Creepers (6 page)

Showered and dressed and still feeling shaky from the dream, Frank concocted a mug of bitter instant coffee and sat down at the table crammed into a corner of his tiny kitchen. He stared out the window down at Hudson Street where it ended abruptly at Abingdon Square; usually he liked this particular view of his Greenwich Village, but today he suspected he wasn't going to like anything.

Damn Dolchik, he thought to himself, he's up to something. Keeping track of M.P.'s was no mere parlor game, not when human lives were involved. Yet he'd been secretly collecting missing-persons reports all along like some kid hoarding baseball cards. The reports were all fragmentary, usually based on the testimony of a token-booth clerk or maintenance worker. They followed the same pattern: a lone passenger, waiting for a train late at night, cries for help, then . . . silence...no one on the platform, and a confused--and usually terrified--subway worker. Dolchik obviously had seen a pattern. Many of the disappearances had occurred in parts of the city where he had no business being. He was onto something, all right. But why, yesterday, had he lied about his interest in Penny Comstock when hers was the last--and most recent--name on the list?

Corelli sat back and sipped the coffee thoughtfully. He'd often suspected that behind the facade of Stan Dolchik's redneck boisterousness there was a cunning and agile intelligence. And now, more than ever, he believed his instinct about the captain was right. Now the question was: What was he going to do about it?

A tapping on the front door roused Corelli from his quandary. It had to be Ralph Myers with the morning newspaper. Corelli had few friends, and those he had never came prowling around at seven-thirty in the morning. He opened the front door.

"How ya doing, Mr. Myers?"

"It's a fine morning, Detective Corelli," Myers replied, the hint of a smile on his face. He was the super's father, a white-haired man in his early seventies who refused to grow old and useless. For Ralph Myers, fetching the morning paper for Corelli, then carrying it up six flights to his top-floor apartment, was proof positive he wasn't ready to be fitted for a shroud quite yet.

"Anything worth reading?" Corelli took the Daily News from the old man and glanced at the front page.

"Wouldn't know myself. Not much interested in what's going on in this lousy world."

"Sounds sensible." Corelli gave him two quarters. "Want to see this when I'm through?"

The old man shook his head like always and started back down the stairs. Myers had read every word of the paper before delivering it, but never would have admitted to the crime. This was his little game, and in a small way, it usually got Corelli's day off on the right track. Today the sight of the old man only depressed him.

He made himself a second cup of coffee before scanning the newspaper. Shit, today was going to be a bad one. He'd known it the minute he woke up from the dream, and reading the deep sadness and loneliness in Ralph Myers' face cinched it. Well, the latest news would certainly take his mind off his own troubles. The inch-high headline "KID GRABBED FROM IND" assaulted Corelli from the front page. Opposite the lurid story was a blurry photograph of a young girl Corelli guessed to be six or seven. Her wide-eyed innocence was deceptive, for even in the grainy black-and-white picture a spark of mischief gilded her eyes. Her name was Lisa Hill. She looked like a nice kid. A smart kid.

But not smart enough.

He read the story, expecting the usual sensation-seeking drivel designed to hold a reader's interest during a morning subway ride. But as he read the details of Lisa Hill's "abduction" a second time, Corelli felt the muscles at the back of his neck tense. Lisa and her mother had been alone on the downtown platform, and witnesses on the uptown platform swore that at the time of the child's disappearance no one had come upstairs! Officials speculated Lisa had to have been taken up the two levels and out onto the street. Any other explanation was absurd.

But not to Frank Corelli.

It had happened again! He cupped his hand thoughtfully over his mouth, exhaled through the fingers while studying Lisa Hill's picture. The only difference between this and the Penny Comstock disappearance was that with Comstock there was no witness. Lisa Hill had been with her mother. Even if the mother didn't see anything, she was still at the scene of the crime. And that was a good beginning. But where to go from here?

Corelli downed the coffee in one gulp, grabbed a cigarette, and pulled the phone book from the top of the refrigerator. Goddammit! The TA was a public-service organization. It was supposed to provide transportation and safety. But New Yorkers were beginning to pay extravagantly for the questionable privilege of exposing themselves to the danger and filth of the subway. Somebody was screwing up. Maybe it was Dolchik. Or maybe it went higher--to the TA executive offices on Madison Avenue. But whoever was at fault was callously overlooking the fact that the friends of Penny Comstock--and the parents of Lisa Hill--just might be wondering where the hell they were!

The phone book listed one L. Hill on West Seventy-ninth Street. L for Louise, Corelli thought as he dialed. Maybe a widow. Probably divorced. The Upper West Side was full of divorced women with children, women using only a first initial, hoping to keep their sex and their vulnerability from the cranks and the perverts. After five rings the phone was answered.

"Yes?" The woman's voice was lifeless.

"Mrs. Hill?"

"What do you want?" A touch of anger lifted her voice momentarily.

"This is Detective Corelli of the New York Transit Police."

"I've answered all your questions." The life drooped out of it again.

"And I'm sure you've been very cooperative, but I'm with the TA--the people who brought you the subway?"

"Thanks a lot," she replied, not missing the irony in Corelli's voice. "So what can I do for you?"

"I'd like to talk to you about Lisa."

Although Louise was beginning to get used to hearing her daughter's name on the lips of strangers, it was still painful. "I'm not sure I have anything more to say."

"I could come over now, if it's convenient," Corelli cajoled. He'd be late for work, but Quinn would cover for him.

"Does it have to be now? I'm--"

"I'm afraid it does," Corelli said officially. The case was actually being handled by the city police and as such was out of his jurisdiction. But there was no need to let Mrs. Hill know that there was no love lost between the TA and the NYPD and that he was actually trespassing.

"You have the address, I presume; everybody seems to," she said listlessly. "It's apartment 4-F."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Corelli brushed his teeth, packed Dolchik's reports into his briefcase, called Quinn and had him cover, then headed toward the subway entrance on West Twelfth Street.

With any luck, talking to Louise Hill would be a beginning. Exactly what kind, Corelli wasn't sure, but a beginning nevertheless.

The apartment house on West Seventy-ninth Street was a large, nondescript gray building whose unimaginative architecture typified the block. Squatting back from the sidewalk, it presented a cheerless facade of dirty stone and smudged windows to the street. Corelli wandered into the sterile and uninviting lobby thinking the co-op more suited for business than for raising a family. The doorman interrupted an animated conversation with an overfed chihuahua to ask Corelli's business. Seemingly satisfied with the answer, he escorted him into the elevator, punched the button for Mrs. Hill's floor, then settled back onto a tall wooden stool and yawned with barely exaggerated ennui.

Corelli hadn't given Louise Hill much thought since talking to her. He expected she'd be emotionally overwrought, and his keen understanding of human nature had prepared him for almost any reception. She'd sounded withdrawn and uncooperative on the phone, but he knew from working in the subway that people under extreme pressure react in myriad ways. What one moment was a respectable, calm specimen of good citizenry turned, the next, into a howling aggressor. However Mrs. Hill had been affected by her situation, Corelli was ready for anything.

He was ready for anything--except what he found when Louise Hill opened the door. When she smiled and said his name, he unconsciously straightened up and ran his hand quickly through his hair. Mrs. Hill was beautiful. Not pretty, not good-looking, but beautiful. She was tall, but comfortably shorter than Corelli, slender but firmly built, as if she were athletic--she probably played tennis. Her face was angular, with high cheekbones, full lips, and eyes the color of burnt sugar. Her nose was small and slightly turned up and her glossy black hair was nearly shoulder-length.

"I hope this won't be too much trouble, Mrs. Hill," Frank said as he was shown into a large, sunny living room. It was a long time since any woman had made him wonder how presentable he looked; Louise Hill made him want to go out and start all over again--this time in a new suit, fresh haircut and manicure.

"Trouble? Until you get Lisa back, that's all I've got." She sucked in a deep breath that lifted her breasts upward, then exhaled with a sigh. "I guess you're used to this."

"As a matter of fact, no." Corelli caught himself looking at her breasts, and, confused by his own crassness, turned and surveyed the living room. He may have been right about the building's impersonality, but he was wrong in thinking it couldn't be made homey. The living room reflected care, taste, and that most ineffable quality in decorating--love. "Nice place," he said, barely aware he'd begun to prolong the interview for a reason that was definitely not business.

"What can I do for you?" Louise fielded the compliment. "I thought I'd answered all the police's questions."

"I'm not with the New York Police Department," he quickly corrected her. "I'm with the Metropolitan Transit Authority--the MTA, usually known simply as the TA." He shrugged now, almost apologetically. "I work in the subway."

"I didn't know there were two different police forces." For the first time since Corelli had walked in, the veil of Louise's own preoccupation lifted and she studied him openly. Satisfied that he was what he said, she indicated a couch by the window. "I'm sorry, Sergeant Corelli. Won't you sit down." She sat on the edge of the chair opposite him. "I've had so many people here, so many strangers asking questions, that I've begun to think everyone knows his way around here . . . including you."

"I can imagine it's been a difficult time for you, Mrs. Hill."

She stared at him for a moment, then stared down at her feet. "I thought I'd been through tough times before. I was divorced last year and I wondered how I got through it all. That was nothing compared to this." She remembered the old complaint that talking to an American for five minutes elicited everything there was to be known about him. But, hell, Corelli was in her home. And she'd damn well tell him what she wanted. Besides, he looked kind, like the type of man who just might understand and sympathize. "I've been in New York for eight years and I've always known as well as anyone what might happen to anyone in this city if they were unlucky. I just never thought it would happen to me."

Corelli studied her as she spoke. She had a way of speaking off into the distance, as if she were alone, or reciting lines. But when she finished and lifted her eyes to his, Corelli felt more the center of her attention than if she had spoken to nun directly. Louise Hill was talking from her heart, not through the layers of defense erected to protect New Yorkers from the very dangers that had so suddenly broken through to her. The defenses hadn't worked. She was totally exposed, and Corelli's heart went out to her.

"Now, Sergeant," she pushed on, "what exactly would you like to know?"

"Just tell me what happened--exactly."

Louise took in a deep breath and, as best she could, recounted the fragmented details of Lisa's disappearance. She had already recited the narrative so many times since yesterday that as the words spilled out by rote, her mind drifted slightly. She now remembered how angry she'd been with Lisa for disobeying her, for walking down the platform alone. And she remembered her promise to herself that if anything happened to the child, that would be just fine; she deserved to be taught a lesson. God, why had it taken this horrible tragedy to make her realize that her world began and ended with Lisa? Teach her a lesson? The lesson was Louise's, and she was beginning to crumble from its severity.

"When you reached the upper level of the Seventy-second Street platform, did you see anything unusual?" Corelli interrupted her thoughts.

"There were a few people waiting for the uptown train; nothing else."

"Then it didn't appear they'd just witnessed something out of the ordinary?" The question, while avoiding the word "kidnapping," was academic--if Lisa Hill had been abducted against her will and forced out of the station, she would have put up one hell of a fight. And that would have attracted attention.

"The only thing out of the ordinary they saw was me," Louise said ironically. "They looked at me like

I was crazy. I guess I really can't blame them; I was screaming or something. The police have statements: they all said that until I came, upstairs they saw no one, nothing strange."

"Is that why you went back downstairs instead of running out into the street? Because they were so calm?" That wasn't the real reason, though even Mrs. Hill probably didn't know it. Corelli guessed that subconsciously she knew Lisa was still underground.