The Night Caller (5 page)

Coop awakened rather late—he could tell by the brightness of the room—and found that he didn’t feel like getting up. It had been a tiring day yesterday in New Jersey, and traffic delays had made the drive home twice as long as it should have been.

He thought about breakfast. His recommended: grapefruit juice, Special-K with a banana, skim milk. Coffee, black. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he wasn’t turned off by the thought of food.

Good sign. According to Dr. Gregory, anyway.

He lifted a heavy arm, threw back the covers. Then he pulled himself upright and swung his legs to the floor. His head felt woolly, but that wasn’t unusual first thing in the morning. The transition from sleep to wakefulness seemed to be getting more difficult. He’d just sit on the edge of the bed for a while.

The Maltese Kitten
was resting on his nightstand. He picked it up and thumbed through the first few pages. The publisher’s Web site was listed, but not their phone number. He opened the drawer and took out the Manhattan phone directory. Already his arms felt stronger, and his head was clearing.

He found the number, then picked up the bedside phone and punched it out on the keypad.

A recorded voice gave him his options and corresponding numbers to press. None of the options quite fit trying to get in touch with the author. Maybe that was on purpose.

Coop hung up the phone, flipped open the novel’s cover, and read the first few pages.

Nothing like Hammett.

As he was closing the book he noticed the lettering on the dedication page:
This Cozy Cat adventure is for the purrfect editor, Alicia Benham.

Coop lifted the receiver and hit
REDIAL
to get the office of Whippet Books again. This time he managed to talk to a live person and asked to speak to Alicia Benham. “I’m calling in regard to one of her authors, Deni Green,” he said.

“Oh!” said the woman on the other end of the line. “Are you with Smurger and Bold?”

Coop didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I am.”

“We asked you not to call here again,” the woman said, and hung up.

Coop wondered if it was even possible to get in touch with an author.

The phone rang a second after he’d hung up.

He lifted the receiver and said hello.

A woman’s voice: “Mr. Cooper?”

He said that he was. “Is this the Mr. Cooper who’s the father of Bette Cooper?”

“Who is this?” Coop asked.

“My name’s Deni Green, Mr. Cooper. I tried to catch up with you in Haverton but kept just missing you. I think we need to talk. I might have some information about your daughter.”

“What kind of information?”

“The papers said you were an ex-cop.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s the kind of information a cop would be interested in.”

“That was the right answer,” Coop said. “When and where?”

“How about the Sapphire Coffee Shop on Amsterdam? Say, half an hour?”

“Fine. I live a ten-minute walk from there.”

“I know, Mr. Cooper. Coffee and bagels are on me.”

Coop got to the Sapphire Coffee Shop first. It was a narrow diner with a long counter, booths opposite by the windows that looked out on Amsterdam. Swinging doors led to the kitchen in back. Two bored waiters slouched whispering to each other like conspirators near a pass-through serving counter where the orders were posted and filled.

Right now there were no orders on the steel-spiked carousel. Coop already had his black coffee in front of him, and the breakfast crowd was long gone. The only other customer was a man in a tweed overcoat, perched on a counter stool and forking in an omelet while reading a
Village Voice.

Among the people walking past the window by his booth, Coop thought he recognized Deni Green from her dust jacket photo.

Sure enough, the woman in the black coat, wearing the squarish black hat, black slacks, and black boots, carrying the thin black leather briefcase, entered the coffee shop.

She saw Coop right away, strode over, and whipped off her hat and grinned. “Deni Green,” she said.

Coop stood up and they shook hands.

“So, Ezekiel Cooper. Anybody ever tell you you look like Gary Cooper the actor?”

“Now and then.”

“What do they call you? Ez? Zeke?”

“Everyone calls me Coop,” he said, “like the actor.” He studied her. Stocky build beneath the oversize coat, features as strong and empirical as in her photograph. One of those women who would have been attractive thirty pounds lighter, but who had been thirty pounds overweight all her adult life. Her flesh-padded dark eyes were bright and voracious and projected an eagerness bordering on obsession. “Why were you looking for me in Haverton, Ms. Green?”

“Call me Deni, Coop.”

He smiled. “Same question, Deni.”

“Let me fill you in before I answer.” One of the slouching waiters unslouched and sauntered over to take her order. “Coffee and a bagel with schmear,” she said. “Want anything else, Coop?”

“Just a topper on the coffee.”

The conspiratorial-looking waiter nodded and went away.

“I’m a mystery writer,” Deni said, “and a pretty well known one at that.”

“The Cozy Cat series,” Coop said.

She grinned fiercely, pleased. “You a fan?”

“Sort of.”

“Then you know the Cozy Cat books are fiction. Now I’ve decided to branch out into nonfiction, try my hand at a true crime book.”

Coop didn’t like the way this was going. Already burdened by his grief and what he might find out about his daughter, the last thing he wanted was some pesky writer telling her secrets to the world. “Are you saying the crime you’re going to write about is my daughter’s murder?”

“Not exactly. It’s something more. Something much larger.”

The waiter brought her coffee and a toasted bagel sliced, with a slab of cream cheese on each half. While he was setting the food on the table and topping off Coop’s coffee, Deni was digging in her black briefcase. She got a dab of cream cheese on the edge of her hand, noticed it, and licked it off. Like a cat, Coop thought.

“Here’s part of what I have,” she said, when the waiter had faded away and was again slouched with his fellow anarchist at the back of the diner. “Through my sources on the NYPD, I obtained this crime scene photo.” On the table she laid a photograph of the dusty partial footprint on the tiles inside the door of Coop’s cottage. “Notice the distinctive crisscross design on the sole.”

“I have,” he told her. “How is it you have sources in the NYPD?”

“I’ve done plenty of research there for my mystery novels, made plenty of good contacts.”

Coop noticed she hadn’t said
friends.
Well, he knew the difference himself.

“Here’s what else I have,” she said. Next to the first photo she laid another.

At first Coop thought it was just another shot of the footprint in his cottage, only from a different angle. Then he realized that the crisscross-patterned sole print was on a marble floor and in a layer of what might have been finely granulated sand. The metal tracks of a sliding door ran across the top of the photo. This one hadn’t been taken in his cottage. It was only a partial, and faint, but it did look similar to the footprint found at the cottage, the print probably left by Bette’s killer.

He looked up at Deni. “Where was this taken?”

The startled expression on his face must have been just what she was hoping for. She grinned and said, “Long ago and far away. At another homicide scene.”

“Give me the facts and save the hype, will you?”

“Sorry, but you’ll admit this is pretty dramatic.” She was still smiling, aiming the bright ferocity in her dark eyes at him. “Same shoe, same killer.”

“Same
kind
of shoe,” Coop said. “Maybe. Neither footprint is clear.”

“Clear enough,” Deni persisted.

Coop knew she was right. Or maybe he wanted to believe that. It was at least something that had to be considered. “Where was the second photo taken?”

“Two years ago in Sarasota, Florida, at the scene of Marlee Clark’s murder.”

“The tennis star?”

“The same.”

“Then the Sarasota police are aware of the footprint.”

“They saw it, all right. But they didn’t think it was important. And it didn’t fit their theory of the crime, or the person they arrested and who was later convicted.”

It was coming back to him now. The case had been widely covered in tabloid newspapers and the more sensational TV news shows, which had played up the sex and scandal. Deni Green was probably planning to give the Clark murder more of the same treatment in her book. What did she have in mind for Bette? Coop’s stomach tightened. He asked, “Wasn’t Marlee Clark killed by a woman?”

Deni Green nodded, keeping her chin down and grinning up at Coop in a way that made her look especially malicious. “Clark supposedly was killed by Sue Coppolino, her lesbian lover. They arrested her even though her shoe soles didn’t match the footprint. They had plenty of other evidence against her, the way she’d been sneaking on and off the property, conducting a secret affair with Marlee Clark. The prosecution said the murder was the result of a lovers’ quarrel. Coppolino was convicted.”

“Then most likely she did the deed.”

“Typical cop thinking,” Deni snapped, irritated. “Tell you one thing—she didn’t kill your daughter. She’s in the penitentiary in Florida. Your daughter and Marlee Clark were killed by this guy, the one who left these footprints.” She tapped the two photographs with the back of a knuckle, but Coop didn’t look down at them. He was draining his coffee, thinking he might be leaving soon. He was about through with Deni Green.

“You’re building a lot on this similarity. What possible connection could there be between my daughter and Marlee Clark?”

“I thought maybe you could tell me.”

“There’s none that I know of,” Coop said. “Bette wasn’t even a tennis fan.”

“I still think they were killed by the same person.”

“On the basis of a similar footprint?”

“And the fact that in each case there was powder residue that was most likely from latex gloves.”

“Latex gloves are worn for everything from cleaning the sink to brain surgery, by millions of people. And whatever brand shoe made those prints, there were probably thousands of them sold.”

“They look to be pretty much the same size,” Deni said.

“The approximate size millions of other men wear. Including me.”

“There’s something else,” Deni said.

Coop was sliding out of the booth, but her tone stopped him. He watched her open a briefcase and take out an envelope from which she drew an eight-by-ten photo. Her movements were slow, grudging almost. He realized she hadn’t intended to show him this. Not yet. Coop’s heart began beating faster as she laid the photo down in front of him. He had to make an effort to look at it.

It was a photograph of Marlee Clark’s body as it had been discovered in her condo, laid out as if asleep. The eyes were closed and the young, pretty face looked peaceful. The long red hair that had been the tennis star’s trademark was fanned out carefully as if to frame her face. Only the bloodstains on the fabric, crimson in the police photographer’s flash, showed she was dead.

Deni was talking. “The prosecutor said the way she was laid out was additional proof she’d been killed by her lover, who was sorry for what she’d done. I expect the NYPD is saying the same kind of thing about your daughter.”

Coop didn’t reply. He was jolted by the photo but he resisted the implication. “Bette was strangled. If I remember correctly, Marlee Clark was hacked at the base of the neck.”

Deni shook her head as if firmly denying the sophistry of a recalcitrant student. “It doesn’t matter. The point is that no wound shows when they’re laid out. The killer had closed your daughter’s eyes, right?”

“Yes.”
As well as her mouth with its swollen tongue.
He fought back the image forming in his mind.

“He doesn’t want anything to spoil the peaceful effect.”

“He’s a psycho, a serial killer,” Coop said. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Deni nodded.

So this was what Deni was after, he thought. Another blood-soaked madman who would be her own personal discovery. With luck he’d make her rich and famous. As far as she was concerned, Bette was only a number. Victim number two.

If she was number two. “Have there been other, similar murders?”

Deni sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, Coop. You’re making me show everything and we haven’t even struck a deal yet.”

Coop waited.

After a moment she shrugged and opened her briefcase again. “Oakland, California. Thirteen months ago. Her name was Ofelia Valdez.”

The photo showed a woman lying on her bed. In the background was a nightstand covered with small framed photographs of smiling people. The victim was young, pretty, not particularly Latin-looking in spite of the name. The hair spread on the pillow was light brown. The eyes were closed. She was wearing a long frilly nightgown. It was impossible to tell how she had been killed.

“Her neck was broken,” Deni said. “One sharp twist from behind. Our killer’s strong.”

A different method again, Coop noted. But that was only his professional mind talking, while he stared helplessly at the photo of the woman who had been posed much as he’d found his daughter. Deni held out another photo. She was quickening the pace now, sensing that she was winning him over. “This one’s from five years ago on Long Island. Ellen Banta.”

This woman was lying on a sofa. Its tan suede looked expensive, as did her gray silk blouse. The hair spread around the head was black tinged with gray, this time. Ellen Banta had been about forty, he judged, and she hadn’t worried about dying her hair. It was a strong-featured, vital face that seemed to retain life. She looked as if she were going to wake from her nap any minute and exercise or go sailing.

“The method?” he asked.

“Knife. The wound’s at the back, of course.”

Coop stacked the pictures and pushed them away. He’d seen enough. “So why isn’t the FBI looking for this guy?”