Shattered Shell (11 page)

I looked down the street at a sign that marked the road leading into the hospital. This is where it happened, where she stumbled out of here early that awful Saturday morning, walking to the hospital, hurting and in pain and terror and crying. What it must have been like, going out in this cold morning, wondering if you could make it, wondering if the man who did this awful thing to you was still out here, watching. Maybe even following you, looking for another excuse to hurt you. Or maybe even something worse...

I stamped my feet again, stared up at the empty windows.

What was it like for you then? I mused. I imagined a man, hunched over from the cold, perhaps standing on the other side of the street in the night. A man with cold eyes, a man who in any other life would have been a concentration camp guard or a sniper killing children in the Balkan mountains. Maybe he sees her, up there on the second floor of the apartment. Maybe the lights are on, the curtains are open, and he sees Kara, moving back and forth, maybe getting ready for bed, maybe stepping out of the shower. Maybe he's been out here, night after night, just staring up there, feeling the desire and the need and the drive to hurt and control just rise and rise, until it snaps. Something happens. A line is crossed, a decision is made, and instead of walking back to an empty home, the man walks across the street and through the open door and upstairs. And there he finds...

Finds what?

I slapped my gloved hands together and started walking back to where I had parked earlier, feeling a need to get someplace warm and strip off the heavy clothes and drink some tea and forget about things for a while, for in those past few seconds, I had gotten into the mind of a rapist, and I didn't like it one bit.

And I also didn't like knowing that I would probably have to do it again, before this was all over.

Chapter Seven

The day after my visit to Newburyport and its grumpy police inspector, I returned to the small city in the company of Felix Tinios. I was a bit touched when Felix had joined me back in Tyler, for not only had he brought along a 35mm Canon, but he also had a camera bag with him as well, so he was quite up to playing his part. And I was also surprised when I noticed the shoulder holster and weapon as he clambered into the passenger seat, his long gray winter coat being unbuttoned.

"Carrying?" I had asked. "We're just looking over Kara's place today, maybe ask a few questions. Seems like a waste of firepower."

"Maybe so," he had said. "But we're going to visit a crime scene, and we're going to start asking questions that you and I hope will lead to some creature who gets his kicks out of raping women. I just like to be prepared in case he answers the second or third door we knock at today."

"And you have a concealed-weapon permit for Massachusetts?" I had asked. "Word is, they're hard to get in our sister state."

Felix grinned. "For the unconnected, you're right." And I had left him alone.

Now he looked over at me as we crossed over the Merrimack River, and he said, "So, what was the point of talking to the police inspector? You figure he was going to roll over and give you everything, maybe even a suspect's name, maybe so you and I could finish this by the weekend?"

"Hardly," I said, taking the first exit off the bridge and maneuvering my way up to High Street. "It's just that it was something that had to be done, getting the first interview out of the way. I didn't expect total cooperation, but I was looking for an idea of where his head was at."

"And besides his shoulders, where is the inspector's head resting these days?"

"He said this is a screwball case, and he wouldn't tell me anything more than that, and I think he was about two minutes away from tossing me out of his office."

"Well, I can see you're glad you got that out of the way."

"You better believe it."

I pulled into the small parking lot belonging to Kara's apartment house. Her car was still parked there and was the only vehicle in the lot. A chest-high wooden fence and some brush surrounded most of the lot and a tiny backyard. We got out, Felix carrying his camera bag and me with my reporter's notebook, and we went around to the front door and I pointed up to the second floor. "That's Kara's apartment up there."

"What room do those windows belong to?"

"Living room."

"Are there windows for the bedroom and bathroom?" Felix asked, his head tilted back, looking up at the windows and the surrounding homes with a practiced eye.

"We'll see once we get in."

We walked up a brick walk and through the front door, which was unlocked. Felix shook his head. "Easy and open access. Jesus. Anybody could come in here."

"Anybody did, last week."

I closed the door behind us. There was a small foyer, and a door to the left with a tiny brass knocker and a nameplate with a piece of white cardboard that said HENRY in careful block handwriting. Before us was a set of stairs and to the right, green trash cans with black covers. I reached up to knock and Felix held my hand back.

"Let's give it a while, why don't we," Felix said. "I want to look around firsthand, get some impressions, and then we can talk to the landlord."

"Sounds good," I said, and we went upstairs. There was a small landing and doors to the left and right. The nameplate on the left was empty and the one on the right said MILES. The area around the doorknob was dirty, and I recognized the light gray powder that cops use when they're looking for latent fingerprints. Felix turned away from the other door and gave me a quizzical look and I said, "Yeah, the apartment across the way is empty, has been for a couple of months. Kara's by herself up here."

“You got the key?" Felix asked.

"I do," I said.

"Then let's go in."

"Fine."

The door opened with no problem and we stood there, just taking in the small apartment. There was a short hallway, leading into a kitchen and dining area. To the right was the living room, with couch, chairs, television and stereo, a couple of bookcases, and a large, woven tapestry hanging on the far wall, showing a mountain scene. We were in an entryway with a coat rack, open closet, step off pad for dirty boots, and a small table that held a collection of mail. On the floor by the table were a couple of small, square, black zippered bags that looked like carry-on luggage. To the left was a bathroom, and beyond that another door, which was open and led to the bedroom.

"Cozy," Felix said.

"That's right," I replied, and closed the door behind us. We both took off our coats and hung them up, and Felix dropped his camera bag on the floor. I noticed that as we went into the living room, we were talking with low voices, like we were both trying not to disturb anything, being in a sacred place that had been desecrated by some old horror.

But not too old. Only a few days old.

In the living room Felix knelt on the couch and looked outside the window, the curtains on either side already open. Without
his coat I saw he was carrying his Smith & Wesson 9mm in his shoulder holster. "Clear view," he said. "Guy standing out there could get a good look in if he wanted to."

"I was thinking about that," I said. "And I think the same is true for the kitchen."

In the kitchen some dishes were still piled up in the sink, and I had an urge to wash and put them away. The kitchen was big with a square oak table and four chairs, and more mail piled up on the table, along with a candle-and-flower centerpiece. Felix opened up the refrigerator and closed it and I noticed him looking at the photographs taped up there. Most were similar to the ones back at Diane's condo, showing Diane and Kara together, arms around each other, and Felix looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"They speak for themselves," I said. "Let's poke around some more."

We walked through the bathroom, quickly noting there was no window for the benefit of any Peeping Toms, and then we were into the bedroom, and something tugged at my throat. The bedroom door was also dusty, where the cops had looked for latents, and there was a wide bed in the center of the room, a short four-poster. The mattress was bare and some sheets and pillows had been tossed in the corner. The mattress was askew and I tried not to think of the awful violence that had been committed there. Again, just like in the kitchen, I had the urge to clean this place lip, to ask Felix to help me haul away the bedding and burn it at some faraway place, and instead I kept my mouth shut. The two windows had their shades drawn and Felix and I went over and lined them up and saw that they looked out over the small yard. A couple of evergreens blocked any view.

"So much for someone from a neighboring house seeing Kara going to bed," I said. "Unless he had been up in one of those trees, and with the weather we've been having... "

Felix grunted. ''Yeah. Good point. Tell me again what she said happened?"

"She said she was sleeping when someone came into the room. She sat up and a guy jumped on her, threatened to slit her throat. She fought back a bit and he beat her up some as ... as he raped her."

“Did she see what he looked like?"

"Nope. Only thing she could tell is that he was wearing blue jeans. She said it was too dark in the room." And I was going to say something about the facial hair contradiction between Inspector Dunbar's report and what Kara had told me, and decided it could wait. I wanted Felix to focus on the matter at hand.

"Did he say anything while he was in the room? Did it look like he knew her?"

"No, nothing like that. He said the usual and customary things a rapist says."

Felix had an impatient look about him. "Look, what did the son of a bitch say?"

I thought back to what Kara had told me, shrugged, and said, "The guy said he would cut her if she struggled or screamed, cut her if she went to the cops, and as she struggled, he said, quote, shut up and take it, bitch, take a real man's cock, unquote."

Felix's features darkened. "Such a charmer. I think I'll enjoy meeting him."

"Me, too."

We poked around the bedroom some more, and I was under no illusions we were going to find anything the police had overlooked. Felix and I were there just to get a sense, maybe even a scent, of what happened that night, something that would help us as we started our work. Felix went through the closets and I examined the bureau. There was a portable CD player there with matching speakers, some jewelry boxes, hairbrushes, and the usual stuff. I looked again and said, "Is this odd, or is it just me?"

He closed the closet door. "What's that?"

"Here on the bureau," I said. "Look, I know that the guy who came in here was looking for a woman to rape, not to clean out her apartment. But it seems strange that when he was done, he didn't scoop this stuff up on his way out. He could have gotten some money for the CD and jewelry, at least a few hundred bucks."

"Maybe it was too dark to see," he said.

"Maybe."

I followed him out to the living room. The bookshelves contained mostly paperbacks, with a few hardcovers concerning computers and software. Most of the paperbacks were science fiction and fantasy, with a handful of romance novels tossed in, maybe for spice. The bookshelves flanked a fireplace that had been closed off.   On the mantelpiece in the center was a framed photo of Kara and Diane. There were some knickknacks near the photo. A Hummel sculpture of a young girl knitting, and three ceramic sculptures about the size of my fist. Two were pushed together, and showed a knight on horseback with a lance, bearing down on a creature that looked like a troll. The detail of the work was quite fine --- this wasn't stuff knocked out at some evening ceramics course. The muscles on the horse were defined, and you could see the knight was dirty and worn, his chain mail not in good shape. The troll had on leather armor and had a matted beard, and had a mace raised lip to ward off the horseman.

The other ceramic sculpture stood by itself. Another knight, similar to the one on horseback, on one bended knee, sword outthrust and shield raised, like he was defending himself against something awful approaching him from the sky. Even the knight's eyes were half-closed, like he was fearful of what was coming toward him.

I looked at the books again and Felix said, "Going to borrow something?"

"Nope, not tonight."

We went back to the entrance foyer, and I saw the black bags there again. There were two of them, and I squatted down and zippered them open. They weren't luggage. They were portable computers --- one a Macintosh and the other a Compaq. I shook my head and zippered them back up and looked around at the apartment, seeing another CD player, a collection of silver in a tiny display case built into a kitchen wall, a small Sony TV set on a kitchen counter, and another, larger set in the living room, and I looked at Felix, who leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, arms crossed.

I said, "There's a lot of stuff here, stuff that could be fenced in another city a couple of hours away, with not much chance of an easy trace, and it's still here. The computers, the CD sets, the  silver... "

He shifted his weight, crossed his legs. "Which tells you what?"

I chose my words carefully. "It tells me that this guy wanted one thing, and one thing only, and wasn't interested in picking up some free and easy cash in the bargain."