Cutter (13 page)

‘She’s made you, Jack! Grab her!’ Doc demanded

As Jack reached out, she bolted away from him.

‘Close her in!’ Doc barked into the microphone.

The woman in the hooded sweatshirt was into full gallop toward the west. Then she spied the quartet of men headed her way, and she turned in a hurry and attempted to come back toward us. She saw that the north, south, and west were all clogged with policemen, and so she raced toward the only direction left. She hit the twenty-foot fence in a hurry, and then she began to climb.

‘Stop!’ Jack yelled.

‘Jesus Christ!’ We were all groaning from the loudness in our ears. I pulled the flesh-colored device from my ear as we ran toward the woman scaling the fence.

She was halfway up the twenty-foot chain-link as Wendkos arrived. Then Jack was up on the links too, and we were almost to him.

The hooded woman climbed as if she was an athlete, a gymnast. Very lithe, very smooth. Then she lifted a leg over and she scrambled down onto the ground where those enormous giraffes stalked. There were six of them in the enclosure, and from what I had read about them, they could be very nasty beasts when they were provoked.

Wendkos had reached the top of the fence when Doc told him to get the hell back down. We had patrol cars outside the far fences. They’d get her, Doc tried to persuade him.

But Jack was coming down on his side, and I found myself on that same fence, going up. Doc screamed at me. He called me something obscene, but I couldn’t make out his words, only his inflections.

I was over and down in a minute or so, and then I was racing across the open field. The giraffes were off to my right, and I could feel them watching the two of us chasing this hooded female who was ahead of us both.

Jack stumbled and fell. I caught up to him, helped him up. He had ripped his jeans open at the knee and his leg was bleeding.

‘Let’s go!’ he shouted.

The woman had a hundred yards on us. The fence she was aiming at was another hundred yards away. She sprinted like an athlete, too. She was way ahead and I knew we didn’t have a chance of catching her.

I grabbed Wendkos by the back of his green wind-breaker and I forced him to halt.

‘Stop, Jack ... Whewww! Stop. It’s no use. Doc’s radioed the guys outside to take her.’

Then I looked up and I saw two of those towering creatures striding determinedly toward us.

‘I think we better just stand still,’ I told the junior officer. ‘What?’

He was still examining the wound on his kneecap.

The giraffes were thirty feet away and closing. I was reaching for my Bulldog. It had the better stopping power of my two weapons. I bent over and tore it out of my ankle holster. The two long-necks approached us slowly now. 

‘I really don’t want to hurt you two boys,’ I told the lofty animals.

Jack had his Nine pointed their way too.

‘I really don’t want to shoot you boys. Please stop.’

They halted abruptly, about ten feet away from us.

‘Go on! Get!’ Jack yelled.

‘Please shut the fuck up,’ I told Wendkos.

‘You want to explain to the Captain why we shot two Brookfield Zoo giraffes, Jimmy?’

‘I’d rather it was them than me, if it comes down to it.’ ‘HEY!!’

The ‘Hey’ was followed by a piercing whistle. The giraffes turned toward the south where they saw one of the zoo attendants at a shed. Then the two loped off toward him, like a pair of trained Dobermans.

After the animals arrived at the shed, I could see them bending over a bale of something. Hay? I couldn’t tell what it was.

The attendant in his tan zoo shirt walked up to us.

‘You two guys want to get squished? You know how close you came?’ he asked us. ‘Jesus Christ. I mean, do yo
u
kno
w?’

Chapter Twelve

‘We found this at the base of the back fence,’ Jack said as he held out a hooded sweatshirt to Doc and me.

Doc took hold of the garment.

‘She got away clean, Jimmy. The bold bitch took off the hood and walked right on past the patrolmen outside the fence.’

‘How could they let a single female walk on by without even stopping and questioning her?’ I asked.

‘General stupidity, I guess, Lieutenant. I don’t know what to tell you,’ Jack lamented.

Doc was so angry that I knew the two of us had better give him some space. So Jack and I took a walk down the long length of the twenty-foot chain-link fence that our girl had recently flown over.

‘Did you see her face?’ I asked the younger detective.

‘She was wearing shades. And the hood was drawn tight. All I could see was that she was young, probably in her mid-twenties, late twenties, and she was white. Sort of pale, I’d say. I’m sorry I can’t do better, Jimmy. I only saw her full-front for a few seconds. She looked to be about five feet four, maybe 115 pounds. Hard to tell about the body size with that floppy-assed sweatshirt on top of her torso ... Jesus. How could she skip on by those guys!’

‘Let it slide, Jack. Like you said, it happens. Now we know he’s got help, at least. How close she is to our guy, I don’t know.’

‘She sounded fairly swift, for the few words she said to me. I mean she sounded witty or intelligent. She was no bimbo. You could tell. She was being, like, playful, I guess you’d call it. She only said a few words, but that’s the impression I got.’

‘Let’s wander back toward Doc. Maybe he’s cooled off by now.’

We walked in silence the block or so back to Gibron.

He was sitting inside our unmarked Taurus. Still seething, it looked like. Jack got in the back seat.

‘She’s working tight with this guy, Jimmy,’ Doc said.

‘How do you figure?’ I asked.

‘She got away because she had a plan. I don’t just mean scaling the walls and running like an Olympic queen either. I mean she didn’t appear panicked. She was cool when we squeezed her. Some messenger girl would’ve laid down and cowered with all those cops after her ass.’

I thought he was right and I nodded in affirmation.

‘Which doesn’t excuse those goofy uniforms from letting her slide. They should’ve grabbed anything moving on the edge of this goddamned zoo.’

He started up the Ford, and we were on our way back downtown.

*

‘We haven’t had a nibble. Not even a flasher. I feel like I should be disappointed,’ Natalie told me.

We were in bed at her apartment. Then she told me she still wanted a spring wedding and she also went off on all the particulars involved in the nuptials. She was a Catholic, as I was, and she wanted the official ceremony in the Church, which was also fine with me.

‘Don’t feel disappointed. I know this’ll piss you off, but I hope you never lay eyes on our man, except through the media the day we put the irons on him and his girlfriend.’ 

‘Girlfriend?’

I probably shouldn’t have told her, but I knew she could keep her mouth shut, and it was not likely the media creeps would be all over her to become a source on the case.

‘He has at least one, someone who’s working with him.’

I told her the adventure of the giraffes.

‘Are you crazy, Jimmy? Climbing a fence and going into an area with big, scary —’

‘Isn’t that what you’re doing, staking yourself out for The Farmer?’

I had shut her up. For once in my life, I had stopped her cold.

‘Point taken. But at least the guy after me is somewhat human.’

I watched her eyes. Then she knew we were wasting time talking shop again.

I kissed her eyes once she’d shut them. Then I kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly, her thighs, and finally her toes. Which caused her to giggle. When I came back topside, she was not laughing anymore. I kissed her lips and I found her tongue. Then I mounted her and I raised her thighs with my arms beneath her upper legs. She lunged at me quickly, and we maintained a locking embrace for an extended moment. We were frozen there, and even though we were both aching by now, neither of us wanted to disengage.

*

‘The ad on the Internet has disappeared,’ Matty McGinn moaned. He looked as if someone had hit and run over his pet pooch.

‘You mean the Bridgeport advertisement, I assume,’ Doc told him as the trio of detectives stood behind him at his station in Computer Services.

Matty nodded.

‘Ain’t your fault, kid,’ Doc commiserated. ‘We had him

and we lost him, and it had nothing to do with you ... Maybe they’ll come back with something else. They aren’t going to stop business, young man.’

He clapped the kid on the left shoulder and we walked out of his office.

‘Next?’ Doc smiled.

‘We go back after those three Lester the Molesters. They’re the only leads I can think of,’ I told him and Jack, out there in the hallway.

‘I hope your keen sense of intuition is on the money, Holmes,’ Doc told me, ‘or we’ll be watching three cheese-dicks while the real guy starts in on slicing and dicing more thirty-something white women.’

Gibron went down to the exit and held the glass door open for Jack and me.

‘Why is it thirty-something white women?’ Jack asked.

I looked him in the eyes, and then I looked over to Doc, still standing there like the doorman.

*

‘Why indeed?’ Doc asked, back at my downtown cubicle.

‘Why not younger, or older?’ I shot back.

‘I don’t get it either,’ Wendkos joined in.

Doc was staring out my window, toward the east and toward Lake Michigan.

Jack and I sat opposite one another. I was behind the desk.

‘If he’s supplying organs, why not go with younger women?’ Doc asked. ‘They’d be even healthier, wouldn’t they?’

‘Maybe it isn’t about the organs’ age. Maybe it’s just about the kind of woman he wants to cut,’ Jack suggested.

‘I think he may have you there, Holmes.’ Doc smiled at me.

‘So you’re saying you think he’s got a history with some female in her thirties. A white woman. Attractive. At least minimally. She did something that’s triggering his wanger.’ 

Doc nodded at my proposal.

‘So if we’re right about why, how does that help us nab this prick?’ I proffered.

‘It doesn’t help us nab him. But it might let us know we’ve got the right collar when we catch up to him,’ Gibron told us.

I looked over to the board with my cases written in red and black ink. The reds were outstanding homicides. The blacks were recently solved investigations. The two latest reds were Genevieve Malone and Delores Winston. I tried to visualize changing the color of the ink that listed their names, but I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t see the change happening.

I looked over to Doc and Jack. I nodded, the three of us rose, and we headed out toward the elevators.

*

Dawson Repzac had a live-in lover. We found out about her from his apartment building’s owner. The owner didn’t give a shit who lived with whom, he told us, but he liked to remember the faces of the people who inhabited his properties so he knew who to look for if there was any damage done to his flats.

The girl was the right height. We saw her coming into Repzac’s as we staked his place out on this Thursday night. She was just the way the owner described her. About five feet five, 120 pounds. Not a beauty, but pretty. Nice rear end, light in the chest, as Jack might put it.

An hour later she waltzed out with himself, with Dawson Repzac. We watched the two of them get in the Toyota that the girl had pulled up in.

Her name was Janice Ripley. We got that from the landlord, too. He knew all their names — even the cohabitors. He was a very careful man.

They took off from the curb, going east. We waited a beat, and then the three of us in the Ford with Doc behind the wheel were tailing them. They were moving out of this near north neighborhood toward the Lake. We saw Lake Michigan as we approached the beach. Then Janice turned right on Lakeshore Drive and headed south. We were keeping our distance, but we had to be careful not to lose her since we were the only car behind her. We hadn’t got the juice on Repzac to pull a massive triangular pursuit, so we were alone on this one. If she lost us, we were lost.

Doc started to become nervous when we were at 79th Street.

‘Shit, she’s headed for Indiana,’ he told me.

‘Seems like she’s got no inclination to turn off,’ I agreed.

‘So?’ Jack wanted to know.

‘We follow her a few more miles, and then we’re out of our jurisdiction anyway,’ Gibron conceded.

When we saw her heading south, riding in the middle lane, we knew our pursuit would gain us nothing. So Doc turned off, headed west, and we figured we’d give them a free ride. We’d return to Repzac’s tomorrow and try them again.

*

Preggio appeared to be a loner. Except for his pool buddies. We didn’t see him with a woman.

‘Maybe he’s gay,’ Doc suggested as we were parked outside that same pool hall on Milwaukee Avenue.

Jack Wendkos was downtown, checking out leads in another investigation he was involved with.

I looked over to my partner and I saw that he was yanking me. Neither of us thought this shithead was a homosexual. He had that swagger that women love, and I couldn’t see him refusing all that feminine attention that his great physical build must have attracted.

No, he was a ladies’ man. But we simply hadn’t seen him with female companionship yet. The investigation process involved a whole lot of endurance. Many times it was a matter of who crapped out first — the copper or the perpetrator. You couldn’t let them outwait you. That was one of my mentor’s first lessons to me when I began to work this job. Doc Gibron was my mentor.

‘He’s here for the evening,’ Doc groaned.

He closed his eyes and slumped back down on the passenger’s side. He was wired to his jazz station, and I heard him click the pocket radio on.

I was wide awake. It was my shift anyway. I didn’t like to listen to the radio on stakeout. It was a distraction. So I watched and I imagined myself with Natalie. It passed the time.

But Doc was correct. Preggio was not going anywhere. I could see him shooting eight ball through the big picture window at the front of the poolroom. He played game after game. Pretty soon it was midnight, and our afternoon shift was over. I pulled away from the curb, but Doc never woke up until I approached the Loop.

*

We saw the girl at Preggio’s crib on the northwest side. He lived in a surprisingly solid middle-class neighborhood. I had pictured Preggio living at the Y downtown or somewhere like that. With transients. For a good-looking guy, he gave out these seedy vibrations, compared to Repzac and Karrios. The reason I was stuck on these three suspects was Stephanie Manske. I knew the man who approached her in that mall parking lot was our guy. I didn’t have any physical evidence to back me up, but I knew it in my guts. It was The Farmer who almost opened Stephanie up in that lot. If it hadn’t been for that mutt with the cutesy name — Longsworth — she would’ve been the third name in red. I was certain of it. These three all fitted the physical description she gave of the soaked man with the bag that she encountered, and I didn’t know how else to narrow the field down. There was virtually no physical evidence. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no semen, no hairs. Nothing. Nothing left but what I had as a feeling in the middle of me. 

The girl was too tall. She had to be five seven or five eight. And she was too busty. Too heavy up top. She had long red hair that Jack Wendkos would’ve spotted immediately.

‘This isn’t the one,’ Jack agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s bonking only one princess. Maybe the guy’s got a stable, for crissake.’

‘You didn’t expect this to be easy, did you, kid?’ Doc chirped from the back seat. ‘They’re playing Brubeck and his version of "West Side Story",’ Doc said as he put the headset back on.

‘Easy, no. I’d like to kick the shit out of those uniforms who saw the right female walk right past their noses. This should’ve been over that afternoon. She would’ve got us The Farmer, and we’d have black ink on your board, Jimmy.’

I waved him off and watched Preggio’s lights come on. I could see the silhouettes against his sheer curtains. And then I saw it.

‘There’s somebody else up there,’ I told my partners.

Doc snapped off his portable and sat up.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Three of them. And the newest member is female. And a few inches shorter than the redhead. Wouldn’t you say, Jack?’

‘We got a full house, Jimmy P. Karrios, Repzac, and Preggio. They’re all real popular with the ladies.’

Then the light in the living room upstairs was extinguished, and the three shadows cast on the curtains disappeared.

*

We had a pair of detectives around the clock on Preggio’s place. The coppers saw the smaller female emerge from the apartment building at 8.26 a.m., the report read. I was in my office at noon, going over that document. They scoped the girl’s license plates and followed her home. She was Caroline Keady, and she lived in a very affluent location — Lake Forest. Apparently with her parents. The old man was a corporate lawyer. Mommy was an heiress in her own right.