Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 7

I STOPPED BY Henderson House on the way home from work, but there had been no change. Mom hadn’t opened her eyes again. I sat with her for an hour. No talking this time, just holding her hand.

Twice I checked my cell phone, to make sure it was on. It was.

After a pillow fluff, I turned to leave and had a good startle seeing Tony Coglioso standing in the doorway. His eyes seemed glazed, far away.

“Tony?”

“Hi, Jack. How’s she doing?”

“The same. How about your dad?”

“The same.”

I wondered if I should apologize for barging in on him yesterday, and then thought that maybe he was the one who should apologize for being so rude, and finally accepted that neither of us needed to say the s word because, hey, our parents were dying.

“You look nice,” Tony said, not quite focusing on me.

I figured I looked like hell, but thanked him anyway.

Tony smiled. “See you soon.” Then he walked off.

Strange. Maybe he was drunk, or high on something. Or maybe he stopped by to ask me out, checked the merchandise, and decided to pass.

I fluffed Mom’s pillow again, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and headed to the elevator. No Tony in the hall, no Tony in the lobby, and no Tony in the parking lot. It didn’t matter. My mind was on Latham, not Tony, so I didn’t dwell.

After a quick check to make sure my cell phone hadn’t accidentally switched off during my walk to the car, I headed home.

Mr. Friskers gave me a warm welcome, howling and running away when I walked through the door. I reset the alarm and turned the dead bolt. Time to plan my big evening.

I made dinner, maxing out my culinary skills with a BLT. Then I fed the feral cat, plugged my cell into the charger, set my.38 next to my bed, swapped my outfit for a T-shirt and fresh panties, scrubbed my face, ate my BLT, brushed my teeth, and switched on the TV. Network drivel was better than brainwashing when it came to clearing a woman’s mind. I hopped on the bed, content to play station roulette.

Next to the TV, still in the Jewel bag, were the Kork videotapes.

They might as well have been blinking like a beacon.

You were pulled from the case, Jack. You don’t need to watch more people being tortured. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is.

I put on a game show, but stared at the bag. I switched to a cooking show, but kept looking at the bag. I tried a sitcom starring the stand-up comedian du jour.

That damn bag kept demanding my attention.

I crawled out of bed. Picked up the bag and carried it into the kitchen.

Mr. Friskers had his face crammed in his bowl. He hissed at my interruption of his gluttony. I hissed back and set the bag on the counter, next to the sink. The cat ran up and swiped a claw at my leg.

I jumped back, knocking the bag over and spilling files onto the floor. My ankle sprouted three shallow cuts, not too far from the other set of shallow cuts that had already healed, but lower than the fresh cuts a few inches higher.

“Dammit, cat!”

It was always my left leg too. He’d clawed me a dozen times, but never on the right leg. Sadism, with an agenda.

I tore off a paper towel, dabbing it at the blood while picking up papers with my free hand. My fist closed around the Diane Kork file, and I paused.

An image, unbidden, flashed into my head, of the first time I’d seen Diane Kork, half naked and bleeding in Charles Kork’s basement. I remembered her pleading, crying face. Her ugly wounds, weeping blood. And something else. Something familiar.

I paged through the file, but there weren’t any pictures of her wounds. Made sense; the case was closed, and evidence was no longer needed.

But I did have images of Diane. Videotape #12, “Slipping the Knife to the Wife.”

“You’re off the case, Jack,” I said aloud.

I didn’t listen to myself.

I found tape #12 and took it into the bedroom. I hit Play and then Fast-forward, cycling through Diane being tied up, up to the scene where he sliced off her clothes.

I paused the tape.

The image jittered, two lines of snow framing the edges of the screen, but I could clearly see what I’d been looking for: a heart-shaped tattoo, the size of a dime, on Diane’s hip bone just below the bikini line.

I stared for a moment, then went back to the kitchen and dug out the copy of the tape of the latest murder – the original was still at the lab.

I swapped cassettes and again viewed the slow approach to the Kork house, the walk into the basement, and the zoom in on the naked victim.

I couldn’t see any tattoos because the woman was sitting, and the crease in her lap obscured her bikini line.

I let the tape play in slow motion, watching her struggle and die frame by frame, and five minutes into her pain she arched her back and her pelvis came briefly into view.

Pause.

The heart tattoo was the same.

I felt my breath catch, and hashed out the possibilities. Either the killer had put a fake tattoo there to make it look like Diane Kork, or else the victim was indeed Diane Kork.

I had Diane’s phone number in my jacket pocket, from when I’d called Information earlier. When I dialed it, I got her answering machine for the second time.

“Shit.”

Two options. I could call the station, have them send a car over to check out Diane’s place. Or I could go myself, even though Bains had ordered me off the case.

Diane lived on Hamilton, and I was more than a mile closer to her than anyone at the 26^th District.

I slid into some Levi’s, shrugged on a sweater, strapped on my.38, and was out the door before I gave it any more thought.