Signature Kill (23 page)

Time for the bullshit to end …

Behr had been sitting outside Prilo’s place for the better part of this nightmare of a day, and as of yet there was no sign of the man. As he shifted in his seat he felt the reassuring hunk of metal heavy on his ankle, where he was wearing his backup piece, as he should have the first time he encountered this killer.

Time for the bullshit to end. Time to apply the necessary pressure to get answers. And time to collect his reward
.

After Mistretta left, and he’d finished beating himself up over the mess he’d made with her and with Susan and with Quinn, Behr had gone to his gun cabinet and taken out his .357 Mag Pug, a squat, stainless-steel revolver with a two-inch barrel and rubberized grips. He’d picked it up for two hundred seventy-five bucks at a gun show over the state line in Missouri five years back, and he’d meant to register it but never had. The guy running the booth had thrown in the ankle holster, which to Behr’s mind was a bit of a silly way to carry a gun, but it was the only holster he had for it. Despite the low price, the Pug was built solidly enough and it bucked like a bronco when he put magnum rounds through it a few times at the range, but it was reliable in its groupings and he wasn’t taking any more chances. He had opened a box of Winchester Silvertips and loaded it up, and then grabbed a few sandwiches and drinks and headed for Prilo’s.

The exchange with Susan had left him with the distinct impression
that the friend she’d be turning to for shelter and support would be her coworker Chad. She’d stopped short of letting him know it, but not by much, and it didn’t seem as if she minded either way. There was nothing he could do about it, sitting as he currently was, except add it to his already boiling blood.

Fat clouds trekked across the sky, and they darkened as the sun dropped and the day ended. An older man in a flannel coat came out the front door from inside carrying a small metal toolbox and climbed up on a stepladder to change the bulb on the porch light. Behr got out of the car and approached him. The man was large boned and mostly bald, and Behr wondered if he was possibly Prilo’s father.

“Excuse me,” Behr said, and the man looked down. “I’m trying to catch up with someone who lives here. Jerry Prilo.”

“I’m the super,” the man said. “He’s at the hospital getting some surgery. Said something about staying overnight.”

“What kind of surgery? When did he go in?” Behr asked. If it was the day before it might put a hole in his theory that Prilo did Quinn.

“Went in early this morning. For his arm.”

“What hospital?”

“St. Vincent’s,” the super said. “Say, are you a friend of his?”

“No, I’m not,” Behr said, walking to his car.

The first thing he heard was the weeping.

It seemed every damned hospital room Behr walked into these days was full of it. This time it wasn’t quite what he expected, though. This time it was Jerold Allen Prilo, propped up in bed, draped in a hospital gown, his right arm wrapped in a cast and suspended in weightless traction by cables. His face was red and wet with tears and slobber as he cried and muttered to himself. Behr had talked Prilo’s room number out of a nurse at the reception desk, and no one had questioned him as he walked the sixth-floor hallway. Visiting hours lasted for another hour or so. Plenty of time.

“What’s wrong with you?” Behr asked, arriving at the side of the bed.

For a moment Prilo didn’t show any reaction at all. He just continued crying, head hanging down, shoulders shaking from the force of it.

“Hey,” Behr said, “I asked what’s wrong with you.” Behr grabbed him by the chin and looked into Prilo’s eyes. The man was barely there. Behr checked his IV drip and saw a small bag of medicine in a locked electronic dispenser port: Demerol.

“It all came back,” Prilo said. His speech was rubbery, slurred. Some of it may have been due to the residual damage to his tongue from their fight, but it was mostly narcotic. “They all came back …”

“There’s a limiter on your pain meds. What are you on?” Behr asked. No answer came, so Behr looked in the drawer of the bedside
table. There were keys, a wallet and a cell phone, and a few pill bottles—OxyContin and Percocet. Behr popped one bottle open and saw it was nearly empty and that there was fine, white dust in the bottom, a telltale sign that Prilo was grinding up and snorting the drugs in a way that intensified their potency.

“How much of this did you take?” Behr asked.

Prilo just shrugged. “It’s been years since I tasted it. Years.”

“You’re not on all this shit for the arm?” This time Prilo shook his head no. “Did I do that, your elbow?” Behr asked.

Now Prilo nodded yes and drooled a little. He was a full mess. But Behr wasn’t there on a mission of mercy, and he certainly wasn’t there to apologize or dish out comfort.

“Quinn,” Behr said, grabbing Prilo’s chin again and slapping him hard across the face. “Tell me about Django Quinn.”

Coherence flickered into Prilo’s eyes. “The photographer …”

“That’s right,” Behr said. “Did you do him?”

“Do what?” Prilo asked. His mystification seemed genuine. “Don’t hurt me, but I don’t know what you wanna know.”

“You messed up Quinn, the photographer. You followed him after the meeting. For days. You picked your spot and you took him.”

“No.”

“Tell me. You hurt him, bad.”

“No. That’s not my thing. He don’t matter to me.”

It was what Behr figured, so with that out of the way, he moved on.

“Right. But you know who he does matter to. And you helped. You and your sick buddy stalked him, beat him, and mutilated him. Tell me who he is.”

“What the fuck?” Prilo said, his eyes rolling in his head.

“I’m gonna ask you again, and if you don’t start getting helpful I’ll undo everything they just fixed on you. And then some,” Behr said. “Where were you last night? Who were you with?”

“I was home. I couldn’t eat or drink anything after seven. I was pilled out and sleeping by six-thirty, I think.”

Fuck
, Behr thought and picked up Prilo’s chart and saw the date of the operation: it was that morning at 6:00
A.M.
Could Prilo have
been involved with what had happened to Quinn and reported for surgery hours later? As much of a crafty, murdering psychopath as Behr knew him to be, about this Prilo seemed truthful.

“Here, show me who you’re working with,” Behr said, pulling out his phone and starting to scroll photos from the community meeting. “Point him out to me.”

“I don’t know those guys, man,” Prilo protested.

“Let’s go back to Kendra Gibbons then,” Behr said, starting to feel the slick slide of desperation.

“Your case.”

“That’s right. Did the girl get abducted and murdered a little over eighteen months ago?”

“Coulda been, but that’s just me guessing.”

“You know something about it.”

Again, Prilo shook his head no.

“You know who’s been chopping up these women—the one in Northwestway and the one that was found over at Donovan-Grant,” Behr said, putting his phone down, as Prilo whipped his head from side to side.

Behr changed gears and went empathetic. He relaxed his posture and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “I know you don’t want to be a part of this, man. I understand.”

“You do?” Prilo said quietly.

“Yes. Things got away from you. You were trying to walk the line, but it’s so hard …”

Prilo was almost nodding along as he listened, but then he stopped and looked up.

“So just tell me how it went. You met this guy somewhere, or he approached you, because he knew about what you’d done … somehow it all got going again. Look, it’s okay. We’ll put you somewhere you can get some help. The important thing is you give me the other guy. We don’t care about him, we care about you.” Behr laid it on thick, the most comforting tone he could dredge up.

“No, man. No. I tell you I’m through with that. I’m all through. I haven’t done anything in a long, long time, and I don’t know anyone who did.”

Either the empathy didn’t work or Prilo was telling it straight. Running low on options, Behr raised the phone again.

“So you don’t know the guy. Look at these photos and pick me some likely candidates. Men you’ve seen around at the wrong places, one you’ve just got a feeling about.”

Prilo’s eyes flickered as the images scrolled by.

“Those are just a bunch of faces to me. Just leave me alone, please.”

“Fine,” Behr said, hopeless and trying to salvage
something
from the visit. “I’ll go if you help me.”

“What you want?” Prilo asked.

“DNA,” Behr said.

“What about it?”

“You seemed surprised that there was none recovered. Why?”

“On account of the semen—he’s got to be using them for
that
—and there’s no way you can account for
all
of it.”

“You said
there are ways
to get around leaving DNA,” Behr pressed. “Condoms?”

“I doubt that.”

“He … finishes … somewhere other than in them?”

“Doubt that even more.”

“What then?”

Prilo took a pause, a bit more coherence coming to his eyes, then said: “Bleach, most likely. Sodium hypochloride or a strong hydrogen peroxide solution. We’re talking about a PCR inhibitor, see.”

“PCR?”

“Polymerase chain reaction. That’s what the lab rats use to amplify DNA so it can be tested.” Prilo was really coming around now, warming to his subject.

“So, bleach,” Behr repeated. “Bleach destroys residual DNA.”

“Destroy is a big word. But render it unusable? Yeah. See the techs try and amplify it, like I said. You can’t let ’em amplify it …” Prilo started to lose focus and drift away. “If they amplify it, you’re fucked …”

“Why are you taking this?” Behr asked, shoving the pill bottles into Prilo’s face.

“The bodies. Those pictures. Our … 
talk
. It all got back in my
head. Everything and everyone from the old days. The old mother-fucking visions came back.” Prilo banged at his temple as if trying to knock something loose. “I didn’t want them back. I was trying, but they’re so strong. They don’t have meetings for what I got,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like, man. Once you’ve seen what I seen, felt what I’ve felt … being in the regular world is like living on mute. Doing what I done? You have no idea what it’s like, no idea.”

“The guilt, you mean?” Behr asked, feeling that perhaps he understood the man and his sorrow and distress for a moment.

But that small smile, mad and maddening, curled at Prilo’s lips. “No … the thrill.”

Behr was stunned into silence for a moment as Prilo went on.

“When you find one, a young one, and you grab her up and she’s
yours
, and when you tie her down and touch that skin—”

Behr stood and got a handful of the man’s hospital gown and put his face an inch from Prilo’s.

“Listen to me, you sick piece of shit. You do not hurt anybody else now. You hear me? Because I’ve got you and I’m looking at you, and if you hurt anybody ever again I’ll know about it and I will fucking hunt you down and kill you.” Behr wanted to do it now. He knew he should. Beat him to death, strangle him, find a way to unlock the Demerol IV and overdose him. But Behr controlled himself and slammed Prilo back against the bed, jarring the bad arm and causing him to emit a moan of pain.

“I know you will …” Prilo said, his head sagging back down and the tears starting to return. “I know …”

“Stop taking this crap,” Behr said and flung the pill bottles across the room. “Get yourself into a detox program or a mental ward or turn yourself in to your parole officer. You hear me?”

Prilo nodded, but succumbed to another paroxysm of sobs. The room suddenly felt airless and rife with evil to Behr, and he had to get out of it.

Stepping off the elevator in the hospital lobby, he texted Breslau: “Check the body cavities for bleach.”