Violent Streets (4 page)

They wouldn't have much time to waste, even so. He meant to be out of there with the lady cop before being observed by any of the early-rising neighbors, or police cruisers.

When he reentered the house, Bolan found Fran Traynor dressed and ready to go. She was waiting for him in the bedroom, a purse and overnight bag on the bed beside her. The snubby .38 was nowhere in evidence.

"I didn't know when I'd be coming back, so..." She gestured toward the bags, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"Good idea," Bolan agreed. "And I hope it won't be for long."

"Let's go," she said, sounding suddenly disinterested, preoccupied. "It doesn't feel homey here right now."

Bolan and Fran Traynor drove in mutual silence to a comfortable motel set back several blocks from the tangle of downtown St. Paul. Bolan registered with a sleepy, disinterested desk clerk, signing the registry for Mr. and Mrs. Frank La Mancha. It was a name he would be using to significant effect in the events to come. Bolan then parked his rented sedan in front of a room at the far end of the motel's east wing.

He locked the door behind them and turned to find the lady cop standing beside the double bed, facing him, digging something out of her purse.

He sighed. "I thought we'd gotten beyond the gun."

Her cheeks colored as she produced a leather billfold and snapped it open, flashing her gold detective's shield into view.

"I want you to know who you're dealing with," she said.

"I know who you are, Fran. I told you."

She looked attractive as she very promptly became flustered.

"Well... damn!" was the best she could manage. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

Bolan spoke after a long pause. He was looking at her intently. "There are some questions I have to ask you."

"Not so fast, handsome." She raised a cautioning hand. "I've got about a zillion questions of my own, starting with who you are, and I am not in the best of health and humor, in case you hadn't noticed."

Bolan appreciated her spirit as much as her good looks. She was plucky enough to endure a deadly and humiliating ordeal, and then play cop. She was strong inside.

"The name I used to register will do for now," he told her. "Let's just say that our paths crossed at an opportune moment."

"Opportune for me," she said. "Why for you?"

Bolan shrugged, dropping into a chair beside the bed.

"If you're dead, you can't answer those questions," he said simply.

"I may not answer anyway."

"You haven't heard them yet."

"Okay."

Bolan paused briefly.

"I need some information on one of your cases, "he began.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Which case?" she asked stiffly.

"The Blancanales rape."

It was as if he had slapped her across the face. She tried to regain her composure at once, but the effect of his words was obvious.

"What's your interest?" she asked finally. She was going to stall.

"Let's say I'm interested in justice."

"You must know I can't divulge information in a rape case," she said. Her voice had become confidential, even though they were clearly alone. "You're wasting your time."

"I don't want the lurid stuff," he said. "I'm not interested in it. My interest lies in what's being done to close the case."

It took her some moments to consider what he had just said. She averted her eyes as she answered.

"A rape can be one of the hardest cases to break, especially where the perpetrator is a stranger to the victim."

"Or when someone upstairs is running interference?"

He had timed that bomb deliberately. He watched her face closely. He saw what he was looking for — angry fire in her eyes... and something more, deep down, when her head snapped up to meet his cool gaze directly.

"What? Now, look, I don't think we should continue..."

"Why were you dumped from the rape squad, Fran?" He asked it softly. "Why now, instead of last month or next year?"

She was stunned.

"Listen, Mr. Whoever, I wasn't..."

She paused in mid-sentence. Then her shoulders seemed to sag, as if she was tired from carrying the weight of the world.

"So, okay," she said. "I was dumped."

"Why?"

She shook her head firmly, sending her barely dry blonde curls into shimmering motion around her face.

"No. You're asking me to reveal department business for a civilian who won't even give me his name."

Bolan fished a nondescript Justice Department ID card out of a breast pocket and skimmed it across to her. It carried the La Mancha alias and was one of the many traveling papers prepared for him by the machinery housed at Stony Man Farm. The card would confirm an identity and official position for him. It was as crucial a device, in many ways, as any weapon in his armory of hardware.

"I'm not a curiosity seeker," he said firmly.

Fran examined the card, then looked at him quizzically.

"What's the federal interest in Toni Blancanales?" she asked.

"None. We were talking about police suppression of evidence.''

The worried look returned.

"Well..." the lady cop began, "I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth, okay?"

"Why were you transferred, Fran?"

"I'm not sure. They called it a promotion, of course, increased departmental status and so on. Goodbye rape unit. I was put into public relations."

Bolan cocked an eyebrow. "You didn't request the move?"

She shook her head, a firm negative.

"They told me about their great need for women in the upper echelons, et cetera, all for the good of the department, you know? And look at the trouble it's got me into already," she added, holding herself to avoid involuntary shivers.

"Who's they?"

"What? Oh, Jack Fawcett, mainly. That's Lieutenant Fawcett, homicide division."

"Does he normally hand out promotions and transfers?"

"The promotion came from upstairs."

"How high?" Bolan asked.

"Sorry. No idea."

"What were you working on when the transfer came down?"

Fran Traynor hesitated. She was obviously reluctant to answer further questions. But looking into his eyes, she found something there that encouraged her to open up.

"I have this theory about... well, in the past thirty months or so, there have been five identical rape-murders here in St. Paul."

It was Bolan's turn to show surprise.

"Identical?"

She nodded animatedly.

"Virtually," she confirmed. "Of course, I'm the only one who seems to think so. But I swear, the M.O.'s are carbon copy. All five victims were found nude, multiple assaults, their throats slashed, and... well, other mutilations."

"And Homicide sees no similarity?"

"Oh, Lieutenant Fawcett will admit certain common elements," she answered, "but he insists that the time factor rules out a single perpetrator."

"How's that?"

"Well, the first killing came eleven months before the next two, and then eighteen months went by before the final pair. Once they start killing, your headcaches normally go at it nonstop until they burn out or take the fall. One-third of all murderers end up as suicides, as a matter of fact..."

"But you have a theory." He was still standing before her as she sat, still exhausted from her ordeal, on the motel bed.

"I believe the intervals between crimes occur when the killer is interrupted, probably by arrest on other charges, or by commitment to an institution," she explained. "Now, the intervals seem too short and irregular for normal sentencing and parole, so..."

"An escapee," Bolan finished for her. The old tightness was back in his gut.

"Exactly," she said, almost shouting it out. "If I can find a man who was locked up during the relevant periods but escaped in time to commit each of the murders... I've got him!"

"What's your progress?" the Executioner asked.

She looked downcast again, losing some of the exhilaration.

"Negative on all local jail records," she said. "I was just starting acanvass of mental institutions when I got kicked upstairs. But from the rapist's M.O. — as far as he got, that is — I believe it is the same man who got Toni Blancanales, and I believe that Toni is the only living eyewitness."

"Who is in charge of the Blancanales investigation now?" he asked.

"Well... Lieutenant Fawcett has indirect authority, in conjunction with someone from the rape unit."

"How does Homicide inherit a rape case?"

She smiled dryly. "R.H.I.P., mister. Rank hath its privileges."

"So what happens to your pet theory, Fran?"

"I still have my friends on the unit," she said. "A transfer doesn't change that. Between us, we'll finish the canvass of sanitariums sooner or later."

"Make it sooner," Bolan advised sternly.

The lady cop bristled visibly at that.

"You don't rank me, mister. I don't know why I'm spilling my guts to you anyway, when I don't even know your interest in all this."

"I told you, I'm interested in justice," Bolan said. "And if your theory proves out, there's more to all this than a sex freak on the prowl. I'll need a copy of that suspect sketch, and any pertinent data from your canvass."

The lady cop stiffened.

"You ask a lot, La Mancha. You won't get me to hurt the department."

"I haven't asked you to. But if there is a cover-up, then those responsible are spoiling every decent thing a lawman stands for. You owe them nothing."

There was another long pause. "I'll have to think this over," she said.

Bolan nodded.

"You know the numbers," he said softly. "Our man missed with Toni, so he's still hungry. How long have we got?"

"Give me time to think, dammit!" she snapped. There was more worry than anger in her voice.

Bolan wrote a telephone number, Pol's answering service, on a card and then rose to leave.

"You can reach me through this number when you make up your mind. And you might watch your step today."

"Bet on it," she told him, smiling again. "And thanks... for happening by. You know, I should report what happened."

"I recommend you don't for now," said Bolan. "See if anybody acts surprised. I'll direct Lieutenant Fawcett to your visitors when I see him."

And with that he left her, passing back into the early-morning darkness that was already tinged with fault traces of gray on the eastern horizon. He had spent more time with the lady cop than he had planned — but he felt that the time had been well spent.

Even so, he had damned little to work with and, possibly, even less time to seek his handle on the situation. If Fran Traynor's theory proved out... and if there was a smoke-screen being laid downtown...

Too damned many
if's,
yeah.

Still, he could project areas of caution and concern, even with the small amount of solid data available.

Item: Someone had definitely called out the guns, and unless they played industrial espionage for keeps in the Twin Cities, that meant someone was vitally interested in Toni's case.

Item: By logical extension, and if Fran was right about Toni being the only living witness to a mass killer's identity, then the shadowy someone just might want Blancanales's sister taken out of the picture permanently.

And finally, Item: By all indications, the human savage that Bolan had come to St. Paul to eliminate was still out there, hungry and waiting for his next chance to strike. And if the lady cop was correct in her surmising, he was not only a rapist, but a five-time murderer as well.

Lieutenant Jack Fawcett was tired and exasperated, and he didn't care who knew it.

He didn't like being roused from sleep in the predawn hours to drive across town and stand above the remains of two leaking stiffs, even though the assignment was nothing new or extraordinary for a lieutenant in homicide division. It was still a drag, even after fourteen years on the job. It would always be a drag.

He watched the uniformed officers moving listlessly as they herded the little clutch of sleepy residents back from the crime scene and onto the sidewalk. All around the little cul-de-sac, people in bathrobes and slippers were sprinkled across lawns and sidewalks, gawking morbidly at the silent residue of violent death.

Behind Fawcett, to the east, the sky was showing the faintest line of pink along the horizon. On the little residential street it was still dark, however, the scene lit eerily by the flashing lights of black and white police units and the city tow truck he had ordered up.

If Jack Fawcett couldn't sleep, hell, nobody would sleep.

The tow truck had just finished winching the long sedan over and onto its tires again from its previous inverted position. The medical examiner's two orderlies were removing a limp body from the driver's seat, laying it out on the street for preliminary examination. To Fawcett's right, in the middle of the street, a second prone figure lay shrouded in linen.

A young junior-grade detective approached Fawcett. His youthful face was already hardened around the eyes and mouth from exposure to violent death. He carried a large manila envelope, the contents jingling, and popped it open to show Fawcett a glittering pile of shell casings inside.

"Nine millimeter," the young detective said. "We picked up a couple dozen back there." He jerked his thumb over one shoulder to indicate the middle of the cul-de-sac.

Fawcett grunted in reply, unwilling to waste words on the obvious.

The young detective wouldn't be put off. He was anxious to display his knowledge and professionalism for the ranking officer on the scene.

"Probably an Uzi," he began, "or a Smith and Wesson M-79. Of course, it could have been..."

"What about the D.O.A.'s?" Fawcett interrupted gruffly. "Were they packing?''

The young cop faltered, breaking his verbal stride, finally nodding.

"Uh, that's affirmative," he said. "We found a silenced .380 back where the vehicle started its roll, and the driver's wearing a .45. The .380's been fired recently."

Fawcett allowed himself a small, sardonic grin.

"Turkey shoot," he said softly to himself.

"How's that?"

Fawcett scowled, scanning the crime scene with narrowed eyes and a pointing index finger.

"See for yourself," he said. "These cocks came barreling in here, hell for leather and ready to rip. Only they weren't ready enough."

"A mob hit?" the younger man asked, sounding excited.

Fawcett shrugged wearily. "What else?"

It was the young cop's turn to frown.

"Well... maybe radicals... or..."

Fawcett snorted. "When was the last time you saw radicals riding around after midnight in fancy suits? Jesus."

The young man's face reddened; he half turned away from the lieutenant, trying to hide his embarrassment from his superior officer. Fawcett sensed that he was on the verge of making an enemy and pulled back, his tone softening.

"Listen," he said more gently, "why don't you finish inspecting the scene and get started on your report. You know how to handle it?"

The young detective brightened immediately as he realized he was being placed in temporary charge of the investigation.

"Yes, sir," he snapped, almost standing at attention. "I'll get right on it."

He hurried off, barking orders at a pair of uniformed patrolmen and bustling around personally to examine the ruined hulk of an automobile.

Fawcett ambled over to where the middle-aged coroner's assistant, an old acquaintance and sometime friend, was crouched beside the dead man from the car. As he approached, the M.E. glanced up and shot him a sarcastic grin of welcome.

"Well, now," he said, "I thought you were working days."

Fawcett treated the guy to one of his best scowls.

"I'm working when they call me. Somebody thinks this one's special, I guess."

The medical examiner cocked an eyebrow.

"Somebody could be right. I haven't seen one like this in... oh, two, three years."

"Do I need to ask the cause of death?" Fawcett inquired listlessly.

The M. E. straightened up, knee joints popping like small-arms fire.

"Take your pick," he said amiably. "Multiple bullet wounds to head and chest, obvious internal injuries from the crash. They had a rough night, Jack."

"You read this as an organization thing?" Fawcett asked, lowering his voice slightly.

The medical examiner nodded. "Gotta be. Who else plays these kinds of games?"

"Nobody," Fawcett answered wearily. "I'll need a copy of that report."

The examiner smiled and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke in Fawcett's direction.

"Right now, or just immediately?"

"Everybody's a comedian," the homicide lieutenant growled, turning away and walking back to his unmarked cruiser.

He had reached the vehicle and had one hand on the door when a big man dressed with expensive good taste materialized beside him, as if out of thin air. Fawcett blinked twice, glancing rapidly around the scene and wondering where in hell the guy had come from.

"Jack Fawcett?" the big guy asked, smiling thinly.

The lieutenant's eyes narrowed with instinctive suspicion.

"Who's asking?"

The big guy flashed an official-looking card, then pocketed it again before Fawcett could focus on it.

"La Mancha, Justice Department," he said, smile fading. "We need to talk."

Fawcett exhaled heavily. "It figures."

The big guy raised a curious eyebrow. "How's that?"

"Sure, whenever the wise guys start to burn each other, the federates are never far behind."

The man called La Mancha nodded toward the cluster of officers and rubberneckers around the battered crew wagon.

"You're calling this a syndicate hit?" he asked.

"Hell, yes," Fawcett snapped. "It's got all the signs."

The big guy was circling Fawcett's cruiser, already climbing in on the passenger side as he said, "Let's take a ride. I'm parked around the corner."

Cursing softly, angered by the fed's take-charge attitude, Lieutenant Fawcett slid behind the wheel, fired the cruiser's engine, and put the unmarked car in motion.

"The Twin Cities are supposed to be quiet, Jack," La Mancha said when they were rolling.

Fawcett shrugged, further annoyed by the first name familiarity.

"Sure, sure, but hell, who can figure these animals? Probably they got mixed up in some damned vendetta or something."

"Maybe."

The big fed's tone was clearly skeptical.

Fawcett bristled, shooting a sidelong glance toward his uninvited passenger.

"You don't think so?"

La Mancha avoided the question, changing the subject.

"How's business in homicide, Jack?"

Taken by surprise, Fawcett blinked rapidly, putting his thoughts in working order.

"Huh? Aw, nothing special. Why?"

"I understand you've got yourself a headcase who doesn't like the ladies."

Just like that, cool as you please. Fawcett stiffened in the driver's seat, hoping at once that it didn't show. He felt his guts going into a slow barrel roll.

"First I've heard of it," he answered after a moment, fighting to keep the tightness and hostility out of his voice.

"Really?"

The goddamned guy next to him was all cool, calm, and collected, sitting there calling Jack Fawcett a liar without really saying so. The lieutenant began to see red and fought the feeling down. He swung the cruiser in to curbside and stood on the brake, forcing an even tone into his voice as he turned toward La Mancha.

"What the hell is this all about?" he demanded. "What does the organized crime unit want with a headcase?"

"Who said I work the org crime unit?"

The damned guy was smiling at him!

Fawcett's insides completed their roll. He felt dizzy.

"Well... I just assumed..."

The federal man's smile broadened, without gaining any warmth.

"You know what they say about assumptions, Jack."

"Well, what do you want?"

"I'm with SOG," La Mancha said simply. "Sensitive Operations Group."

Fawcett was nonplussed.

"I, uh, guess I'm not familiar with that unit," he said.

"It's need-to-know, Jack. You don't."

Fawcett felt as if he had been slapped.

"So, okay," he said, forcing a casual tone he didn't feel, "why are we having this conversation?"

"I was asking you about your problem. The headcase."

"And I'm telling you that there isn't any goddamned headcase. I don't know where you get your information..."

"That's right," the big guy cut him off, still smiling. "You don't."

Jack Fawcett felt like a tire with the air slowly leaking out of it.

"Listen, La Mancha, somebody's been feeding you a line. There's no way I wouldn't know about something like that."

"That's what I thought," La Mancha said, nodding.

Fawcett's hands fidgeted on the steering wheel like nervous spiders.

"Okay," he said. "So you asked, and I told you. That's it, right?"

"We'll see."

"Well, what the hell..."

"About those D.O.A.'s, you may need to rethink the syndicate connection."

Fawcett was on firmer ground now, and he felt some of his old self-confidence returning.

"Says who?"

"Call it intuition," the fed replied. "While you're at it, you might want to pick up the other three."

He was already out of the car and leaning in through the passenger's window, big forearms neatly crossed on the frame.

Fawcett was flustered now, hopelessly confused.

"Other three what?" he asked.

"Bodies, Jack," La Mancha said patently.

And the man called La Mancha proceeded to tell the dumbfounded Jack Fawcett exactly where and how to find a Caddy with three cold ones in the trunk. Fawcett had just enough presence of mind to memorize the details for future use.

"You have to get on the right side of this thing, Lieutenant," La Mancha was saying from the window. "We don't want to see a career man get caught with his pants down."

Jack Fawcett felt numb.

"I don't know what you're talking about, mister."

The federale's smile was back in place.

"Okay. I'll be in touch in case you change your mind."

And Fawcett was still trying to think up a snappy retort to that when he noticed that the big guy was gone. He craned his neck, catching a brief glimpse of the man's retreating back in the rear-view mirror before he disappeared entirely. After another long moment, Fawcett came to himself and put the cruiser in casual, aimless motion.

I understand you've got yourself a headcase.

Jack Fawcett cursed, softly and fluently. It would be the homicide lieutenant's job to find out how much this guy knew and where he was getting his information.

And along the way, he might have to check up and see just who Mr. No-Name La Mancha really was. That Justice Department ID looked okay at first glance, and yet...

Another thought came to Jack Fawcett, banishing all others in an instant.

He would have to get in touch with the commissioner, no doubt about that. And no delaying it, either.

He checked his watch, wincing at what it told him.

The commissioner wouldn't like being roused from a sound sleep this early in the morning. When you reached his station in life, you were accustomed to something like bankers' hours.

Fawcett grinned mirthlessly to himself.
If I don't sleep,
nobody sleeps, he thought.

But he didn't feel the bravado, not down inside where his guts were still quaking and shifting.

And he wasn't looking forward to his next encounter of the morning. Not one damned bit.