A Cruel Season for Dying (11 page)

Last night on the local TV newscasts, a police hot-line number had been run beneath updates of the serial-killer story, reaping
the mixed blessing of so much public attention. Shortly after the program a call
had come in, a man insisting he had information he would only give Sakura. The screener had made the judgment to transfer
the call.

Sakura had spoken to the man, a bartender who claimed he’d seen Geoffrey Westlake on the night he’d been murdered. He hadn’t
liked the man’s tone, which impressed him as both overeager and evasive. He’d refused to give more details on the phone. But
Sakura had long ago learned not to make snap judgments about a possible witness, especially based on a single telephone conversation.
He had agreed to a meeting this afternoon, and a subsequent check of the cab company records confirmed that a fare picked
up Halloween night at Westlake’s building had been dropped off at the bar.

Crossing Columbus Avenue, Sakura turned off on Sixty-seventh and pulled the unmarked department car onto the curb. Taking
the vehicle identification plate from behind the visor, he tossed it on the dash. He got out and walked the half block to
Marlowe’s, a popular neighborhood pub that catered to soap opera actors and newspeople from the nearby ABC building. This
time of afternoon the lunch crowd had cleared and the place was fairly empty.

Sakura took a seat at the bar. “I’m looking for Jack Trehan.” He flashed his badge.

“You got him, Lieutenant Sakura.” The bartender had an over-groomed look that made it hard to place his age. “Fix you something?”
He smiled with capped teeth, indicating the bottles behind him.

Sakura shook his head. “You said you had something that could help us.”

“About Geoffrey … yeah.” Trehan waited.

“You knew Mr. Westlake?”

Now the bartender shrugged. “We weren’t close. But he came in here a lot. And sometimes, when it wasn’t too busy, we’d talk.”

“What about?”

“Acting mostly. I’m an actor.” The smile stretched wider.

“You do commercials too?”

The bartender made a noise. “Commercials are a bitch to get.”

“But Geoffrey got commercials?”

Trehan nodded, leaning in, his elbows on the bar, an insider imparting information. “A while back,” he said, “year or two
after he started modeling, Geoffrey lands this pilot that gets picked up as a series.
Good part, second banana to Byron Shelton, the comic who’s supposed to be the next Drew Carey.”

“But …?” Sakura picked up the cue.

“But the sitcom never made it to the air. Shelton got arrested for exposing himself to little girls in the park. Too bad for
Geoff’s big break. Still, he and the show’s producer got pretty chummy.” The smile became a smirk. “He’s the one who started
Geoffrey in commercials.”

“Was it generally known that Mr. Westlake was gay?”

“Depends on what you mean. He wasn’t out of the closet, but people in the business pretty much knew.”

“You said this morning that Mr. Westlake was here on Tuesday night. Was he with anyone?”

Trehan frowned, faking concentration. “It was slower than I expected that night, being Halloween and all, but the weather
was so crappy. Some of Geoffrey’s friends came in, but that was later. After he’d left.”

“And he left alone?”

The bartender was smiling again, the tension of the scene having played to his direction. He pointed to the far side of the
bar. “Geoffrey was sitting there,” he said. “It was dark, and I was busy filling orders for the tables. But I saw this guy
sit down next to him.”

It was obvious where this was going, and Sakura allowed himself to hope. “Did you know this man?” he asked.

“No.” At least Trehan didn’t string it out. “I finished with the drinks and figured I’d take his order. Only he’s gone already.
And so’s Geoffrey.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Yeah.” The flatness of the answer betrayed him. “I’d say he was tall and thin, but he had on a big outdoor jacket that made
it hard to tell. I thought the coat looked too big for him.”

“Hair?” Sakura asked.

“Difficult to say.” Trehan shook his head. “Remember, it was pretty dark in here. And he was wearing a Yankees cap … and dark
glasses. I couldn’t see his eyes.”

Certainly an anticlimax. “One of my people will call and set up an appointment with a sketch artist.” Sakura took refuge in
habit.

“Sketch artist, huh?” The bartender seemed pleased with the notion.

“Also, I’ll want a list of those friends of Westlake’s you mentioned. And anyone who was here that night who might have gotten
a better look at this guy.”

“Sure,” Trehan said, but his tone was dismissive. “Like I said, Lieutenant, he wasn’t around long enough to even order a drink.
You think he was the killer?”

“I don’t know,” Sakura said, refusing the man satisfaction. But the truth was, that in his gut, he did. Just as he was certain
that any composite based on the bartender’s vague description would be virtually worthless. The killer had exposed himself,
but he’d been reasonably careful. And lucky. Beginner’s luck. He wondered how long it would hold.

Gil Avery never imagined anyone would want to photograph his birthmark. But this nutso did. Seemed to get off on it too.

“How’s this?” Gil asked from his position on the cool white sheets. He’d twisted his torso so that his hip became the dominant
feature in a landscape of flesh.

The photographer nodded from his spot at the foot of the bed.

Wasn’t much for talk. In fact, Gil could count the number of words he’d spoken since he’d picked him up.
Click.

“Yes,” he finally said in a breathless voice. “Yes, yes, yes.”

A litany of yeses.
Click. Click. Click.
A run of spiky clicks like teeth chattering. The whir of the roll like a toy train. Gil went with it. Let the photographer’s
momentum pull him along. It was a weird kind of power just lying back, posing like some god. Knowing some guy wanted to take
pictures of you. Make memories. It was as close to immortality as the young model was likely to get, and the pleasure of it
leaked to every cell. Slowly Gil found himself getting hard, and the freak hadn’t even touched him.

Today’s overcast had not broken, and dead night air clung to the window like paper wrapping. Sakura tried to be grateful for
the new
fluorescent tube that shone uncompromisingly upon the growing stacks of DD-5’s on his desk. A major problem in this kind of
investigation was the sheer amount of data it gathered, and the task force was generating a blizzard of reports. Critical
connections could be missed because no one person possessed all the facts. For as long as it was possible, Sakura was determined
to know everything.

Computerizing things helped, and Walt Talbot was good at that. The detective was in the process of setting up a program that
would help identify potential suspects. Of course, the trick was to keep up with the paperwork. Organizing, categorizing,
feeding the information into the proper files.

He smiled, thinking of Talbot. The detective’s cool had been thoroughly shaken Tuesday by Philippe Lambert’s sin of omission.
Obviously, the members of the ballet company had long ago disregarded the birth gender of Andrea, alias André Wilitz, and
felt no compunction to inform the uninitiated. At first Andrea might have seemed a dream suspect—an impotent homosexual transvestite
with a decidedly artistic bent who had had an ongoing feud with Luis Carrera at the time of his death. But there were several
factors that disqualified Wilitz as the killer. In addition to an alibi that checked out, the wardrobe mistress was nearing
sixty and an amputee.

Lambert’s alibi had also cleared him of Carrera’s murder, and by implication of those of the other two victims. He had indeed
been in the theater for the Thursday-night performance and had returned immediately after to his apartment with two of his
roommates.

As for the Westlake murder, some fairly clear prints, other than the victim’s own, had been found in the model’s bedroom.
The prints, though, were undoubtedly female and belonged, most likely, to the maid who’d been in to clean. The partials from
the bathroom were more tantalizing, but as he’d expected, had too few points of identification to be of any use.

The crime lab was working on identifying the adhesive left on the victims’ skins and would prepare a brand list of the corresponding
duct tapes. But trying to trace the point of purchase would be a long shot. And they could forget the potassium chloride.
It was a common compound, which the killer could have picked up virtually anywhere.

Spectrographic analysis of the substance on the walls had indicated that it was ash from incense burned at the scene. The
same for the symbols on the chests. The next step was trying to pinpoint the brand, though knowing whether it was commercially
or liturgically distributed was less important than understanding why incense had been used at all. Why not something as simple
as a marker? Because incense fit with angels?

According to the crime lab, the white wings were swan wings from a genus that was plentiful along the East Coast. They had
not been preserved in any chemical way, but had perhaps been frozen. Unless the killer was keeping a pen of the birds to be
used as they were needed, which seemed unlikely in the city.

A tap at his open door caught his attention. Adelia Johnson poked in her head. One of his unit regulars, she’d come to him
from Sex Crimes, where she’d worked a fair number of cases involving repeat rapists. A serial rapist, as someone once remarked,
was a serial killer who hadn’t yet worked up the guts. To a large extent, this was true, which meant that, like her partner,
Kelly, Detective Johnson was one of very few task force members with actual experience dealing in serial crime.

“We’re ordering pizza….” She let the words hang. A question. Her white smile blazed.

“No, Delia … thanks.”

The detective’s head disappeared. He listened to her footsteps moving back down the hall. A light tread for such a substantial
woman.

Sakura slid open the bottom drawer of his desk. He had not yet reached the point of succumbing to junk food. He removed his
tea things, swiveling the chair toward the console behind him, where a kettle of water stood on a small hot plate. He switched
it on, heating the water to be poured into the small porcelain pot, anticipating the scent of tea.

The phone rang. His direct line. He lifted the receiver. “Yes.”

“Lieutenant Sakura.” Dr. Linsky’s voice.

“You have the results on Westlake?”

“Yes, I do. His electrolyte levels show the same pattern as the others.”

“Consistent with his being given potassium chloride.”

“That is precisely the way to put it.” Linsky sounded approving. “It is consistent.”

It was as definitive a statement as Sakura could expect. “What about LSD?” he asked.

“There was also LSD in Mr. Westlake’s system.”

Three victims out of three. Surely beyond coincidence. “What would be the effect of an injection of LSD,” he asked, “in contrast
to ingesting it?”

“The effects would be the same,” Linsky answered, “especially with the large dose that these three apparently received. The
difference is the speed with which the effects would begin. With injection, it’s nearly instantaneous.”

“Mental distortions? Disorientation?”

“It all depends. The effects are highly variable. Experience with the drug generally allows the user to function in a manner
approximating normality.”

“But if you don’t understand what’s happening …”

“Paranoia usually results. But in any case the effects are variable. Even an experienced user can get a very nasty effect
… feel he’s losing his mind.”

“What about the physical effects?”

“LSD is neutral to systems other than the brain. And interestingly, once the receptors in the brain have all been engaged,
taking more of the drug has no effect. One can’t actually overdose.”

“But there are deaths with LSD.”

“The result of impurities, some substance the drug was cut with. Significant impurities would have shown up in the blood work,
but there was none of that here. Which leads me to suppose that the killer may be manufacturing the drug himself. It’s a relatively
simple process.”