Night bait, page 11
Glancing over his shoulder, he backed the blue Mercedes out of the driveway. He turned on the radio, a classical station, and listened to the opening strains of Mozart's Requiem as the car cruised silently out of the neighborhood toward 12th Street.
FOUR
Vickie was happy that Steve had spent the night with her. Though she hadn't been able to tell him about the tremendous decision on her mind, his presence comforted her. Already dressed and ready for work, she sat with him at the kitchen table over a cup of steaming black coffee. She still had an hour to kill before work. Music played from the radio on top of the refrigerator, but neither of them paid any attention. Steve wouldn't be going to work that morning like Vickie. He was an engineer for the FAA; it was a good-paying, highly technical occupation, but it did have one bad point. It seemed that every month or so, Steve would have to go out of town: Los Angeles, Miami, Atlantic City, Philly. He was involved in air turbulence technology or something crazy like that, and she could never understand why it was necessary for him to have to go away, sometimes for weeks at a time, to record wind speeds of an airplane flying upside-down. It felt like everytime she turned around, he would be leaving on such a venture, and that upset her. She didn't get to see enough of him as it was, but she supposed that that was part of the ball game. They planned to get married in a year; it would be hard for her to get used to his leaving all the time, but she realized that was one part of what marriage was all about. She knew his job was rough, that it took a great deal out of him, and that it was no picnic for him either. So the last thing he needed was to have her giving him a lot of guff about it all the time. She would just have to tolerate his schedule, resign herself to it. That afternoon, he would be leaving for Dallas, and he didn't expect to return for a week. She hated being without him for long periods of time. She loved him; she needed him, especially this week. But there was nothing she could do about it.
Neither of them said anything as they sat sipping coffee. Vickie was still racking her brain over Dignazio's plea for help. Steve seemed uptight about having to go on another trip. She wished she could see him off at the airport, but she would be at work when he left. They would have to say their goodbyes right there.
Suddenly, the insensible music pouring out of the radio came to a halt, and the hourly news replaced it. Still, they didn't pay much attention: the news was always the same—singularly bad.
"What are the chances of your getting back before the weekend?" she asked him, and broke the silence.
"Not good," he returned. "We have to try out a lot of new experimental equipment, and that always means one test flight after another."
"It's been so long since we've gone anywhere for the weekend. You'd think those pricks you work for would at least-"
Steve cut her words of with a concise wave of his hand. "Shhh, listen," he said, and pointed to the radio.
The radio announcer's voice sounded mechanical and distant: "... of the Metropolitan Police Department report the discovery of another electrocution victim, the fifth such killing in two weeks. The body of a white female, twenty-four years old, was found in an empty parking lot on 12th and Κ Street North East at seven o'clock this morning. Authorities speculate that the deceased is undoubtedly another victim of the necrophile-murderer known as The Electrocutionist. Police homicide captain Gregory Dignazio reports that there are no leads thus far, but that investigations are well under way. The victim's identity is being withheld until relatives can be notified..."
"Holy Christ," said Steve. "Another one."
Vickie shook her head over the rising steam of her coffee. "You'd think that crazy stuff like that wouldn't happen in a civilized world. It's so ... scary."
Steve returned a grim nod and blew on his coffee. Vickie pressed her knees together and shifted in her seat. Another one, she thought. He's taken another one. What am I going to tell Dignazio? She hoped that Steve wasn't able to read the distress in her eyes. She wanted desperately to tell him about this business with the police, to ask him his advice. But she could never do that. Steve was all she had in the world, and to tell him about Dignazio's strange offer would be at the risk of stirring up her past, the past which she had locked up long ago. And she would not put her love for Steve on the line for all the killers in the world.
More silence passed between them. Finally, Steve got up and knocked off the rest of his coffee. "I better go now. I got a lot of packing to do, and I don't want to make you late for work."
"Will you call me tonight?"
He walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Sure. First thing."
She went with him to the front door. He turned her toward him, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.
"I'll do my best to get back on Friday," he said.
"Good," she whispered, brushing her lips on his cheek. "I'll miss you. Have a nice trip."
"I love you... 'Bye."
She leaned against the doorway and watched' as he descended the stairwell to the parking lot. When he had gone, she closed the door and went back into the living room, the abrupt solitude following her like a black cloud. She yanked the curtains open to let the light of the morning shine through the sliding-glass door of the balcony. Flinching, she brought her hand to her eyes as a shield from the blinding sun. When her pupils had adjusted to the light, she slid the door open and stepped out onto the two-story platform. Her hands gripped the iron rail, and she leaned over at the waist and looked out over the endless expanse of rooftops and jutting factories with cannonlike smokestacks billowing soot and black clouds of filth into the sky. Somewhere out there, she thought, there's a killer, a killer that I might be able to help catch.
She would have to call Dignazio soon and let him know what she had decided. She dreaded it.
A mile in the distance, she could see the five-hundred foot WSDT radio tower standing on top of a small hill which protruded out of the surrounding sea of roofs like a gray blister. The tower looked like a slim steel skeleton, joined to a sharp point at the top as if it were a missile aimed at heaven. The red light at the apex blinked slowly on and off; it reminded her of an evil eye flashing some kind of arcane warning at her.
She could not get her mind off the inevitable phone call to Dignazio. She didn't know what to tell him.
The hem of her light blue dress fluttered up then down as she spun at the sound of the doorbell. She rushed to the front door without looking through the peephole, thinking that Steve may have forgotten something.
But it wasn't Steve. The face which greeted her outside the door was disquieting, yet all too familiar. She couldn't remember his name. It was the detective who had come to the typewriter store yesterday to take her to Dignazio's office, the one who looked like a male equivalent of a Barbie doll dressed in a suit and tie. He looked at her as if his face were of stone.
"I know, I know," she said, "I'll get in touch with Dignazio in a little while."
"Yes, he's expecting to hear from you," David Elliot said, "but that's not the reason I came here. . .. May I come in?"
"Sure." She backed away from the door and admitted him. "What's this all about?"
He stood in the foyer and looked down at the tile with troubled eyes. "Does a girl named Jennifer Currie live here?"
"Yeah, she's my roomie. Why? Is she in some sort of trouble?"
Elliot paused for a long, miserable second. "I'm afraid she'd dead. We found her body a few hours ago."
She squinted at Elliot's face, trying to figure out if she had gotten the words right. When the meaning of what he had said finally hit her, she frowned in disbelief. "You're crazy. Jennifer's in her room right now sleeping like a log. She was out late last night."
"What time did she come in?"
"I don't know. I went to bed early. But I'm sure she's here."
"The identification we found on the body belonged to Jennifer Currie, at this address."
It was too outlandish for Vickie to believe. She turned on her heel and went down the hall toward Jennifer's bedroom. The door was closed. When Vickie made it halfway down the hall, her self-assurance as to Jennifer's safety began to fade. No, she hadn't heard Jennifer come in last night. Why was she so sure that her roommate was tucked away in bed?
Vickie let out a muffled squeal when she opened the door and saw Jennifer's bed, the pillow centered up top, the corners folded neatly under the mattress. The bed had not been slept in.
Elliot walked up behind her, the hard soles of his police-issued oxfords thumping softly on the carpet. Vickie turned around, open-mouthed, to face him. "Are—are you sure it was her?"
"There's no doubt. ID was positive."
For some insane reason, she couldn't stop thinking about the radio toward and its blinking red light. "What happened? Was she in some sort of accident?"
"No. She was murdered ... by The Electrocutionist."
The black memory of the newscast she and Steve had heard at eight drifted into the back of her mind. Her mouth opened and closed, but there was nothing to say. All the Oh My Gods in the world wouldn't change anything.
"I'm terribly sorry to have to tell you this, Miss Anderson," Elliot said. "I need you to give me the name and address of her next of kin."
Jumbled, Vickie nodded and shuffled to Jennifer's desk. She opened her roommate's address book and wrote down the address of Jennifer's father, who was retired and living in Bowie, Maryland. Her limbs went numb. The shock finally hit. Jennifer was dead. She gave the slip of paper to Elliot.
"Again, I'm very sorry about all this," Elliot offered. "You have my deepest sympathies. I better go now. Thank you."
Vickie stood in place, frozen. Everything around her seemed fuzzy and unsharpened. When Elliot had his hand on the front door, Vickie snapped back and ran to him, grabbing his arm before he walked out.
She said in a flat voice, "Tell Dignazio I'll be in his office at noon."
He took a sip of orange juice from the thermos he had brought from home, holding it in his mouth for a moment, savoring the flavor. "How's that for a fucking coincidence?" Dignazio said after he swallowed. "Her own roommate gets it the day after we ask her to help us out. Talk about irony."
Even in the middle of the afternoon, Dignazio's office was very dark. Chet Winslow stood up from his seat and took off his tattered army jacket. Dignazio noticed that in the poor lighting Chet appeared as a shadow with only vague human characteristics. His long brown hair obscured his sex.
"You know, Captain," Chet said as he sat back down with his jacket in his lap, "you're sure getting some high hopes about this idea of yours. It'll never work, even if she does go for it."
"How do you fucking know, smart boy? It will work, and she will go for it. I know her kind. Christ, her own roommate got fried last night. She'll want to do everything she can to help. She's that kind of a girl."
"The way she sounded when I left her apartment this morning," Elliot interposed, "was pretty positive. I think she's going to do it."
Chet nodded neutrally. "It's still a long shot."
"And what isn't?" Dignazio said. "With fucking Mullins tying our hands, what else can we do? We got no choice but to go under the table. Besides, his orders were so ambiguous, we could practically get away with murder."
"Has Major Case come up with anything for us yet?" Elliot asked.
Dignazio flicked his hand aside. "Fuck no. It'll take those old fuckers a week just to get the cobwebs out of their brains. We can't afford to wait on them—they won't come up with shit anyway. We have to get the ball rolling tonight. Chet, did you get any cash?"
"Yeah, I got some cash," Chet said with a smirk. "I rolled some dealer last night. Had four hundred bucks on him."
"You didn't show you tin, did you?"
"No." Chet shook his head with his eyes to the floor. "What happens if there's no overflow cash again next week? Do I have to keep mugging bagmen?" Chet did not intend for his questions to be answered. They only served to magnify his apprehensiveness. "And aside from that, we still have the heart of the matter to consider. The entire operation is unauthorized. If anyone ever found out—"
"Then we'd all get thrown in the shit," Dignazio finished. "But like I said, that won't happen, because nobody will ever know. It's all worked out. And I already told you, the cops in Chicago did the same type of thing, paying hookers to help on a case."
"Yeah," Chet argued, "but that was authorized, and that was a vice case. This is murder."
"If it worked for those clowns, it'll work for us. And when we get our man, we'll all get raises."
Chet didn't say anything more. He placed the stack of bills on the desk.
"It's almost noon," Elliot said after glancing at his watch. "She'll be here soon."
"Go downstairs and wait for her," Dignazio said. "I don't want her wandering around all over the building."
Just as Dignazio finished his sentence, there was a light rap on the door. Elliot answered it, and Dignazio stood up when Vickie walked into the office. She stood in front of the three men as if she were a spectacle.
Dignazio offered her a look of serious sympathy. "Vickie, I'm really sorry it had to be a friend of yours."
"I'm sorry it had to be anyone," she returned. "I'll do whatever Γ can to help you, anything you say. My boss gave me two weeks off; I told him my grandmother died in Connecticut."
"Okay, great. Have a seat."
Chet slid her a chair, and she sat down in front of the desk. The other two men stood behind her.
Vickie twisted her lip. "Are you sure the guy who killed Jennifer is the same guy who killed those other girls?"
Dignazio sucked in a breath of air. "The word's not official yet; the autopsy's being done right now. But we're sure it's the same person. I, uh, don't want to shake you up with any of the details."
"Shake me up," said Vickie. "I want to know what he did to her. I have to know."
"Well, like I said, the cause of death isn't official yet, but everything else was the same that we could see. She had been gagged with a tennis ball, and we discovered a needle puncture mark on the right side of her neck. The body was found next to an attendant's booth at a commuter parking lot on 12th. Like the others, she had been wrapped up in a plastic drop cloth, naked. Her voter's registration card was taped to her body. That's how we knew who she was. This killer always leaves some kind of ID on them unless they don't have any."
"Was she raped?"
"We won't know positively until the people at the hospital send us the autopsy report. But from what I could see, yes, she was raped. And I'm sure that the autopsy will reveal that rape occurred after death."
Vickie swallowed so loud she could hear it. "You know, when you hear about these things on the radio, you always think they'll happen to other people, but never to yourself or to anyone you know. You never care until it matters."
"I know what you mean. It's sad, but it's true."
"What exactly do you want me to do?" she said to change the subject.
"You'll be working with Sergeant Winslow, the hippie standing behind you. He's the best undercover man I have, and he knows the streets like a junkie. He'll never let you out of his sight."
Vickie nodded in approval. He struck her as one of the few plainclothes cops who could have the ability to melt into a crowd. Usually, no matter how long their hair was, or how shabbily they dressed, the undercover cops stuck out like missing teeth on movie stars. But not this guy; he could pass for a real doper.
Chet smiled back at her, but said nothing.
"First," Dignazio went on, "let me tell you what we know about The Electrocutionist's m.o. The way we have it figured is the guy's picking up girls and knocking them out with sodium pentothal once he gets them in his car. With the hookers, he probably agrees to drive them to a whorehouse, but drugs them up after they get in his car and takes them to wherever he does his thing. That's his motive for using the pentothal; otherwise the hookers would scream bloody murder the second they saw he wasn't taking them to a motel as planned. Next, he takes them to his place and somehow gets them inside without being seen. That's why we think he lives out of the inner city, probably in a house. It'd be pretty hard to carry an unconscious girl into a rowhouse or an apartment without anyone seeing him. The next part is fairly obvious. Since the doses of sodium pentothal have been small, the girl's aren't unconscious for very long; probably by the time he gets them inside, they're awake, so we have to assume that he wants them to be conscious when he kills them. Otherwise, he'd just kill them with an overdose of pentothal. He gags them so they won't make any noise that might arouse suspicion. Then he kills them by electrocution. More than likely, he's putting them in water, probably a filled bathtub, and then sending household current through the water. There have been no electrical burns on any of the bodies, which means that no direct electrical contact has been made on the victims; plus, all of the girls had traces of soap film all over them, like the kind that would accumulate in bathwater. So that's how we know about his method of electrocution."
Vickie's mouth crimped with distaste. "That's sick."
"Yeah, but keep in mind, we're dealing with a sick person."
"Why doesn't he just stab them or something?"
"This guy knows what he's doing," Dignazio admitted. "His murder technique is quick and efficient. No blood, no mess. And after he kills them, he rapes them. He seems to possess an attraction to dead girls—a sexual attraction. That's just another reason why we know he's nuts." Dignazio paused. "Anyway, after he's done raping the bodies, he wraps them in plastic and dumps them off at the nearest inconspicuous location."
