A Cook in Time (9 page)

“Gross,” End-Is-Near said. “Junk like that gives us all a bad name.”

“He's such a phony, dude,” X-Files said. “So is that jerk he hangs around with. The pretty boy. You know the one.”

“Holton,” the gum chewer said. “He's sooo cute.” She made a strange squealing sound. “Too bad he's on their side. He calls himself their president now.”

“He's a phony, dude, if I ever saw one,” X-Files said.

“He's so phony he gives fakes a bad name,” End-Is-Near pronounced.

As they chortled, the gum chewer swallowed
her gum. “Oh shit,” she muttered, pounding her chest.

“Why do all of you think he's a fraud?” Angie asked.

They looked at her as if she were the alien. “We just know, dude,” X-Files said. The other two nodded.

“Algernon's no fraud, though. He's the real thing.”

“He's cute, too. If you like older men,” the former gum chewer said.

Angie wondered what the girl thought older consisted of. Probably anyone over thirty.

“So, you interested in anything in particular?” End-Is-Near leaned forward, elbows on the counter. “Maybe we could help you out.”

Angie looked back at him. Well, she'd asked everyone else—why not them? “I do have a question. What do aliens eat?”

The three glanced at each other, then X-Files leaned close and said in a hushed voice, “Earthlings.”

Paavo couldn't say that Thai food was a favorite cuisine of his, but it was one of Angie's. That was why they were seated in the Rose of Siam restaurant and he was chasing clear, slippery rice noodles around his plate with a fork. At least in this restaurant he didn't have to fight his food with chopsticks. He wasn't very good with those, either.

He'd been feeling guilty ever since he'd questioned Angie because of Stan's crack that she had gone out with an old boyfriend.
Damn that man, anyway. Why, out of all the millions of people who could be living next to Angie, does he have to be the one?

Paavo was going to make it up to her, though, first with this dinner, and then with a play in the little theater area of the city just off Geary Boulevard. He also needed to find her something especially nice for Christmas. What that
was—that he could afford—he had no idea. Christmas was only two weeks away. He'd better come up with something.

“The green curry prawns are excellent,” Angie said. “The curry is hot, but the varied tastes are clear and even the delicate flavor of the prawns isn't overwhelmed.”

“I'm glad you're enjoying it.”

“It's good you decided to take a break. This case seems to be getting you down.”

He nodded. “The victim was practically a hermit. We contacted people whose names he had written down in his address book, and most of them hadn't heard from him in years. They didn't even exchange Christmas cards. It made me wonder why he still had their names in his book. Unless it was simply because he didn't have anyone to replace them with. Even looking at his phone bill, the only long-distance calls he made were to businesses. Not even his sister cared much that he was dead.”

“How awful for him. There's been little mention of the death in the papers. It was murder, right?”

“It's a good thing it's stayed out of the papers. The guy was mutilated. Badly. We don't want the gory details published.”

“What was his name again?”

“Bertram Lambert.”

“Great name.” The singsong quality of the name made her want to smile, but due to the gravity of what had happened to the man, she kept a
straight face. “Well, with that gory a murder. I guess whoever did it must be nuts. If he's still in the city, you'll find him. Someone that crazy can't stay hidden for long.”

“Let's hope not.” The subject died. “What have you been up to?”

The waitress cleared their plates and brought them tall glasses of iced and sweetened Thai coffee. “Let's see. Connie and I went to a science fiction convention this afternoon,” Angie said, using her straw to stir the milk through the syrupy coffee. “It was fun. That's about it.”

“Science fiction? I didn't know you liked that.”

“It's so new-millennium,” she said. “Thought I'd try it.” She hoped he couldn't tell she was lying through her teeth.

“What gives, Angie? All this millennium stuff isn't like you.”

She bit her tongue, literally. That was the only way she could stop herself from telling him about Triana Crisswell and her fantasy dinner—or fantasy party—for two hundred plus people. Despite her mother's advice, she couldn't tell him about a business that might fail, and she simply wasn't sure that she could pull the party off—or that Triana wouldn't back out, or that some other last-minute disaster wouldn't occur and cause the entire job offer to go belly-up. She was tired of telling Paavo of her excitement over new job prospects, only to watch them blow up in her face. So, despite everything, she
decided to keep this a secret until she was certain the Fantasy Dinners enterprise was everything she intended it to be.

“What can I say, Paavo? I want to be with it. Just like everyone else these days. After all, I probably won't be around for Y3K.”

 

The next morning Paavo found the official write-up of Bertram Lambert's autopsy on his desk. Even though he had watched the autopsy take place and had a preliminary indication of what had happened, the complete report could still hold some surprises. As he read, Yoshiwara came in and sat, looking up from time to time to gauge Paavo's reaction.

Based on pattern impression and calculations of the shape and dimensions of the implement used on Lambert's skull, the coroner determined a hammer had been used. Paavo remembered seeing a well-stocked toolbox in the garage. The tools in it were so shiny, he had doubted they had ever been used. The cut to the carotid artery had apparently been made with a broad-bladed steel knife such as the kind used by hunters. Gastrointestinal tract contents were described. The crab, liver, crackers, and blood alcohol caused Dr. Ramirez to unofficially suggest in a Post-it to Paavo that the deceased had eaten crab mousse, paté, and wine. If she was right, an elegant little party had been taking place before things turned ugly. Whom would a pariah like Lambert have been partying with?

“I've never seen anything like it,” Paavo said when he finished reading.

“It's crazy.” Yosh rolled his chair away from his desk and turned toward Paavo. He had already read the reports. “There's barely a drop of blood left in the guy's body, his wounds were made with a fine cutting instrument, and they've been cauterized. It doesn't make sense.”

“The crime lab suggests some kind of laser was used,” Paavo said.

“Who'd get access to a laser?” Yosh cried in frustration. “And why bother? The guy was dead. What was the killer trying to prove?”

Paavo flipped through the pages to the description of the cauterized tissue. “Say, have you figured out what you're going to give Nancy for Christmas?” he asked as he read the gory description.

Yosh slid his chair back to his desk and picked up a memo from the bureau chief talking about holiday leave and the need for staff coverage. “I don't know what I'll do this year. Last year I had her gift all picked out. She'd been hinting, so I knew she'd love it.”

Paavo looked up, interested. “Really? That good?”

Yosh nodded, a big smile on his face. “It was perfect. Hey! It's something Angie might like.”

“Really? What was it?”

“An electric bread maker. It cost a bundle, too. Over eighty bucks!”

So much for that idea
. Paavo tossed the autopsy report on his desk. “I'm going to send the CSU
over to Lambert's house. We have no indication that it was the scene of the crime, but he had a nice store of wines, paté in the refrigerator, and a hammer in his toolbox. He might have invited the killer over. The doer would have had plenty of time to clean up, since Lambert's neighbors never paid any attention whatsoever to him.”

“Do you realize how boring that means he must have been?” Yosh said with a shake of his head.

“If you guys are done talking about all that gore,” Calderon barked, “I want to know who's going to handle Christmas duty. I want to make sure you don't expect me to do it just 'cause I'm alone this year.”

“You planning to sit home singing carols?” Yosh asked. “With visions of sugarplums dancing in your head?”

“Real funny. I'm going to try to see my kids,” Calderon said. “Why don't you take it, Paav? You don't have kids or family. Christmas can't mean anything to you.”

Paavo's head jerked up at Calderon's words. Here he'd been thinking of what a loner Lambert was. He wondered if others saw him the same way. “I'm supposed to go to Angie's parents' house. I guess—”

“Go ahead, pal,” Yosh said. “I'll do it.”

Paavo stared at his partner. Yosh was the biggest family man in the department. “But—”

Just then Lt. Hollins, head of the Homicide Bureau, stepped into the big room where the
inspectors had their desks. All talking stopped. He seemed even more worried than usual. “Paavo, Yosh, come into my office.”

The lieutenant was in his early fifties, with thinning gray hair and a thickening waistline. He'd been a cop for over twenty years, starting as a beat patrolman at Central Station in North Beach. His dream had been to become the head of Homicide, and five years ago he'd made it. He'd been nursing an ulcer ever since. Even though his job had become, for the most part, administrative instead of investigative, he still had a nose for crime scenes and knew how to follow up on a good lead.

As they entered his office, he walked to the windows and stood in front of them, one hand rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hey there, Chief,” Yosh said exuberantly. “Why the long face?”

“Sit down,” Hollins said, his voice grim.

They sat. Yosh clamped his mouth shut.

Hollins drew a deep breath. “I just got a call from the Southern station,” he said. “There's been another murder. A man, probably in his mid-thirties. It's hard to tell exactly what was done to him, but it sounded a lot like the Stern Grove victim. Our boy—or whoever's responsible for this—is at it again.”

Hollins paused, then stared them both in the eye. “You two need to get out there right now and take over. Keep it quiet. I don't want the press involved. We managed to keep any details of the
first mutilation out of the newspapers. If the press gets wind of this second one, it could throw the city into a panic. Especially with all the kooks already running around sure the millennium means the world is coming to an end.”

The two inspectors stood up. “Where are we going?” Yosh asked.

“The Giants' new stadium. The groundskeepers found him. Right behind second base.”

“I wonder if I'm overdressed for a lecture,” Connie said, her voice giving away her nervousness as she checked her face in the mirror of Angie's Testarossa. “I kept thinking about how handsome he was in that picture, and I might have gotten a bit carried away.” Under a heavy coat, she was wearing a kelly green cocktail dress, sleeveless, with a plunging neckline.

“You said you wanted Derrick to notice you,” Angie said noncommittally as she turned into a parking lot by Tardis Hall. “Once you take that coat off, he definitely will. Anyway, I told you how lonely he seems. He needs you, that's all there is to it.”

As they walked toward the entrance to the hall, they saw that a line had formed to buy tickets. It was considerably longer than the first time Angie had been there, and the crowd was
considerably more conservatively dressed. “It looks popular enough,” Connie admitted.

“Didn't I tell you?” Angie said, trying to hide her own amazement.

The same man Angie had seen the first time she was there, and at the Moscone Center, again sat behind a small folding table with brochures stacked tall. The same sign stood in front of him:

 

N
EW
M
EMBERS
! F
REE
D
RAWINGS
!
$100
TO THE
L
UCKY
W
INNER
! J
OIN
T
ODAY
!

 

Angie and Connie joined the line to buy tickets for the lecture. The wait wasn't long, and soon they were in the dingy entry hall, milling about with others and waiting for the auditorium doors to open.

“Back again, Angelina?” Derrick said as he reached Angie. He gave her a hug. “What a wonderful surprise! You must like our message.”

He tried to put his arm around her, but she stepped to the side. “I'd like you to meet my friend, Connie Rogers. Connie, this is Derrick Holton,” Angie said. Derrick held out his hand and said it was nice to meet her. Connie took a moment before she placed hers in his and, with a look of sheer bliss, she checked him out from his neatly trimmed brown hair to his black oxfords, then murmured something that sounded a bit like “Same here.”

“The doors should be opening anytime now.” Derrick clapped his hands together and rocked
onto his toes as he excitedly scanned the area. “Isn't this crowd fantastic? They're here to see if Mosshad shows up tonight. I think he will, but he's not here yet. I've got to go wait for him. If you can stick around after the lecture, I'd love to take both of you out for a drink. How would that be?”

Angie turned to Connie, who nodded enthusiastically. “That would be quite nice,” she said. Derrick rushed off as quickly as he'd arrived.

“My, my!” Connie said, fanning her face. “I see what you mean about him.”

“Ah! Sir Derrick's lady fair.” Angie jumped as a man came up from behind her. Even before turning to look at him, she knew such words had to belong to the blond, long-haired fellow she'd met last time.

“Kronos, right?” she asked.

“At your service. And who is the lovely wench with you?”

Connie had been gaping at the strangely speaking fellow with the loose bleached-muslin overshirt and grubby jeans.

“Connie,” Angie said, “meet Kronos.”

“Hello.” She cautiously held out her hand.

Instead of taking it, he bowed from the waist with a great flourish. “Greetings and salutations.”

Elvis, from the science fiction and fantasy convention, joined them. He was still conservatively dressed in a white dress shirt, blue tie, and gray slacks. “Remember me? I gave you books on Roswell.”

“You're pushing Roswell again, young knave?” Kronos asked. “Haven't you learned there are some things better left unspoken?”

“We've got to talk about it,” Elvis exclaimed. “Roswell is where it all began for us. Even Algernon can't break away from it, as you well know.”

“I hate Algernon. I hate Roswell. And I hate your talking about them!” Kronos cried, forgetting his phony Elizabethan speech for the moment.

As the two men glared at each other, Angie said, “Why does everyone seem to dislike Algernon so much?”

Two heads swiveled toward her with surprise. Elvis's expression changed first, his mouth curving into a lopsided grin. “You don't know much about us, do you? Algernon and Mosshad were on the same side until Holton entered the picture. Then it was Holton and Mosshad on one side, Algernon on the other. Along with Kronos's ex-wife.”

“That's old history, swine. I have better things to do than stay and listen. Excuse me, fair ladies. The truth about Algernon is simple. He is a fraud and a liar. And a home wrecker. If he were dead, everyone would be better off.”

With that, he spun away.

“Go play with your implant,” Elvis said to Kronos's disappearing back. He faced Angie. “Have you met Algernon?”

“I meet him tomorrow night. I think it'll be most interesting,” she said with a glance in the direction Kronos had taken.

“To understand Algernon is to understand NAUTS and Derrick Holton. Even though they are opposite in almost every way. And deadly enemies.” He glanced at Connie. “It seems to me that meeting Algernon would be well worth your while.”

Connie's eyes met Angie's. “Perhaps so,” she said.

“Well, excuse me, please,” Elvis said. “I've got to help my friend Phil over there with the tickets. We're getting a good crowd due to all the publicity about Dr. Mosshad.”

Angie watched Elvis walk over to the man he had referred to. The name Phil had a strangely normal sound for this crowd. Phil himself, however, fit in with the others. He was an older man, his black hair streaked with gray. He was almost bald on top, though his hair was thick and bushy at the sides and back. He had a full beard and wore love beads and Birkenstock sandals with no socks. A true child of the sixties, most likely still searching for the Age of Aquarius.

Angie turned back to Connie and the two were quietly commenting to each other on the bizarre people there when Angie noticed another man hovering nearby. He was a pudgy twenty-something fellow with a little Hitler-type mustache and thin black hair combed forward onto his forehead. He was the man who had been sitting outside the hall and giving away Roswell brochures. She frowned and turned her back to him.

Instead of taking the hint, he moved in front
of her. “Are you a member of NAUTS?” he asked nervously.

“I'm here to learn,” she said coldly.

The chubby fellow stepped closer, twisting his fingers. “It's nice that you're here. Both of you.” His voice was soft. He smiled at Connie, who looked even more alarmed. “You should both think about joining us. You might even win a hundred dollars.” His smile made his cheeks dimple deeply. “My name's John Oliver Harding. Everyone calls me Oliver—Oliver Hardy.” He gripped his shirt as if it were a vest and waggled his fingers. “I'm into old movies and comedies.”

“Ah, I see,” Angie said. She looked around for Stan Laurel. He had to be nearby.

Just then the doors opened. “Good-bye, Mr. Hardy. We've got a lecture to hear.”

“It'll be about the men in black. You should enjoy it.”

Better than men in Oliver Hardy disguises
, Angie thought as Connie tugged her to the front row for a better view of Derrick Holton.

 

Another male. This one seemed to be in his forties. His lips, nose, ears, genitals, and rectum had been removed as cleanly and bloodlessly as those from the victim found in Stern Grove. The number 5 had been carved into his chest.

Paavo stood on the infield of the city's new ballpark and looked down at the victim. He had come
from the dugout, where he'd talked to the security team and the groundskeepers who had found the body. They'd given him a good idea of what he'd see when he got there. Maybe that was why, as he crossed the field, he'd made a detour to the pitcher's mound, stood on the rubber a quick second, and stared at home plate. When he was a kid and would go to Candlestick Park to watch the Giants with his stepfather, he had dreamed of standing on the mound one day. He guessed this was as close as he'd ever get. Then he turned and continued toward the crime scene.

As Yosh joined him, he looked once more down at the body. This one hadn't been dead a couple of days like Lambert. He was so recently dead his skin still smelled burnt where the cuts had been cauterized. Paavo held his breath as he squatted down. There was no lividity. Finger pressure could not turn the skin any whiter than it already was. It looked as if this victim, too, had been drained of blood. Rigor mortis was in the early stages of development. Three or four hours earlier, the man might still have been alive.

Beside the mutilated body Paavo saw a small waferlike metal object. He didn't touch or move it until the photographers got there, just in case there was some significance to the way it had been placed at the victim's side. It seemed to be some kind of computer circuitry, but neither Paavo nor Yosh, nor any of the patrol officers around them, had any idea what they were looking at.

“It's got to be the same doer,” Yosh said. “I don't want to think there's more than one psycho going around hacking up people like that.”

“What worries me,” Paavo said, “is that there was only about a week between this murder and the earlier one—depending on how accurately we estimated the day of Lambert's murder.” Anyone who killed so brutally usually took a few weeks, even months, between crimes. Past studies of serial and spree killers showed that such killings often accompanied a kind of sexual frenzy on the part of the killer. Those who mutilated their victims, in particular, always went into a profound exhaustion for days thereafter. It was considered nearly impossible for someone to kill again in such a lurid way after only a few days. Nearly impossible, but obviously not completely so.

Or—the thought was chilling—there might be more than one killer. A cult, perhaps? One that had a sick fascination with death.

Equally grim was the possibility that these killings were being done without the frenzy and emotional involvement and release such horrid crimes usually entailed. Was it possible for a man to commit crimes like that without passion? To do it with indifference? Not if the killer had any humanity at all.

Paavo slowly circled the victim. Needle marks speckled his arms. He was so skinny his ribs showed. The corpse's unkempt and dirty hair, battered and scarred hands with dirty nails, and
callused feet with ragged toenails were the markings of a man who had lived hard and lived on the streets, the antithesis of the immaculate Bertram Lambert.

Just as with the last victim, something about the mutilation and the way the victim lay cast a ritualistic tinge over the murder. All the flesh that had been removed had surrounded an orifice of the body. It was significant—but why?

“Number five,” Yosh muttered, as much to himself as to his partner. “What the hell does it mean? The other guy had a seven. Seven, five? Seventy-five? I don't get it.”

“It might be the start of an even bigger number,” Paavo said.

“Let's hope it's not too big a number,” Yosh said, his voice low. “I don't want to see any more vics end up like these last two.”

Paavo silently scanned the empty ballpark. “Something tells me we're only looking at strike two.”