Lark (7 page)

“You haven't even been through the file on the case.”

“Near as I know, there isn't much in the file.”

“There's officers' notes on the interviews in the area where she was found.”

“Didn't turn up anything. I was there, remember?”

“You're damn near insubordinate, Horse. What about the autopsy pictures? The girl was burned by an unknown device. Look at the pictures, damn you!” He shoved a folder full of glossy shots the ME's photographer had taken into Najankian's hand. “Look at them.”

Horse blanched. His voice dropped. “I don't want to see them. I got a kid her age.”

“So do I. I was out there when the ME cut on her.”

“Then you don't need me to look at them.”

“I still own your soul for five minutes, so look.”

“Four minutes.” Najankian reluctantly opened the folder and looked at the young woman stretched out on the autopsy table. He winced. “There's letters burned into her.”

“They spell slut. We ran the configurations through the medical examiner's national organization and they can't tell us what did it.”

Najankian placed the pictures back in the folder and carefully returned it to Lark's desk. “I'm going home.”

“You know, I can have you up on charges?”

“Maybe so, Lieutenant, that's your choice.” He shuffled toward the door and paused. “By the way, I know what made those burns.”

“Huh?”

“Sure. I gave one to Jerry, that's my ten-year-old, last Christmas. Those wedge-shaped burn marks are from a wood-burning kit.” He left the cubicle and hurried toward the locker room.

Lark stared at the empty hall in astonishment. A wood-burning device. Of course. He'd had one as a kid, and suspected that at one time or another almost every kid had one. He clutched for the folder of pictures and sorted through them. The wedge-shaped marks appeared to be the right size. He'd buy a kit tomorrow and take exact measurements.

Lark shook his head and laughed aloud. Horse might not work overtime, but he seemed to make up in quality what he lacked in quantity.

“Are you Lieutenant Lark?” a hesitant voice asked.

“Yeah.” Lark looked up at the heavyset man standing uncomfortably in the doorway. He judged him to be about thirty, softly overweight, with a wrinkled suit and heavy glasses. His appearance was nervous, almost furtive. “What can I do for you?”

“They told me downstairs where to find you. I understand from the newspaper that you are in charge of the investigation concerning that dead young woman.”

“Uh huh.” Lark wondered if this was going to be a false confession.

“I—I have something that I think may be involved in the case.”

“Come in and sit down. What's your name?”

“Maurice Grossman.” The heavyset man sat uneasily in the side chair. His fingers trembled. Lark noticed that he carried a small cassette recorder nearly buried in the palm of a sweating hand.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Grossman?”

“I—I came to Middleburg from Maine a few weeks ago to start a new job. This came in the mail to me today.” He reached into his coat pocket and lay a small tape cassette on the center of the desk.

“Does this have anything to do with my investigation?”

“I think so. I should tell you that I'm a radio personality.”

Lark found this hard to believe, but he nodded assent.

“I do a show here and go by the name of Johnny Gross. Maybe you've heard it, Gross Out?”

“You're Johnny Gross?” Lark asked in amazement. He found it difficult to align the personality of this soft-spoken, nervous man with the overpowering, raunchy radio personality.

“I'm different when I'm on the air,” Grossman said in a soft voice. “I've started running a contest and asked people to send me tapes of—”

“I heard you on the radio.”

Grossman nodded toward the tape. “That's one of them that came today. I think you should listen to it.” He placed the battery-operated recorder-player on the desk, levered the cassette into it, and held out a small earphone toward Lark. “You should listen.”

“Why the earplug?”

“I—I don't want to hear it again.”

Lark nodded, placed the earphone in his ear, and pressed the
PLAY
button.

The voice was male, guttural, and so nearly indistinct that Lark had to strain to catch the words.

“I've got a song for you, Johnny. A pretty, pretty song that I'm sure you will like. And there will be others just as nice. Listen, Johnny. Listen good and see if it's Gross Out.”

An anguished scream jolted Lark's body as if he had been shocked.

His fist slammed against the recorder twice before it mashed down the
OFF
lever, but it wasn't soon enough to stop the second scream, which was cut off at its height.

“You see what I mean?” Grossman said softly.

Lark's hands trembled and perspiration beaded his forehead as he stared down at the small machine. His finger reached slowly forward and depressed the
PLAY
button.

He heard the end of the scream. Although prepared, his body tensed and he clenched the edge of the desk. Words now:

“Oh, please. I did everything you said … No!” Again a scream.

“You wish you were never born. Say it. Say it!”

“I wish …” The words were temporarily lost in racking sobs. “I wish I were never born.”

It was a young woman's voice and Lark knew who it had once belonged to.

He unplugged the earphone, walked to the single window in the narrow cubicle, and looked down at the parking lot. It was shift change and men were leaving their patrol cars to be replaced by a new shift.

He turned to face Grossman; their eyes met momentarily and then flicked away.

Lark knew he had to listen to the remainder of the tape, and he wondered if he could.

5

Lark had neglected to switch on the desk lamp, and the small office lay in deep shadows, illuminated only by a yellowish swatch of light falling through the partly open door. The small earphone was inserted in his right ear. He leaned across the desk and supported his head with both hands. His palms were clammy.

The sound fidelity of the small machine centered on his desk filled him with wonder coupled with revulsion. The voices swirled around him. The man's guttural commands were obscenely specific and were counterpointed by the girl's occasional whimpers and cries. It was a descent into hell that evoked a montage of incidents he had witnessed over two decades of police service.

If this were a film sequence, he would have averted his head and watched the images through peripheral vision, but sounds were more horrifying, since they created mental images more vivid than reality.

The tape ended with a single shot.

He removed the earphone and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Is it over?” the deferential voice asked from the chair in the darkened corner.

He had completely forgotten Grossman's presence. “Yes.”

“Do you think it's her? The one you're investigating?”

“There's a strong possibility.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lark stared into the shadows. His vision was filled with strong afterimages. “I'm going to find and kill the son of a bitch,” he said softly.

Chair legs squeaked on the bare floor as Grossman stood. “You're welcome to keep it. The tape, I mean.”

Lark laughed. “Thanks.”

“If you don't need me, my wife is holding dinner.”

Lark snapped on the desk lamp, and light spilled across the feet of the heavy man standing a few feet away. “I'd like to borrow the player for a few days, and tomorrow I want to come by the station and see the other stuff you got in the mail.”

“Oh, sure. Anytime.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I didn't hear it all. Does it get worse?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Uh, then see you tomorrow.” Grossman turned and hurried through the door and down the hall.

The familiar pulse of the building surrounded Lark. A distant typewriter
plocked
, and an occasional loud laugh issued from the squad room. A mop squished as maintenance worked on the hallways. It was a familiar, usually comfortable pattern that now seemed uncaring in the light of what he had just heard.

He shook his head to dispel the demons and then searched through a bottom desk drawer for an evidence bag. He carefully bagged the wrapping paper used to mail the cassette and placed the evidence carefully on the desk.

There were other things to do, many other things, and he tried to order his priorities. Distasteful as it was, he would have to listen to the tape again and make notes. Tomorrow it would have to be transcribed into a verbatim account. Who would get that unpleasant task? He'd let Frank decide.

He rewound the tape and replaced the earphone in his ear. His index finger hovered over the
PLAY
button. He couldn't do it. Not again tonight.

He locked the tape and recorder in his desk and went home.

He saw her car parked by his trailer as he pulled into the parking lot by the side of the Milligan Machine Company. He parked parallel to her car and hastily circled the factory on his security round. He wished she hadn't come. He really wasn't in the mood for any company.

Dark clouds scudded across the sky as if fleeing from a partial moon and a cool wind, dank from its sweep down the river, raised goose bumps on his arms.

Faby Winn poked her head out the door as he approached. “I don't hear any ‘hi-ho hi-ho' as we return to the little house in the dark wood.”

“Fuck you.” He slammed into the trailer and went for the refrigerator. He saw a new bottle of wine open on the table.

“My, we're our usual sweet self tonight.”

“If your cuteness factor rises another inch, out you go.”

Her voice dropped in irritation. “Feet or head first, Lark?”

She had bought a six-pack of German beer and nestled it against his hamburger. He liked it, but considered it too expensive. He took a bottle from the carton, flipped the cap off, and let it roll across the floor. “Thanks for the beer.”

“You promised me dinner, or have you forgotten?”

“It slipped my mind.”

“We can get takeout Chinese.”

He shrugged, sat down, and plopped his feet on the coffee table. He drained half the beer. “Whatever.”

“Cathy called me today. She's upset that you never sent this week's check.”

“I told her I wouldn't.”

Faby nodded and sipped wine. “She suspected as much. She's taken a job at the Seven-Eleven on Grove Street.”

“About time she got off her ass.”

“Give the girl a chance, Lark.”

“Chance? She had a year to, quote, find herself, unquote. So, she's lost in the wilderness. Let her join the rest of the human race.”

“If there's anyone who needs to join humanity, it's you.”

Lark finished the remainder of his beer. “Don't you have anyplace else to go?”

Faby Winn jerked to her feet as a look of astonishment swept her face. “You lowdown son of a bitch,” she said in a whisper. “You arrogant pig.”

“I've had a bad day,” Lark replied in a partial apology.

“Did the big bad criminals say mean words to the poor lieutenant?”

“Knock it off.”

“Let me ask you something, Lark. Do you ever have any good days? Or are they all just bad and worse?”

“Today reached a particularly low mark.”

“You've got your twenty years on the force. Quit. Resign. Do something, anything, that doesn't make you so unhappy.”

“I'm not good for anything else.”

“I know a lot of the men get jobs in store security.”

“And bust teeny-bopper shoplifters all day.”

Her face flushed with anger. “You know, you're full of it. Why am I wasting my time with a man who's such a goddamn crybaby? You feel sorry for yourself, Lark. You wallow in self-pity, and I'm tired of it.”

“Then leave,” he said softly as he stared into his beer.

“It's not that simple. I've given you years of my life.”

“Months would be closer to the truth. Christ, you're melodramatic tonight.”

“You bring out the bitch in me.”

“No wonder your husband left you.”

She stared at him with wide eyes. “At least he didn't blow his head off.”

He moved without thought. His body catapulted across the room as his hands automatically balled into fists. His hand lashed out to be deflected at the last possible moment by a massive surge of will. “I almost lost control.”

“Do you want to hit me?”

He took two backward steps. “I almost did.”

“You know, Lark, one of these days you aren't going to stop.”

He slumped down on the divan. “You know all the wrong buttons to press.”

“You're not a bad button-presser yourself.” She turned and ran from the trailer.

He heard her car-starter engine whine and whine again. Her engine started, coughed, and died. He went to the doorway. “You've flooded it.”

“Screw you!” She jammed her foot down on the accelerator.

“Wait.”

“Up yours.” The engine caught and she threw the car in gear.

Lark ran into the car's path and stood before it with his hands stretched toward its nose. “I want you to hear something.”

“I'm tired of insults.” She jammed on the brakes only feet from him. “Out of the way.”

He walked over to the driver's door, opened it, and gently put a hand on her shoulder. “There's something you should know. It might explain something about me. Come with me.”

“You take me anywhere, Lark, and I warn you, I'll scream the whole bloody way. When you stop for a traffic light, I'll jump out and yell rape.”

“Gonna call the cops?” He tried to smile.