Smokin' Seventeen (12 page)

“The car looks like a light-color, late-model Toyota. You
can see the emblem when he pulls into the lot. I’m guessing it’s a Camry. And with some enhancement you should be able to see the plate when he leaves. Have you given this to the police?”

“Yes. And we’re also running the plate.”

“Hard to tell on the infrared, but I didn’t see any blood. I couldn’t see her face. Slim body. Short skirt. Tank top. No shoes.”

“And the killer?”

“Male. Obviously disguised. He’s wearing a coverall that looks padded. And he’s wearing a rubber Frankenstein mask. His hands are hidden in gloves. Judging his height by the car I’d say he’s somewhere between 5′10″ to 6′ tall. And there’s something familiar about him.”

Ranger looked at me. “You know him?”

“I can’t exactly dial in on it, but the more I watch the video, the more I feel like I’ve run into him before.”

“You’ve met a lot of bad guys since you’ve worked for Vinnie.”

I ate some of my muffin. It would be comforting to think I recognized the killer from a previous takedown, but I wasn’t sure that was it. I felt like I
knew
this guy.

Ranger closed the file. “What’s your plan for the day?”

“I thought I’d do my bounty hunter thing.”

“You know where to find me if you want to do your vordo thing.”

The hideous truth was I wanted to do my vordo thing at this very moment. I wanted to do it bad. I had memories of Ranger in bed, his voice a whisper against my ear, the small of his back slick with sweat, his silky brown hair falling across his forehead when he took control and moved over me. The only thing stopping me from closing his office door and straddling him as he sat in his chair was the knowledge that we were out of raincoats.

He read my thoughts, and it dragged another smile out of him. “Babe.”

“Vordo is a bitch,” I told him.

• • •

I passed by the office on my way home. Mooner’s bus was still there, plus a couple cop cars, the M.E.’s truck, the state crime scene van, a satellite truck from Fox News, Morelli’s SUV, and Vinnie’s Caddie. I thought it best not to stop since I was wearing yesterday’s clothes, coming from the wrong direction, and even though I’d taken a shower I worried that I smelled like sex, or at the very least like Ranger, since I’d used his shower gel. Okay, so I have an agreement with Morelli and technically I didn’t do anything wrong. And last night was all his crazy grandmother’s fault. That didn’t mean it was a good idea to stand next to him reeking of Ranger first thing in the morning. If the situation was reversed and I knew for sure he
was doing Terry Gilman, I might be inclined to pry her heart out of her chest with a butter knife. I assumed Morelli had similar issues with Ranger.

I swung into the lot to my apartment building and parked. The plan was to make a fast pit stop, turn myself into a brand-new Stephanie, and head back out to the crime scene. I hustled to the lobby and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I burst into the hall and saw that a gold foil gift bag had been placed in front of my door. There was a red apron inside the bag and a card.

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU WEAR THIS. OTHER CLOTHES WOULD BE OPTIONAL. DAVE.

Good grief. I took the bag to the trash chute and tossed it.

Forty minutes later I was back on the road. Rex had been fed, I’d re-showered and dressed in clean clothes, I’d checked my phone for messages, and I’d checked my email. I’d had sixteen junk emails advertising male enhancement drugs. This was like trying to sell sand in a desert, because my males needed no further enhancement.

I also had three messages from my mother asking if I had heard from Dave Brewer, that he was such a nice young man who came from a wonderful family. Clearly my mother had given up on Morelli as a source for future grandchildren. Ranger had never been in contention. Dave Brewer was up at bat.

I reached the bonds office lot and saw that everyone was
still in place, plus Connie’s car had been added to the mix. I parked and crossed to where Connie and Vinnie were standing, looking not too happy.

“Someone dumped another body,” Connie said. “A young woman this time.”

“Anyone recognize her?”

“Juki Beck,” Vinnie said. “I wrote bond for her once, a couple years ago. Shoplifting. At the rate we’re going I’ll have to call in an exorcist before the union lets me build on this lot.”

“I need to download mail,” Connie said. “Does the bus still smell like bear?”

“No,” Vinnie said. “It smells like Mooner.”

I handed Connie my key. “You can use my apartment. Just don’t let Vinnie in.”

“Nice way to treat your relative,” Vinnie said. “You know, I gave you this job, and I could take it away.”

“You didn’t
give
me the job,” I said. “I blackmailed you into hiring me. And you’re not going to take it away, because you can’t find anyone else stupid enough to work for you.”

“Not true,” Vinnie said. “There are a lot of stupid assholes out there. And where the hell’s my bear? Why aren’t you tracking down my bear?”

“It’s on my list.”

Connie went to her car, Vinnie went back to the bus, and Morelli broke away from the knot of cops and forensic techs and walked over to me.

“This guy’s pushing his luck,” Morelli said.

“Vinnie said he was able to ID the woman.”

“Yeah. Vinnie and half the cops on the force. She got around.”

“Did she have a connection to Dugan?”

“Nothing apparent. She waited tables at Binkey’s Ale House. Divorced. No kids. Twenty-six years old.”

“Maybe this was a different killer.”

“Cause of death is the same. Dugan, Lucarelli, and Beck all had their necks broken. Dugan and Lucarelli were decomposed enough not to show a lot of detail. Beck had severe rope burns on her neck. Probably choked unconscious and then had her neck snapped.”

I felt a wave of nausea slide through my stomach.

“This guy is strong,” Morelli said. “It’s not that easy to choke someone, and Dugan and Lucarelli were big guys.”

I looked to the back of the property where Juki Beck had been pulled from the car. I know him, I thought. This monster. This serial killer. He’s moving among us, looking normal. He’s a shoe salesman, or a cop, or a gas station attendant.

“Why did he bring her here?” I asked Morelli. “I know the lot is shielded by Mooner’s bus, but it still seems risky.”

“This is the ugly part,” Morelli said.

“How could it possibly get uglier?”

“There was a note pinned to her shirt. It said
For Stephanie.
”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s all it said. Two words.
For Stephanie.
”

TWENTY-ONE

I WAS ON MY BACK,
looking up at Morelli through cobwebs, and my first thought was that the 7-Eleven victim had exacted revenge on me, and I’d been stun gunned. The cobwebs cleared, and I discounted stun gunning.

“What happened?” I asked Morelli.

“You fainted.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I agree, but if someone sent me a dead woman I might faint, too.” He was down on one knee, bending over me. “Are you ready to get up?”

“I need a moment.”

“Don’t take too long. People will think I’m proposing.”

I slowly got to my feet. “Why me?”

“I don’t know. Have you been getting threatening letters or phone calls?”

“The only one threatening me is your grandmother.”

“Ranger had cameras working and apparently captured the drop. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m told the killer was covered head to toe. The interesting thing is he delivered the victim here in her own car.”

“Have you found the car?”

“Not yet. And if we don’t it’ll be following the pattern because we never found Dugan’s car or Lucarelli’s car. Disappeared without a trace.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I have to get back to the station. I want to see the video, and I’m going to run some names through the system. See if I can connect someone to you and Dugan. There are only a handful of people who know about this note, so keep it to yourself.”

“Ranger?”

“You can tell Ranger.”

Lula was standing by the bus, waiting for me. She was dressed in poison green spandex pants, five-inch leopard stilettos, a low-cut scoop neck stretchy lemon yellow shirt, and she’d had her hair done up in braids that made her look like she was wearing a giant spider on her head.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Another body. This one wasn’t buried. Just deposited.”

“We have a sick individual here. He’s killing too many people. He might even be over the legal limit for Trenton.”

For the sake of keeping the note secret I was trying to look calm, but I was actually very rattled. In a back corner of my mind there’d been a nagging thought that Vinnie or the bonds office might have been involved somehow. It never occurred to me that
I
was the connection. And pinning a note on a dead woman and addressing it to me as if it were a gift tag was hideously disgusting and beyond frightening.

“You look real freaked,” Lula said. “Are you okay?”

“I have problems.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

There was a laundry list, ending with the big one I couldn’t talk about. “For starters, I’ve got the vordo.”

“So you be a good time. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m too much of a good time. It’s even more confusing than when I wasn’t a good time at all. And I think I might be getting a bladder infection.”

“A bladder infection’s no good. Maybe you should cut back.”

“I can’t cut back. I’ve turned into a sex addict. I get within a foot of Ranger or Morelli and I’m ready to go … and go, and go, and go, and go.”

“That’s a lot of going. I’m a retired professional, and it’d be a lot of going even for me. What you need are granny panties. You put on a big ol’ pair of ugly granny panties and you won’t be dropping your drawers no more. And even if you forget in the heat of the moment, and you pull your skirt up over your head, you’re not gonna see no action on account granny
panties have a deflating effect on a man. Your man’s gonna be going
unh ah, no way am I getting busy with a woman wearing granny panties.
”

Call me crazy, but it made as much sense as anything else going on in my life. And it was better than thinking about Juki Beck. “Okay, sign me up. Where do I get granny panties?”

A half hour later we were at JCPenney, wandering around in the lingerie department.

“This is the perfect all-purpose store,” Lula said. “They got panties to fit any occasion. They got everything from thongs to granny panties and everything in between.” She picked a pair of pink cotton panties off the rack and held them up for inspection. “Now this is what I’m talking about. You don’t want to be seen in these panties. You have to turn the lights out when you put them on so you don’t even see
yourself.
”

“They look big.”

“Yeah, these suckers are gonna come up to your armpits. Try ’em on, and we’ll take ’em for a test drive. See if you want to hump anybody while you’re wearin’ these panties.”

I took the panties to the dressing room, tried them on, and checked myself out in the mirror. Not a pretty sight. I was definitely moving into birth control territory.

“Well?” Lula asked when I came out.

“They’re perfect.”

“They got them in red and white, too. I bet you put the white ones on, and you want to jump off a bridge.”

I bought one in each color, and I wore the pink ones out
of the store. Better safe than sorry was my motto. Although truth is there wasn’t much to be sorry about considering the night I’d just had. And the night before that with Morelli hadn’t exactly been shabby.

“Now that you been back-to-back with Morelli and Ranger who’s winning the sack race?” Lula asked.

“The food and the bed linens are better at Rangeman, but Morelli has Bob.”

“All those things are important, only I’m talkin’ about the big O.”

I took some time to think about it. “They’re different, but equal.”

“That don’t tell me nothing,” Lula said. “Sounds to me like you gotta do more research.”

Oh boy.

“And what about boyfriend number three?” she asked.

“Dave Brewer? I don’t know him very well.”

“He’s good-lookin’, right? And he’s big and strong and manly?”

“I guess.”

“And he can cook. Seems like that equates to Ranger’s sheets and Morelli’s dog. And your mama likes him.”

“My mother’s endorsement doesn’t count for a lot. One time she fixed me up with Ronald Buzick.”

“The butcher? The fat, bald guy?” Lula followed me out of the mall. “He’s not a real attractive man. Your mama must
have been thinking about free sausage. I got some kielbasa from him once that was outstanding.”

I unlocked my Escort, and I thought about Ronald Buzick. He was about the same size as the killer. The jumpsuit had looked padded, but maybe those lumps were actually Ronald. He was strong enough to break someone’s neck. And he was a little odd. He seemed jolly on the outside, but I was guessing he had a lot of anger on the inside. I mean the man had his hand up chicken butts all day long.

“Do you think Ronald Buzick could kill someone?” I asked Lula.

“I think anyone could kill someone. People get a little wacky, and
bang
someone’s dead. At least in my neighborhood. What are we gonna do now? Do we need lunch?”

“We just ate lunch at the mall.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

I put the car in gear and drove out of the lot. “I think it’s time to visit Merlin Brown again.”

“That’s a good idea on account of I haven’t been knocked on my ass yet today. It wouldn’t be right for a day to go by without him knocking me on my ass.” She looked over at me. “Do we have a plan?”

“No.”

“Probably you still don’t want me to shoot him or run over him with your car.”

“Right.”

“I got a new idea. How about we bring him a poison pizza. I’m not saying we want to kill him or anything. I’m thinkin’ we could just slip him some pepperoni roofies.”

“That’s illegal.”

“Only a little. People eat roofies all the time. At least in my neighborhood.”