Twist (Book 1): The Abnorm Chronicles-Twist (16 page)

Chapter
40

Still angry at how he had found himself that morning, Thumper answered the pounding on his door. He didn’t even need to look through the peephole to know who was on the other side.

Cop knocks were
all too distinctive.

The bitch must have reported him for trashing her apartment
after all. He considered ducking out back, laying low for a while, but that would only put them off and make the situation look bad for him. But he wasn’t the guilty one here. The kinky bitch had drugged him! Maybe there was some residual roofie in his bloodstream, and that would be proof enough. Yeah, that would show extenuating circumstances all right. Not that he could ever catch a lucky break.

He pulled open the door to face two men standing
outside his door. Though they both wore suits, one looked like a cop and the other one looked like a Fed. Thumper had a sense for these things. He could tell the difference.

Thumper gave them his most charming
“I hate you” smile. “How can I help you officers?”

Both had their badges out and ready.
“Expecting us? My name is Detective Jones, Denver PD, and this is Special Agent Cooper from Equitable Services. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

Thumper stared at them.
Who would send a full-blown detective for a little apartment vandalism? And he didn’t like the sound of “Special Agent” either, but he knew the drill. “Yes, officers. Ask away.”

The agent
studied him with an unsettling intensity. “Are you Wilfred Eugene Lawrence?”

“
Yeah, but most people just call me Thumper.”

The one in the cheap detective suit rolled his eyes.
“We’ll keep that in mind, if we get to a nickname basis.”

Agent Cooper said, “We’d like to know your whereabouts last night between midnight and dawn.” His tone said they already knew damn well where he was at the time.

“Out drinking. Picked up some chick at a bar, went home with her. Is that a crime?”

“For her maybe,”
muttered Detective Jones.

“Would that have been in the vicinity of the Lion’s Regency
Apartments?” Cooper asked.

The name meant nothing to Thumper. “Some shithole. I don’t know
. After I woke up, she was gone, and I went home. I doubt I could even find the place again.” This wasn’t the line of questioning he expected. Usually cops came right out and got in your face. He collected his thoughts. “I don’t remember where it was . . . a five, ten minute walk from here. It was still on the Hill.”

The detective continued, as if dropping the hammer,
“Mr. Lawrence, your DNA was found at a crime scene. Hairs on a wig used in a disguise.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Thumper had said that to cops before. This time he meant it.

Unconsciously, he touched his head, rubbed where the scalp was sore from where the bitch had yanked out a handful. He rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell, no . . .” He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and saw both officers draw back, on guard for violence. Thumper dialed it down a notch. “Look, the skank I went home with—she drugged me. I swear! She was into the kinky stuff, handcuffs and shit like that, but she knocked me out. I woke up alone—but I could feel that she had pulled out my hair. She must have taken it, planted it on the scene. I’m being framed!”

Jones could barely keep the sneer from his face. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Actually, Thumper did. But he didn’t have any other explanation.

Agent Cooper, though, said, “I
n fact, Jones, it sounds too ridiculous to be a made-up alibi. It might even be true.” Cooper had an odd way of looking at him, like he was some kind of human x-ray. He turned to the detective. “I doubt he could have slid under those cars, doesn’t match Adam Lee’s description or what we saw on the dash cam, doesn’t fit the pattern.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Damn right!” Thumper said.

“And if our suspect is a female . . .” Cooper turned that eerie gaze on Thumper again. “What can you tell us about this girl who drugged you?”

“
I don’t know, medium sized, thin, sexy, couple of tats.”

“Do you remember her name?” Cooper asked.

Both Thumper and Jones looked at the agent as if he had asked a particularly stupid question.

Jones pressed, “Hair color, eye color? Can you give us anything?”

Thumper shook his head. “I can tell you the bar, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her there before. Café Netherworld.
I think Skinny Dave was bartending. You can ask him. He probably remembers more than I do.” His pulse was racing now. She must have done some nasty crime if this much firepower was coming after him. “That’s all I can think of.”

“Better think harder, Mr. Lawrence,” Jones said. “Two murders last night around
3:00 a.m. Two
cops
.” The detective let that sink in for a moment. “See, we have a lot of incentive to find the killer, and your DNA was found on a disguise that was worn by the killer. Looks bad for you, Thumper. Really bad.”

Thumper swallowed hard. “I know, it sounds crazy, man. I’m a two-timer, and I
ain’t gonna do a third stretch. Please believe me, I’m telling you the truth. That’s all I got. I ain’t a saint, but why would I kill a cop? Why would I kill anybody?” His thoughts were frantic, and now he counted himself lucky that the bitch hadn’t just chained him up and killed him in her bed, sliced off his balls, filleted his liver and cooked it up with some fava beans.

But
if the cops had already identified his DNA, they would be ready to close the case . . . . Then he realized they must be bluffing. “Hey, wait a minute, you’d never get DNA results that fast.” The paternity test he’d had to undergo last year took five friggin’ months.

“I can,” Agent Cooper said, and Thumper believed him.

“We’re bringing you in, Mr. Lawrence,” the detective said.

“But what for? I didn’t do anything except pick the wrong bitch at a bar—”

“For further questioning. And to make sure you don’t decide to visit distant relatives in Alaska.”

“Or maybe for your own protection,” Cooper added. “Maybe
the killer will want to eliminate witnesses, and you can identify her.” Thumper’s eyes widened. “You can work with the sketch artist to help us find this woman.”

Jones
said, “Now, am I gonna need to use the cuffs? The sooner we catch the real killer, the sooner you’re off the hook. So it’s in your best interests to cooperate.”

Cooper spoke to Jones as if Thumper wasn’t
right there. “It’s not him, Jones. As crazy as his story sounds, my gut says he’s telling the truth.”

“
Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I’m getting the same feeling.”

Somehow, though, Thumper didn’t take much reassurance from that
as they led him away.

Chapter
41

Turning back to the Sunday afternoon outside the window, Adam continued scanning. He had enjoyed getting to know Rodriguez, but beneath it all, he was extremely worried about Selene. Her curtains had been closed so that he couldn’t see inside—since yesterday afternoon, in fact, and that was unlike her. She never seemed to care about anyone watching what she did in her bedroom. In fact, she might even have expected that somebody was watching.

He focused on her curtains, pushed his perception, and teased out a thin and awkward slice of view that bounced off a water drop on the
window sill, under the curtain, through the window.

H
er apartment had been ransacked! Someone had thrown her sheets, clothes, furniture about, knocked the pictures from her walls.

Alarmed, he sent his perception elsewhere, through the
main-hall windows, out into the corridor with the elevator, then down to her apartment door—which stood wide open. Yes, her place had been trashed. He could see few details, but what if Selene lay there, another victim, her throat cut open . . . like Chloe!

He
left a ghost of his perception standing in the hallway outside her apartment, then called to Rodriguez. “I think we might have something. One of the apartments . . . I’m worried about—“

Then the elevator door opened, and Selene emerged.
Selene, alive! He sagged his head back against the rest, feeling relief.

Rodriguez said, “What did you see?”

“Maybe nothing, Detective. Give me another minute. Could be a false alarm.”

Adam
watched Selene. She was crying, devastated about something. Something at work? Something in her personal life? He could see the flush on her cheeks. She kept wiping her face on the sleeves of her scrubs, striding down the empty hallway, shoulders down, head tucked, refusing to acknowledge that the rest of the world existed. But when she got to her front door and stopped, a gasp of shock and disbelief escaped her lips.

From his many times watching her, Adam had seen
Selene inflict pain upon herself, wanting her sex partners to hurt her, damage her, as if to prove that she could endure it—or as if she felt she deserved it. She had faced plenty of drama in her life, went about her days battered and bruised, but she never learned how to keep it from happening again.

“Need me to do anything?” Rodriguez pressed.

“No . . . it’s just one of the people in the other building, someone I—” He dropped his voice. “Someone I watched often. I get to know them.”
Like Chloe.
“This woman just had a terrible day. Domestic mess. Nothing to do with the case.” He sighed in disappointment and concern.

Something wasn’t right, though. Selene’s
reaction to the vandalism seemed odd. Adam watched with growing uneasiness as she walked into her living room, assessed the damage. She seemed more disgusted than horrified by what she saw, and certainly not afraid.

Something about the way she moved triggered a sense of recognition in him.
She turned so he could see her face, and she was actually
smiling
, as if satisfied with what had happened here. But that made no sense.

Stepping over debris, she walked into her small kitchen; Adam had never seen it before because the angles were not right, but now he watched from a reflection bounced off of a framed print tha
t had been knocked to the floor. Viewing her from that disorienting angle, his vision looked up.

Selene
straightened and glanced around as if she felt someone watching her. No wonder she was worried if one of her dirtbag boyfriends had wrecked her place. She would be on edge.

For just a moment, she stopped with her head tilted to the right, looking up and out of the hall window—
directly at Adam along the ricocheted reflections. But that couldn’t be. There was no way she could have noticed him.

Selene stood before a cupboard with her back to him, opened it, and
stared at the broad selection of liquor bottles there, mostly whiskey but other hard liquor as well. She was a party girl, always brought men home, usually poured them drinks to keep them drunk. But he had never seen all those bottles before.

She poured herself a glass of whiskey, as if she needed to brace herself for whatever demons she had to face.
Then, inexplicably, she poured the rest of the bottle down the sink.

Adam couldn’t stop watching. He pushed his sensitivity, but she remained silent, contemplating. Her body seemed familiar to him, but different from before
, as if he looked at her through a different set of filters.

Selene reached up and removed the tie from her ponytail, shook her head to let her long auburn hair fall loose.

Adam had seen it before. This was exactly the glimpse he had seen of the shadowy figure—the killer—depositing the disguise in the Dumpster before doubling back to murder the two cops in the squad car.

He drew in a cold breath, stared until his eyes burned with shock-hot tears.

Then Selene closed the door of her apartment, severing his lines of sight.

Chapter
42

Though it was the middle of a bright Sunday afternoon, Café Netherworld was dark and gloomy, intentionally so. New Wave and underground artwork adorned the walls. Five Mac computers, each one with its own little workstation, were lined up on the wall adjacent to the door. Rather than short wooden tables, the seating area was crowded with four-foot-tall brushed-steel mammoths. The back area of Café Netherworld had three pool tables, two pinball machines, and six more booths. All of the seats were empty.

The man behind the bar was about six foot four, lithe
and muscular, thoroughly decorated with tattoos and piercings. He looked up as Cooper and Jones walked in. “Get you guys something?”

Jones glanc
ed at Cooper, as if he felt he needed to explain. “They cater mostly to goths and punks.”

Cooper nodded,
knowing the crowds wouldn’t start gathering until much later. This wasn’t a sports bar where customers hung out to watch the games on big-screen TVs while drinking Coors Light.

They
pulled up bar stools and ordered two cups of coffee. “I’ll have to brew it,” said the bartender.

Jones
said, “We’re looking for a bartender named Skinny Dave.”

The
man looked at them askance as he worked with the coffeemaker behind the bar. It did not seem to be used often. “And who would be looking for him?”

Jones pulled out his badge, and Cooper followed suit.

The bartender was neither impressed nor intimidated. He flicked the coffeemaker and started the brew. “I’m Skinny Dave, and I usually have some idea why the cops come around, but I’m not aware of any trouble today.”

“Last night
, two cops were murdered a couple of blocks from here.”

Skinny Dave got out two mugs from under the
bar, set a cup full of sugar packets and powdered creamer in front of them. “I haven’t been out since then, and it was loud in here last night. I doubt I know anything that could help you.”

Cooper said, “We’re
trying to corroborate a statement made by one of your customers. Wilfred Eugene Lawrence.”

“You might know him as Thumper,” Jones added.

The bartender
obviously recognized the name, but he turned to the coffeemaker and filled the two mugs. “Sure, Thumper. Fine upstanding citizen. You saying he killed two cops?”

“He’s saying he didn’t.
Claims he was here last night and went home with a young woman.”

Dave slid over the coffees. “I wouldn’t doubt it. He’s usually in here. Doesn’t get lucky often, but sometimes.”

Cooper said,
“If his statement is true, what happened last night wouldn’t qualify as getting lucky.”

Skinny Dave reached under the bar to grab a rag. “I’m trying to remember what happened last night.”
He mopped the bar, slowly nodding to himself. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I remember her. She doesn’t come in often, but I’ve seen her here before. I think she lives nearby.” He paused, then added quickly, “I never hooked up with her, though.”

“Can you give us a description? A name?” Cooper asked. “An address?”

“Don’t know all those details. Average height, reddish-brown hair, kinda long. Pretty enough that she didn’t have to work hard to convince Thumper to take her home, if that’s what you’re asking. I think her name is . . . Selene. Yeah, that’s her name. Her taste tends to run to the seedier type of guy, based on the times I’ve seen her go home with somebody. She could do better, if you ask me. But who am I, Cupid?”

Cooper had another idea.
“What about credit cards? Did she pay with a card, or with cash?”

Skinny
Dave raised his eyebrows. “Someone like that doesn’t usually pay for her own drinks.”

Cooper turned to the detective. “A name like Selene is unusual enough, we can run computer searches, pull up the people in the radius of interest. I might be able to spot a connection.”

Jones turned to the bartender. “Right now, Thumper’s working with a sketch artist, and I can bring it down here when they’re done. His DNA was connected to the crime scene, but he says this woman drugged him and set him up.”

Cooper watched the bartender for a reaction.
“Does that surprise you?”

Skinny Dave
shrugged. “I manage a place like this. Nothing surprises me.”