The Hundredth Man (8 page)

“Weasels “R’ Us around?” I asked.

Harry shook his head. “Squill’s been at his brother’s condo in Pensacola. On his way.”

Pensacola was at least ninety minutes away. Given time elapsed, we had maybe a half hour without him.

“Let’s hit it while we can, bro,” I said. We walked onto a large front porch. Leaning against a white column was Detective Sergeant Warren Blasingame from District Three, who since we were in D-3 had initial jurisdiction. Blasingame was sucking a cigarette and staring at the treetops.

“What’s happening inside, Warren?” Harry asked.

Blasingame drew a finger across his Adam’s apple. “That’s all I know.”

“You haven’t been inside?”

“Just ME folk, scene techs, and Hargreaves. She took the call,” Blasingame drawled, spitting onto the lawn. “My guys ain’t supposed to go in till Squill gets here. Neither are you, probably, no matter what Piss-it rules say about you being in charge.”

“Didn’t hear nothing about that,” Harry said as our footsteps thumped across the porch.

Words scripted around a logo on the door: Deschamps Design Services. A small sign below the doorbell advised, please ring to enter. A decal on the glass said protected by Jenkins security systems. While the place wasn’t the Bastille, neither was it open-door policy. Directly inside was a small pastel-hued reception area that screamed Designer at Work: Chagall-hued abstracts spotlit by track lighting; a puffy blue-leather couch; a frame-and-fabric chair more like a kite than a sitting device. One wall held framed awards for best this and that in design. The place had a subtle astringent smell, like disinfectant, or strong cleanser.

“Could chill beer in here,” Harry said, cinching his tie. We walked a short hall. I heard a muffled sob from a room to the left and gently opened the door. A slender woman sat at a small conference table with patrol officer Sally Hargreaves. Sal had been first on the scene. She was talking softly with her hand over the woman’s wrist. Sal saw me and came to the door.

“Cheryl Knotts, victim’s fiancee,” she whispered. “Flight attendant out for three days. She got here fifty minutes ago to find one Peter Edgar Deschamps dead in his studio.”

“Impression?” I asked, knowing Sal’s got the magic.

“She had nothing to do with it, I’d bet the farm on that. She’s devastated.”

By magic I mean Sal has that rare sense letting her read people fast and dead on. All cops grow the ability to detect bullshit better than your average citizen, but some are prodigies, poly graphic Mozarts. On Sal’s take alone I pretty much X’d out the fiancee as a suspect.

“Get her to answer some questions in a few?” I asked.

Sally nodded, touched my arm. “Walk light if you can.”

Sally’s got a hint of wet in her eyes; the magic has its price. I kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Did I tell you I dreamed about you last week?” I said. “I was a nurse and you were a Viking … “

Sal smiled for the first time and pushed me down the hall. “Go take care of Harry before he does something weird,” she said.

The victim was on his back next to a drawing board. Beside the board was a desk with a Mac, and a monitor with a screen larger than the one on my TV. The man’s garb was white-collar casual: blue Oxford-cloth shirt, pressed khakis, webbed belt, brown loafers. The deceased was solidly built not a hardcore gym rat with ham biceps and steroid-worm veins, but a guy with a hard and regular regimen. His shirt was unbuttoned and the slacks unzipped, the pants bunched low around his buttocks. Outside of the scarlet collar there was no sign of blood or other violence on his clothing. Hembree’d caught the case.

“What’s the word, Bree?” I asked.

“Looks like you and Harry are going to pull some overtime.”

“Cause of death?”

“Just like Nelson. Can’t find anything on the body. But a head wound … “

“Could be floating past the Dixey Bar lighthouse about now.”

Hembree nodded. “If the perp’s using a gun, I’d bet a twenty-two. Most of the time the slug goes into the skull and ricochets around inside like a Ping-Pong ball. No exit wound, no splatter. Just brain pudding.”

I thought about what the mind might make of a pellet bouncing within its confines like a metal wasp. Could a brain comprehend its own destruction? Hear itself scream?

“What about the blood when the head comes off?” I asked, rubbing my hands together, suddenly cold.

“Heart’s stopped, blood’s not moving. Less exsanguination than you’d think. Was me I’d slide a towel under the neck to sop blood, then remove the head. Wrap the head in the towel, drop it into a bowling-ball bag, and wave good-bye.”

“Just don’t get the bags mixed up on league night. Any writing?”

“Been waiting for you to ask.”

Hembree slid the deceased’s briefs past his pubic hair. The same minuscule writing, but in two lines. The top one said, Warped a quart of whores. Quart of whores. Whores warped. Quart of whores. Warped whores. Quart of whores. Warped whores. This was followed by Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Rats Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho

An icy finger tickled the base of my neck.

“The whores angle again,” Hembree said. “You guys went that road?”

I nodded. We’d contacted vice and homicide departments across the Gulf Coast, expanding to national crime-stat sources. No unsolved killings in our area, at least not within our parameters. Whatever this was, we had an exclusive.

Hembree pointed to the second line. “Ho as ‘whore’?”

“Or ho like in laughing at us, Bree.”

Hembree closed his eyes. “Oh, man, anything but that.”

Taunts from psychopathic ally disordered killers were a chilling sign. The killers felt certain they could get away with anything. Some did, especially if they had iron-hard self-control, like the control to precisely sever a head and write in tiny, perfectly defined letters. Such people could live anywhere, be anything: janitor, schoolteacher, bank president.

Hembree said the ME’s tech had approximated TOD at two or so hours before, give or take. Harry said, “I’ll go look around the rest of the place. See if you can get anything from the woman. Girlfriend?”

“Fiancee,” I corrected. “Sally thinks she’s clean.”

“Good enough for me,” Harry said, familiar with the magic. He buttoned his jacket. “Damn, it’s colder’n a tomb in here.”

I returned to the room with the fiancee, not looking forward to what I might become to her. In a grocery store I once unknowingly stood in line behind a woman I’d interviewed about her daughter’s violent death. When our eyes connected she turned white, made kitten-mew sounds, and ran out the door, her groceries still riding the belt. Now, entering the worst moment in this woman’s life, I prayed her mind blanked me out after tonight, and when nightmares screamed open her eyes, it wasn’t my face printed on the ceiling.

“Excuse me, Ms. Knotts, I’m Detective Carson Ryder, and I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes if I may.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “While it’s still … fresh, I know.” I had to strain to hear her.

“Peter didn’t tell you about any kind of meeting today? Anyone he was going to be talking to?”

“No. But he’s wearing meeting clothes, long pants, dress shirt. He’d work in cutoffs and a T-shirt, unless … someone must have scheduled at the last minute.”

I heard voices and footsteps at the front door. Sally closed the door for privacy.

“Did clients come here often?”

“No. He goes to them. Peter’s big on service.”

“Walk-ins?”

“Sometimes people’d see the sign and ask if he did business cards and stuff like that.”

“If he was going to meet someone and wrote it down, where would he keep the information?”

She closed her eyes. “I gave him a PDA last Christmas. It’s probably in the front desk. Top drawer.”

Sal slipped away, returning a minute later with a device hardly larger than a credit card. She’d put on latex gloves. I joined Sal in the hall. She tapped the keypad and studied the display a long moment before turning it to me.

Today’s date. Under that was entered: 8:00 PM mtg.w/Mr. Cutter.

“Well, isn’t that just bold as hell,” Sally said.

I stepped out to tell Harry about Mr. Cutter and ran into a straight-arm block with a wall of meat behind it. “Whoa, there, Ryder,” Burlew said. “Where you going, sport?” His breath smelled like manure and onions; maybe he should have chewed Listerine ads.

“I have to talk to Harry.”

“Phone him, hot dog. From outside.”

I yelled. “Harry, you back there?”

He pointed to the front. “Door’s the other way, bucko.”

“Where’s the captain, Burlew?”

“Sergeant Burlew to you. Now haul ass before it gets hauled.”

Squill stuck his face through the doorway of Deschamps’s studio a dozen feet down the hall. It was like the world had shifted on its axis and everyone got thrown into different positions. “I’ve got the scene now, Ryder,” he said. “Go take statements from the neighbors.”

“Where’s Harry, Captain? It’s important.”

“Didn’t you get enough air at birth, Ryder?” Squill said. “I gave you a direct order. Get outside and start interviewing.”

I’d read the revised manual about a hundred times, mostly in drop-jaw disbelief at the autonomy supposedly granted the PSIT. In cases judged to be under the unit’s purview, Harry and I were to be the ones coordinating the efforts.

“Excuse me, Captain,” I said, “but this scene, combined with the Nelson murder, displays evidence of a disordered mind, pyschopathologically or socio pathologically that means “

Squill jabbed a manicured digit toward the door. “Door,” he elucidated.

“Dammit, sir, hear me out. The evidence indicates “

“Swearing at a superior officer? That’s it. I’m done talking, Detective.”

“Then how about listening, Captain? We have two men beheaded, and we have “

“You, Officer,” Squill barked to a young patrolman by the back door. “Yes, you. Wake up. Get over here and escort Mr. Ryder from the house, now.”

” clear evidence of a disordered mind … “

Burlew’s hand tightened around my bicep like a vise and I yanked it free. “Off me, Burl. Shouldn’t you be washing the captain’s socks or something?”

Burlew wheeled to me and spat a gray plug of newsprint on the floor. “Anytime,” he dared, a foul-breathed Gibraltar with clenched fists, cannonball biceps bulging beneath his jacket. “Got the balls to try it?”

I shifted my balance low in my hips and felt the buzz of energy just below my navel. I could smell heat coming off Burlew. His penny-sized eyes blazed with anger, but behind it I sensed fear.

“Sergeant,” Squill commanded. “Get over here. We have work to do.” Squill gave Burlew a come-hither twitch.

I spoke low. “Captain needs a foot rub, Burl. Best get on it.”

Burlew tried to set me on fire with his glare, then tongued his lips and turned toward the studio, a heavy shoulder nudging me as he passed. “Your time’s coming, asshole,” he whispered.

The uniform was at my side. “I’m sorry, Detective Ryder,” he said, “but could you please step outside, sir? Please.”

Shaking with anger, I went to the porch and heard Harry’s whistle. He walked up from the shadows beside the house.

“Welcome to the B team, Carson. We B out here while Squill’s in there. He showed up while you were with the fiancee and it was like the Marines landing.”

“Explain this to me, Harry. Am I missing something?”

Harry pointed to a big command SUV pulling onto the front lawn, engine revving needlessly, tires breaking traction and spitting grass. Look at me, the machine seemed to say as it lurched to a stop. The passenger door opened. After a five-second pause to let camera lights frame the scene, Deputy Chief Plackett emerged as if born of the dark vehicle. He straightened his tie, showed the newsies his palm, and no-commented his way to the house. Bile roiled in my stomach I got the message: Squill and Plackett were doing the brass-hat dance, Squill performing for Plackett, Plackett for the cameras and public. While inside the house a dead and mutilated human body functioned as a prop in an act of ego theater.

“Excuse me, Detective Ryder?”

I turned to the uniform Squill had walk me from the house, a young blond guy looking like he’d skipped directly from the Cub Scouts to the MPD.

“I’m sorry about the action in there, sir. The captain ordered me and I … “

“Did what you had to do. Relax.”

“It’s bullshit if you ask me, Detective. It seems if anyone should be in there, it should be you. This crazy stuff … wasn’t it you solved that Adrian case by yourself? I mean, didn’t you?”

His words were innocent, but they wrapped dread around me. From the corner of my eye I saw Harry’s head angle my way, watching my response.

“Not really,” I told the patrol officer, trying to talk through the sand in my throat. “I just got lucky that other time. And I had a lot of help.”

“Carson, you NEEEEED ME AGAIN … “

I didn’t tell him where the help had come from. Or how just thinking of going back for more made my knees weak and my spine cold. I looked at Harry. He was studying the sky like it was a movie screen.

I drove home with the windows down, the AC blasting, and a knot in my gut the windstorm in the car couldn’t blow away. Created in the wake of the Adrian killings, the PSIT was the rarest of all public-relations contrivances: one that accidentally or not served a purpose. But, like so many blue-ribbon-panel creations over the years, the PSIT seemed destined for an unmourned death. Quietly excised from existence in the next iteration of the procedures manual, its transitory purpose would be served, its vaporous delusions no longer required. Until the next Joel Adrian. Or maybe whatever the hell was out there now.

When I arrived home, drained and angry, the light on my phone signaled a message. I pressed the Play button.

“Hello, Carson? Are you there? It’s Vangie Prowse. Pick up, please. I want to talk to you about Jeremy. We have some things to discuss. Carson?”

The message beeped to an end. I pressed Erase and fell into bed.

CHAPTER 8

“I
s Piss-it coordinating this case or not,” I asked Lieutenant Tom Mason when he arrived at 7:30 the next morning. “We’ve got two headless corpses. Are we waiting for the killer’s shrink to call and say, “Yes, Cutter’s wacko, yours truly, Dr. Igor Hassenpfeffer’?”