer, Ollie put the recorder on Fast Forward. He stopped the tape a bit past the mark and then fiddled with the controls, jockeying the tape back and forth until he found what he wanted.

“Yeah, here it is,” he said. “Listen.”

“Gives us a time,” Ollie said. “Very nice of him.”

“Here it comes,” Ollie said.

“He turns off the machine here,” Ollie said.

“Is that it?”

“There’s more. But the guy just located the garage for us, so it should be pretty easy to find it, don’t you think? Right around the corner, near Jefferson. How many garages...?”

“We’ve already hit a dozen of them,” Hawes said.

“Well, this should make it easier. You checked the phone books for Corey McIntyres?”

“None in the city,” Carella said.

“So he was just usin’ that guy’s name out West, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“He won’t be usin’ it no more,” Ollie said.

“What do you mean?”

“Listen,” he said, and pointed to the recorder. “He musta turned it on again just before he killed her. Wanted a permanent record, huh? The guy must be nuts.”

The detectives listened.

“There’s the click,” Ollie said. “Here it comes.”

“Where you suppose they are?” Ollie asked.

“Shhh,” Meyer said.

“Here it comes,” Ollie said.

The sounds of scuffling, heavy breathing, rasping, a thud, a gasp for breath, and another thud, and yet another, and now more gasping, fitful, frenzied.

“He’s beating the shit out of her,” Ollie said. “You should see how she looked when we found her...”

And then, suddenly, a sharp click.

“What’s that?” Meyer asked. “Did he turn off the recorder?”

“No, sir,” Ollie said.

“I thought I heard...”

“You did. That’s the girl’s neck breaking.”

Silence on the tape now. Ten seconds, twenty seconds. Then the sound of footsteps moving quickly. Other footsteps, fading. A car door slamming. Another car door. The sound of an automobile engine starting. Then, over the purr of the engine, McIntyre’s voice.

Silence.

The detectives looked at each other.

“That’s it?” Hawes asked.

“That’s all she wrote,” Ollie said.

“Wants to get caught, doesn’t he?” Meyer said.

“Looks that way to me,” Ollie said. “Otherwise why leave us a tape zeroing in on the garage and giving us a voice print we can later match up we get a good suspect? First thing we got to do...”

“We?” Carella said.

“Why, sure,” Ollie said. “I don’t like young girls getting their necks broke by no fuckin’ idiot. I’m gonna be workin’ this one with you.”

The detectives looked at him.

“We’ll have a good time,” Ollie said.

Which they found less than reassuring.