Midnight Grinding (16 page)

“We didn’t mean to disturb you, Mr. Rollins,” said Lowery, “but we wanted to ask you a few questions concerning the recent deaths of Phil Jarrett and Joe Killian.”

Rollins felt his way across the room and sat in an armchair. “Terrible thing that happened to those fellows, just terrible. Not that I’m surprised. This certainly isn’t one of Atlanta’s most crime-free neighborhoods, you know. Some young hoodlum broke into my bedroom six months ago. The bastard slugged me with a blackjack while I was asleep and stole my tape player and all my audio books. Now why would someone stoop so low as to steal from a blind man?”

“There are a lot of bad apples out there, sir,” said Taylor. “Some would mug their own grandmother for a hit of crack. About Jarrett and Killian…what sort of impression did you have of them?”

“Killian was nice enough. He was a welder. I could tell that by the smell of scorched metal that hung around him all the time. I never said much to the gentleman, though. Just an occasional ‘hello’ in the hallway.” The old man frowned sourly at the thought of his landlord. “Jarrett was a hard man to deal with sometimes. He could be downright dishonest. He tried to cheat me out of rent money several times, telling me that a ten was a five, or a twenty was a ten. I’d never let him hornswoggle me, though. The bank where I cash my disability checks always Braille marks the bills for me. Of course, I really couldn’t say much about Jarrett’s treachery. A blind man has a hard enough time making it on his own, without making an enemy of the one who provides a roof over his head.”

“Have you seen—?” Embarrassed, Lowery corrected himself. “Have you
heard
anything out of the ordinary lately? Strangers? Maybe an argument between Jarrett and one of the other tenants?”

“There’s always some bad blood in a place like this, but nothing any worse than usual.” The old man’s face grew somber. “I have had the feeling that somebody’s been prowling around the building, though. I’ve heard strange footsteps in the hallway outside. Several times I’ve felt like someone was standing on the other side of my door, just staring at it, as if trying to see me through the wood.” He reached down to where he knew the dog lay and scratched the animal behind the ears. “You’ve sensed it, too, haven’t you, Conrad?”

The German Sheperd answered with a nervous whine and rested its head on its paws.

“Well, we won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Rollins,” said Taylor. He caught himself before he could hand the man one of his cards, giving Rollins the number vocally instead. “Please give us a call if you think of anything else that could help.”

“I surely will,” said Dwight Rollins. “Do you think the murderer lives here in the building?”

“We can’t say for sure, sir. It’s a possibility, though.”

“Lord, what’s this world coming to?” muttered Rollins. “Well, at least I’ve got good locks on my door. Somebody would have to be a hell of a Houdini to get past three deadbolts.”

The two detectives said nothing in reply. They thought it best not to upset the old man by telling him that, strangely enough, the apartment doors of both Jarrett and Killian had been securely locked from the inside, both before and after the times of their murders.

***

“Who the hell is it?” growled a sleepy voice from Apartment 4-A.

“Atlanta Police Department, sir,” called Lowery through the door. “We were wondering if we could talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Is this real important?” asked the tenant, Mike Porter. “If you’re selling tickets to the freaking policeman’s ball, I’m gonna be mighty pissed off!”

“There’s been another murder in the building, Mr. Porter,” said Taylor. “We’d like to talk to you about it.”

The click of deadbolts and the rattle of chains sounded from the other side, then the door opened. A muscular fellow with dirty blond hair and an ugly scar down one side of his face peered out at them. “Somebody else got fragged?” he asked groggily. “Who was it this time?”

“The landlord,” said Lowery. “Mr. Jarrett.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” grunted Porter. He yawned and motioned for them to come inside. “You fellas will have to excuse me, but I work the graveyard shift. I catch my shut-eye in the daytime.”

“We just need to know a few things,” Taylor told him. “Like what your impression of the two victims was and if you’ve noticed anything peculiar around the building lately.”

“Well, old Jarrett was a first-class asshole. That’s about all I can tell you about him. The other fella, Killian, was an okay guy. Had a few beers and swapped a few war stories with the man. He was a die-hard Marine, just like yours truly.”

Taylor walked over to a bulletin board that was set on the wall between the living room and the kitchenette. A number of items were pinned to the cork surface: a couple of purple hearts, an infantry insignia patch, and a few black and white photos of combat soldiers. “You were in Vietnam?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Porter said proudly. He shuffled to the refrigerator and took a Miller tall-boy from a lower shelf. “The Central Highlands from 1968 to ’69. Just when things were starting to get interesting over there.” He plopped down on a puke green couch and popped the top on his beer can.

“What about things here in the building?” asked Lowery. “Any fights or arguments between the tenants or with the landlord? Maybe someone hanging around that you didn’t recognize?”

“It hasn’t been any crazier than usual. I’m not surprised that it’s happening, what with all the crack dealers and gangs in this part of town.” Porter grinned broadly. “They just better not screw around old Sergeant Rock here.” He stuck his hand between the cushions of the couch and withdrew a Ka-Bar combat knife. “If they do, I’ll gut ’em from gullet to crotch.”

The two detectives left their number and exited the apartment. As they headed up the stairs to the fifth floor, Taylor turned to his partner. “Did you notice anything strange back there in Porter’s apartment?”

“Other than that wicked knife and the crazy look in the grunt’s eyes?” replied Lowery. “Not really. Did you?”

Taylor nodded. “Those pictures on the bulletin board. One of them showed Porter wearing something other than his dog tags.”

“And what was that?”

“A necklace…made out of human ears.”

“Interesting,” said Lowery, recalling the mutilation of the two victims. “Very interesting.”

***

“What do ya’ll want?” glared the tenant of Apartment 5-C. The skinny black woman balanced a squalling baby on her hip as she stared at the two detectives standing in the hallway.

“We’d like to talk to you about the recent murders here in the building, ma’am,” Lowery said. “May we come in for a moment?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “Just watch that you don’t go stepping on a young’un.”

Lowery and Taylor walked in and were surprised to see four other kids, ranging from eighteen months to five years old, playing on the dirty carpeting of the living room floor. Three looked to be as dark-skinned as their mother, while one was obviously the odd sock of the bunch, from the lightness of its complexion and the color of its hair.

When they asked Yolanda Armstrong about the landlord, she scowled in contempt. “That bastard got just what he deserved, if you ask me. He was white trash, that’s what he was. Wasn’t about to take responsibility for things that were rightly his own.”

“Pardon me?” asked Taylor, trying to clarify what she was talking about.

“The one beside the TV there, that’s his. I came up short on the rent a couple of summers ago and Jarrett took it out in trade. Tried to get him to wear a rubber, but he was all liquored up and horny.”

Lowery’s face reddened slightly in embarrassment. “Uh, no need to go into your personal life, ma’am. All we need to know is if you’ve noticed anything strange going on in the building lately. Strangers in the hallway, or arguments you might have happened to overhear.”

“Lordy Mercy!” exclaimed the woman. “If I was to pay attention to every bit of trouble that’s gone on in this building, I would’ve gone plumb crazy by now. Half the people in this place are junkies and drunks, and the other half are losers and lunatics. You’d just as well take your pick of the litter. Anybody in this here building could’ve killed both those men.”

“Including yourself?” asked Taylor.

“Don’t you go accusing me!” warned Yolanda Armstrong shaking a bony finger in his face. “True, I’ve been wronged more than most. But I’m too damned busy trying to put food in my babies’ mouths to go getting even with every man who treated me badly. I just take my lumps and hope they don’t come knocking on my door again.”

After the two detectives left, they called on the rest of the tenants who were there at that time of day, then headed back downstairs. It was nearly twelve-thirty when they climbed into their car and headed for a rib joint on Peachtree Street. “So, what do you think?” asked Taylor. “Think we have a suspect somewhere in that bunch?”

“Maybe,” said Lowery. “Or our killer might be a neighborhood boy. A pusher or a pimp that Jarrett and Killian might have wronged in the past.”

“Or we could have something a little more sinister on our hands. Maybe a serial killer.”

“Let’s not go jumping to conclusions just yet,” Lowery told his partner. “This is just a couple of murders in a sleazy apartment building in South Atlanta, not some Thomas Harris novel. We’ll grab a bite to eat, then head back to the office and check out the crime photos and Walsh’s autopsy report. Later this evening we’ll go back and interview the tenants we missed the first time around.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Taylor. “I just hope we come up with something concrete pretty soon. I have a bad feeling that this could turn into a full-scale slaughter before its over and done with.”

“Yeah,” agreed Lowery. “I’m afraid you might be right about that.”

***

The warmth has gone and the chill of the winter twilight invades me once again, freezing the madness into my brain. My hands shudder and shake. They clench and unclench, yearning for the spurt of hot blood and the soft pliancy of moist tissue between their fingertips. The damnable winds must be stopped! They must be driven away. And only death can provide that blessed relief.

But I must be careful. The first was easy enough, and so was the second, but only because no one expected it to happen again so soon. The next time might very well be the last. But it simply must be done. There is no denying that. Even if there are suspicious eyes and alert ears on guard throughout the building, I must let my hands do the work that they are so adept at. I must allow them to hunt out the warmth necessary to thaw my frozen sanity.

Oh, that infernal howling! The howling of those hellish winds!

***

Lowery and Taylor were going over the coroner’s report and the 8x10s of the two victims, when a call came in from Doctor Walsh. Lowery answered and listened to the medical examiner for a moment. Then he hung up the phone and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair. “Do you still have those binoculars in your desk drawer, Ed?” he asked hurriedly.

Taylor recognized the gleam of excitement in his partner’s eyes. “Sure,” he said. “What’s up? Did Walsh come up with something important?”

“Yep. He found some incriminating evidence on both of the bodies.”

“What did he find?” pressed Taylor. He retrieved the binoculars from his desk and grabbed his own coat.

“I’ll fill you in on the way,” said Lowery with a grim smile. “Let’s just say that I think our killer is going to strike again, sooner than we think. And I have a pretty good idea who it is.”

***

The blanketed form was so sound asleep that it didn’t hear the metallic taps of light footsteps on the fire escape. Neither did it hear the rasp of the bedroom window sliding upward, giving entrance to a dark figure with the glint of honed steel in hand.

The snoring tenant knew nothing of the intruder, until she felt the weight of the body pressing on her chest and the edge of a knife blade against the column of her throat. She lay perfectly still, afraid to move, waiting for the fatal slash to come. But the action was delayed. Instead, she felt a hand creep along her flesh, the fingers clenching and unclenching, searching through the darkness. Suddenly, she recalled the rumors that had been going around the building that day. Rumors of the organs that had been forcefully taken from Phil Jarrett and Joe Killian.

Then, suddenly, the room was full of noise and commotion. She heard footsteps coming from the direction of the open window, as well as the sound of cursing. Abruptly, the weight of her attacker was pulled off of her, along with the sharpness of the deadly blade.

Melba Cox reached over and turned on the lamp beside her bed.

The two detectives who had visited her earlier that morning were standing in the room. The one named Taylor was beside the window, holding a snubnose .38 in his hand. The other, Lowery, was pressing the attacker face-first down on the hardwood boards of the bedroom floor. As Melba climbed shakily out of bed, she watched as the detective cuffed the killer’s hands.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” asked Taylor, holstering his gun and walking over to her. She saw that he had a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck.