Frenzy (31 page)

68

W
ith Weaver tucked away, the killer checked to make sure that what he might need was in place. He would return briefly and pick it up later tonight. There was an old shovel, and a rusty pickax that had broken halfway up its wood handle but would still be useful. A folded tarpaulin. More duct tape, just in case.

There was other, heavier equipment. A compressor with a muffled engine, a small jackhammer, a set of steel wedges. And there was clothing—a disguise.

It occurred to the killer that he could make a good television commercial about the duct tape, what a useful product it was. A testimonial.

Had any of the infamous serial killers done celebrity television commercials?

Why not? It was all lies, anyway. Fun and lies.

He began cleaning up, taking his time. He didn't simply wipe to eliminate fingerprints—he rubbed, sometimes leaning his weight into it. This had to be perfect one time around. There wouldn't be a chance even for a quick cleanup later.

The last thing he did before leaving the building was to wipe the car down carefully, inside and out, still wearing his rubber gloves, so there would be no fingerprints. He had already wiped down the interior of the vehicle's trunk, knowing it would soon contain Weaver.

A less careful man would say this overabundance of caution didn't matter.

But a stray, neglected print might matter someday. A print that might match his own.

He would do as he told Weaver, parking the car, with her in it, at a desolate spot near the East River. There the vehicle would sit for quite a while before someone called the police about it, and it would be towed.

The first surprise for the police would be that the old car had stolen New Jersey plates and was a chop shop vehicle impossible to trace.

The second surprise would be the corpse of Officer Weaver.

Either way she played it, this would be the end for Weaver. If the killer could remove the birdbath and uncover
Bellezza,
why should he complicate measures by telling anyone about an untraceable parked car with a body in it?

The killer hoped she was telling the truth about
Bellezza
being contained in the concrete birdbath at the Far Castle, but one way or the other, Weaver would die of dehydration or suffocation in the car's locked trunk. She hadn't really believed he'd see that she was rescued. But he knew she'd convinced herself that she believed him. It was a shame he couldn't be there to see it. Would she run out of hope before she ran out of air? Or would it be a tie?

He mentally removed her from the game board.

 

 

There was no sound.

No light.

And Weaver had no illusions. BMW trunks, even on older models like this one, were tightly sealed. She was sure now that the killer had lied to her. It was a simple horrendous fact. She knew she would soon be dead.

D.O.A. would return and dispose of her body. Or put it on grisly display, complete with carved forehead.

She tried moving her arms and legs and found them tightly bound with industrial duct tape. She could move her head slightly. Shift her legs if she moved them pressed together ankle to knee. There was only slight play in the tape. She could work it looser, but never loose enough to work her way free. And even if she were free of her bonds, would she be able to find a way to open the trunk?

She lay nude and sweating in the fetal position. Frustrated. Fuming. Fretting.

69

“D
amned paddle!” Fedderman said.

He had somehow been knocked clear out of the canoe, all the way up onto the lake's mud bank.

His brother. He had something to do with this.

Lights were flashing, red, blue, white. Fedderman's clothes were stuck to him, soaking wet, and he could feel something, rain drops, tickling his bare ankles where his pants legs had worked their way up as he . . . what?

Fell?

He blinked, trying to remember. Above him, Batman hovered black and silent against the background flashes of light and darkness. Barely moving like a breeze-borne kite, this way, then that . . .

Not Batman
—raining—a black umbrella keeping the light cool drops off his face. Fedderman moved slightly and a wedge of pain slammed into the side of his head, and he remembered.

Some of it, anyway.

“Feds?”

“Feds? You hear me?”

“Cold cocked me,” Fedderman heard himself say. “Wham! Wow!”

“Who?”

“My brother.”

“What?”

“Canoe.”

“You're scaring me, Feds.”

“How do you think I feel?”

Another voice. Authoritative: “Move that car so the ambulance can get close.”

Somebody must be hurt. Fedderman raised his head to see what was going on.

Wham!
The headache. That's what was going on.

But the pain had not only cleaved his mind, it cleared it.

“Weaver,” he said.

“We're looking for her,” Quinn said

“
Looking
for her? Jesus! I don't know what happened, Quinn. I was tailing her and I got hit by the sidewalk. Gotta find her . . .”

“We'll find Weaver. Worry about yourself now.”

Strong but gentle hands slid in tight beneath Fedderman. He rolled an eye and saw a collapsible gurney. There was another, weaker, blast of pain; in his head and down the back of his neck.

He moved higher. Levitating. A patch of night sky and tall buildings were rotating.

He knew they were going to put him on the gurney, transport him.

There was Quinn's face, looming over him, revolving with the nighttime view.
Good man, Quinn.

“I was tailing her and he cold—”

“I know,” Quinn said. “We can talk later, Feds.”

Fedderman felt the gurney moving smoothly. Did the damn thing have wheels? Or were the paramedics carrying him?

“We'll take care of things on this end,” Quinn assured him, as the lighted and cluttered back of the ambulance appeared beyond Fedderman's feet.

“Don't scare Penny with this. Let her know, but don't scare her.”

“Not to worry, Feds.”

Fedderman was inside the ambulance. “Let me know about Weaver. All my fault. You can't trust anybody in this world.”

“Nothing is your fault. Nothing at all.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the vehicle was suddenly close and crowded. Voices spoke incomprehensibly. White forms huddled around Fedderman. The siren growled and revved up.

“Don't ever go out on the lake with the bastard,” Fedderman said, just before they clamped an oxygen mask over his face.

 

 

Five blocks from where Weaver was bound and locked in the trunk of the parked BMW, the killer hailed a cab and took it to an intersection several blocks from his apartment.

He didn't walk toward his apartment, though. Instead he walked east, toward the river, where there were some industrial buildings and a small gray van he'd obtained from a rental firm. He'd used false ID and a hokey story about moving his possessions before his ex-wife claimed everything in divorce proceedings. His first inclination had been to hot-wire and steal a vehicle. He had the skills to do that. But he knew the vehicle might be reported stolen and hit the NYPD hot sheet before morning. That could lead nowhere good. Besides, the semi-legally rented van, with its darkly tinted windows, was exactly what the task required.

He drove to the building where he'd broken Weaver—the fabled criminal returning to the scene of the crime—and loaded the back of the van with a five-gallon can of gasoline that he'd filled two days ago at a BP station in New Jersey. Alongside the gas can he placed the rusty pickax and shovel, and a folded tarpaulin.

All part of his plan. And his plans, once put in motion, ran smoothly.

 

 

Halfway to the Far Castle, which had closed and darkened hours ago, the killer steered the van around a corner and pulled to the curb of a shadowed street lined with closed shops.

After a few minutes, motor idling, he drove forward slowly until he saw a space between buildings. He parked near it and turned off the engine. Keeping in mind that there might be concealed security cameras here—because there might be concealed security cameras anywhere—he put on a baseball cap and pulled its bill low, then turned up his collar.

He got down out of the van, making as little noise as possible, and unloaded the five-gallon can of gas from the back. Keeping his head down, he carried the can to the dark passageway and unscrewed the cap. He went deeper into the darkness, then began walking backward, toward where he'd just come from. He was leaning forward and pouring gasoline in a side-to-side motion as he went. Leaving a long trail that, when lighted, would act as an unstoppable fuse.

A voice said, “Wha' the fu—”

The killer stopped, listened, and heard a scraping sound. He looked in the direction of the noise and saw a dark figure attempting to stand up. A man who had been almost invisible slumped against the brick wall.

A drunk. Or maybe it was drugs. The killer didn't know and didn't care. He was grateful that the man was disoriented and continued to scrape the leather heels of his shoes against the bricks in an effort to slither up to a standing position with his back against the wall.

If he did manage to stand, it looked doubtful that he could stay on his feet.

All right. This was unexpected but could be handled. The killer's plans made allowances for contingencies. He screwed the cap tight on the gas can and carried it to where the man had almost straightened up. He was rough looking from living on the streets, wearing torn dress pants and a black T-shirt with the arms cut off to reveal complicated tattoos that involved snakes and nude women. He smelled of stale vomit, even over the stench of the gas.

The killer said, “Let me help you,” and raised the half-full gas can high.

“Wha's 'at smell?” the tattooed man asked, just before an edge of the metal can came down hard on his head.

He put out a trembling hand to support himself against something that wasn't there, then crumpled to the pavement.

Working faster but wasting no motion, the killer poured gasoline over the unconscious man, then back-stepped quickly out of the passageway, bending low and continuing the trail of gas until the can was empty.

He put the can back in the van, then returned to the mouth of the passageway and the beginning of the trail of gasoline. He struck a match and flipped it into the glistening gas.

Surprised by the ferocity of the sudden blaze, he hurriedly climbed in behind the wheel of the van and got out of there.

He watched his rearview mirror as he approached the corner. An orange glow flickered from the mouth of the passageway.

It grew suddenly brighter as he turned the corner. The sound the igniting gas made was a low
Whump!
that probably didn't alarm or awaken anyone.

Five blocks away, he pulled the van to the curb and got out a disposable cell phone he'd bought at a drugstore uptown. He punched out 911, and in a voice that he made sound excited gave the address of the fire.

“I saw a cop run between the buildings!” he added. “I don't think he came out. And there mighta' been a shot. Oh, God! I dunno! The flames are so high!”

“Please try to remain calm, sir. I'm going to—”

He cut the connection, powered the van's driver's side window all the way down, and tossed the phone so it skipped once on the concrete and went down into a storm sewer. His rubber gloves he left on.

It seemed a long time before there was a reaction to his phone call.

Faraway sirens began a frantic howling, cries that were soon joined by others. The NYPD sirens were accompanied by FDNY wailing. Soon the distant din sounded like wolves calling loud laments to others in the pack.

Satisfied that he'd created an effective diversion, the killer drove the stolen white van away from the maelstrom of flames and sirens, toward the Far Castle.

70

P
enny Fedderman lay alone in a king-size bed and stared at a fly walking on the ceiling, seeing things upside down. Or did the kind of eyes flies have automatically flip things right side up in their vision, the way cell phone screens and pads did?
Was
there an upside down, when it came to flies?

The question was like life, Penny decided. On the surface simple, but on a more thoughtful level, amazingly complicated.

She looked away from the lackadaisical fly, toward the dark window. She could see through the rain-distorted pane to the lights of the taller buildings in the next block. Now and then the tires of vehicles swished past on the wet pavement outside.

Here she lay in bed, angry with her husband, because he insisted on working a job that threatened the premature end of his life. Of their life together. But was she unreasonable to feel that way? She'd known he was a cop when they married. She simply hadn't know all that that involved.

So here she was, warm and alone in bed, while he was away somewhere in a dangerous city, possibly in a place where it wasn't safe, where he was wet and cold.

What were the odds on him coming home at the end of each shift? She'd looked them up and forgotten them, but she knew that only a small percentage of cops actually were wounded or killed on duty. A small percentage unless you were a cop. Or a cop's wife.

Penny switched on the bedside lamp. She was going to read—a detective novel, no less. It would help her to get to sleep, because she knew that the odds were on the side of the detective in the novel, in this case a female PI. She would somehow not only survive any odds, but she would solve the case.

Penny had decided that she owed a certain fidelity to detective novels. They provided a different, safer world. Safer for the fictional detective, anyway.

She knew how life often imitated art, and found that reassuring.

 

 

Weaver had managed to work her way onto her side, which gave her leverage as she kicked at the back of the BMW's trunk, which was also the back of the backseat. She could manage to get only so much strength into her kicks, and the car, a 1995 model, was built solid as a damned brick.

She'd known someone with this kind of car, and she knew that in this model the battery wasn't beneath the hood; it was beneath the backseat and extended slightly into the trunk. She gave up kicking at the back of the seat, and instead began kicking at the carpeted floor up near the nose of the trunk's interior. Over and over. In the same spot.

The tape over her mouth remained firm, and she couldn't manipulate her bound body so that she could kick loud enough for it to be heard. She prayed that she could kick in the bottom of the seat back enough so that she might be able to move one of the battery cables. Kick it loose and perhaps bring about some condition that could be used to create noise. Maybe even set off a theft alarm.

But a part of her recognized that the rest of her was being foolish. She was bound head to toe with duct tape. Her possibilities had been reduced, if any had been genuine in the first place. Her battering bare heels could do only so much damage.

Her efforts were causing her nude body to twist around on the carpeted trunk floor so that she was no longer kicking the rear of the backseat. She was kicking with her bare feet the upholstered part of the trunk that housed the power source for the interior lights.

The trouble was that the lights drew current from circuitry that was no doubt connected by a thick wiring harness.

Her heels ached. Her kicks were softer now, becoming feeble. She realized she was losing strength fast.

What she didn't realize was that her kicks had finally dented the carpeted fitting, and done slight damage to the wiring.

Electrical current arced. She could smell its acrid scent.

But nothing seemed to have changed. No earsplitting horn blasting, no loud outside signals of theft or vandalism.

She couldn't know that outside the trunk, the car's taillights and one of the reverse lights were silently blinking regularly and out of sequence. Somewhere in the rear of the car, she had done enough damage to the wiring to create a repetitive spark.

But was that good? The car was no doubt parked in a desolate spot. Maybe even indoors. For all she knew, it was in the basement parking garage—or whatever it was—where they'd started from. There was no one around to notice the spark she had fought so hard for and finally attained. No one to see, hear or smell it.

Until that spark might ignite the gasoline fumes.