Act of Betrayal (10 page)

She heard the click of the phone disconnecting. Julia had hung up on her.

“Exactly what you’ve just told me,” PJ finished lamely.

PJ hung up the phone, her thoughts spinning. Schultz had asked for a three-day grace period before she said anything about the fact that he had contacted her. He hadn’t known about the hit-and-run when he called, or he probably wouldn’t have gotten her involved in the first place. Undoubtedly the purpose of his phone call had been to pump her for information about his son’s case. The way he had reacted when he found out he was a suspect seemed far too extreme. Grace period? Telling her she was in way over her head?

He knew the workings of the law. Even if things looked bad on the surface, there could be ways to corroborate Julia’s story. A train ticket stub, for instance. Someone who could identify Schultz at the station in Chicago. Maybe they stopped at a favorite restaurant after Julia picked him up. If he knew he was innocent, and Julia and her friend backed up his story of spending the night in Chicago, then why was he so leery of turning himself in? What was he running from?

There were only two explanations that came to mind. Either Julia was lying about his alibi, or he feared for his life if he turned himself in.

Or both.

T
HE NEXT TARGET WOULD
be taken down Tuesday night, possibly on a crowded street and almost certainly with some show of security around him. It would be hard to get up close. Cut reviewed his choices, and settled on throwing knives from about twenty feet, which would be outside any circle of security men. It was silent, no gunshot to give away his position, and no retained weapon to pose a disposal problem. Even if he was somehow picked out of the crowd, how could anyone prove that the knives originated in his practiced hands? He would be wearing gloves, of course, leather ones that gave him an excellent grip, so there would be no fingerprints. The temperature after dark wouldn’t be low enough to justify even unlined gloves, so he would have to remember to get the gloves off in a hurry.

Cut needed money. He considered making a phone call to get it, then decided that it would be better if he obtained it himself with a couple of quick daylight muggings. His first netted him only fourteen dollars. On the second he was lucky: two hundred and eighty-three. He never did understand why people carried around so much. He never did, except of course when he had to buy something out of the ordinary. He didn’t trust credit cards. They led the weak-willed into trouble. Not that he was weak-willed when it came to spending money, but there was no sense taking any chances. Although Cut was an eminently practical man, he also believed in the temptation of the spirit, and he didn’t want his spirit tempted by any little scraps of plastic.

He cruised North County in his rental car, a nondescript tan Chevy Cavalier, popping peppermint hard candies into his mouth, chomping them, and watching the stores and houses stream by outside his car window. While he was driving around, he heard on the radio that the victim of an early morning hit-and-run had died, and that police were looking for a suspect for questioning.

It was one of the harder things he’d had to do, run down that little girl. He felt bad for her mother. He knew how hard it was to lose a child. In his case, first a daughter and then a son. That wasn’t right. Children were supposed to go to the cemetery and take flowers to their parents’ graves, not the other way around. But the hit-and-run was over in an instant, and it was part of the plan, so he stuck to it. He wouldn’t hesitate to change a plan for a good reason—it had saved his hide before—but shying away because it wasn’t a pleasant thing wasn’t sufficient.

Cut found what he was looking for, a camera store. He paid cash for a serious-looking but inexpensive cameraman equipment bag with a shoulder strap, and a couple of rolls of film. He still had a satisfying chunk of money left from his earlier fund-raising activities, so he let one of the pizza places on Lindbergh seduce him. Hunger satisfied, and with a slight buzz from the two beers he had downed, Cut headed to his hotel room for an afternoon of contented sleep. He hadn’t gotten a lot of it the night before, and he wanted to be at his peak physically for the night’s work.

The hotel, the latest in a string of them he’d used, was one of those instantly recognizable places where he had known no questions would be asked if cash was paid in advance for a few nights’ stay. It had the laughable name of The Executive Palace, and its benefits besides the lack of curiosity of the staff were the bus stop nearby and the presence of a Steak ’n Shake a block away. He was a hard, strong man, with all the fat burned off by work, and ordinarily had little interest in luxuries of the mind or body. But these weren’t ordinary times for him, and lately he’d discovered Steakburgers. He laughed at himself. If he stayed at The Executive Palace too long, he might have to loosen his belt buckle a notch.

His full bladder woke him at 7:00 P.M. He spent a half hour thoroughly familiarizing himself with the camera, which turned out to be simpler than it looked. Packing the equipment bag carefully, Cut added a bundle from his suitcase. He showered, decided to pass up dinner as a small atonement for the pizza and burgers he’d been eating lately, and then took the bus downtown. He got off a few blocks from the Grand Mississippi Hotel, which was located in Laclede’s Landing, a stretch a few blocks long on the Mississippi waterfront crammed with nightspots.

Victor Rheinhardt, his target, was attending a charity fund-raising dinner at the hotel, along with three hundred of the city’s socially privileged. Cut found a good place to wait, at the rear of the hotel, near a loading dock. There were no guards, no activity of any kind. The strong scent of garbage, especially spoiled food, told him that the large trash receptacle near the dock hadn’t been emptied in a while. In August, the smell didn’t just get a little bit worse every day between pickups—it doubled. There was a dusk-to-dawn light, but Cut slipped into a shadowy niche that shielded him from the limited reach of the light. His dark T-shirt and dark pants made him nearly invisible against the wall.

Checking his watch, Cut figured that he had a couple of hours to wait before the dinner broke up. Then, as the crowd of dinner guests was leaving the hotel, he would walk around the front and take a few pictures. Hopefully he wouldn’t be the only one doing so. If things went awry at that point, he was just an admiring citizen photographing a St. Louis hero.

Cut planned to get as close as he could to Rheinhardt, remove the two throwing knives from his camera bag, and send them on their way. He would mill around with the rest of the crowd, a shocked and fearful look plastered on his face, and then ease himself away into the night during the precious minutes of disorientation that followed the attack. He knew all about that brief disorientation—he’d used it to good advantage before.

It was an ambitious plan, but a solid one.

Forty-five minutes went by uneventfully except for the fact that Cut was getting hot in the long-sleeved black T-shirt he had chosen to blend in with the night, and his nose was running a little from his usual summer allergies. The combination of long sleeves and a runny nose had led him to indulge in a furtive bit of nose-wiping, and he found it ironic that he was more worried about being discovered with snotty sleeves than with throwing knives concealed in his camera bag.

Cut was startled in midwipe by a noise. Very close. A creaking noise, like a door opening reluctantly. He slipped as far back in the shadows as he could.

The loading dock door was opening. Not the big one that rolled up like a garage door, but the ordinary entry door next to it. A man stepped out under the dusk-to-dawn light. He was wearing a tuxedo. One of the dinner guests, then, probably out sneaking a smoke. Cut drew in his breath slowly, tried to let it out slowly. He was only thirty feet from the man, who was looking down, rumbling in his pocket. Cut couldn’t make out his features clearly. A cigarette lighter flashed a tiny defiant flame. Then the man tilted his head back, the tip of the cigarette glowing brightly, inhaling deeply. The orange glow of the dusk-to-dawn light fell on his face.

It was Rheinhardt.

Cut hesitated, not quite believing his luck. Rheinhardt was alone and exquisitely vulnerable, puffing away, probably hoping no one would miss him inside the hotel while he sucked in a few puffs. Cut slipped the pair of throwing knives from his camera bag. They were eight inches long and double-edged, with a dull black finish so they wouldn’t catch the light. He hefted them in his left hand, admiring their weight and balance. It would be a shame to lose them.

He ran forward, light on his feet, and passed one knife from his left hand to his right as he darted toward Rheinhardt, coming in on the man’s left side. When he had closed the distance to ten feet, he saw Rheinhardt’s head swivel toward him; the man had picked up the motion. The blade flew from Cut’s hand, turning end over end, barely visible in the muggy night because of its nonreflective black surface. It caught Rheinhardt in the neck, burying itself half of its length, transfixing the man as he turned toward Cut, wide-eyed, cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. The second blade, not wanting its twin to have all the fun, tumbled silently through the space between the two men and landed with a muted thump to the left of the sternum.

Cut saw the man drop. He looked around; no witnesses. He approached the body to be certain of the killing. Bending over Rheinhardt, he pulled off his gloves and shoved them in his pockets. If the man had a faint pulse, Cut might not have been able to feel it through his gloves. He pressed a couple of fingers of his right hand against the bloody throat of the man lying on the ground. There was no pulse. Life had fled quickly. It was a clean easy death compared to what Cut’s son had endured, but setting up a homemade gas chamber and luring a victim was too elaborate and risky a thing to do every day. After the harsh statement delivered by the first target’s death, expediency ruled for the follow-ups.

He was tempted to retrieve his lovely and useful knives, but he knew that would create a disposal problem. Better to leave them in place. Cut wiped his bloody hand on his victim’s shirt, being careful to leave nothing but smears, no recognizable finger or palm prints. He moved away rapidly, relieved to be out of the revealing cone of brightness from the dusk-to-dawn light. Back out on the street, he strolled through Laclede’s Landing, his hands jammed into his pockets to conceal the slight bulge of the crumpled gloves that also rode within them. The sidewalk was busy with people barhopping, and none of them gave him a second glance.

He hadn’t needed the camera, after all. It had been a waste of money, and that was a small blot on an otherwise gratifying mission.

S
T. LOUIS AWOKE ON
a steamy Wednesday, the fifth day of August, to news of the slaying the previous evening of a fixture in the city, the popular Prosecuting Attorney Victor Rheinhardt. He had held the elective office for almost twenty years. Although PJ hadn’t lived in the city that long herself, some of those in the law enforcement and judicial structures of the city wouldn’t remember a time in their careers when Rheinhardt hadn’t held the reins of the prosecutor’s office.

Most likely a few of the up-and-coming were secretly glad to see an opening at the top, although she thought that only the most hard-hearted of the law-abiding citizens of St. Louis—plus several thousand convicts—would have wished that manner of death on the man. By 8:00 A.M., when PJ arrived at work, it was clear that the jockeying for position and advantage was under way, as assistant prosecutors strutted their stuff.

It wasn’t CHIP’s case, as was made amply clear by the defection of most of the officers who had been assisting on the Rick Schultz homicide. She understood the pressure on Lieutenant Wall and his superiors. She could close her eyes and hear his excuses. Rick Schultz was the son of one of their own, but the inescapable fact was that he had also been an ex-con.

The fact that an ex-con died an unnatural death was only news so long as nothing overshadowed it.

Victor Rheinhardt was not only a local celebrity, but the city’s chief prosecutor. It was imperative to the reputation of the department to have a quick arrest, and Chief Wharton would not only be watching the case with a magnifying lens, but meddling in it himself.

PJ found it hard to be sympathetic with Wall when he appeared midmorning, harried and hurried, and announced that he could spare only her core team, Dave and Anita, to continue working on the Rick Schultz case.

The three CHIP members sat glumly in PJ’s office.

Anita looked like a pixie on downers. Dave had the sleepy detached look that had earned him the nickname Witless, a play on his last name of Whitmore. If he were a bear, he’d be about to go into hibernation.

“Any helpful news on the chemical sources?” PJ asked.

“News, yes, helpful, no,” Anita said. “Two companies, Brenner Chemical Supplies in Springfield and Overton Chemicals in Peoria, have records of purchases by a G. Miller. Small quantities over three months. Nothing alarming. Always paid with a postal service money order. The orders were picked up directly at the loading dock, but no one remembers anything out of the ordinary. They tell me it isn’t unusual for chemistry teachers to do that.”

“During the summer?” Dave asked.

“I suppose so. Restocking for the next school year, and have to be ready by the time the fall semester starts. Or it could be summer school at a college. G. Miller must not be too memorable. Both companies claimed that about a quarter of the direct pickups are by women, but none of the loading guys remember anything unusual, and can’t put a face to the name.”

“Our gal Ginger may not have gone in person. Or maybe Ginger looks more like a George,” Dave said.

“Anything on the money orders? PJ had perked up. She tapped a pencil rapidly on the desktop.

“Purchased at the main post office for cash. The receipts show the address on Lake where Rick’s body was found. No ID recorded, such as a driver’s license number. I sent copies of the receipts over to handwriting.”