Signature Kill (26 page)
Authors: David Levien
“A little over forty thousand.”
“Wow.” That’s when Behr pretended to almost drop it. Benj leaned forward, almost keeping his cool. Behr regained control of the camera and said, “Must take a hell of a picture.” Then he drifted down the counter, camera still in hand, toward the film-processing section, knowing Benj would follow.
“It’s a professional’s tool,” Benj said, his pretension evaporating. “Regardless of income level, it’s more camera than most people need. You could save plenty and still come away with a great product if you look over here.” The suddenly helpful salesman pointed at a nearby glass case.
“That’s a relief,” Behr said and practically tossed the Hasselblad back to him.
“Look, the truth is I’m old-school. I’m interested in getting back to shooting film, not digital, and there’s this guy who’s supposed to know a lot about this stuff. I was hoping to ask him for some advice. Maybe you know him?” Behr took out the photo and showed it. Behr studied Benj, while Benj studied the picture.
“Well, sorry, can’t help you,” the salesman said.
“So you don’t know him?” Behr said.
The suggestion that he might not know something seemed to rankle Benj. He cocked his head with an air of superiority before answering. “Look, man, ours is a shrinking business, and I’m not in the habit of giving out sensitive information on customers.”
“So he
is
a customer?” Behr asked.
Now Benj looked pissed. “Is there anything
camera related
I can help you with? Otherwise—”
Behr picked up a large bottle of film-cleaning solvent and hefted it in his hand. “Is this flammable? It says here on the label it’s alcohol based, must be pretty flammable. Oh yeah, it is, I see the warning now. You have a lot of it? You keep it stored in back? Man, if this stuff caught fire, this whole place would go up like a Roman candle and burn for days. Hasselblads and all …”
Behr craned his neck and glanced around. “I’m sure there’s a shitload of security cameras here, so whoever started something like that would probably cut power to the store and come in with a black mask on in case of battery backup, that way no one would know who did it and he’d never get caught.”
Behr let that hang out there for a minute, then finished. “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’d only burn for like five hot minutes and there’d be nothing fucking left, not even helpful employees.”
“Are you threatening … are you saying you’re gonna come burn down the store?”
Behr fixed him with a flat gaze. “I’m just a solo P.I. on a case who doesn’t give a shit about anything except getting a name. So you can tell whoever you want about this conversation, but I promise you this: if this place ever goes to torch, I’ll be sitting across town somewhere in public with lots of people, maybe even a cop or two, and it will never, and I mean
never
, track back to me.”
Benj grew very uncomfortable and looked around as if searching for help, but none was coming and Behr wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine. I know him,” Benj said in a small voice. “It’s not like he’s some friend of mine, fuck it. We don’t see him much in here, but when he comes in he buys heavy quantities of developer, fixer, and stop bath.”
“Name?”
“It’s … slipped my mind,” Benj said.
“You have records of your transactions?” Behr asked.
“Yeah …” Behr followed as Benj went behind the counter and got on the computer. “He … I don’t see any credit card information.
I see where we’ve sold a lot of developer—that goes into the system for automatic restocking—but no purchase info.”
“Meaning?”
“He must’ve paid cash.”
Shit
, Behr thought. He envisioned sitting out in front of the store for weeks, months on end, hoping for the guy to show up to resupply while bodies piled up and the reward went unclaimed.
“Oh, there’s an old note in here …” Benj said, almost emitting a nervous laugh at what he read off the computer. “There’s a phone number. It says: ‘Call Hardy Abler when Kodak D-76 back in stock.’ ”
And just like that Behr finally had a name.
“We’re good now, right?” Benj said. “You’re not gonna do what you were saying …”
But Behr was already out the door.
Something is bothering him, and nothing ever bothers him. Not that he can remember. Last night was a little stupid. As delicious as it had felt to crack that Chink hooker—the bitch hadn’t even been a real blonde—it might not have been smart to go into that place and to do what he’d done. And smart is a thing he’s always been. But so far, so good. He’s seen no news coverage. There’s no indication that the police have been called and are looking for anyone. His picture isn’t on any news websites, so they must not have had cameras. How could they call the cops for help anyway, he wondered, a filthy joint like that? He should be feeling better now, but he isn’t.
It’s because the sensation of the punch has worn off too quickly, he realizes. His knuckles aren’t even sore. Maybe it’s an age thing, a midlife crisis. He’s heard about how people lose their taste for their pleasures in life. But that doesn’t seem right either. He still has plenty of appetite. Too much. It’s that merely hitting some girl isn’t
enough
. He is jumping out of his skin.
The sounds of the break room invade his thoughts. Someone is causing everybody to laugh. He looks up from his coffee and sees it is Kenny. Three women are Kenny’s audience, Claudia, Beth, and Stacie, and Kenny is really busting them up. Claudia is an old battle-ax of a secretary who’s been with the company for twenty-five years. Beth is a married woman about his age, but Stacie, in her early thirties, is a different story. She’s worked here for a bit over a year. He’s seen
her around, but he hasn’t really
noticed
her. Maybe it’s because of his strict policy not to act on ones he knows or works with.
But looking at her now, as she tosses her butter-colored hair back while flirting with Kenny, the swell of her breasts against her blouse, her sheer white pantyhose stretched over her ample thighs and rustling against her dress skirt, he thinks he must’ve truly blinded himself, because she is incredible. He feels the thrill of need and desire. He suddenly knows it plain and simple: here’s a project sitting right in front of him.
Why the hell not? Back to the beginning with one I know
.
He’ll take her right away.
Tonight
.
Three ways to go about it pop into his head. He can disable her car so it breaks down on the way home and he happens by to help her. But he discounts that one right away. It is too inexact. He can’t be sure exactly where she’ll stop. It will likely be too public. Option two: he can just wait outside in the parking lot and follow her home. Of course he’ll have to find a minute to dart home to get his kit and get back before she leaves. But why work that hard? He has access to the company’s personnel records. He’ll pull her address and show up at his leisure.
She stands with her coffee, her back to him, rearranging her skirt over her buxom hindquarters. She has what regular guys call a “heart-shaped ass.” He already has ideas forming as to what she’ll look like legless, when she turns to go and sees him sitting there.
“Hi, Hardy,” she says. “How are you doing today?”
“Top of my game, Stacie, thanks for asking. How are you?” He wonders if she can read the thoughts behind his eyes. Of course she can’t, no one can, because she’d run screaming in horror if she could.
“Oh, I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do,” she says. He smells her vanilla chewing gum in the air.
“I hear you, Stace,” he says, and gives her a smile.
The house was as benign as a sugar cookie, sitting there on a tree-lined street that must have been positively leafy during the spring, summer, and fall. There was nothing going on behind the shaded windows as far as Behr could tell in the two hours he’d been sitting there. Every few years or so, it seemed, a nondescript home like this one was revealed in the news to be a house of horrors, a wife kept prisoner by an abusive husband, kidnap victims locked up in the basement. He’d even had his own experience with a place more run-down than this, in a worse part of town, used as a temporary depot for unimaginable crimes, where again, the bland facade of suburbia masked pure malice. But this time it wasn’t the house itself that held his attention. No, this time his gaze kept shifting to the oversized detached two-car garage. There were no windows on the garage bay doors, which was a bit odd, and the sliver of window on the side of the structure that he could just glimpse from where he sat appeared to be blacked out.
About halfway through his sit, a somewhat portly middle-aged woman arrived and entered the house. After the camera store, Behr had run a quick background, which he finished on his laptop with a Wi-Fi card on his stakeout. So he had the plate on the Toyota Corolla station wagon she had driven up in. He knew she was Margaret Abler and that she had been married to Reinhard Peter Abler, his subject, for the past eighteen years.
Abler himself had served a five-year stint in the army and had
gotten out with the rank of first sergeant via honorable discharge. This was about eighteen years ago as well. He had no criminal record, was listed as a member in good standing of and donor to the Bethel Lutheran Church, and was currently employed by Martin, Miller & Elkin, a firm that provided audits, tax management, and advisory services to corporate clients. Though not as large as PricewaterhouseCoopers or Deloitte & Touche, MM&E was in the same mold, and as a director of accounting services, Abler was firmly middle management. He had a blue 2004 Buick Park Avenue registered to him, and Behr had the plate number on that. He had modest credit card bills, low outstanding balances, and no liens against him. On paper he was a most innocuous individual, a solid citizen. But Behr was interested in what was
off
the paper.
That was when Abler’s wife exited the house after fifteen minutes inside, got in her car, and drove off.
His gaze pulled away from the house once again and landed on that garage. That garage. They didn’t use it for parking their cars. She didn’t anyway. Maybe there was a way inside, so he could take a look. He sat there for a long half hour wondering, thinking, sweeping the neighborhood with his eyes in all directions for witnesses. And then he reached for the door handle.
His feet felt like they were hovering inches above the ground, such was the deftness with which he tried to move as he crossed the street, then the lawn, and slipped between the house and the garage. His big concern was that he’d be spotted, perhaps by a neighbor, who would alert Abler that someone was creeping around, giving him the chance to clear out evidence and cover his tracks. Behr couldn’t let that happen. He moved along the wall until he got to the window. He peered inside, or tried to anyway. The window had been treated with a darkened film, and there seemed to be another layer of solid blacking on the inside, so there was no seeing through it, and it wasn’t the type that opened. Behr moved on until he reached the rear, where there was a regular door. He didn’t have to try the
knob to determine if it was locked, because there was a chunky stainless-steel padlock with a thick hasp securing the portal. It was a security measure, to be sure, but to what end—to safeguard valuables inside, to keep people out, or to keep someone in?
Behr gave a quick glance over to the house. The back door would present less of a challenge than the garage and that padlock, but the house didn’t hold the answers. Of that he was sure. Then, as he headed back to his car and got in, a sick feeling descended upon him. He took out his phone and looked at it. It was a miserable call to have to make, but he went ahead and placed it.
“Hey, Breslau, it’s—”
“I know who it is. Your number comes up under ‘asshole.’ What do you want?”
“I was thinking about that DB you mentioned, the little girl. Did her aunt turn up yet?”
“No,” Breslau said.
“You got a description on her?”
“She’s thirty-two, Caucasian, five foot nine, eyes blue, hair blond.”
The facts settled on Behr. He felt his eyes go to the garage.
“Have you looked out by where the other bodies were found?” he asked.
“Of course. And by the tracks where Quinn turned up. We’re looking everywhere,” Breslau said.
“If I had an idea—”
“Yeah?”
“A potentially related crime that led to a search warrant on a location …” Behr was thinking about the assault at the massage parlor, and how he’d made the ID at the photo store. It was circumstantial, potentially rickety in court. Breslau was ahead of him.
“Did this related crime get reported?” he asked.
“Not exactly.”
“We’d need solid linkage. Will the victim come forward?”
“Doubtful,” Behr said.
Breslau took a breath. “All I can tell you is: I cannot afford a bad search or any other brand of bullshit right now. And neither can you.”
“Shit …” Behr breathed. “You got a pic on the aunt?”
“E-mailing you now,” Breslau said, and hung up.
A moment later Behr’s phone buzzed with the incoming message. He opened the attachment, and the photo scrolled onto his screen. Pam Cupersmith was young, lovely, and blond. As Behr stared at the picture, an urgency to get inside that garage exploded within him. She was right there, across the street and inside that small structure, he suddenly knew, in whatever condition, mere wood and glass and metal all that was separating him from recovering her. Hell, maybe she was even alive, as doubtful as that seemed.
But Breslau and the rest of the cops weren’t going to help him. They couldn’t. He had to help them. He jerked his car into gear and stepped on the accelerator. He drove for MM&E, where Abler worked, moving like an automaton now, programmed for one function at any cost: entry.
Amber plate-glass windows reflected the late-afternoon sun onto a dozen rows of vehicles. Behr had arrived at the office building that housed MM&E, and he drove slowly up and down the columns of cars until he spotted Abler’s Park Avenue. Advertised as a slice of American automotive luxury when it was new, it was more like the baked potato of cars now. Innocuous and forgettable, and in a dark blue color that vaguely connoted authority, the car was getting old. But he imagined Abler’s reluctance to sell it considering what Behr imagined it had been used for—the collection and transportation of victims. Behr had dug up a police report on file back from 2003 when Abler’s prior car, a Pontiac Grand Prix, had been “stolen.” The car had been found three days later, burned. Abler had collected the insurance. It read like an effective sterilization of evidence to Behr, but it wasn’t a move that could be repeated often, if ever, and Abler was smart enough to know that.