No Place Like Hell (15 page)

"No sign of a robbery," Dave said.

"What about his coat?" I argued.

Dave threw his hands in the air. "Fine. I'll call it in, but Greene will skin us alive if Merkel died of natural causes."

24

Kasker twisted the top off his beer, sank into the couch, and placed his feet on the coffee table, knocking over two bottles standing empty on the surface. The Byrds'
Eight Miles High
reverberated from the stereo. He'd go to bed soon so the flesh could rest, but for now, he reveled in satiety.

His thoughts drifted to Officer Demasi. They were more alike than he'd realized. She had a hunter's tenacity.

Too bad she was in the angel's care. She'd make an interesting conquest. What a trip, banging a cop.

The surprise on her face when he returned to the flesh was priceless. If only the annoying guardian hadn't interrupted them, he could have pushed her into attacking him. Imagine the blackmail value of an unprovoked assault.

The thumping beat of the bass no longer matched the music. A garbled voice joined the asynchronous hammering. Someone pounded on his door. The neighbors complaining again.

He sashayed to the stereo and cranked up the volume. The walls shook. He grinned and danced. Beer sloshed on the carpet.

Too late, the smell of cigarettes and sweat reached his nostrils. A hand wrenched his arm behind his back. Shoulder pain drove him to the floor. The music cut out. Three pairs of shiny black shoes filled his shrunken field of vision.

Handcuffs secured his wrists. The pain in his shoulder stopped. He was brought to his feet with a jerk. His bleary vision focused on the faces of the surrounding police officers.

"Kasker Sleeth, you're under arrest for the murder of Robert Haskell."

A voice droned on, reading him his rights. Through a haze of soul lust and beer, Kasker struggled to think. Who was Robert Haskell? The name brought no souls from his memory.

How incompetent could the cops be? They ought to be here about Susie's murder. Should he correct them? No, that was a bad idea.

"Do you understand your rights?" Lt. Mack asked.

Officers spread through the room, tearing cushions from the couch, opening empty kitchen cupboards. The sounds of similar mayhem drifted from the bedroom.

Kasker managed a cold smile. "It's your party, pig. Knock yourself out."

Mack stepped in so close Kasker could feel his breath. "We've got you this time, Sleeth. Give us Calderon, and we'll take the death penalty off the table."

Kasker giggled. "Skipped right over the part about innocent until proven guilty, didn't you? But hey, trials. Expensive, time-consuming. Who needs 'em?"

Mack's jaw worked back and forth. He flagged an officer. "Take him to the station. Get a blood alcohol and drug test. If he's over the limit, we'll have to wait to question him until he sobers up."

Officers flanked Kasker and frog-marched him from his second-floor apartment down the metal stairs to the parking lot. Residents watched from windows, from balconies, and from little knots around the fuzzmobiles that jammed the parking lot, their red lights whirling.

Kasker gave them all a drunken smile. The pigs were fools to think he'd killed anyone. What evidence could they have when he hadn't done anything?

At his Mustang, an officer searched the back seat. He wouldn't find anything except old burger rappers and empty drink cups. Kasker should have tossed those on the roadside to avoid stinking up the car.

The officer pulled something out and dropped it in a paper bag. Kasker couldn't see what it was. The first niggle of apprehension crawled through his guts.

They took him for a blood test, and then to interrogation. They cuffed him to the table. He ran through possible scenarios about why he was there while his high faded. Fatigue and boredom set in.

He put his head down on his arms and napped.

The door slammed, and Kasker jerked awake. The wall clock told him he'd been asleep for ten minutes. His stiff neck and back screamed that he'd been slumped over the table far longer.

Mack claimed the chair across from Kasker, his face haggard but confident. Kasker lounged back and pulled one ankle up on the opposite knee. He'd aggravate Mack into throwing a punch. Then he'd scream for a lawyer and be on the street within the hour.

"It'll go easier for you if you confess," Mack said.

"Yeah, man, I confess," Kasker said with a laugh. At Mack's gleeful look he added, "I confess that I'm stumped about why I'm here. Maybe you want to clue me in?"

Mack's face darkened. "You murdered Robert Haskell. Considering the circumstances of his death, you're looking at the gas chamber."

A wave of uneasiness washed over Kasker. What kind of 'circumstances' would make the pigs arrest him when he'd had nothing to do with any murder?

"Yeah, right. You gotta prove I did it first."

An officer came in carrying a plastic-wrapped object. He dropped it on the table in front of Mack. It clunked when it struck.

Kasker stared at his tire iron, covered in blood and dusted with white powder. His jaw tightened. Goats! Holmes set him up for Haskell's murder—whoever the Heaven Haskell was. Another of Seve's damned souls?

"If you cooperate and give us Calderon, I can talk to the DA. He can ask for life."

"Go screw yourself," Kasker said, his voice filled with bravado he didn't feel. If his chase of Holmes was delayed while he procured new flesh, his master would not be pleased.

Another officer entered. Another plastic-wrapped bundle plunked on the table, some kind of cloth saturated with blood.

"Blood type matches Haskell," the officer said.

Victory glowed in Mack's tired eyes. He pointed to the bundle. "A bloody shirt found in your car. A bloody tire iron with your fingerprints found at the scene. It's not looking good for you, Sleeth. Last chance. Give us Calderon and we take the death penalty off the table."

Kasker's foot dropped to the floor. A low growl rumbled in his throat. His true form hovered at the edge of containment.

"I want a lawyer."

25

"Damn it, Dave, there's something fishy about Merkel's death. Greene had no right to call off my investigation."

Dave sighed, but at least he didn't roll his eyes. "You heard the ME's assistant. Looks like a heart attack."

"There was a mark on his wrist! How does a heart attack explain that?"

Dave pulled open the station door and held if for me. "You think someone tied him up before they mugged him? And then they forgot to take his wallet?"

The station was the last place I wanted to be. The hallways buzzed about the Slasher murder.

"It's been a long night. Let's just file our paperwork and go home." Dave slipped past me into the squad room. Down the hall, Stutzman and Arndt regaled a uniform with details of their collar.

"What about the missing jacket?" I asked. I stomped into the squad room and nabbed the desk with the typewriter that didn't jam.

"Mrs. Sanchez might have made a mistake. After all, who wears a jacket in this heat?"

Dave took a seat at a desk and flopped his notebook beside the typewriter.

"Why didn't he call someone to change his tire? Or call a cab and worry about it in the morning?"

"I'll do Merkel. You write up our car vandal?" Dave fed a form into his typewriter and dropped the bale onto the roller.

Stutzman ambled into the room and parked his butt on the corner of my desk. His rumpled gray suit stank of cigarettes. I wished he'd go away.

"You got good instincts, kid," he said. "We bagged Sleeth. He's stitched up tight this time. Let that be a lesson. Don't cry wolf until you got the goods on your suspect."

I stopped feeding a form into my own typewriter and wrestled with my anger. While I was glad they'd gotten Sleeth off the streets, their delay had cost a man his life. "If you'd locked him up after Decker, the man he killed tonight would still be alive."

Stutzman's face went hard, and Dave winced.

"Congratulations," Dave said in the chilly silence. "How'd it go down?"

Stutzman removed his behind from my desk and pulled up a chair beside Dave's. He put a foot on the seat and leaned his forearms on his knee. My fingers flew over the typewriter keys, making such a clatter that Stutzman had to raise his voice.

"We got him at his apartment. He never saw us coming. Found a bloody shirt in his car and his tire iron at the scene. Talk about your brainless criminal."

Dave looked puzzled. "Tire iron? I thought you brought him in for the second Slasher murder."

"We did. Same MO as last time: funny marks on the floor, victim gutted, knife stuck in the throat. The guy's face was smashed in, but the ME said that was done post mortem, probably to delay identification." Stutzman straightened and ambled toward the door. "We're all going to the Longbar to celebrate. You're welcome to join us."

I couldn't help myself; I had to know. "Did Sleeth say why he did it?"

"He ain't talking. He's lawyered up."

Dave checked his watch. He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. Then he jumped up and ran after Stutzman.

"Hey, Jonas!" Dave called after the retreating detective. "What's the time of death on your vic?"

Stutzman's voice drifted down the corridor. "Between eleven and eleven-forty."

"You sure about that?" Dave asked.

"Night watchman says the site was clear at eleven. He found the body on his eleven-forty rounds."

"The vic couldn't have been killed earlier and dumped there after he died?"

Stutzman's laugh boomed off the walls. "Not on your life. His blood covered everything. 'Sides, the ME corroborates the time of death."

Dave came to stand beside me. "You know what this means. We have to tell Mack."

I pushed up to face him. "What about the tire iron and bloody shirt?"

"It'll fall apart in court. Sleeth will tell his lawyer we saw him."

"It'd be his word against ours."

Dave stepped back, his brows pulled down. "What's wrong with you? You'd lie under oath?"

"If it means no one else has to die, yes I would. Maybe when he sees we have an airtight case against him, he'll roll on his accomplice, and we'll get
two
murderers for the price of one."

Dave took another step back. His face screwed up like he'd smelled rotten fish.

"Do you really believe that?"

I crossed my arms and glared at him. Part of me knew Dave was right, but the part of me that knew Sleeth was guilty didn't want to listen. The guy was dangerous. Everyone in the station knew it. It was my
job
to get him off the streets.

Dave's shoulders drooped, and he looked away. "I'm going to tell Chief Greene."

He walked out of the office. I hurried after him. By the time I caught up, he was already knocking on Greene's open door.

Inside, Lt. Mack rocked in the visitor chair and nursed a glass of whiskey. Greene lounged on the other side of the desk, his empty glass sitting on a stack of files, a grim smile on his face.

"Sorry to interrupt," Dave said, "but there's something you need to know."

Mack took one look at me, and a curtain of steel dropped over his demeanor. The legs of his chair thumped the floor, and he hoisted himself to his feet.

"You'll want to hear this, too, lieutenant." Dave ducked his head, adjusted his belt, and blurted it out. "Sleeth's not your killer."

"Bullshit," Mack said.

"At eleven-ten, we were chasing Sleeth around the Park View neighborhood."

Greene and Mack exchanged a look.

Mack huffed up like an angry bull. "It'd be close, but he'd still have time to get to the construction site and kill Haskell."

Dave wiped a hand across his mouth. "We lost him, but we caught up to him again by eleven-twenty. If the kill was between eleven and half past, he wouldn't have had time to drive back and forth and carve up Haskell."

Mottled red crept up Greene's neck and onto his cheeks. "What the hell were you doing chasing Sleeth in the first place?"

I put my hands behind my back so Greene couldn't see my clenched fists. My chest felt like I was in the grip of an anaconda.

"He wasn't, sir. I was."

The room went so quiet that for a minute, I thought I'd gone deaf. Then Mack slammed his palm on the desk.

The redness in Greene's face shaded into purple. "I told you to stick to patrol work, Officer Demasi, and to keep your nose out of the Decker case. You disobeyed a direct order."

"With respect, sir, she didn't," Dave said. "It was a routine traffic stop. The vehicle was being driving erratically. We had reason to believe the driver was intoxicated."

I decided it wasn't the time to tell them I'd seen Sleeth at Susan Brown's home. God forbid I should cause Greene to have a stroke.