Drawing Dead (24 page)

“ONE QUESTION?”

“Worth what?” the Chicago detective said into what he called his “CI phone.”

“Can't tell until I get an answer,” the gang boss said in response.

“Gonna spook the paying customers if they see an unmarked parked at your joint?”

“Might. Only they won't see it. Just pull up to the gate—you'll be met.”

“IT
WOULD
be you,” the detective said, later that night.

“You know a better driver?” Buddha said. “Besides, I'm the only one that could fit in this seat.”

“Rhino isn't the only—”

“Yeah, he is. You'd want Princess driving your car?”

“I was thinking about—”

“Don't waste your time, Mac. We won't pretend to know what you know, but, trust me, it ain't as much as you think it is.”

“Trust
you
?” the detective retorted, as he slid out from behind the wheel of his unmarked. “I've taken a few hits to the head over the years, but never
that
hard. I got the odometer memorized, so don't even think about—”

“It's not going more than a couple of hundred yards,” Buddha promised.

CROSS MATERIALIZED
next to McNamara while the cop's unmarked was still moving slowly away.

“Only one question, Mac,” he said, firing a cigarette from the flame in his left palm. “No reason for us to go further than that dark spot over there.”

“Then you could have met me.”

“I don't know what's in your car. What I got is for you, not some audio pickup the cop shop installed.”

“They'd never—”

“Sure. You don't trust Buddha, but you trust
them,
right?”

“One question, you said. Get to it.”

“The Rejuvenator.”

“That's not a question.”

“This is: You
sure
he's dead?”

“He was a…Ah, pick your own words. ‘Narcissistic psychopath' is pretty much what the department shrinks decided on.”

“Not you, huh?”

“What difference? ‘The Rejuvenator'? Fine. You know how it works: once the damn media gives any of these dirtbags their own special name, they never drop it. ‘Son of Sam.' ‘Hillside Strangler'—like that. Only reason Speck didn't get one is because he was nabbed too quick.”

“This time, though, there was some reason….”

“Sure. He copied every serial killer's work, like those guys who copy Rembrandts. They know their ‘creation' is just gonna end up in some collector's private gallery, so they always leave some little hint that it was
their
work. Same with this freak; he couldn't resist leaving a tiny piece of himself at the crime scene. That ® brand. Cute, huh? That's the symbol for ‘registered trademark,' so he was doubling down on his bragging.”

“I know. He got all the usual props for a serial killer: fan mail to the Internet, like that. Even book-and-movie deals, only he never got to sit in a cell and read them. My question's still the same: You sure he's dead?”

“The man who left those ® brands on all those kills? Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Then you're sure the man you beat to death was the Rejuvenator? None of those ‘true crime' writers scored an interview with you. None of the TV shows, either.”

“I didn't beat anyone to death,” McNamara said, unconsciously dropping his voice into the toneless recital he always used when speaking with Internal Affairs. “I followed him to where he was holed up. When I saw him coming down the stairs, I drew my service weapon and told him he was under arrest. He kicked the gun out of my hand—I guess he'd been some kind of martial artist—and came at me all in the same move. I defended myself.”

“You didn't have a search warrant.”

“I never entered his place. He was still on the staircase when—”

“You didn't have an arrest warrant.”

“No time to get one. I was—”

“—acting on a tip from a CI that the man you'd been looking for—the one who wrote all those notes, like ‘Heirens Is Innocent,' and mailed them to the papers—he was on his way back to his hideout, right? Pretty good CI…even gave you the address.”

“What's your point?”

“You don't even know who the CI is—all he ever does is call, always from a different number.”

“Uh-huh. That's the way it usually works.”

“And the phone you kept for those calls—the one you paid for out of your own pocket—it got smashed so bad during the fight that even the SIM card was destroyed. So all the IAD investigators could recover was an under-a-minute call to your phone. Made from a burner cell—bounced off five towers within a half-mile. So there was a call, but whatever was said, only you know.”

“That's the way it happened. And that's what was in their report. Although how
you'd
know about that…”

“Come on, Mac—databases get hacked all the time. Those boys always talk about their ‘exploits'—all you have to do is listen. But it's still the one question.”

“How would it help
me,
like you said it might.”

“ ‘Might'
is
what I said. If you've still got copycat crimes unsolved, and this ‘Rejuvenator' guy is definitely dead, I've got something for you.”

“No copycats for years. And
definitely
not one sending love notes to the papers.”

“So the one you were looking for once, he's dead. And you'd know, because you killed him yourself.”

“I defended myself,” the hard-core cop said, nothing in his voice but relentlessness.

“Must've been a hell out of a fight, the way the guy got his neck broken, ribs driven into his lungs, too. And—”

“You got a point you want to make?”

“Not anymore, I don't,” Cross said.

“SHE'S THE
one who's gonna be doing all the talking, so what do you need me for?”

“Drive the car, Buddha. Like you always do.”

“You're keeping the others back, right? Whatever this…thing is, you know what it can do. So you're keeping them out of range.”

“Whatever this thing is, it's got a longer range than any distance we could run to.”

“So why aren't we
all
going?”

“You know damn well we can't all fit in the car. Even if we could, any of the others get out, it's gonna attract attention. We don't need any cell-phone video on some idiot's Facebook page.”

“Tiger's the only one who's gonna go over to that ladder. Why can't she just drive over there by herself?”

“Tiger's not working with a cold back.”

“Then the more the—”

“Buddha, what the hell's wrong with you? We need the car to slip in quiet. And maybe get out fast, things go wrong. Sure, I could drive this beast, but not like you can. I can't shoot like you, either. But I can cover one side, launch a message out of one of the tubes, if I have to do that. This makes sense, brother. It's the right play, the right tactic….”

“Boss, ever since…Hell, I don't even remember exactly when it started, but…I'm just spooked, I guess. We don't know—”

“We don't and we
won't.
Not unless Mural Girl knows something, and right now she's the best bet we have.”

“Why should she talk to us?”

“I don't know why. But Tiger's right—if there's anything Mural Girl wants to say, Tiger's the one she'll say it to. Look, I don't like it, either, okay?” Cross said, feeling the tiny brand below his eye suddenly flare—one flash-burn and then it was gone. “But I don't think we could do anything about the Simbas, even if it
is
them. This is just to make sure that this AI stuff is legit. It doesn't feel like anything they'd bother with, but we've gotta make sure—
dead
sure, brother—that whatever we blew up inside that creature's house doesn't have any friends left.”