Don't Close Your Eyes (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 1) (6 page)

Ma kissed me on the head. I would always be her little girl, even if I did carry a Glock. “Go do your job, Stephanie. Go get the guy who killed the lady lawyer and that nice Italian man.”

“And you lay off the Hershey bars.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” I left her standing at the door. I was sure she had her fingers crossed behind her back and that she’d have a piece of chocolate in her mouth before I hit the street. I hoped God was watching over her. I hoped she was smart enough to keep it under control.

I was nibbling on pistachios when I arrived at the crime scene which looked similar to the one at Ellen Redner’s co-op just a few hours earlier.
RMPs and official police department vehicles were double-parked in front of a luxury high-rise on the Upper East Side. I didn’t like familiarity of this sort. From where I stood, the medical examiner was overworked already.

The doorman had left his post, allowing unrestricted access to the building. Homicides are great for security.

There were two elevators located well past the lobby. One of them was getting a lot of attention. Lido looked to be running the show. “Got something for you,” I told him. He perked up at the news. “Give me your hand,” I continued. I filled it with pistachios. “Don’t let me eat any more of these things. They’ll give me killer heartburn.” Lido rolled his eyes and then slipped the pistachios in his coat pocket.

“I’ve got something for you and it doesn’t belong to any food group.” He was smiling deviously.

The crime scene was being photographed. Ever the gentleman, Lido put his arm behind me and escorted me into the elevator where some kind of god-awful music was playing. “What the hell is that?” It wasn’t
Muzac
. It sounded creepy, like organ music from a low budget horror flick. The right atmosphere is important for a homicide. The sounds were coming from the victim’s laptop computer which was still running. A screen saver called Mystery was on the screen: haunted house, bats, witches on flying brooms, yada, yada, yada. I recognized it as one of the pre-installed screen savers that comes with Windows.

I snapped on my gloves and put my finger on the touch pad. The haunted house disappeared. In its place appeared the message, “Are you looking back?” Damn. Our death toll was going up.

Lido looked on knowingly. “The victim’s name is Samantha, Samantha Harris. The night doorman, a guy by the name of O’Brien noticed that the security camera was dead when he sat down to take his break.” Lido referred to his notes once again. “That was sometime around 10:30. He rang for the elevator. When it came down, he found Ms. Harris. He said that he had chatted with her when she came in for the evening and that she was alone.”

“Just like Ellen Redner.”

“Right. O’Brien was pretty broken up. Said the victim was one of the nicest people in the building. Works late all the time. She did something with computers. O’Brien didn’t know exactly what.”

“Why do big strong felons pick on ninety-pound chicks?” I shook my head in dismay and squatted next to the victim’s computer. I created a file and named it “scumbag.” I saved the murder note in the directory of
My Documents
and shut down the computer before the battery and any other tidbit that our psychopath may have left us died.

This was a scary guy: knew how to kill, was good with a gun, electronics, elevators, tramcars and God knew what else. In other words, he was no lightweight. The man obviously had an IQ for no good. From the perspective of the good guys, this was not good news. Perps with barely any skills commit most homicides at all: druggies, pimps, hoods, hooligans, and gang members. You get the picture. As I remembered, though, it was the dumb ones who didn’t want to get caught. It was the psychopaths that did. They dropped you clues that led you back to them. They wanted to be caught. They wanted to be punished. Sounds good to me.

There were no signs of a struggle. The perp had stuffed a rag in her mouth, just as he had with Ellen Redner. “How do you think it played out?” I asked Lido.

“Perp probably has a gun. He tells the victim to stuff the rag in her mouth and says, ‘Turn around. I won’t kill you if you cooperate.’ Then he covers the victim’s mouth and pinches her nostrils.”

“Odd way to kill someone, don’t you think? We’d better see Strassman in the morning.” Lou Strassman was a trained psychologist as well as a detective. I was hoping he’d be able to draw me a picture of this deranged asshole’s psyche. Strassman was bright, a little melodramatic perhaps, but at least he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d drop coins on the floor to create a diversion while he looked up your skirt. That was a rather long-winded way of saying that he was an okay guy.

“I already checked. We can see him tomorrow morning at ten,” Lido told me. “The boss wants to be there too and said that should give you time for church.” Good old Chief Sonellio, good as gold. Some whack-job had taken down two women in less than twenty-four hours and Sonellio wanted to make sure I’ll receive Holy Communion. He had been my dad’s boss before he was mine. He and his wife were the keepers of Italian tradition: first mass on Sunday morning, followed by dinner at three in the afternoon. Sonellio probably thinks I’ll be up at dawn simmering sauce and braising meatballs, just like his wife. I love tradition and I love Italian food. In fact, I know several fine restaurants that serve it.

Back to the case. “Does the chief know what we know?”

“As does the commissioner and the mayor. I filled them in while you were in transit.”

“I think I’ll have to skip morning services tomorrow.” Lido snickered at my remark. He knew I never missed a Sunday workout. How the hell else was I going to repent for eating all those pistachios? “Can you meet me at eight-thirty? We’d better have a game plan before we sit down with the brass. This is not exactly your typical dead ho scenario.”

“Right. I wouldn’t tell the press jack shit either. They’ll turn the investigation into a circus.”

“Three ring, Lido. Three ring.”

I was kneeling next to Samantha Harris, looking for signs of anything, when a cop named Dugan burst into the elevator. “Detectives,” he announced with urgency, “I found the super in the basement.”

I stood quickly. “Dead?” I assessed by Dugan’s state of agitation.

“The man has three eyes, Detective.”

“Oh shit.” I shook my head and then glanced at Lido. “Number four.” I turned back to Dugan. “We’ll follow you.” Lido and I followed Dugan through a fire door and down one flight of stairs to the basement. Victor Alamento, the super, was slumped in a corner of the basement. The entry wound, as Dugan had suggested, was right between his eyes.

“This is one bad fuck!” Lido stated with hostility. The bullet had exited the back of Alamento’s skull and blown a chunk of brain matter out the back. “Possible 9mm?”

“Bet ya even money. I don’t care if forensics and the ME have to work all night. They have to find the slug. I want to know if this bullet matches the one that went through the tram conductor’s back.”

“Let’s hope they can find it,” Lido said.

“Officer Dugan, can you get the proper personnel down here on the double?” I smiled at Dugan and he took off without a word.

I turned back to the latest victim. I guessed that Victor Alamento couldn’t help but nose around. The man had the biggest schnoz I’d ever seen. It looked like some kind of medieval battle horn. If he had only thought to sneeze, he might have blown the projectile right back into the gun. Thank God big noses don’t run in my family. It would have been a shame if I’d needed a nose job. Just for the record, I’m completely unaltered. Nothing’s been added, removed, augmented or sculpted and the only surgeon who ever touched me drove a BMW and had eyes like Paul Newman.

“I take it our perp didn’t shoot this guy because he finds big noses offensive.”

“Not likely.” I replied. “Alamento probably ran into harms way while our psycho was screwing around with the elevator controls.”

“Our psycho is damn good with his hands,” Lido said.

“You noticed.” By the way, Lido has really nice eyes. “Our boy definitely has skills. We’d be wise to check for priors on perps with mechanical training, perhaps someone who’s repaired elevators or installed them; an engineer, someone with technical smarts.”

“Maybe someone heard the gunshot. I’ll start knocking on doors right away.”

“Good, that should make you nice and popular with all the neighbors. Better you than me,” I remarked. “I know this guy named Ambler at the Bureau. He and my dad go way back. I can call him and see what the FBI computers can dig up. Ambler’s a career bachelor. He never sleeps.”

“You know how I love the Bureau,” Lido remarked. “I’d better stop off and get some Crisco.”

We both laughed. “Hey, you’re starting to get funny, Lido.”

“You’re rubbing off on me.”

You should be so lucky.
“Seriously, Ambler’s one of the good guys. Somehow he’s managed to remain oblivious to the Bureau’s brainwashing. Doesn’t live anywhere near Connecticut, doesn’t eat white bread, and adores pro wrestling. He’s got autographed pictures of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

Lido shook his head in dismay.

I guess you’re wondering how two God-fearing police officers can crack jokes while standing three feet from a cooling corpse. Well, I don’t have an answer for you. It’s just a part of our makeup. You’d never catch a Fed doing it. They’ve got too much starch in their shorts. All except for Ambler and I’ll bet he wears briefs.

All those guys who think that women work out in Lycra for that hot and sexy look should try ripping a sweaty sports bra over their head after sixty minutes of aerobics.
Hot? You have no idea.

I covered myself with a bath towel, slipped into my thongs (as in sandals) and went off to the showers. It’s amazing how immodest some women are. Some plump woman was standing in front of the mirror, naked as the day she was born, applying blush in full view of everyone in the women’s locker room. Her breakfast was sitting on the sink ledge. We come here to avoid looking like cottage cheese, so why eat it? I knew that she had once been a working actress and was still a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild. However, from the shape of her these days, SAG may have meant something entirely different.

The forecast called for clear skies and temperatures in the low eighties. There was no way I was going to wear a skirt again, so I put on a linen suit. It was sage, a color that doesn’t exist in a man’s vocabulary. I layered it over a rayon tee. The T-shirt was ecru. Men are familiar with this color, although they have no idea what it looks like.

I checked myself in the mirror. I work out every chance I can to stay taut and healthy. I then proceeded to cover up every inch of flesh possible. Of course, as I said before, a burlap bag would have been too revealing. So I’m a living contradiction; so what? The main reason behind my fanaticism for exercise is not the obvious. It’s my fear of the big D: diabetes. It feels as if there’s a ticking bomb inside me, genetically crafted and secreted within my pancreas. I can’t stand the thought of it. The very idea that I might someday be injecting myself with insulin turns my stomach. It’s really frustrating to know that two people as caring and warm as my parents had passed along this chromosomal nightmare. I have to beat it. I just have to, and if I need to exercise every day of my life to do it, I will.

When I arrived at the station house, Lido looked like he needed a double espresso. He was cleanly shaven and groomed, but those red, bloodshot eyes told the whole story. “I got up at six-thirty,” I boasted, “worked out for an hour before I got here.”‘

“I passed out about three,” Lido advised. I’m so glad he doesn’t feel the need to compete.

“I hope she was worth it.” Lido smiled in a strange way, not quite the cat that ate the canary smile, but close. I don’t think Lido has any trouble getting women.

He walked over to the coffee machine without answering. Station house coffee is absolutely dreadful. Lido filled one of those Styrofoam cups to the rim with the black swill. He swallowed it down in two gulps and made a face to demonstrate how offensive it was. Cute.

Lido and I reviewed all that we knew about the case and talked about the wheels we had set in motion. The department’s research boys were looking for anyone with a record of having been trained or having worked on elevators, someone with an electronics background or anyone who could play havoc with an elevator in the way someone had last night.

I had called Herbert Ambler sometime after midnight. He was up watching reruns of Mission Impossible, just as I expected. Ambler was one of those guys who could function perfectly on three or four hours of sleep. He promised to run our killer’s profile through the Bureau’s computers. He was going to tap NACIC as well. I promised to buy him a steak dinner when the case was solved, an offer I knew he would not let me get away with.

We had put the word out on the street, but so far nothing had come back. Even Manhattan streets are pretty much deserted at half past three in the morning. We were going to question some of the girls at Scores. Wendell Johnson had reminded us that the club had let out shortly before the incident. Aside from a few street urchins, the Scores girls and a few of their diehard customers were probably the only ones who might have seen anyone run down off the tram station.

We still hadn’t figured out how our perp had gotten into Samantha Harris’s building. Victor Alamento probably knew and was now passing his secret along to Saint Peter.

The phone rang. It was Aaron Kurtz from the forensics lab. The forensics guy confirmed that the 9mm bullets that had killed superintendent Victor Alamento and tram conductor Teddy Balto were fired from the same weapon. I say weapon as opposed to gun because Kurtz made a point of telling me that the markings on the slugs, or rifflings, as they’re called, came from a long-barreled instrument and were definitely not made by a handgun. Having heard what Kurtz had to say, I tried repeatedly to get off the phone, but Kurtz just kept on talking. I like Kurtz but he’s a real motormouth.

The coroner had confirmed that both women had been suffocated in an identical fashion: mouth gagged and nostrils pinched. As of yet, I hadn’t heard anything that I didn’t already know. Kurtz then added one last piece of information. He had found small bits of bright yellow fibers and minute pieces of metal strands at the bullet’s point of entry on both men. For the moment, neither he nor I understood what that meant.

And that’s all we knew when we sat down with Chief of D’s Sonellio and psychologist-cum-detective, Lou Strassman. Chief Sonellio’s appearance belied his capabilities. Too many years of smoking and drinking had wreaked havoc on the man’s skin. It was pallid and gray. His fleshy cheeks appeared puckered, sort of how Dean Martin looked toward the end. Every once in a while, Sonellio would rattle out a cough. He hadn’t smoked in years, but the damage was already done. He was sharp though. There was no denying that the man still had a keen mind.

Lou Strassman had honed his demeanor over the span of his prior career as head of social work services at Saint Francis Hospital. I always felt relaxed in his presence. Ten minutes with Strassman and your eyelids grew heavy—he was the psychological equivalent of Sominex. He had come in just for this meeting and was wearing a light sweater and khaki pants. He held a pipe which I prayed he wouldn’t light up.

Sonellio listened to our entire dissertation. We took him through the chain of events exactly as they had occurred. “So this loser knows his way around gadgets,” Sonellio offered. “He hot-wired the elevator and knew how to park the tram car. That should prove helpful to the investigation.”

“What you’re saying about the elevator is true. I understand that it’s still out of order. The tram is different,” I began to explain.

“How’s that?” Sonellio asked.

“I did some research—the tram’s computerized. The conductor’s supposed to initiate the speed reduction setting just before the tram hits the guiderails, but if he doesn’t, the computer takes over.”

Strassman pointed his pipe at me. “He’d still need to know that.”

“True, but all he’d need to do is ask a few questions. From the little I’ve seen, the tram conductors are viewed as if they’re operating an amusement ride. They seem pretty chatty,” I replied. “It was something I was curious about myself. I thought there might be a dead-man’s control like in the subway, but there isn’t. A subway conductor has to keep constant pressure on the hand control to keep the train moving; not so with the tram.”

The chief had ordered us coffee from the deli around the corner. It wasn’t Starbucks, but it wouldn’t peel paint either. Strassman offered to pay. He reached into his pocket and accidentally dropped some change on the floor. I wasn’t wearing a skirt so my opinion of the man stands.

I poured Sweet’N Low into the cup and used one of those portion-sized containers of half-and-half. After listening to Strassman for thirty minutes, I needed caffeine badly. It was analogous to when Dorothy stumbled through the poppy field in The Wizard of Oz. “So what makes this guy tick, Lou?”

Strassman was still making fine adjustments to his coffee. He was adding sugar and half-and-half between sips. You’d think he was preparing solid-state rocket fuel for the next shuttle launch. We waited while he fine-tuned his cup of java. Satisfied, Strassman finally picked up his coffee and pipe. Leaning against the table, he was now the center of attention. “The clues, in this case, the note and computer message, are well thought out. Psychopaths want to be caught.” I knew that. “They want to be punished.” I knew that too. “But our guy is a little different.” Huh?

“What makes our perp so special?” Lido asked. His coffee cup was already empty.

Sonellio looked on with interest. He had been a detective during the Son of Sam investigation. “Our perp is taunting us,” Strassman said in a matter-of-fact way. “Many psychopaths leave very subtle clues. In fact, sometimes the killers are not aware that they’re leaving clues at all. The desire to be caught is often subconscious. But our guy is throwing the clues in our face.
Look back! Are you looking back?
He’s almost indignant about the damn thing.
What’s the matter? Aren’t you smart enough to catch me?
”

Great. Nothing like a perp with attitude.

“Any fingerprints?” Sonellio asked.

“Forget about it!” Lido announced. “There’s a billion sets of prints on the tram. It’s useless information.”

I’m sure our perp knew this. I was also sure that he hadn’t left any prints of his own. I was starting to develop a character composite of this guy. He wanted us to follow his clues. He was choreographing the entire affair. By the way, notice how I keep calling the perp a guy. One woman wouldn’t suffocate another, scratching her eyes out would be more like it. Poison is the most likely lady-killer scenario. Besides, our perp had to be strong enough to take Wendell Johnson clean off his feet and ram him into a concrete wall. Of course I’m not saying that women can’t be strong. Ever see that Zena Warrior Princess chick or Chyna, the female wrestler? Women can be strong, unattractive perhaps, but strong. There’s nothing like a woman on anabolic steroids.

“Nothing on the victims?” Sonellio asked.

“Zilch,” I replied. “Our perp’s too clever for that. The forensics specialist did find some unusual yellow fibers and metal strands on the clothing of the two male victims, but nothing on the women.”

“Based on where these particles were found, we believe that the murder weapon came in contact with these substances. Perhaps the rifle was contained or wrapped in them,” Lido explained.

“There’s something about suffocation, about the psychology of it, that sets it apart from the norm. Our man is killing his victims by depriving them of the life-giving air they need to breathe.” Strassman looked around the room. “It’s even different from strangulation. There’s little pain involved. He wants to see his victim struggle for breath. Necessary air is right there, all around his victim, just an inch away. He wants the victim to know that he’s in control of their outcome. He’s got his victim’s life in his hands. It’s all very personal.” Strassman laid his pipe down on the desk. “It’s sadistic in the most intrinsic sense.”

“What does the press know?” Sonellio asked.

“They know what happened on the tram. By noon, the deaths of Samantha Harris and Victor Alamento will hit the airwaves and the public will start putting two and two together,” Lido stated.

“That’s if the press doesn’t put it together for them,” I added.

“This is a goddamn mess!” Sonellio swore. He paced around the room a bit, rubbing his chin. “I’m going to call the commissioner and the mayor. I’m going to put the entire borough on alert and request reinforcements from neighboring precincts. I can’t believe the audacity of this slug, committing two double homicides just blocks from one another.” He turned to Strassman. “You’re right, Lou, the son of a bitch is taunting us.” He turned back to me. “I want this to end right now. I’m going to dump every available man on the street. You and Lido are in charge of the effort. I’ll okay overtime, money for stoolies . . . whatever it takes. This prick’s not going to grab me by the balls; no way!”

I told you Sonellio was a good guy. He was really worked up. It was personal with him. A perp had singled out his precinct and he didn’t like it. “I’m going to pull the entire detective’s squad in for a meeting at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Stephanie. Gus. You two represent the best and the brightest, but neither of you has much experience with psychopaths. I’m going to make sure you get all the help you need.” He winked at us,
“Capisce?”

I winked back at him. “No problem.”

“That goes for me too,” Lido added.

It was a beautiful moment: officers of law and order vowing to rid the city of evil—a roomful of good intentions. All we had to do now was catch the filthy bastard.