Play It Again (9 page)

“Why?”

“Because in the last eighteen months there have been other unsolved murders where the crime scene was arranged the same way.”

R J. felt for his cigar and stuck it into his face. He bit down hard. “Do the cops know about this?”

Her eyes gleamed. “They have the same information I have, R.J.”

He barked out a short laugh. “But they don’t have your brains, right? You’re okay, kid.” He sank into the other chair beside her. “All right. Let’s take a look.”

Casey leaned forward and grabbed the joystick. “This is the first one,” she said, leaning the stick forward. She wound quickly past some standard-looking interview footage, a few exterior shots, and then: “There.” She stopped the tape.

The camera was looking down on the back of a nude body, male, middle-aged. The guy would never have made anybody’s pin-up calendar alive, and dead he was far beyond a little unsightly.

A pool of blood spread out around the body, although no marks were visible on the man’s back.

Just out of reach of his outstretched hand was a battered ukulele.

R.J. frowned and leaned closer. “What’s that?” He pointed
at the screen. Something was barely visible, tucked in between the cheeks of the body’s naked buttocks.

Casey gave him a grimace. “It’s a spread of pictures. Polaroids. Cops wouldn’t let me see ’em. Said they were too gruesome.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head. “Cause of death?”

She was already rewinding the second tape. “The closest they could come was to say either shock from multiple injuries or loss of blood. They said it looked like some kind of crazy surgery, where the doctor didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he kept looking anyway.”

She stopped and once again ran the tape ahead with the joystick. The same kind of stuff: same crime-scene crew. Then she stopped the tape again. “Number two.”

There was a woman wired to a straight-backed chair. At least, R.J. was pretty sure it had been a woman. It looked like her lips, and most of her face, had been eaten away by acid. In her hand was a cheap Japanese fan.

“Were there Polaroids at this one?”

Casey nodded and hit rewind. “At all of them. But the police—it was a Lieutenant Kates in particular, do you know him?”

R.J. nodded. His lips moved away from his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. “I know Freddy.”

“Well, he felt that the way each victim was killed was so different they couldn’t be connected. The Polaroids had to be coincidence.”

“He also feels he doesn’t want the blowdries from the evening news on his ass about a serial killer,” said R.J. “But maybe he’s right. What makes you think they
are
connected?”

She looked him square in the eye. “When I was a freshman in college the girls on my floor played a game. It was called Date Lit 101. The others would pick a character from fiction
and you had to tell what a first date with that character would be like.”

“Who did you get?” he asked her with a wolfish grin.

“Stephen Dedalus, from
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

“Sounds like a pretty dull date.”

“The point is, you had to get inside the head of these characters, the books. It was always you, but the experience was different.

“That’s what the killer is doing.”

R.J. blinked. “I must have missed something there.”

She sighed at him impatiently. “You had to
think
like the character, then set up a date the way he would have done it. The killer is doing the same thing. He’s committing each murder like he’s playing a different part—a different
character
is committing each murder, but it’s the same actor, don’t you see?”

R.J. whistled. No wonder Kates was skeptical. “I guess I don’t. How can you tell?”

She shrugged. “At the moment, it’s just a feeling I’ve got,” she said, and then seeing his expression she added, “What, you never get hunches?”

“I’ve got one right now. Roll that tape forward.”

She turned and pushed the joystick again. “What are you looking for?”

“Footage of the funeral, if you have it. I thought—there!”

She stopped the tape. A small crowd was gathered at an open grave. “Okay, run it forward, slowly.” The tape went on, frame by frame. “Stop.” Casey froze it and R.J. leaned forward.

An overweight man with a florid complexion was leaning on an adjacent tombstone, looking just a little tipsy somehow. It was hard to make out too many details of his face, but R.J. was sure he’d never seen the man before. Except—

“Next tape.” Again they wound forward to the funeral. And once again R.J. stopped it as the camera panned across a solitary man on the outskirts of the small crowd. “Stop.”

She shook her head. “This guy’s a lot skinnier.”

“So he was wearing padding before. Look at the face.”

This time he was a Jesuit priest, looking solemnly toward the grave. He was about the same height as the drunk, but slimmer. R.J. couldn’t quite make out the face. The angle was bad and the cameraman wasn’t really focusing on the priest. But it could have been the same face, or at least similar, as though the two men were related.

More than that, though, was—what? Something he could not for the life of him put his finger on.

He swore softly under his breath.

“What? Do you see something?” Casey asked, frowning at the monitor.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to be sure. But after what you said about one guy playing different parts, and the feeling I already got about this…I don’t know.” He shook his head. It was just too stupid to say out loud.

Casey leaned toward him impatiently. “Come on, R.J., don’t hold out on me. What’ve you got?”

He threw the mangled cigar at the wastebasket and let the breath hiss out between his teeth. “I think I recognize the actor,” he said.

CHAPTER 11

R.J. was unable to shake that haunting feeling of familiarity. He and Casey had looked at the tapes over and over until almost dawn, and when he finally stumbled down the stairs to go home all they could agree on was that it might be the same guy.

But the name wouldn’t come, and he could not remember how or why the face was familiar.

R.J. took the subway home, hoping the adrenaline rush of danger would keep him awake. But all the muggers must have taken the night off too, and he dozed around Grand Central Station. He woke up one stop past his and walked back.

The elevator was out again in his building, so he climbed the four flights up to his apartment, so tired he couldn’t even think of a good death threat for the super.

He opened the door and stood blinking for a good thirty seconds, sure he was hallucinating.

There was a body on his couch.

“Shit,” he said, and the body sat up.

“Well,” said Henry Portillo, stretching. “Hell of a time to
be tomcatting around, R.J. Your mother’s funeral is this afternoon.”

R.J. was stung. “It’s all right for
you
to sleep,” he snapped. “She was my mother.”

Portillo froze in midyawn. R.J. could see the remark had hurt. Tough, he thought.

“All right, R.J.,” he said softly, “let’s just start over, okay? Where have you been all night?”

“Working. With that TV producer, Casey Wingate.”

Portillo nodded. “What did you find?”

R.J. sank into a chair and rubbed his bleary eyes. “I’m not sure if I found anything. But I think we got a serial killer. I don’t know how or why he got on to my mother. Maybe coincidence. And—”

He hesitated. He knew that Uncle Hank, like most longtime cops, would respect a hunch. But it was still tough to put into words something that indefinite. Still, he wanted the older man’s input. “I think I know the guy.”

Hank leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “Tell me,” he demanded.

R.J. ran it all down for him: the different figures at the funerals that
could
have been the same man in different disguises, Casey’s ideas about the role-playing, the haunting feeling that he knew that face. When he finished, Hank lounged back on the couch, his brow furrowed in thought.

“It fits,” he said. “When I saw what the crime scene was like…” He shook his head. “A one-time killer, somebody who does it for revenge, out of passion, whatever—somebody like that doesn’t do those things. This guy took a lot of time, made it look perfect.”

“He’ll be there this afternoon,” R.J. said.

“That fits too,” Portillo agreed. “Let’s see if we can’t catch him. But first…” He stood up. “It has been, by my account, almost three years since you have had a proper breakfast.”

“Uncle Hank—”

But Portillo held up a hand to cut him off. “No, R.J. You are tired, and you’re hungry. You can’t catch a killer without a fire in your belly, and I’m going to put it there.” With that he headed for the kitchen.

R.J. trailed after him. “You can’t even get most of the stuff you need in Manhattan,” he protested.

“I brought it with me,” answered Portillo, rummaging through several grocery bags. “Why don’t you make coffee while I cook?”

In a very few minutes the two were sitting at the rickety kitchen table, tearing into
huevos rancheros
smothered in hot salsa, refried beans, and fresh, hot tortillas.

R.J. was surprised at how hungry he was. He wolfed down two full plates before settling back with his coffee.

“Better, huh?”

R.J. had to agree.

As R J. stood up to get more coffee, there was a knock at the door.

Hank looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but R.J. shrugged. “Not a clue,” he said and went to open the door.

Hookshot stood in the hall. R.J. gaped in surprise: His friend was wearing a tie with his black silk jacket. R.J. hadn’t even known Hookshot owned a tie.

“R.J.,” said Hookshot with grave formality, “is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah, there is,” said R.J., holding wide the door. “Come on in.”

The three of them sat in the kitchen with mugs of coffee. When they had filled Hookshot in, he nodded. “Count me in. I can get some of the minimensch to help too.” Hookshot had a small army of preteen boys working for him. They hawked papers, carried messages, and gathered information.

“All right,” R.J. said. “The service is at Parker and McDonald’s on 44th Street. It’s not a big place. Should be easy enough to keep an eye out.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Hookshot. “This is going to be a circus. You’ll have two or three hundred people from the press, God knows how many geeks and gawkers and goons. People be coming from everywhere, man.”

“He’s right,” said Portillo.

“Sure, I know. But if they come in they all have to come through the door. I can keep an eye out—”

“Leave it to me,” Hookshot said. “You’re gonna be busy.”

“I can handle it,” R.J. said through his teeth.

“
Chico,
no. There is enough for you to do,” Hank said.

“Hey,” added Hookshot gently, “the news hounds be on your ass like slick on a pimp. Let the minimensch handle this, R.J. Kinda thing they good at.”

“He is right,” said Portillo. “Let him do it, him and his
pobrecitos.
You and I will be busy.”

“You? What are you going to be doing?”

Uncle Hank looked at him with quiet hurt in his eyes. “I will be with you,
chico. Como siempre.
”

R.J. nodded, ashamed. “Like always.”

“Be easy on this, R.J.,” Hookshot told him. “I’ll have a couple of little dudes on roller blades waiting outside. Midtown traffic like it’s gonna be, they be faster than anyone on foot or
in a car.”

“All right,” said R.J., suddenly overwhelmingly tired.

“So tell me again what we’re looking for,” Hookshot said. “‘Could be anybody’ just doesn’t cut it.”

“It’s what we got,” answered R.J.

“If this guy fits the kind of profile I think he does,” Portillo tossed in, “he’ll want to get close, be part of it. I think a guy like this, he will get off on being in your face without you knowing who he is.”

“From what I figured out with Wingate,” R.J. said, “he
could look like just about anybody. Young, old, fat, thin—whatever he wants. But I agree with Uncle Hank: He’ll want to get close.”

Hookshot shook his head. “That’s gonna fit just about everybody in town too. You don’t know how they’re talking about this on the street. You were selling tickets, you could
retire tomorrow.”

“All I can say is, keep an eye out for anybody who doesn’t look quite right,” said R.J.

“Or somebody who looks a little
too
right,” Portillo added.

Hookshot nodded. “That should cover just about everybody,” he said with a straight face. “Okay, I got a couple of real smart guys I can stick inside. You have to fix it for them, R.J.”