Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (130 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The woman cop dodged, causing his fist to drive through empty air. Eckker cursed.

In the dark, narrow alley the policewoman began to scream.

His hand clamped over her mouth savagely. He felt something cool and hard press into his stomach. He twisted, heard the explosion, then felt a burning ache tunnel into his side. She had fired a round, the percussion muffled by his own flesh. Something warm and wet mushroomed beneath his shirt. Blood.

She’d shot him. The bitch had shot him. He found that remarkable.

They scrabbled in the alley, both slipping on the slick rivulet of water running from the building toward the sewer grate.

He wrenched the gun from her hand and dropped it into the pocket of his coat. She screamed again, snatched up the handcuffs, and on hands and knees managed to crawl to the side of the building. He grabbed her.

A door opened opposite them. A small Asian man dressed in chefs whites peered out. He advanced a step, uncertainly.

“Get outta here,” Eckker growled, averting his face.

The small man disappeared inside, the door closing resoundingly after him.

As quick as lightning the cop managed to secure one wristband of the handcuffs to the handle of the steel door.

He smiled, thinking she had in mind to cuff him to the door, and it was going to be interesting to see her try. But instead of attempting to clamp the other band over his wrist, she brought it to her own, the sound of the serrated teeth crunching like steel jaws as she squeezed it closed.

She had handcuffed herself to the metal door. With her other hand she grabbed the bottom of her purse and slung it, scattering the contents every which way across the dark alley.

A rage surged up in him. The ache in his side burned. No one had ever beaten him. He could cut her hand off at the wrist, rip her arm out of its shoulder socket, crush the bones in her hand until it was mush, no longer an obstacle against the circle of steel—but he didn’t want her now. She was a cop. She was everything he hated.

His hand loosened from her mouth, then inched downward to circle her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but within moments the paralyzing constriction to her vocal cords rendered her speechless. Nothing more than a pathetic squeak escaped her lips.

He squeezed and squeezed.

Staring down into her saucer-like eyes, he squeezed until all emotion dissolved, leaving only two blank, glazed circles of icy blue-green glass.

The Power. The power to eliminate what was worthless, what served no good purpose. He could spare a life or he could take it. It was so easy. He blustered in the power radiating through his loins, making his heart thump like one wild beast triumphant over another. She’d been a cop and she’d shot him and now she was nothing.

Clasping the woman’s limp body to his chest, the stainless steel handcuffs clinking against the metal handle, he hauled her dead weight up.

“Where’s your power now?” He lifted the lifeless woman’s face. “What good’s your badge or gun now?”

The door across the way was flung open. The small Asian and another even smaller man, brandishing a meat cleaver, stared.

“P’lice come now,” one called out in a shaky voice.

A siren warbled in the distance. Eckker swung around to the plate metal door to which the dead woman was handcuffed, the light from the Chinese kitchen making it a bright mirror, and glared at his own reflection.

In the shiny chrome of the door his face was captured cruelly, indelibly, like a tintype portrait. Those piercing black eyes burning—

________

“Robbi—Robbi, wake up!” She heard him calling. Felt him shaking her. Slowly, Roberta dared open her eyes. She was in a dim place, diffused light came from a doorway—
not the doorway in the alley, don’t let it be that doorway.
She raised her head and looked into Jake’s concerned blue eyes.

Robbi threw her arms around Jake’s neck. “Ohhh God, Jake, he killed her. The woman from the bar…it was Detective Lerner. He killed her.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes! She’s dead. He killed her.” She moaned, tightening her arms around him.

“Where?” Jake flipped on the bedside lamp. He grabbed the phone and dialed.

“I don’t know. An alley.”

Into the receiver Jake said, “I’ve got to talk to Detective Avondale. This is Dr. Reynolds. I know he’s not at the station. Find him and patch me through to him. It’s an emergency. It’s about his partner, Lerner. She may have been killed.” The muscles in his back tightened. “Yes, yes, Reynolds. My number is 555- 9007. Tell him Roberta Paxton saw it.”

He hung up, turned to her. “They’ll find him and he’ll call.” He pulled on a pair of sweat pants.

Roberta shivered.

Jake pulled the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her, then he left the room. A minute later he returned with a snifter of brandy and handed it to her.

She sipped slowly; the burning path the liquor made going into her stomach warmed her.

“What happened,” Jake asked.

Before she could answer, the phone rang. He snatched it up, listened a moment. “Yeah, she saw it. A vision. Not more than five minutes ago.” He handed the receiver to Roberta.

“Miss Paxton, Avondale here.” His voice was highly charged. “What did you see?”

“He strangled your partner in an alley.”

A long pause, then, “Can you come down here—to the crime scene? I can’t leave. I’ll send a car.”

She looked at Jake. “He wants me to go there. He’s sending a car.”

Jake took back the phone. “I’ll bring her. Where are you? No. She only knows it was in an alley. She doesn’t know where.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

At one-thirty a.m. Roberta, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, entered the alley with Jake. A uniformed policeman held up the yellow tape that was used to cordon off the area. They ducked under.

Avondale rushed over to them.

The body was still there, handcuffed to the door, just as she’d seen it in the vision. Roberta tried not to look.

Over the next half hour Avondale had her reenact the events as she’d seen them.

“You think he was shot here, where this water is?” Avondale asked. She nodded. “Damn. Most of the blood would’ve been diluted or washed away. You smoke?”

When she told him no, he bummed a cigarette from one of the crime scene investigators.

She pointed at the stainless steel door. “That’s where I saw his reflection. The light came from inside the door across the alley.”

Avondale crossed the alley and pounded on the opposite door. “Police! Open up!”

The door opened cautiously, an inch at a time. A tiny man poked his head out. Avondale pulled at the door, exposing the man. “Is this the man you saw?” he asked Roberta.

“One of them.”

Avondale looked back at the door on the other side of the alley, the bright metal sharply reflecting Roberta and Jake’s image. He pressed his lips together, puffed out his cheeks, and nodded.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to the cook. “I wanna talk to you and anybody else in there.”

At two, Jake, Roberta, Avondale, and a police artist sat in a large booth inside the Zenith Club. Earlier the customers and employees had been given a basic description of the killer. Those who did remember seeing a large man with dark hair and beard that evening had never seen him before. He was not a regular to the club. Everyone had been sent home and all the lights turned up.

“Are you certain she was the one who handcuffed her own wrist to the door?” Avondale asked.

“Yes.”

The detective clasped and unclasped his long fingers, then patted his breast pocket. “Anyone got a cigarette?” The police artist offered him his pack, lit one for him. “Thanks. We—Lerner and I, were both over there sitting at the bar. She signaled she was going to the head. She didn’t come back.”

“You didn’t wonder…?”

“She wasn’t gone that long. Six, seven—ten minutes tops.”

“Who made the call to the police?” Robbi said.

“Anonymous. No doubt someone from the restaurant across the alley.”

“Would she have gone out into the alley with him?” Jake asked.

Avondale shook his head. “No, not without letting me know. She was bushwhacked. You saw where the rest rooms are…out back by the exit. That’s probably why she handcuffed herself to the door. She figured I’d”—his voice cracked, he dragged on the cigarette—“I’d be along any minute to back her up.”

The police artist cleared his throat, glanced at his watch. He tapped the Identi-Kit on his lap.

Avondale sat forward. “Ready to give the composite a try?”

She nodded. Before speaking, she sat up straighter, brushed her hair from her face and closed her eyes.

Her eyes quickly opened as a spark of fear ignited in her. If she concentrated too intensely on him, she might just find herself joining him in whatever endeavor he was presently engaged in. His kidnap attempt had failed. Would he continue to prowl tonight, seeking prey, or give it a rest? Go home and lick his wounds?

“Miss?” the artist queried.

Robbi drew in a long breath. She closed her eyes again. “He’s very big. Tall, large, though not fat.”

“Height? Weight?”

“Six-five at least. Two hundred and eighty pounds.”

“Like a professional wrestler?” the artist asked.

“In size, but not bulk. I don’t see the muscle. He’s just a very large man. Big-boned.”

“Go on,” Avondale prompted.

“His face is angular, rugged. His hair is black, short, and thin on top. He has rather full lips, what you’d call blubbery. Long teeth. He has a full beard.” With her fingers she indicated whiskers high on his cheeks and under his chin. “Not long, but untrimmed, mountain man-like.”

“Sounds Neanderthal,” Avondale said.

“Sort of. His eyes—it’s his eyes that are so terrifying,” she said in a quiet voice. “They’re deep-set in shadows, heavy brows that meet above his nose. The eyes are pitch black.”

The charcoal whisked over the sketch paper.

“And?” the artist said.

‘That’s about it. He has large hands with coarse black hair on the fingers.”

The artist turned the pad around for Robbi to see.

She stared dispassionately at it. Everything about the composite was on target. The hair, beard, full lips, just as she had described. The eyes, she realized, could belong to anyone.

“The eyes are all wrong.” To the artist she said, “On TV, the late movie, they sometimes show old horror movies—”

“Vampire movies…Bela Lugosi?”

“Exactly,” she said carefully. “Exactly.”

The artist set to work again, the bit of charcoal scratching and scraping on the paper, his strokes urgent, determined.

He turned it around for her to see.

She felt the hair at the back of her scalp rise. “Yes,” she said so quietly it sounded like a hiss.

The artist turned it around for Avondale to see. The detective shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing him, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t here.” He cleared his throat, his pen poised for writing. “Tell me about the bullet wound.”

Robbi was thankful for the change of subject. Without hesitation, she touched her left side. “Right there.”

“Unless it was a flesh wound, our guy will be looking for a doctor to treat that wound.”

“I think the bullet went through his body and came out,” Robbi said. “I saw blood on his back.”

“I’ll have forensic scour that alley for the slug.” He scribbled frantically. “The bullet didn’t knock him down? He didn’t black out?”

“No. Nothing like that. I’d say he was more surprised than hurt.”

“Jesus,” Avondale said under his breath.

Robbi became conscious of a dull ache at the base of her skull. She hoped it was nothing more than the strain of the evening and not the signal for another vision. She rubbed her neck.

“I think Roberta’s about had it for the night, gentlemen,” Jake said, standing.