In for the Kill (13 page)

Bocanne, Florida, 1980

It was deep into the night, and Sherman had been unable to sleep. His light was on and he was lying in bed reading about the battle of Lookout Mountain and trying not to think about Sam, when his mother opened his bedroom door. She had on an old dress and apron and was holding some trash bags.

He lowered the open book to his chest.

"Come when I call," she said to Sherman.

His heart fell as he watched her lay the folded trash bags on the corner of his dresser. He knew what they were for. She knew he'd bring them when she called.

"Mom...?"

"It's not time for questions, Sherman, it's time for doin'. And what you're gonna do's what I tell you."

"I know, Mom." He propped up his book again and watched the print swim before his eyes.

He didn't hear her leave, but he knew she was gone.

Ten minutes later she called his name and, wearing only his Jockey shorts, he trudged into her bedroom.

Sam was lying nude and dead still on the bed. He had a peaceful expression on his face, though his mouth was a bit crooked.

"He didn't suffer none," Sherman's mother said, noticing how Sherman was looking at Sam, not at all like Sam was any of the other lifeless hulks he'd seen. "Pick up his stuff." She pointed to a pile of Sam's belongings she'd built in the middle of the floor. Next to it were his boxes of books.

"Can we keep the books?" Sherman asked.

"Ain't you read 'em all?"

"I could read 'em again."

"They go into the swamp with the rest of Sam's things, Sherman. Every part of Sam's gotta be gone."

He didn't argue. Instead he stooped by the pile of old clothing. Next to it were an empty leather wallet and tobacco pouch, and an old pipe with a tooth-marked stem. Sherman began to cry as he stuffed it all into one of the black plastic trash bags.

When he was finished, his mother said, "Go put that bag on the porch, then come back here an' give me a helpin' hand with him."

Sherman did as he was told, then returned to help her move Sam into the bathroom.

Myrna gripped Sam beneath his arms, and Sherman clutched him just beneath the knees. They'd done this often enough that unconsciously they'd established a system.

"Shut up your cryin'," Myrna said to Sherman, as Sam thumped off the bed onto the floor. "Now come grab an arm."

But Sherman was already on his way. Sniffling and choking back sobs, he gripped Sam's right wrist while his mother gripped the left, and they began dragging him over the plank floor toward the bathroom.

Rigor mortis had come and gone in Sam, so it wasn't too difficult to wrestle him into the big clawfoot tub.

"Go out an' git your father's tools," Myrna said.

Sam silently obeyed. He knew which tools to select from the old wooden shed.

When he'd returned to the bathroom with the tools, the water was running. His mother had already removed all her clothes so as not to get blood on them, and had begun on Sam with a knife.

"He weren't a bad man," Sherman said, observing.

"Bad don't figure into it, Sherman. It's about survival." She began working the knife back and forth in a sawing motion to cut through a small tendon. "Someday you'll understand."

Sherman wondered if he would.

"Turn that tap water down some," Myra said, "then go fetch the rest of them bags."

Sam obeyed, then he stood and watched the water mixed with blood swirling down the drain.
Sam's blood.
He began to cry again.

"The bags, Sherman!"

He left the bathroom, glancing back as his mother scooted across the tiles to the dry end of the tub opposite the taps, her bare breasts swinging pendulously with her smooth but hasty movement. He knew how she worked, keeping everything dry as possible until finally it was drained enough to use the power saw on what was too big or tough to cut with a knife. The stench, the sound of the gurgling, bloody water, went with Sherman as he returned to his mother's room and got the rest of the plastic trash bags.

When he came back he watched his mother work with her usual speed and economy, and before long Sam's parts were stacked neatly in the tub in the familiar, orderly fashion. There were cleaning agents and bottles of bleach nearby, most of them already empty.

Myrna turned the cold tap water on full blast, then reached over and worked the lever that diverted it to the showerhead. The shower hissed and spat before breaking into a steady spray.

Sherman and his mother watched the shower water run on the tub's contents for a while, then Myrna turned off the squeaky tap and said simply, "Sherman."

He knew precisely what to do.

Their system was fast and efficient. Myrna and Sherman stuffed the damp, pale body parts into the plastic bags and carried them out to the back porch. Sam had been a big man, so it took several trips, and when they were finished they were both breathing hard. Myrna stood with her hands on her hips for a few seconds, staring out at the black night. Then she sighed and turned around. She got a short bamboo rod from where it was leaning against the house and rattled it back and forth over the wooden porch spindles, the way a child would run a stick across a picket fence.

Within a few minutes, Sherman and his mother heard and saw movement in the dark swamp. The gators were conditioned to respond to the rattling sound that carried on the night through the black swamp, just as Sherman was conditioned to respond to his mother's commands.

Sherman helped his mother remove the body parts from the bags and toss them into the darkness beyond the porch rail. He tried not to cry, tried not to listen to the splashing and the grunting, grinding sounds. He knew alligators usually carried their food back to their nests in the banks to let it rot some before they ate it, and he wished these would. But some of these gators were too hungry to wait, and the swamp was theirs at night.

When all of the bags were empty, Myrna looked at her son in the faint moonlight and nodded. He watched her as she refolded the plastic bags so she could wash and reuse them. The boxes of Sam's books, and the bag containing his clothes, would remain on the porch and she would bury them in the swamp when it was daylight.

And Sam would be gone.

Like the boarders before him. Old men who didn't have long to live anyway.

But Sam was different.

Sherman's mother would never again mention his name, and Sherman knew better than to utter it even to himself.

"You go back to bed," Myrna told him. "I'll clean up."

Without a word, he turned and went back into the house, aware of his mother staring at him. Behind him the dark swamp continued to stir. Off in the distance, a night bird cried.

Sherman lay in bed thinking he'd sob himself to sleep. Only he didn't sob. And he didn't sleep. His eyes were open and dry.

He lay quietly listening to the sounds of his mother down the hall, scrubbing the bathroom. When she was finished there, she'd return to her bed, alone.

Sherman knew that if he could cry it would relieve some of the pressure in him that was making it difficult for him to breathe. And maybe his heart would stop crashing around in his chest as if it wanted to get out. If only he had Sam to talk to...

Sam was gone.
But what would Sam tell him to do?

Sherman got out of bed and slipped into his stiff and damp Levi's cutoffs, then the T-shirt he'd worn that day. Moving quietly, he rummaged through his dresser drawers and pulled out what clothes he'd need, including some socks and his old joggers. He'd go barefoot for now, for silence. He stuffed the wadded socks into the shoes, then wrapped his clothes around the shoes and fastened the roll tightly with his old leather belt.

All he had to do now was remove the screen from his bedroom window and slip outside, and he could be miles away by morning.

Miles away! Free!

"Sherman."

His mother's voice was soft and neutral, almost lazy. He was too terrified even to move from where he was crouched facing the other way.

"You plannin' on leavin' me, son?"

He moved only his head, craning his neck so he could see behind him.

She was standing in the doorway, not frowning, not smiling, her dark eyes fixing him where he crouched. In her right hand she clutched the bamboo rod she used to summon the alligators. Slowly, she raised it high.

She moved fast toward Sherman, crossing the room like a tiger.

New York, the present

The printed note was sent to Quinn via the NYPD:

Red blood on blue tile. Fools rush in.

So do the police.

The Butcher

"It came in the mail yesterday," Renz said, seated behind his desk. He was wearing his reading glasses, and the sun piercing the blinds glinted off their lenses. The office was too warm and smelled faintly of cigar smoke again. Renz the addicted couldn't keep away from whatever cheap brand he smoked. How he must long for one of Quinn's illegal Cuban
robustos.
He knew damn well they weren't Venezuelan, as Quinn claimed.

Renz held up note and envelope. "Lab's already gone over it. The paper's cheap stock, sold all over the place. Same with the envelope. It's the kind people buy by the thousands to pay bills and send letters. No DNA on the flap. Nothing remotely like a fingerprint. And two handwriting experts agree the printing is almost drawn and there isn't enough of it to be distinctive or provide material for a meaningful match. The killer used a number-two lead pencil, the most common kind."

Quinn said, "You've got it pretty well covered."

Renz peeled off his glasses so he could focus long on Quinn. "Doing my job."

Quinn was seated in one of the chairs angled toward Renz's desk. Pearl and Fedderman were standing on either side and slightly behind him. "You might have told us about this yesterday," he said.

Renz shrugged. "I wanted to have something to tell, so I waited for lab and handwriting analyses." He squeezed one hand with the other, as if someone had given him a high five way too hard. "What do you think this means?"

"Can we run a computer check and see if the tile color in Marilyn Nelson's bathroom was mentioned to the press and repeated?"

"Did that," Renz said. "No matches. No mention. The note's genuine."

"The bastard's toying with us," Pearl said.

"So the profiler tells me," Renz said.

"Nothing unusual in that," Qunn said. Like many cops who'd been on the job a long time, he had little faith in profilers; they could easily head an investigation off in the wrong direction. "It's all part of what drives sickos like the Butcher. He wants to engage in a game and prove he's smarter than we are. He wants this note released to the media."

"That'd be your call," Renz said. "Why I hired you. And of course, you take the heat if it turns out to be a big mistake."

Quinn shifted a few inches in his chair so the sun wasn't in his eyes. "You asked what the note means, and I don't know the answer. But apparently it was written after Marilyn Nelson's death, and it means
something
. We have to figure it out. I say release it to the media. Call Cindy Sellers at
City Beat,
give the little rag a scoop."

"How will that help us?" Renz asked.

"We might need a favor from her someday."

"No, I meant what good will it do to release the note to the media?"

"If we don't figure out what the killer's trying to tell us, maybe somebody else will."

"You think he wants this figured out."

"Yes, but only when it's too late. In fact, if we don't figure it out, he'll tell us. But not in time to have stopped him from taking his next victim."

"Maybe the key is colors," Fedderman said. "Red and blue."

"And gold," Pearl added.

The three men looked at her.

"'Fools rush in.' Fool's gold. The gold rush."

"Somebody whose last name is, or starts with, the word gold," Fedderman suggested.

"If the killer's still focusing on his victims' initials," Quinn said.

"There's that question," Pearl said, "Maybe he's spelling out something else. I mean, not necessarily a person's name."

"It better be the word
apprehended
," Renz said, looking at each of them in turn. "And soon."

Quinn considered telling him to stop playing the hard-ass, then he decided to let it pass. It was part of Renz's persona. He needed to flex his bureaucratic muscles now and then to remind himself they were still there. The important thing wasn't that Quinn knew what made Renz tick; it was that Renz knew that he knew.

Pearl, however, looked as if she were about to say something. He could tell by her eyes, by the way she was tensing her lips.

"We're on it, Harley," Quinn assured Renz, figuring Pearl would be less likely to spout off to a superior who was on a first-name basis, who was one of them rather than simply an authority figure. Before she could cut into the conversation, he added, "We'll go to the office, run computer searches on the colors mentioned in the note. If you don't mind, I'll take it and the envelope with me so we can put it in the file."

"That's the place for the original," Renz said, handing the items to Quinn. "We've got copies."

As the three detectives filed from the office, Renz motioned for Quinn to stay behind and close the door.

"Are you staying on those two?" Renz asked.

"They don't need it, Harley. They're solid cops. And remember, you chose them just like you chose me."

"But I had some reservations."

"About who?"

"You and Pearl together, if you know what I mean."

Quinn knew. "It isn't any of your business, but that relationship's been over for a long time."

"Then why do you look at her the way you do?"

"Start worrying, Harley, if she looks back at me that way."

Renz smiled. "I haven't noticed that. She looks terrific in that outfit. If boobs were brains she'd be a genius."

"How come you have to keep trying to irritate people?" Quinn asked, pushing his anger away.

"I dunno. How come the Butcher keeps killing and chopping up women?"

"Maybe it's the same answer," Quinn told him.

"Hey, screw you!" Renz said, as Quinn was leaving.

Quinn couldn't help smiling. It wasn't easy getting over on Renz. He'd have to tell Pearl about it.

As it turned out, the decision to release the note to the media wasn't relevant. It was featured on the front page of the
New York Post.
The killer had sent copies to all the New York papers and TV news desks.

When Renz released the information that the tile in Marilyn Nelson's apartment was indeed blue, the media was on the story even hotter. Red blood on blue tiles. Cindy Sellers wrote it straight, but a columnist in
City Beat
speculated that if the bathtub and commode were white, there might be a patriotic slant to the killings.

At the office, Pearl continued to work the computer, double-checking Renz to make sure no one had mentioned the color of Marilyn Nelson's bathroom tiles before the note arrived.

She found no mention. The only way the author of the note could have known the colors was if he'd been in Marilyn's bathroom, unless someone in the NYPD had leaked the information to him. That last was one Pearl didn't want to think about.

Quinn was at his desk rereading the murder files, while Fedderman was on line with his own computer, using the Internet to tie everything possible to the colors red, blue, and gold.

Beneath the hum of the air conditioning, the only sounds were Quinn shuffling pages, and the rattling of keyboards. Pearl raised her head for a moment and looked around, thinking they were all probably doing precisely what the killer intended.

She considered returning to the victim's apartment again. Maybe she'd missed something unobtrusive, or too obvious. Or maybe Jeb Jones would turn up again.

Not that he had a reason, she thought.

Or he might. She might be the reason.

The possibility made her blood rush. It also made her realize she wasn't thinking straight or professionally. This was the kind of thing that had gotten her in trouble throughout her career. It was a bad idea to return to the Marilyn Nelson apartment on the unlikely premise that Jeb might be there.

Not only am I flirting with disaster, but I'm making everything all too complicated.

She put returning to Marilyn's apartment out of her mind.

Easier simply to phone the Waverton.