A Killing Gift (24 page)

B
y midnight Jason had covered all the subjects on his list more than once. He thanked Al for his help and told him he'd see what he could do to get him out. A few minutes later Albert Frayme was quietly released from the Sixth in spite of the many inconsistencies in his story and incriminating statements he'd made. A uniform came in and told him he could go.

By then the squad room had emptied out, and practically no one was there. Only a few people from the second tour were left. Al carried his last water bottle with him as he skipped down the stairs to where Mike and Jason were waiting by the front door of the building.

"Thanks for coming in, Al; you've been a big help," Mike said.

"Am I done?" he asked.

"Yes. You're done for now. We may need your help down the road. You want a ride home?"

"No, thanks. No more hospitality, please. I'll walk." Al glowered at the heavyset lieutenant at the front desk, then put the water bottle right next to his hand.

"Garbage," he said, and gave Jason a triumphant look.

"Don't leave town, and don't get in any trouble," Mike advised him.

"I don't get in trouble." Al stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and walked out the front door, whistling a happy tune as if all his business there were taken care of.

"Why didn't you let me crack him?" Jason asked when the door closed and he was gone.

"We still have some details to pin down. If we can't place him on the scene, we've got a problem. He won't give on his sparring partner. That may be the missing piece. If we can get him and persuade him to testify, we can make an arrest. Come on; we'll drive you home."

"Are you sure you want to? It's out of your way."

"No problem."

April came out of the muster room. "Ready to go?"

The men nodded. Mike disappeared for about sixty seconds behind a closed door, then came out jingling somebody's car keys. He'd snagged a nice unmarked vehicle that was conveniently parked out front.

"Let's roll." He got in the front seat of the shiny Lumina. Jason took shotgun, and April sat in the back.

"So I thought that went very well," Jason said as soon as they were settled.

Mike fired up the engine and pulled out. "Yep, we've got a scrambled egg, all right."

"He's got the perfect job for his mission," April murmured.

"Absolutely," Jason said. "He's surrounded by the kind of people he hates. He's a perfectionist, but not a visionary. He doesn't hear voices. He has an idea what's going on around him, but has trouble reading people and computing the meaning of their actions. He's a narcissist. He actually believed he was important enough to merit an emissary from the university with the power to get him out." Jason paused for breath, then went on.

"He likes to be in control. In the next interview, if you tell him you need his expertise on martial arts and ask for his help, he'll talk your ear off and give you some specific details about the killing. He said he didn't hit Bernardino. He knew the killer hadn't hit him and was angry when I gave a wrong detail."

"Would you have been able to predict who he was?"

"I might have gotten a few things, maybe. The fact that he did so many things right out in the open- used the phones to call his victims, had lunch with them. I'd guess he probably followed them around. He feels personally close to them. Calls them B and B. I wonder if that's his favorite drink. Of course, he never thought anyone would connect the dots. I'd have guessed someone who was powerless but felt invincible. Had reason to feel that way. Was maybe thirty to thirty-five years old. How old is he?"

"Thirty-six."

"Ha. And his core feeling would be chronic rage."

There was very little traffic, and Mike sped up Third Avenue. Jason still felt the high.

"He must have been cooking for a long time. These murders are the act of someone who's been building up to it. I'd say he's been able to contain his rage at his position, both at the university and in life, because of a profound feeling of superiority that he's developed from his karate and his identification with the powerful and successful father who rejected him long ago."

"And then a new president came in," April said.

"Yes, a new dad to please. And some good luck for a change. Some of the alums he actually knew had a dramatic change in fortune. B and B. Here's your coincidence, April. Bernardino and Birdie unexpectedly came into money. Frayme finally had his chance. He acted like a long-lost friend to them, called them frequently until they rejected him. This happens to be a repetition of the story of his life. No one thinks he's important. No one takes him seriously. I wonder if he's hurt anyone in the past."

The three of them were silent for a moment.

"And of course the murders were displacement of his rage against his siblings, who were born and took his place after his father remarried. When B and B held out on the cash and love that he needed to move up with the wealthy people he identified with, he did to them what he never had a chance to do to his real brother and sister. He throttled them."

"Transference is all," April murmured.

"And he's a narcissist. He doesn't think anyone exists except as his friend or his enemy. You noticed that he projected his own paranoia onto Devereaux," Jason added.

"He thinks Devereaux told on him. That pissed him off."

"It's his need to be in control of people that consistently alienates them. When his charm fails to win people, he has to annihilate them. In the past he just did it in his head. Now he's moving on to killing. He's a mission killer. Rich people."

"Did you hear him complain about the Asian students?" April murmured.

"Yes. He didn't recognize you because you all look alike to him."

"I wondered," April said.

Mike took Seventy-ninth Street across town. It was a beautiful night. The trees in Central Park were fully dressed for summer, turning the street into a leafy bower. The perfume of spring was heavy in the night. On the West Side he came out on Eightieth and Central Park West, only a hop away from the Twentieth Precinct, where they all had met. The cross street changed direction at Columbus. Mike had to go south on Columbus to get farther west.

"Two things bother me," Jason said as they rejoined Seventy-ninth Street and cruised closer to his home on Riverside Drive.

"Only two?" Mike said.

"How good are Frayme's fighting skills?"

"He took Bernardino with no trouble at all, and Bernie was a big guy," April said.

"What about you?"

"And he took me," she said quietly.

"About Marty, he said what was a win if no one saw it. I think you're right that he has a fighting partner. He kept saying he'd learned. I think what he learned was how to channel rage into fighting power. He's very organized, very tied to his work. I'm sure he isn't traveling far. Convenience matters to him; the gym would have to be close."

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. What's the other thing?"

"It's related to your theory, April. He's a careful guy. How did he know that no one would come along and stop him?"

"Are you thinking his friend might actually have lured Birdie into the square?" Mike mused.

"Maybe. The more I think about it the surer I am that he didn't act alone."

Mike drew up in front of Jason's lovely prewar building on Riverside Drive. "April?"

"Good night, Jason. Thanks for everything," April said.

Jason grunted and got out. "Keep me informed," he said.

A
pril's heart was racing. "We need to talk to Hammermill again," she said excitedly as soon as Jason was out of the car. "If we could just nail the dog down, we'd have something solid. If the dog I saw on the street when Bernardino was killed and the dog Hammermill saw when Birdie was killed are the same dog, we have that accomplice. This is coming together."

"Maybe if we showed him some photos it would help," Mike suggested.

"He told me it was a brown dog."

"There are a lot of big brown dogs,
querida.
Labs, all the sheepdogs and shepherds, retrievers. Weimaraner. Dozens."

"Weimaraners are gray," she said, "and I know it wasn't a German shepherd or a Doberman or a rottweiler. But photos would help me, too." She plucked her phone out of her purse and dialed a number, then put the cell on speakerphone so Mike could hear. "Woody, it's me," she said. "Get me some flip charts on dogs."

"And hello to you, Sergeant. It's one in the morning; where am I going to get that kind of thing now?"

Mike shook his head.

"Not now. In the a.m., Woody."

They heard him sigh. "Okay. What do you need?"

"I need dog pictures."

"Can you narrow that down?"

"All the big brown ones."

"Yes, sir. And Sergeant, Frayme was at the funeral."

"Bernardino's?"

"Yeah, his picture came up several times in the crowds. He was at the cemetery."

"Thanks, Woody." She hung up and turned to Mike. He was talking softly on his phone while she dialed another number. Now they were cooking.

"Jack, am I waking you up?" she asked.

"Who is it?" came a sleepy voice.

"April Woo."

"Oh, Jesus, April. What time is it?"

"Sorry to bother you so late. This dog question is still really bothering me. Did you give any thought to other dogs when you were walking Sheba in the square that night?"

"Jesus, there are always other dogs."

"I know, but we have to nail this down. Sheba was barking. What was going on before you became aware of me?"

"Gee, do I have to do this now, April?"

"It's important."

"Yeah, there was somebody with a big dog. The dog barked at Sheba, but I got distracted when I saw you. Listen, Al called me a while ago. What's going on?"

"What did he say?"

"He said you interrogated him all day, and he's helping you with the investigation. Is he cleared?"

"Did he say anything else?"

"He was upset that I told you about the karate thing. He said he'd told me about it in confidence. It caused trouble for him, but it's all cleared up now, and everything is fine. Is that true?"

"Did he say anything else?"

"No, he was very open about the whole thing. He told me he was treated like a suspect, everything but the fingerprints and the lie-detector test."

April snorted-another stupid criminal. They got the fingerprints and the DNA (should they need it) from his water bottle. Only the molds of his handprints were left to do, and they wouldn't do it until the ME told them they had a mark on the body they might be able to match with it. "Was he disappointed about that?" she said.

"No. Completely secure in his innocence. He was excited. He wanted to make a lunch date to tell me all about it."

"What, at midnight?"

"He sounded a little high, April."

"Interesting."

"It was a little creepy. He didn't seem to mind being a suspected murderer."

"Well, people like attention," April told him. "What did you say about the lunch?"

"I don't know where you're going with this, but I can't be sure he didn't break my arm, so I said no to the lunch. I told him I was going out of town for a couple of weeks."

"Good. I'm going to want you to look at some dog photos in the morning. See if you recognize any of them from the neighborhood. What time are you leaving?"

"Noon. Can I go to bed now?"

"Sweet dreams."

"Help me out,
querida,"
Mike said when she hung up. "I told Marcus we need the list of martial-arts studios in a twenty-block radius of Fourteenth Street, especially the ones on the East Side with professional sparring partners and non-Asian masters. He wants to know what system Frayme favors-karate, tae kwon do, judo, tai chi, kickboxing, hapkido, kung fu. There's a mess of them."

"Put him on speaker. Marcus, hey. The serious practitioners learn more than one system. Bear with me while I fill you in. The Chinese claim that karate derived from kung fu. They're both unarmed methods of combat with all parts of the body used to punch-strike, kick, or block. Karate itself means 'empty' or 'China hand.' Judo, jujitsu, and go ti are wrestling forms and considered the art of the gentle. That's out. Tae kwon do is the Korean method-probably the most popular form of martial arts these days, called 'way of the hands and feet.' There are tournaments for all the systems, but the belt grades and many terms derive from the Japanese. And everybody has to learn the kata, the moves and maneuvers. Kenpo may be what Frayme favors, since he's a fist man. Kenpo comes from Hawaii and the Americas, introduced by a guy called Ed Parker. Most people learn several mix-fight methods, bits and pieces of several systems."

"Can you narrow this down a little?"

"Frayme probably goes to a place called Tiger Strike, or Praying Mantis, or Silent Warrior-as you said, no Korean or Japanese or Chinese name. Maybe U.S. professional, something macho without a particular accent." April lifted a shoulder.

"That's what I told them. What about the brick thing?"

"Okay, my take on this is he doesn't break bricks at all. That's too old-fashioned. A clumsy party trick. He was talking about doing it for balance. That means not standing there and pounding something but moving. That means he'd be working with kick mitts and striking pads, coaching pads. I believed him when he said he did that at home. You can get sandbags and platforms and various kinds of striking pads to practice at home, but it wouldn't be enough. He certainly had the ridge hand of a fistfighter, which means he could fight without a protective mitt, but I wonder if he was wearing one when he killed Birdie."

Mike slowed in front of the precinct, where they had to switch cars. It was one-thirty. "We need to clear this up with Gloss. This may be what was bothering him. The bruise on her neck might be wider than the blade of a hand," he said. He turned off the headlights.

"Want me to call him?" April asked as he went inside to return the keys.

"I already did. He's not picking up the page." "Well, he'd better get to it if we want to resolve it before the funeral." April yawned and got out of the car. She could hope, couldn't she?