Serial (27 page)

Vitali and Mishkin had been driving most of the day. Telephone checking could do only so much. They needed to drive to various retail and wholesale outlets and show people the drawing of the carpet-tucking knife, close cousin to the lower-class linoleum knife.

They had worked their way through Queens, then returned to the office and played with the phones some more to get some addresses, and had spent much of the afternoon in Brooklyn.

When they reported their wasted day to Quinn, he instructed them to widen their search to New Jersey. Which was where they were now, cruising along the highway in the Garden State toward a place called Underfoot Carpet Supplies, where maybe they sold carpet-tucking knives. Ordinary hardware stores sometimes had no idea what Vitali and Mishkin were talking about.

The car’s interior seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and Vitali was finding it more and more difficult to be cooped up and have to listen to Harold. Mishkin, in the way of people who could get under the skin of even a patient person like Vitali, seemed blissfully unaware that he was in the least bit irritating.

For the fifth time in five minutes, Mishkin mentioned to Vitali that he was hungry. Like a mirage summoned by desperation, five hundred feet or so ahead loomed a sign advertising Doughnut Heaven.

“I guess that’s where you go if you take your eye off the road to look at their sign,” Mishkin said.

“It’s where we’re going to get some doughnuts,” Vitali said, staring straight ahead and already starting to slow the car so he could pull into the doughnut shop lot.

Doughnut Heaven turned out to be not much more than a shack. It served only drive-through customers. There was a menu nailed to the wall near the serving window. It featured about a hundred kinds of doughnuts.

There were no other cars in line, which seemed ominous to Vitali.

“They make it almost impossible to make up your mind, Sal,” Mishkin said, as he studied the menu.

“Give me a dozen assorted. Whatever’s fresh,” Vitali said to the skinny kid in the serving window. He was wearing a chef’s cap that was cocked at an angle suggesting it might fall off any second. “And two coffees with cream,” Vitali added.

It didn’t take the kid long to exchange two foam cups and a greasy white bag for Vitali’s money. “I added some doughnut holes as a bonus,” he said with a snaggletoothed grin.

“Much obliged,” Vitali said.

“We got a special,” the kid explained.

As they pulled back out onto the highway, Mishkin added off-brand sweetener from one of the little green envelopes he always carried in one of his pockets. The cups didn’t have lids, and coffee was starting to slosh over their rims in the car’s plastic holders. Vitali took a careful sip and then replaced his cup quickly because the coffee was close to boiling temperature. He had burned his tongue. That didn’t lighten his mood.

“What we oughta do is check the Internet for places that sell carpet-tucking knives,” Mishkin said, opening the doughnut bag.

“I don’t know how much good that would do, Harold. I mean, carpet knives aren’t registered like guns.”

“But I bet a lot fewer of them are sold than guns,” Mishkin said. “Somebody might remember a fairly recent sale.”

“Somebody in Bangadel, India,” Vitali said, thinking how difficult it was to contact Internet-based companies on the phone. He saw that Mishkin already had powdered sugar on his bushy mustache.

“Where exactly is that?” Mishkin asked.

“India?”
Give him a little of his own medicine
, Vitali thought.

“C’mon, Sal, you know where I meant. Bangadel.”

“I don’t know, Harold. I made it up.”

“Hmm.”

They could hit this Underfoot Carpet place, Vitali thought, then maybe a few more, and head back to the city. Beside him, Mishkin stirred and the doughnut bag made rattling noises. This was the part of police work that drove Vitali nuts. He felt like pulling over and bolting from the car.

He saw a service station up ahead, glanced down at the dashboard, and found the car had less than a quarter tank of gas.

Even though they were hardly doing twenty miles an hour when Vitali steered off the highway and into the gas station, the tires squealed as if they were in a Grand Prix racer.

“You fill the tank, Harold. I’m going to walk over where I might be able to get a good signal and see if I can get in touch with Quinn.”

Vitali strolled about a hundred feet away, near a rack of used tires.

Quinn answered his cell phone on the second ring.

“We’re not getting anywhere driving around looking for places that sell those tucking knives,” Vitali told Quinn. “I think our time would be better spent just using the phone and the Internet. Calling carpet installers, seeing where they get them, if they even use them.”

“I’ve got Jerry Lido prowling the Internet,” Quinn said. “Pearl’s been working the phone.”

“Any luck?”

“Not so far. And some of the newer carpet-tucking knives look like straight razors, not the kind of blades that match the wounds.”

“It’s not a common item.”

“No,” Quinn said. “That’s why it might mean something when we find places that sell them and keep a record. It’s possible on the Internet, but not many are sold, and so far none in this area to anyone who could be a suspect.”

“Internet, phone, and legwork,” Vitali said. “Yeah, I guess that’s the way to work it. And I’m in no way gonna underestimate Lido and his computer. If the guy didn’t drink he’d be another Bill Gates.”

“Or still with the NYPD. If you get no results today by driving, we won’t waste any more time on it, Sal.”

“Makes sense. Anyplace we can drive to, it probably has a phone.”

“Yeah. And if the Skinner paid cash for the knife, it will probably be impossible to trace. And for all we know, he might’ve been in a hardware store looking for something else and simply bought the thing and there’s no record of it because it isn’t itemized, even if it was paid for with a credit or debit card.”

“That’s how I see it, too. But you never know; the information we need might be right on top and we’d kick ourselves if we found out later and hadn’t touched that particular base. We can hit it tomorrow using national directories and the phone, if you want. Widen what Pearl’s doing.”

“Thanks, Sal. I gotta go now. Other phone’s ringing. Any thing else?”

“I might decide to murder Harold.”

“Fight the impulse, Sal.” Quinn broke the connection.

Vitali returned to the car. Mishkin had used a company card to pay for the gas at the pump and was already ensconced in the passenger seat. The car’s windows were up and the air conditioner was laboring.

Vitali steeled himself and got in behind the steering wheel. He looked both ways, pulled back out into traffic, and accelerated fast so they could beat a tractor-trailer angling onto the highway from a cloverleaf ramp.

Mishkin looked over at him. “Anything, Sal?”

“Quinn says they hit a few places on the Internet that sell the knife we’re looking for, but there’s no record of any going to someone who’d be a suspect.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, Sal, if we might be hitting the same places. Duplication of effort.”

“Taxpayers would be pissed off,” Vitali said.

“Like being back in the NYPD,” Mishkin said.

They drove for a while.

“Doughnut holes, Sal. That make sense to you?”

“Not to me, Harold.”

“A hole is like… nothing.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s something like that get started?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s an oxymoron. Like jumbo—”

“Pass me one of those doughnut holes, Harold.”

Tanya Moody emerged like a casual queen from the Breaverson Arms on East Fifty-fourth Street, wearing her navy blue shorts, armless blue T-shirt, blue and white sneakers, and carrying her sky-blue gym bag. She began perspiring as soon as she stepped from the cool lobby into the morning heat. She squinted and brushed a lock of her long brown hair back from her face. Today, she decided, was going to be even hotter than yesterday. After drawing a pair of Gucci knockoff sunglasses from an outside pocket of the gym bag, she began walking toward her subway stop at Fifty-third and Lex.

As she strode along the shaded side of the street, Tanya drew attention. She was five-foot-ten and lean and muscular. With each step her powerful thigh and calf muscles flexed. Her breasts were large, but too firm to bounce as she took the curbs. She was covering ground fast with her long, graceful strides.

Down the stairs to the subway platform she went, causing a man looking back at her to stub his toe painfully on a concrete step. Tanya heard the guy yelp and glanced back, amused by what had happened. He was gripping the tip of his shoe and glaring at her as if his mishap was her fault.

Tanya ignored him, fished her MetroCard from her pocket, and headed for the turnstiles. She was well aware of the effect her appearance had on men and on some women, and was pleased by it. In her business, as a self-employed personal trainer, she was her own best advertisement.

She’d just left a fifty-year-old wealthy widow who still flaunted a fashionably trim figure. The woman had lost ten pounds and firmed up wonderfully since employing Tanya two months ago, and was especially pleased because Tanya planned and instructed physical workouts at her clients’ homes. Most clients, encouraged by their initial progress, purchased their own exercise equipment—at a discount—from a company that gave Tanya a generous commission. All in all, Tanya was pleased by how her business had grown during the past few years.

She’d left the trim widow preparing herself for the dating scene, now that her husband had been dead over six months. She was doing wide-armed bench presses on a home weight machine, an exercise that built up the pectoral muscles that supported the breasts. Three sets of ten with moderate weights, every third day, had already added an inch to the widow’s bustline.

Tanya was one of the first to board the train after the subway passengers exited. She found a seat near the back, where it would be easier to get out if the car became crowded as the train made its way downtown. As she settled in with her gym bag on her lap, the train jerked and squealed away. The motion caused her to glance to her left, and there was the man who’d been following her the past week or so.

Of course she wasn’t positive he’d been tailing her. At least not sure enough to confront him. Besides, she was used to men sort of latching on to her presence and paying her particular and obvious attention. Some of them were married men, or men too shy to speak to her. If they were on more or less the same schedule, these men would appear on her periphery often. Only now and then would one approach her. Tanya knew they meant no harm. And in truth she was flattered by their presence.

But there was something about this guy that didn’t fit the mold. He wasn’t feigning disinterest and then sneaking glances at her, like most of her anonymous admirers. Instead he either completely ignored her or stared right through her, as if he could see her in outline and transparent, like one of those airport scanners, but she was about as important to him as an inanimate object. There was something creepy about that stare.

Other than the unsettling stare, he was an average-looking sort of guy. He always had a hat of some sort on, and seldom wore the same one two days in a row. As if he thought that by changing hats he was altering his appearance and making himself unnoticeable. Today he had on a Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap. Tomorrow he might be wearing a beret. She did pick up that she saw him mostly on weekends, when she did much of her work because her clients were free from their offices. So maybe he had some other job during the week. It was, she thought, smiling slightly, at least nice to be attracting men who were employed.

Thank God the man
didn’t
look like Tom Stopp. Stopp was the man Tanya had mistakenly identified as her rapist ten years ago, not long after she’d moved to New York. Tanya had been at a club, drinking too much, with people she didn’t know, and she passed out. She had never done that before and was amazed. Then suspicious. She didn’t know whether someone had slipped a date-rape drug into her drink, or she’d simply not been used to so much alcohol in such a short period of time.

She had woken—or regained consciousness—the next morning with a man on top of her. She came alert and furious instantly, fought her way out from beneath him, and ran toward the door. Somehow she managed to snatch up her Levi’s and blouse as she ran, and in the elevator managed to yank and work her clothes onto her body. The physical action alerted her that she was sore where she shouldn’t have been. She immediately knew what had happened.

My God! Was he the only one?

She scrolled through her memory and found blank spots. Vaguely, she recalled the three men and two women, her “new friends” she’d been drinking with at Arthur’s Lounge on Sixth Avenue. Or was it Seventh? Her mind was playing tricks on her. Not natural.

A woman carrying a small brown dog got on the elevator when the door opened at lobby level. She’d looked at Tanya and said simply, “You’ve got no shoes, dear.” The elevator door slid closed and Tanya made her way toward the street door. She heard hurried footsteps on the stairs and assumed Tom Stopp was coming after her.

Tom Stopp. I do remember
his
name.

In the street, she waved her arms wildly and a cab separated itself from traffic and came toward her. At the same time, Stopp broke from the apartment door, saw her, and started yelling and running toward her.

She could see the cabbie yammering in his radio as the taxi pulled up next to her. She threw herself into the backseat and pulled the door shut.

Stopp was there immediately, tugging at the cab’s door handle.

“Doors, window, everything locked,” said the cabbie in an accent Tanya didn’t know.

Stopp started to beat on the window. For some reason the cabbie didn’t drive away. He simply sat calmly behind the steering wheel, only now and then glancing over to be sure Stopp’s efforts were in vain.

Then Tanya understood why the cab hadn’t driven away. A police cruiser was double-parked in front of it. Two uniformed policemen appeared on either side of Stopp and pulled him away from the cab. Tanya twisted around and saw that another police car was parked close behind the cab.

Stopp was out of sight now. The cab’s rear door opened, and one of the cops leaned in. “You okay, ma’am?”

Tanya was too confused to answer.

The cop looked at her more closely, smiled, then nodded. “Stay where you are for a little while, okay? Till we get this straightened out.”

She nodded. Stunned by what had happened. By what must have happened last night.

Tanya told her story to the police. So did Tom Stopp. He claimed to have been home all evening, alone, in an apartment other than the one from which Tanya had escaped. The apartment where Tanya had awakened was down the hall from Stopp’s. He’d heard a commotion, gone out into the hall, and seen Tanya fleeing. He went after her intending to help her.

The problem was that Stopp’s fingerprints were in the apartment where Tanya was raped. It was an unoccupied furnished apartment and he maintained that he’d gone into it a week ago to examine it because he was thinking about renting someplace larger. The super confirmed this, but so what? The bed was unmade, sheets a tangle, and it was obvious that the rape had occurred. If it wasn’t Stopp who’d drugged and attacked Tanya, where was the real rapist?

And who could substantiate that Stopp had been alone in his apartment, and not in the other that he’d known was vacant and had chosen as a convenient place to commit his crime?

Of course, Stopp’s insurmountable problem was that Tanya positively identified him as one of the men she’d been with earlier that night at the bar. One of the bartenders, though less certain, had also identified him. A sympathetic jury, an enthusiastic prosecutor, an inept defense attorney, and the evidence, all added up to a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence for Tom Stopp.

That had all happened ten years ago, to a young and naïve Tanya Moody. She was older now, a self-supporting woman with a business of her own.

Tom Stopp was older, too. He was a forty-year-old ex-con who’d been exonerated by DNA evidence collected at the time of Tanya’s rape and stored for over a decade in an evidence box. He’d been released last year and was free.

Someone else had raped Tanya Moody, and he, too, was free somewhere.

The police had talked to Tanya about Stopp when he was released, and said he was living now in New Jersey and seemed to bear her no animosity. Also, he had alibis for at least two of the Skinner torture murders.

They warned Tanya to be careful, and to call them if she so much as caught a glimpse of Tom Stopp anywhere near her.

Only it wasn’t Stopp who’d been following her lately. And she doubted if the man was her actual rapist. He looked nothing like any of the men in the bar that night, and he would simply have no reason to step back into her life after ten years. He could rape some other woman with much less risk.

The Skinner murders, and the strange man she at least
thought
might be stalking her, had brought back to the top of her memory the time of the rape. She’d assumed that she’d purged herself of that night, or at least left it as a part of the past she had no need to revisit. But the man she kept glimpsing on the subway, and on the sidewalks, had become a regular visitor to her dreams.

Tanya owned a small .22-caliber handgun that she used to carry in her purse. She’d obtained it illegally as a gift from a man she’d dated after the trial, and for years it had lain wrapped in an oily rag in a steel lockbox at the back of her closet’s top shelf.

A week ago she’d gotten the gun down, checked it to make sure it was in working order, and again began carrying it. She knew it was against the law, but screw the Sullivan Act. When her life was at stake, the only law that mattered was survival. Tanya also had a tiny canister of mace in her purse, and she’d taken kickboxing lessons. But she knew the kind of uphill struggle the strongest of women might have with the weakest of men. The gun gave her comfort.

She didn’t think she had enough evidence to contact the police about the man who seemed to be too often near her. And she didn’t know how they’d find the man to talk to him, unless they assigned an undercover cop to tag along with her for days until she could point him out. Obviously they weren’t going to do that. And after costing Tom Stopp years of his life, Tanya didn’t like the idea of positively identifying anyone for any reason. The human eye was an unreliable partner to memory.

All Tanya could do was wonder if the man actually
was
following her.

And, if so, why?

And be ready.