Lark (20 page)

“That can be arranged.”

“The lieutenant hates paperwork,” Horse said. “If he has to go to trouble like that, he might not be too pleasant.”

“Pleasant like he was to the Méndez kid,” Lambert said as he helped himself to more bourbon from a bottle on the credenza.

The station manager looked up from his putt. “Méndez? Who's that?”

“He fell down the stairs, that can happen during an arrest,” Horse said in defense.

“He fell down the stairs twice,” Lambert added.

Lark sighed. “Well, if I have to get a court order, I'll do it when I take that DJ in the front window down for booking.”

“What?” The station manager missed a putt by a yard.

“That's right. I thought you should know that he's flashing his member to a bunch of teenage girls standing outside.”

“That's a lie!”

“I'm a witness,” Horse said. “He was completely unzipped and waving it back and forth. I think he was playing a record by the Doors at the time.”

“This is extortion.”

“The lieutenant hates to go through the paperwork of booking minor offenses,” Horse said.

“I like your style,” Lambert said.

“What are you doing down here?” Lark asked the reporter.

“The same thing you are, getting background on Maurice Grossman. It's going to be one hell of a feature story. Prominent radio personality beaten to death during police interrogration.”

“The medical examiner said he had a congenital heart problem.”

“You guys all stick together.”

“You want me to bust that DJ now or let him finish his program, Lieutenant?”

“Now,” Lark answered. “We can't have such goings-on.”

“Okay,” the station manager said as he slammed his putter into a golf bag in the corner. “What do you want me to get?”

They worked in the station manager's office, who, once he had begun to cooperate, cooperated with a vengeance. He kept sending in more material as if he wanted to crush them with the very weight of the files. Little of it pertained to Maurice Grossman.

“We don't need that,” Horse said as a secretary tried to deliver a year's supply of tapes. He had just returned from a trip to Lark's office, and now their meticulous time chart, listing the killings on a map, rested on top of the credenza.

They began to recapitulate Johnny Gross's movements by using the logs, tapes, interviews, and receipts. As the office sank into shadows, Horse threw the overhead light, moved a mass of tapes from an easy chair, and sank back against the cushions. “When are you going to admit it, Lieutenant?” The guy was at a broadcasting convention when the body found on Mark Street was killed.”

“Admit what?” Lark snapped. “That he outsmarted us? What's with you, Najankian, taking a break?”

“It doesn't work out.”

“It does. There's a hole somewhere. Maurice Grossman, aka Johnny Gross, has been knocking off women for years.”

“You're looking for a hole that doesn't exist.”

“Bullshit!”

“The trouble with you, Lieutenant, is that you're like most street cops: everyone is guilty until proven innocent.” Horse stalked the room, snatching up receipts and notes on telephone calls they had made to other stations where Grossman had worked. He pointed to the map. “He couldn't have killed the girl on Mark Street.”

“He had no real alibi for the girl in the state forest.”

“Or this killing.” Horse pointed to another pin. “But during his time in Springfield he was doing a telethon when victim twenty-seven was murdered. It doesn't work.”

“More prerecorded broadcasts or he could have used his wife to sign credit receipts for places he wasn't at. The man was smart.”

“You're reaching.”

Lark's gaze shifted from one pile of documentation to another. “He's all we have.”

“You want to lay it on a dead man so that we can close files? What happens when there's another killing with the same MO?”

“Then we're back to square one.”

“
You
are. I'm back on traffic.”

Lark dropped the personnel file he had been holding. “I wonder where they keep the booze.”

“It's on the credenza behind the map. There's no answers in a bottle.”

“Jesus, Horse, do you have any other inspirational messages to impart?”

“There's something up there.” He made a sweeping gesture across the map with its mass of minutely inscribed detail. “But we just aren't seeing it. There's a pattern that ought to tell us something.”

“Not necessarily. The guy picks his victims at random.”

“They all fall into the same age group and most were hitchhiking,” the uniformed officer replied.

“They and a million other women. He's a serial killer picking his victims over a five-state area.”

They both stared at the map with its colored pins denoting the locations of murder.

“The info tells us a couple of things,” Horse said. “The victims reach up to mid-Vermont and New Hampshire.”

“And every other rural area through New England.”

“Wait a minute!” Horse waved his hand over the map at the upper regions of New England. “There aren't any killings in upper Maine or in the White Mountains, and the same for Vermont. The guy has limits. Limits in time or driving distance or something. He's also got a home where he lives.”

“Unless he lives in the camper.”

“I don't think so, because of the periodic nature of the killings. They happen in regular intervals, planned intervals. We also know that he's begun to send tapes of his killings to Grossman at this station. I think he lives within the range of this station.”

“Which narrows it down to a few hundred thousand people,” Lark said.

“Of which half are women, some are too young, and others are too old. We're looking for a guy between twenty and forty who lives near here and owns a camper.”

“Which is still too broad,” Lark said.

Horse returned to the map. “There has to be something in the pattern, the time and the reason for the sequence.”

“Like the fishing season.”

“As best we can tell from the medical evidence available,” Horse said, “he does it every ten to fourteen days for part of the year.”

Lark's interest was piqued sufficiently to temporarily overcome his depression. “Do the dates always fall on weekends?”

“Once in a while, they are simply ten days to two weeks apart. It's as if he gets a couple of days off every two weeks or so and goes traveling for entertainment.”

“Okay, let's recap what we know about his games: from the tapes and the profile Rasmussen gave us, we know he's a guy between twenty and forty; from the tire tracks and the door sounds we recorded, we know he's driving a recreational vehicle.”

“And that he kills them inside the camper,” Horse added.

“After torturing them without a gag, which means that he's made some unusual modifications to the inside of his camper to stifle sound.”

They began to get caught in the excitement of the analysis. “He sent tapes to Gross, which means he has a permanent home within twenty miles of here,” Horse said.

“He kills in ten- to fourteen-day cycles, probably days he has off from his job shift.”

“Shift?” Horse looked puzzled.

Lark waved a deprecating hand. “I think in terms of shifts because I'm a cop and have worked days and nights all my life.”

“Yeah, but except for those of us on traffic, the department works a twenty-eight-day shift cycle, including days off.”

“That's because we change shifts every month,” Lark said impatiently. “Most places work a permanent day-and-night shift.”

“My brother-in-law in Scranton works a ten-day rotating shift, and has for years,” Horse said.

“Ten days on and four off?”

“Something like that. He likes it because those four-day chunks of time give him the opportunity for hunting or—”

“Fishing,” Lark interrupted. He stood stock-still in the center of the room. “There can't be many plants and businesses in a twenty-mile radius that work a rotating shift.”

“And when we find the ones that do, we could compare their dates with our time chart. Jesus, Lieutenant, I bet there's only a couple, maybe one, in our area that would fit our time chart.”

“And of the men on that shift in that particular factory, how many would own campers?” Lark shook his head. “It's thin, but it's all we have.”

Randy Lambert entered the room. He reminded Lark of a cat he once had who looked furtive on the most mundane of missions. “I've been downtown, Lark, and I've got it all.”

“Good for you, Randy.”

“We're busy, sir,” Horse said.

Lambert ignored the comment. “You and that big jigaboo scared the fucker to death.”

Lark's fist instantly lashed out and connected with Lambert's face. The reporter tumbled backward over a chair and fell in a heap against the far wall. Lark brushed the bruised knuckles on his hand.

“The lieutenant believes in instant retaliation,” Horse said while trying not to smile.

“You'll pay for this, Lark! I swear to God, I'll haunt you in my column every damn day until you're kicked off the force. And that doesn't include the lawsuit I'm laying on you tomorrow.”

“You do that, Randy,” Lark said, “and you won't be able to leave your driveway without a traffic ticket. Drink one beer in a bar and you won't make it home without a DUI charge. Twenty-two percent of the police force in this town is black, and they're going to hear what you said. One word, one column about this, and your name goes to every black cop in town.”

“You don't scare me.”

“Then you're a damn fool,” Horse said. “The lieutenant scares the shit out of me.”

15

“That reporter, Lambert, is in the building sporting one hell of a shiner,” Horse said.

Lark looked over the edge of his Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Make sure Lieutenant Horn asks him how he got it.”

“You want Horn to ask him while he has his shirt on or off?”

“Get going.” Lark stared into the brownish coffee and felt the bitter taste of vending-machine liquid in his throat. They needed to find a factory that utilized a rotating shift that corresponded to their time chart. Factories, like people, left a paper trace. They would begin by making calls to various state agencies: the Department of Labor, Unemployment Compensation, Wage and Hours, and Economic Development. Somewhere would be a record of who worked when, and then it would be a matter of running employee names against MVD records and narrowing their list of possible suspects still further.

Lark was making notes on his legal pad when Horse returned. “I thought Lambert was going to faint when Horn put the question to him. By the way, he says he caught his eye on a door.”

Lark ripped off a page of notes and handed it to Horse. “Find yourself a phone. You know what we're looking for.”

By noon they had preliminary results and met back in Lark's office to compare notes over a couple of pastrami sandwiches. The state agencies they contacted couldn't give them a list of who worked rotating shifts, only those places that worked around the clock. Horse made the master list and spoke the names aloud as he compiled it.

“Here's what we've got,” he said. “In our area, a branch of the aircraft works twenty-four hours, the pressroom of the
Middleburg Times
, one chicken breeder, the computer force of the Nutmeg Insurance Company, the Macklin Company, Middleburg General Hospital, the Xavier Tool and Die Company, and of course, cops and firemen. That's not a hell of a lot.”

“We can rule out the cops and firemen as the last labor contract provides for the twenty-eight-day cycle. I know that the aircraft and the newspaper run permanent night shifts.”

“So does the hospital,” Horse said. “Next we call what's left.”

“Try the personnel departments. Give me half the list,” Lark said as he reached for his phone.

In half a dozen calls they discovered that the chicken breeder, the Xavier Company, and the insurance company all had permanent shifts. The Macklin Company ran a rotating program. Lark dialed the company and asked to speak to the personnel manager. “This is Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg police. I have a confidential request and would appreciate your cooperation. It is our understanding that you have rotating shifts that slide from night to day on a periodic basis?”

“That's right,” the feminine voice answered. “We prefer to call them teams rather than shifts, and each team works ten days straight followed by four off and then rotates to a different time.”

“Ten days,” Lark repeated. “I see, and who is this?”

“I'm Rose Harris,” she answered. “Can I give you any further information?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, you can. Could you check your schedule and give me the exact dates each of your teams worked during the past two months?”

“Give me a moment to get the information.”

Lark signaled to Horse. “Get on another phone and have them patch you in.”

“Are you still there, Lieutenant? I have the recent schedules.”

“Yes, I'm here, and my associate is also on the line. We're ready.”

“Beginning two months ago, Team A worked the day shift on the …” She began to recite the complicated schedule as Horse and Lark scribbled rapidly. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked when the information was complete.

“I'm not sure yet. Let us get back to you, and thanks.” He hung up, looked at his notes, and began to compare them with the dates and times on their map.

Horse came back to the small office and stood next to the desk as he compared his notes with the last murder dates. Both men simultaneously put down their pads. “I think we had better get the shift schedule for the last couple of years,” Horse said.