The 5th Horseman

Chapter 36

IT WAS TOO EARLY for this kind of crap, just 7:00 in the morning when I pulled up to the curb in front of an old Tudor-style house on Chestnut Street. A large evergreen tree sent fingers of dark shade across the grass between the house and the garage. A handful of cops already dotted the front lawn.

I slammed the door shut on my three-year-old Explorer, buttoned my khaki blazer against the morning chill, and marched across the well-shorn grass.

Jacobi and Conklin were at the front doorstep interviewing a seventy-something couple wearing matching awning-striped bathrobes and slippers. With their stricken faces and spiky bed heads, the septuagenarians looked as shocked as if they’d just put their fingers into wall sockets.

The elderly gentleman screeched at Jacobi, “How do you know we don’t need police protection? You can see into the future?”

Jacobi turned his weary expression on me, and then introduced Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cronin.

“Hello,” I said, shaking their hands. “This is a terrible ordeal, I know. We’ll make it as easy on you as we possibly can.”

“CSU is on the way,” Conklin told me. “I’m okay here to do the interview, Lieutenant.” He was asking permission, but letting me know he was more than ready.

“It’s all yours, Inspector. Do your job.”

I excused myself and Jacobi; then we walked together toward the dark-blue Jaguar XK-E convertible parked with its top down in the driveway. A beautiful car, which only made things worse.

I’d known what to expect since getting Jacobi’s call twenty minutes ago. Still, when I looked into the victim’s face, my heart lurched.

Like Caddy Girl, this woman was white, probably eighteen to twenty-one, petite. Her blond hair fell to her shoulders in loose waves. The girl had lovely, lustrous hair.

She was “looking” out onto Chestnut Street with wide-open blue eyes. As with Caddy Girl, she’d been posed to look as though she were still alive.

“God, Jacobi,” I said. “Another one. Has to be. Jag Girl.”

“It was in the low fifties last night,” he told me. “She’s cold to the touch. And here we go again with the high-ticket clothes.”

“Head to toe.”

The victim was wearing a blue scarf-type blouse and a subtle blue-and-gray plaid tulip skirt. Her boots were Jimmy Choo, the kind that zip up the back. It was an outfit that would cost about three months’ of a cop’s salary.

One little discrepancy though. The dead girl’s jewelry struck me as wrong.

Her tennis bracelet and matching ear studs flashed with the prismatic light of fake diamonds. What was that all about?

I turned at the wail of sirens. I watched both the EMT and CSU vans roll up, park next to the lineup of squad cars.

Conklin crossed the lawn toward the EMTs. I heard him tell the driver, “She’s gone, buddy. Sorry you wasted the trip.”

As the ambulance shifted into reverse, Charlie Clapper stepped out of the scene-mobile with his kit and camera in hand. He walked over to where we were standing, said, “Another day, another body,” and asked us to kindly stand aside.

Jacobi and I stood a few yards from the Jaguar as Clapper shot his pictures.

I was thinking that I knew what he was going to find: a ligature mark at the young woman’s throat, no handbag, no ID — and that the car would otherwise be clean as a whistle.

“Smell that?” said Jacobi.

It was faint at this distance, but I’d smelled it before: a musky fragrance that made me think of orchids.

“Caddy Girl’s eau de toilette,” I said to my former partner. “You know, the first one you think, maybe it’s personal. But again? Another girl? Similar physically. Another immaculate crime scene? They’re getting off on the killings, Jacobi. They’re doing it for fun.”

We watched Clapper’s team dust the car for prints in silence. I knew that Jacobi and I were cycling the same unspoken questions.

Who were these two girls? And who was the kinky tag team that had murdered them?

What had triggered the killings?

What was the meaning of the odd dress-up tableaux?

“The balls on these guys,” said Jacobi as the ME’s van arrived. “Putting the vics on display like this. They’re not just having fun, Boxer. They’re giving somebody the finger.”