The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 22

Vivian breathed in the smell of horse manure and hay. The chauffeur had taken them to the edge of the city to a small riding stable.

“I need to change into my riding clothes.” Katrinka frowned as Vivian moved next to her. “It’s not dangerous. I can go alone.”

“You’re probably right, but this is my job.” Vivian opened the door to the tiny room and checked it out. A toilet, sink, and garbage can. A tiny open window high on the wall. Katrinka would have a hell of a time getting to the window, and she probably wouldn’t fit through it.

Vivian stepped back and let the huffy teen go in. She hadn’t wanted to take the girl riding at all, but it was on her weekly schedule, so Vivian had to go. To make matters worse, she’d have to ride with her, and Vivian didn’t know how to ride.

When Katrinka came out, Vivian almost didn’t recognize her. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, changed into a white cotton shirt and a black jacket, riding pants and high boots. She’d also removed her makeup. She looked fresh-faced and happy.

“Do you have any riding clothes?” Katrinka asked.

“I can ride in what I’m wearing.”

Katrinka didn’t agree. She nodded to the woman in charge of the stables, and in a few minutes, Vivian was kitted out like some kind of English riding doll. She hated it. At least her clothes wouldn’t smell like horse after.

Katrinka waited for her by the horses. She held the reins of a reddish horse with a white streak on his nose. “Meet Blaze.”

Vivian looked at the other horse. It was black and looked tall.

“That’s Missus Jenkins,” Katrinka said. “I thought you might want a beginner horse.”

“I want a motorcycle.”

Katrinka grinned. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Soon they were on the animals, loping along. Ahead of her, Katrinka and her chestnut-colored horse moved as a single unit. Vivian wondered if her own spine would survive the drubbing.

“You have to relax into the horse’s rhythm.” Katrinka slowed down to ride next to her.

Vivian tried, and it seemed to go a little better, but she still felt like she might fall off at any second. “How long have you been riding?”

“Every summer since I was little. My Aunt Billie in Montana has horses, and I spend my summers there while my parents are in Russia.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is.” Katrinka’s eyes went soft. “If I could, I’d live there all the time.”

“Is it a big ranch?”

Katrinka laughed. “It’s not a ranch at all. Just a rundown farmhouse with a couple of horses, some chickens, and beehives. Aunt Billie makes her living as a nurse. I help out with the animals when I’m there.”

They rode for an hour before they had to get Katrinka home in time for dinner. Her father had business colleagues coming by, and he’d told her that she had to be cleaned up and on time.

Vivian dropped her off, watching all the carefree joy fade away from the girl’s face in the elevator. Not that it was any of her business.

She hobbled home. Her butt and thighs hurt from the riding, but walking helped. Once home, she popped two ibuprofen from the big bottle her mother kept in the kitchen. Her mother had gone to bed early, and Lucy was out with her friends, probably getting into trouble. Vivian wished her sister had more direction. Vivian had direction at her age and look where that got her — dishonorably discharged, living with her mother, and babysitting rich kids. Maybe Lucy was better off flitting around aimlessly like Katrinka. Vivian sure as hell didn’t have the answers.

With a sigh, she kicked off black leather boots more suited for motorcycle riding than horseback riding. She settled at the scuffed kitchen table with a cup of coffee from the Keurig she’d given her mother for Christmas as a not entirely unselfish gift. She should go straight to bed, but she had some work to do. Hence the caffeine.

She picked up her boots and took them to their spot by the front door, aligning them carefully so no one would trip over them, then went off to hunt up her laptop. She tiptoed around the tiny living room in her stocking feet, glancing at the doily-covered chair, the doily-covered couch, and the neat coffee table. No laptop. She headed for the bedroom she shared with Lucy.

Vivian’s half of the room was Spartan and spotless. The top of her dresser was clear, her bed made so tightly that a quarter could bounce off it, and the floor was free of clutter. Lucy said it looked like a barracks, which wasn’t far from the truth. But it let Vivian see at a glance that the laptop wasn’t on her desk where it was supposed to be.

She ventured into Lucy’s territory, stepping over landmines of crumpled clothing before leaning down to check underneath the unmade bed. Bingo. The laptop lay at an odd angle, propped up by a balled-up sock. She hauled the computer out with one hand, glad that Lucy hadn’t left it in the middle of the floor to get stepped on.

Tesla had given her one of his old laptops, and it was the nicest computer she’d ever owned. Lucy had glommed onto it right away and was constantly borrowing it for homework. Vivian couldn’t blame her. She was probably the only kid in her class who didn’t have her own computer.

Vivian carried the device back to the kitchen, set it down, and took a long sip of coffee. She leaned against the ladder-back chair and rubbed her temples. The headache wasn’t going away.

A car honked on the street below, and someone shouted. Even this late at night, traffic was noisy. The refrigerator kicked in. These days it made a disconcerting sound, like some kind of appliance death rattle, and she worried that it would soon have to be replaced. Her mother couldn’t afford that. She could only afford the rent on her apartment because Vivian pitched in. This was the real reason Vivian didn’t find her own place — she’d be kicking her mother out into the street.

Plus, she told herself, the old place suited her. With what she was billing working for Tesla in her off hours, she’d be able to put aside enough for a new fridge. Maybe something that shot ice out of a dispenser on the door. Her mother would get a kick out of that. Meantime, they’d run the fridge until its death rattle overcame it.

Vivian took another sip of coffee and opened up her reports on the victims. Sandra Haines was the most recent one, and Vivian typed in notes about her conversation with that ass, Slade Masterson. Hard to believe that anyone would kill herself over that guy.

Vivian opened a browser and did a quick search on his name paired with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to check out his alibi on the night of Sandra’s death. It was pretty unlikely that he’d killed all ten women, but he might still have killed Sandra.

The first entry in her search results pointed to a review on a New York theater web site. She clicked on it, wondering what kind of actor Slade was. The article was dated the day after Sandra’s death. Vivian skimmed the piece, establishing that the reviewer had seen the play the night before. Apparently, Virginia Woolf was damned long, because it had run from 10 pm to 1:30 am. She hoped they had two intermissions. Regardless, it was being performed when Sandra was hit by the train. If Slade was on stage that night, he wouldn’t have been able to sneak across town, drag his screaming ex-girlfriend down into a tunnel, push her in front of a train and be back for curtain. Not enough time.

One line verified that Slade Masterson had been on stage as he’d said. He’d made an impression on the writer of the article. The woman had written: “this reviewer had no trouble believing that Slade Masterson, who played the role of Nick, couldn’t perform in the bedroom.”

Vivian laughed out loud, imagining the look on his rugged face when he read that review. Sure, it established his alibi, but it didn’t do him any other favors. Now she knew why he’d been so reluctant to tell her about the play in the elevator. With a grin, she copied the URL and that snippet from the review into her report, noting that Slade Masterson was no longer a suspect.

That left all the rest of New York.

Her butt felt better. Either the ibuprofen or seeing Slade Masterson get his was helping.

She started researching Rita Blaskowitz. Rita had died a week before Sandra Haines. Unlike Sandra, Rita had a blog. At the top someone had posted the sad news of Rita’s death, and the comments underneath showed that she’d been well-liked. No one mentioned her death had been a suicide.

Vivian brought up Rita’s earlier blog posts. Apparently, the poor woman had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months before her death and had started the blog to talk to the world about it. Her early posts brimmed with fight and determination. The later ones tapered off into resignation. In the last one she talked about the despair of realizing that she’d been given a death sentence although, in the end, the cancer hadn’t killed her.

Again, the transit authorities had quickly ruled her death a suicide. She’d been diagnosed with a fatal disease and was clearly depressed. It was hard to argue with their findings.

Except for the peculiar fact that she looked so much like Sandra Haines. And both of them looked like the other eight victims. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

Vivian wondered what she would find when she’d researched the others. Probably eight more women struggling with difficult burdens, eight women who could easily have chosen to end their lives in front of a train.

But had they?

If they hadn’t, what did that mean? Could there be a killer out there who found these women, brought them down to the tunnels, and convinced them to jump? Was that technically murder?

Sadly, it wasn’t. It was only considered murder if the women were pushed, and there was no evidence they had been. None of the train operators had seen anyone else in the tunnels. Standing next to a depressed woman and talking her into jumping in front of a train might be despicable, but it wasn’t illegal. Vivian had checked. If there was a perpetrator, and she found him, there was likely nothing the police could do. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

She shifted in her seat and winced. Her butt hurt, and she wished the kitchen chair had some padding. She was pretty fit for most activities, but horseback riding wasn’t one of them.

She sighed. It was late, and she ought to get to bed. This stuff was too depressing to be thinking about at night, alone in a darkened kitchen.

She ignored her sensible impulse and re-read the accident reports, looking for patterns. Different operators, different train numbers, different women. She was so tired her eyes were having trouble focusing, and she still hadn’t found anything that linked the women.

Then, she did.

A name kept popping up again and again. Salvatore Blue. He was part of the cleanup crew, and he’d cleaned the front cars of the trains that had hit four of the women. She tried searching for him online, but didn’t have any luck, even though it was a weird name.

She forwarded the name to Tesla, knowing he had access to databases she didn’t.

Then she went to bed. The faces of the dead women brightened and darkened in her dreams.