The Death Artist (17 page)

Kate could almost feel him in the room with her now, watching, smirking, his presence palpable. She was suddenly aware of her breathing, the quiet, and then something moving, ever so slightly, behind her. She froze. Her skin prickled. But when she turned it was only a pigeon on the window ledge.

She let out a breath.

But a second later, there it was again, nothing specific this time, just a feeling, as if he had tapped her on the shoulder, said, Look here, and here.

Kate shivered.

In the living room she stopped a moment, picked up the Marilyn pillow. The faintest whiff of patchouli, Elena’s perfume, sent her reeling. Another minute in this place and she would break into pieces.

She was thankful for the smell of stale cabbage that permeated the hallway–anything to extinguish that killing patchouli.

She’d like to get out of here, but not yet. She needed to talk to Elena’s super. According to the uniform who took the man’s statement, he wasn’t around the night of the murder, but still he could have some useful information.

Kate sidestepped four rusting trash bins. Two without tops, overflowing with malodorous garbage, practically blocked all entry to the basement apartment. She squeezed through, but a good-sized swatch of the fine gray fabric of her blazer impaled itself on a jagged edge of the trash can.

“Damn.” She leaned hard on the metal bell, thought it was either pitched for dogs’ ears only or, more likely, dead.

She knocked. A few flakes of glittery blue-black enamel fluttered to the concrete like swooning drag-queen moths.

Nothing.

Another knock. The only response a few more flakes of falling paint.

There was a hole where the doorknob ought to be. Kate bent for a closer inspection, thought it looked like a mouth without dentures, pieces of the metal lock sticking out. She riffled through her bag–comb, cigarettes, lighter, perfume, Tic-Tacs–came up with a metal nail file, probed around in the hole until she heard a click, and the door popped open. Breaking and entering–something the young Detective McKinnon had always been good at.

“Hello?” Kate called into the semidarkness of a hallway littered with old newspapers, empty six-packs, a large bag of kitty litter, an open metal toolbox, a stack of skin mags, Roach Motels. She stepped over them, turned into what appeared to be a combination living room/bedroom with a lumpy pink-striped mattress on the floor, a couple of folding chairs around a fifties-style card table. Across the room, Jenny Jones baited her audience on the twenty-eight-inch Sony Trinitron.

When the black-and-white cat rubbed against her ankles, Kate leaped, almost screamed. “Oh, kitty, you scared the shit out of me.” She took a breath, petted the cat, but as she straightened up, she caught the faintest glimpse of something massive and colorful just off to her right.

Then came the shove, and the gray-beige walls, Jenny Jones, the floor, all were coming at her fast. Kate got an arm out, grabbed on to something soft and fleshy, gripped hard, and pulled. The large, colorful thing–which smelled like weeks-old Campbell’s chicken noodle soup–went down as Kate found her balance. It–the thing–hit the faded linoleum floor with a loud clunk, sputtered like a dying diesel engine, and farted.

Kate stabbed her heel into the back of a neck like a Goodyear tire, yanked the hippo’s flabby arm up and under his scapula–though she couldn’t be sure there was any bone beneath the layers of fat.

Now she took him in: a good three-hundred-pounder in a parrot-patterned shirt.

He yelped like a pup. His breath, even from a few feet away, like aged farmer cheese, was giving his fart some stiff competition.

A couple of weeks earlier, Kate had been lunching with Philippe de Montebello in the private dining room of the Metropolitan Museum, discussing the finer points of Vermeer, had been having tea with the latest Mrs. Trump, securing that million-dollar check for Let There Be a Future. Now she was not only skipping tea and lunch, she was ramming her four-hundred-dollar heel into some fat guy’s neck.

“Name?” Kate laid a little weight into that heel, watched it disappear into the folds of yeasty flesh.

He bellowed: “Johnson. I’m the fuckin’ super here! Wally Johnson. You’re breakin’ my fuckin’ arrrmmm.”

“You always drop-kick your guests?”

“Y’broke into my place, f’Christ’s sake!”

He had a point. “NYPD,” she said, easing up on his arm a bit. She leaned closer, then pulled back. That breath. She managed to extract a promise from fat boy Wally that he would behave.

“Why didn’t ya say so?” He rolled over, sat up, rubbed his arm, whined, “Jeesus.”

“I knocked, called out. You didn’t answer.”

“I was takin’ a dump, for Christ’s sake.” His eyes, tiny dark specks peeking through Venetian blinds of fat, assessed Kate skeptically. “You’re a cop?”

“Working on the Solana case,” she said, liking the sound of it. She was pretty pleased with herself, too, taking down fat boy Wally with one arm. Thank God for her personal trainer. Of course, Wally was in maybe the worst shape of any person she had ever seen–alive. “Look,” she said, softening. “I’m not here to do you any harm–”

“Y’already broke my fuckin’ arm.” He pouted.

Kate resisted calling him a crybaby. “I read your statement. You weren’t here the night Elena Solana was killed, correct?”

“I already told the other cops. I was at my sista’s, on Staten Island. She cooked spaghetti wit’ meatballs.”

“Sounds delicious. But I’m looking for a little more than meatballs.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . did you ever see her friends, Elena Solana’s–”

“Hey, I don’t snoop.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Kate softened her tone. “Look, Wally, you and I know that any good superintendent knows the comings and goings of his residents. It’s part of the job, which I am sure you do
very
well.”

He rubbed his arm, said, “She had a few nigger boyfriends.”

For a second, Kate thought maybe she’d break his other arm, but that wouldn’t get her any answers. “Tell me about them.”

He shrugged. “What’s t’tell? One was small. One skinny. One big.”

“
How
big?”

“Like a bouncer, or a prizefighter, you know.”

“What else?”

“The little one had that hair, y’know, like, uh–”

“Dreadlocks?”

“That’s it. Dreadlocks. A young guy. He was here a lot.”

Willie.
“And the skinny guy?”

“I only saw him couple a times. Looked like a junkie.”

“And the prizefighter?”

“Hasn’t been around awhile now. I guess, maybe they broke up. Boo-hoo, huh?” He grinned. Not a pretty picture: teeth the color of ripe bananas, a couple of black holes.

“Could you identify any of them?”

“The young one, the one with dreadlocks, for sure. Maybe the big guy.
Maybe.
I never got a real good look at him. But he was big, like I said. The other guy, the junkie, well . . . a junkie, you know.”

Great.
The only one of the three men Fat Wally could identify for sure was Willie, the one Kate already knew. It figured.

“Oh.” Fat Wally leaned in a little too close. Kate took a step back from eau de halitosis. “There was this other guy, also kinda skinny, a white guy. Blond hair. Medium height. But slight, kinda feminine. Probably a fag, y’know.”

“And you saw him . . . when?”

“I don’t keep no stopwatch. A few times. In front, maybe, or ringin’ Solana’s buzzer. Maybe once or twice, the two of them goin’ out together, arm ’n arm.” He grinned. “Maybe he weren’t no faggot after all.”

Outside, in the cold afternoon light, Kate assessed her losses–one very good pair of pants and one even better blazer; then assessed what she’d learned–three men, excluding Willie, had called on Elena regularly. A large black man and a skinny one. Also, a pale white guy.

Who were they?

Back home, Kate headed for the guest-room closet, grabbed a chair on the way. She did not like the way she felt when Fat Wally came out of nowhere. Way too vulnerable. And the next guy might not be as out of shape. She had better be prepared.

She pushed aside a stash of silky scarves. There it was, the plain gray shoe box marked “Slippers, crushed velvet,” in neatly printed Magic Marker. Exactly where she’d put it almost ten years ago. She tugged out the box, sat on the edge of the bed, pushed back layers of tissue paper as though peeling away time. Gently, she extricated her old Glock.

Kate turned it over in her hand, could still, remarkably, smell the slightly acrid odor of gun-metal cleaner. There was a full clip in the shoe box. Kate snapped it into place and felt the rush. The power she’d given up a long time ago, exchanged, you might say, for the power of money. Back in the old days, Kate hadn’t known about money or what it could do. Her fingers tightened around the gun handle. Now she had a gun
and
a checkbook. And yes, she felt a lot stronger than she had only minutes earlier. Ask any fifteen-year-old who has had his hand around a gun and he’ll tell you the power it offers, the sudden, stupid bravery. Who was the NRA trying to kid?

Kate exchanged her destroyed designer duds for Gap khakis and a plain blue cotton shirt. Much better. A lot less flashy than the way she dressed as a detective in the old days, when she favored miniskirts and V-necks. But those days were gone, no matter how many miles she logged on that damn treadmill.

Her reflection in the mirror told her she could use a solid week at a spa. She ran a brush through her hair, dabbed her wrists with Bal à Versailles.

Why was it she had always felt embarrassed, as though somehow it had been her fault that she didn’t have a mother? It wasn’t until the tenth grade, at St. Anne’s, that she learned the truth: Mary Ellen Donaghue taunting her, “You think you’re such hot stuff, McKinnon, well, at least my mother didn’t kill herself,” and Kate punching her, over and over, until finally one of the nuns pulled her off.

Why had they all lied to her? Did they think it was her fault?

Oh, man, the years spent on the shrink’s couch over that one.

Kate tucked the Glock into her most sensible bag–a smallish black leather pouch with a long strap–looped the bag over her shoulder, then sorted through her closet for another lightweight jacket. The only non-designer item was an old jean jacket with an appliquéd peace sign over the breast pocket left over from who-knew-when.

Outside, the trees bordering Central Park West had sprouted their spring greenery to spite the dreary weather. Kate patted the artillery in her bag. Insurance, that’s all it was. It wasn’t as if she were planning to shoot anyone.

Hernandez slid the graduation photo into the glass contraption, lit the superglue.

The two women watched as vapors swirled around the collage, searching for prints.

“This is a mess,” said Hernandez, removing the photo with tweezers. “Prints on top of prints.”

“Sorry,” said Kate. “I didn’t know what it was when I got it. Had my hands all over it.”

The technician gave her a sorry look, pulled gloves off her chubby hands, dropped them into the trash. She was maybe thirty-five, her ample figure straining against the snug lab coat.

Kate offered up the ballpoint pen wrapped in tissue. “This should be a lot neater. See if there are any prints that match what was found at the Solana scene.”

Hernandez sighed.

Kate pulled out a Marlboro.

“In the hall,” said Hernandez. “No, better yet, take a walk. Gimme a half hour to print the other ones. I’ll see what I can get.”

One coffee and three cigarettes later, Kate was getting the lowdown from Hernandez.

“The pen’s got a few good prints, but they match nothing at Solana’s or any other scene.”

“It was a wild shot,” said Kate. “What about the collage?”

“Not much. Mostly smudged. I got maybe one clean quarter-print.”

“Could be mine, I must admit.”

“They’re called gloves, McKinnon.”

“I don’t wear gloves when I open my mail.”

“Well, from now on you should.” Hernandez handed Kate a couple pages of mechanical printouts–numbers, symbols, words. “Not much to tell you. The glue he used in the collage is acid-free but otherwise standard. The photo’s a Kodacolor, four to five years old. The material over the eyes is some kind of tempera paint, water-based, for sure. The other one, the Polaroid–” She shook her head. “No prints. Unlike you, your unsub
is
wearin’ gloves.”

“Can you make copies of the collage and the photo for me?”

Hernandez nodded toward a Xerox machine in the corner. “You can do it yourself. The pictures are in plastic now.
Protected.
” She offered a caustic smile.

A minute later, Kate was watching the Xeroxes spill out of the machine.

“Oh, McKinnon.” Hernandez called her over. “Before you leave I wanna mess up your manicure. Gotta have your prints on file to check against anything else you decide to drag your hands across.”

Floyd Brown squinted at the stat sheet.

He studied the photo. Seventeen stab wounds. Brutal, for sure.

Through a magnifying glass he searched for signs of pleasure. No bite marks, no nothing. And the usual trophies–nipples, earlobes–were intact. So what was the guy after?

A manicure? Now that, even to Floyd Brown, who had seen it all, was odd. Some kind of ritual they hadn’t yet figured out, or was the killer just smart enough to file away any traces of flesh that may have lodged under the dead girl’s nails? Either way, Brown could see the guy took his time.

Three murders.

One killer?

Maybe.

Mead didn’t want to believe it–hell, who wanted to think there was a serial killer out there? Brown pushed away from his desk, swiveled back and forth in his chair. Twenty-plus years of detective work told him this was no coincidence. McKinnon was probably right. Plus, he was impressed with what she’d already delivered–though he hated to admit it. Who was she anyway? Some uptown dame with all the answers.