The Assailant (16 page)

“She died. Friday night.”

“What? What happened?”

“She was killed. Murdered.”

“Oh, God.” She placed her hands on the railing of the balcony. She took a few breaths. Then she looked at him. “Larry? You think Larry did it?”

“I don't know yet,” Hastings said. “What do you think?”

“I think you're fucked. Larry wouldn't murder anyone. And he had no interest in her.”

“He wasn't attracted to her?”

“No.” She was offended by the suggestion.

“He never made a play for her?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she would have told me.”

“Yeah?”

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe he liked her. Maybe he would have liked to fuck her. I don't know. But nothing happened between them. I
know
that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I would've known. We were living in the same apartment together. If they had done it, I would've known. You can tell. A woman can always tell.”

“But he wanted to, didn't he?”

“I don't know.”

“Yes, you do. You know.”

“Okay, maybe he did. He's not perfect, you know.”

Right, Hastings thought. He said, “But she wasn't interested, was she?”

“I don't know. I guess not.”

“Did it make him angry?”

“Yeah, maybe. But he didn't—look, he didn't do what you think he did.”

“I haven't said anything,” Hastings said.

“I don't want to talk to you no more. I don't think I like you. You acted like you cared about me, cared about what he was doing to me. But all you care about is Reesa.”

“Reesa's dead, Jennifer.”

“I know that,” she said. “Okay? I know that. What do you want?”

“Tell me where he was Friday night.”

“He was at work. He works at McGill's.”

“Saturday night.”

“The same place. He's a barback.”

“When did he leave for work Friday?”

“I don't know. I was at work until six thirty. He was gone when I got home. Saturday, I worked until eight. He was gone when I got home that night too.”

“When did he come home?”

“Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know. I was asleep.”

“Did he wake you?”

He meant, wake her up to use her. Or hurt her.

“No,” she said. “He didn't wake me.”

“What do you know about Reesa?”

“We worked together. She quit, I stayed.”

“Did you know . . . ?”

“That she became a hooker? She never told me, but yeah, I figured it out. All of a sudden she had all this money. At first, I thought she'd fallen in with a coke dealer or something. Or maybe she was dealing herself. But I figured it out.”

“Did you ever talk to her about it?”

“You mean, tell her to stop? No. I didn't care, really. It was her business.”

“What did Larry think about it?”

“I don't think he knew. He's not the brightest guy.”

“He's hit you before, hasn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Has he ever put his hands around your neck?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“No. He never tried to choke me. He may have, you know, grabbed me by my throat once or twice. But—”

“When did he do that?”

“I don't know. Maybe a few weeks ago. Look, I told you, he wouldn't do this. I know him. He ain't like that. Seriously, do you think if I believed he killed those girls, I'd be telling you this? You think I'd want to protect him?”

Hastings had no doubt that she would, love could be a sickness, but he said, “I don't know.”

“I mean, if I thought he had done that, I'd want him in jail for my own sake. Wouldn't I?”

“Maybe.”

“
Maybe
? My God, do you think
I'm
some sort of monster too?”

It was a three-story gray-stone town-house on Pershing Place, off Euclid Avenue in the Central West End. Walking distance to the Chase Park Plaza and Forest Park. The real estate market had faltered in the past few months, but Marla still believed she would get the asking price, which was a million seven. Her latest showing was at seven thirty in the evening, a bond salesman and his wife, transplanted from New York to St. Louis so he could manage the sales department at Edward Jones. The husband was younger than Marla expected, maybe less than thirty-five. Rich, though. Very rich. The bonuses they paid on Wall Street alone could pay for this house. Marla was friendly to the man, but not too friendly. She could see that the wife was intimidated by her and she didn't want to alienate
her
. You don't sell the wife, you don't sell the house.

Marla was older than the wife. Forty-two, but she still had the model's figure and she knew it too. The bond dealer's wife was frumpy and getting heavy, and her hair was cut like a boy's. Marla liked to be looked at and she caught the husband ogling her at least twice, but she hoped the bond dealer wasn't getting any ideas that would spoil the sale.

She was wearing a Donna Karan outfit. Tan skirt and jacket over a dark brown silk blouse. Her chest was nicely tanned.

The short-haired wife was sighing and
hmmm
ing and saying, “I don't know . . .” but Marla was an experienced Realtor and she knew that the lady liked the house. And she was right to like it. It was reasonably priced and was in one of the higher-prestige neighborhoods in the city.

Marla said, “In Manhattan, you would have to pay about three million for something like this.”

“More like five,” the wife said, not making eye contact with Marla when she corrected her. “And you'd be in Manhattan.”

Marla smiled over the comment.
Bitch
, she thought. Probably pushed her husband to get out of New York so they could live in a better place to raise their children. But she wasn't going to let these Midwest yokels forget that she was from New York. No sir. They've got the money, Marla thought. They have the money.

The husband looked past his wife's shoulder and gave Marla an apologetic smile. Marla smiled back at him. A moment of conspiracy. But Marla cringed on the inside. The husband was not exactly ugly. Not hideous, just sort of doughy and unappealing. Probably one of those types who hadn't been with a girl till his twenties, but then got rich and somehow believed he was entitled to beautiful women. Now he was all but winking at her.
Hey, it's the wife, heh-heh. What are you going to do? Heh-heh
. He was a prospective buyer, not a prospective lover. Men like this never seemed to figure out the distinction.

The wife looked at the husband, not catching him leering.
The wife gave him a tired “let's go” look and they began moving toward the foyer.

At the front door, the husband said, “We'll be in touch. You know we like it. I just have to talk to her, that's all.”

“I understand,” Marla said. “I do have to show it to another couple tomorrow. No pressure, though.”

“Of course not,” he said. He hesitated, then extended his hand. Marla shook it, conscious of the man's wife getting into the Lexus on the street. The wife wasn't looking up at them. She seemed preoccupied with getting home or to a restaurant where she could rag on someone there.

The husband held Marla's hand a tad longer than necessary. Then he released it and walked down the stairs. “I'll call you,” he said.

“Okay,” Marla said, her sales voice doing the talking.

She went back into the house and made sure all the lights were turned off and the doors were locked.

Then she called her office and told her assistant that Anderson, the customer, would likely make an offer tomorrow and that he was to be forwarded to her immediately. She told the assistant this even though Anderson had her cell number. He might call for a social reason as well. But the goal was to get him to sign on the line that was dotted. After that, if he persisted in this delusion that there was some sort of romantic connection between them, she would graciously but promptly disabuse him of it.

She clicked off the cell phone and climbed into her Range Rover. For Sale signs were in the back. She put the key in the ignition and turned.

Nothing.

She tried again.

Nothing.

“Oh, shit,” she said. Sixty-thousand-dollar SUV and it wouldn't start. “Unbelievable,” she said. “Un-fucking-believable.” Her language was coarser when customers weren't around.

She was still trying when a man walked up on the sidewalk. He was wearing a Burberry raincoat and an Irishman's flat hat. He slowed his walk, hesitated, and then walked over to the driver's window.

Marla opened it.

“You need a jump?” the man said.

“I don't know. It just won't start. It's never done this before.”

The man smiled. He seemed sympathetic. Marla noticed that he was well dressed. He said, “I'm not a mechanic, but I think it's probably your battery.” The man pointed to a late-model Mercedes and said, “That's my car there. I've got jumper cables.” He paused then said, “If you want to try that.”

“Okay,” Marla said.

She watched the man walk back to the Mercedes and pull it forward so that it was parallel to the Range Rover. Marla stepped out of her vehicle as the trunk of the Mercedes flipped up. She was standing next to him as they looked into the empty trunk.

Marla said, “Where are they?” Meaning the cables. But then her consciousness went black as the man brought down something hard on the back of her head. She fell halfway into the open trunk. Then the man took her by the legs and shoved the rest of her in. Then he closed the trunk.

There was a photograph of Ronnie Wulf with the mayor and the Missouri candidate for the Senate behind Wulf's desk. It had been taken on a golf course, a fund-raiser of some sort. It made Hastings uncomfortable for some reason. He was a former athlete, perhaps even arguably a retired one, but he had never seen the appeal in golf.

Wulf was sitting behind his desk, reading Hastings's latest report. Attached to it were supplemental reports written by Detectives Murphy and Rhodes.

Wulf looked up from it and said, “Well, what do you think?”

“We don't have any evidence linking him to it.”

“He knew Reesa Woods. You know he's violent, abusive to women.”

“That's evidence that he knew Reesa Woods and that he roughs up his girlfriend. It's not evidence that he strangled these two women.”

“Have you looked hard enough?”

“We're still looking at it.”

What he was trying not to do was make the facts fit the profile of Larry MacPherson. Hastings didn't really know what Larry MacPherson's psychological “profile” was, and he wasn't sure it would make much of a difference if he did.

Wulf said, “Don't you have a gut feeling?”

“No,” Hastings said. “And to be frank, I'm not sure I'd want to trust it anyway. Sometimes gut feelings can have shit for brains.”

Wulf didn't seem amused by this. He seemed disappointed. He said, “Detective Murphy's report indicates that MacPherson showed up for work Friday night at seven
P.M
. Reesa Woods's approximate time of death could have been as early as six fifteen
P.M
. He could have killed her and gotten to work in that time.”

“I understand that—”

Wulf went on. “It also indicates that MacPherson left work at approximately eleven thirty
P.M
. on Saturday night. Which would have given him time to kill Adele Sayers.”

“Yes,” Hastings said, “it's possible. But it's not likely.”

Wulf looked directly at him as he said, “It's not likely.” As if the statement was weak.

Hastings felt he was being interrogated now. Pressured to agree. He didn't like it one goddamn bit.

He said, “Chief, he would have had to book it pretty quickly from Laclede's Landing to West County in order to kill Adele Sayers. Very quickly. The evidence shows that Adele Sayers was murdered from behind in her own vehicle. That is, that the killer followed her to the Thunderbird Motel and waited in the car for her
before
he killed her. It's not likely that MacPherson would have had the time to do that.”

“You feel sure about that.”

“You want me to say what I think, or you just want me to agree with you?”

“Take it easy, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” Hastings raised a hand in conciliation. “I'm not trying to be difficult. I think the guy's a fucking nasty piece of work. He likes to beat up his girlfriend and take a lot of steroids. But that describes about a quarter of the people we deal with on a daily basis.”

“That makes him incapable of murder?”

“Plenty of people are capable of murder,” Hastings said. “Him probably included. But we're dealing with something that's . . . uncommon.”

“And you think Larry MacPherson's common?” Wulf put a not pleasant emphasis on the last word.

“In a way, yes.”

Wulf leaned back and seemed to think for a moment. Then he said, “You went to behavioral-science training in Quantico, didn't you?”

“Yeah.” It was a one-week course.

“I understand you're skeptical of this psychological-profiling business.”

“I am.”

Wulf said, “How come?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Don't you think those guys at FBI know what they're doing?”

Hastings sighed. “I suppose they do.”

“George, I remember when I was younger, first became a detective,
I had some backup role on an FBI case. I didn't like the feds, thought they looked down their nose at me. I understand how it is. But you've got to get past that.”