Don't Look Now (12 page)

They grabbed a coffee at The Cup on Brookpark, and Paris tried once again to contact Eleanor Burchfield, with no success. He also had her paged at Lake West Hospital, but was told she wasn’t answering. Thanks to the thousands of orange barrels that made four lanes magically turn into one on I-480, Paris didn’t arrive at his desk until noon.

As soon as he sat down – a pile of message slips on his desk, the coffee starting its march uphill – the phone rang. He debated on whether or not to let his voice mail get it, but he remembered that he was in demand now. He was management. He picked it up on the third ring.

‘Homicide.’

‘Detective Paris?’

He couldn’t believe it. It sounded like Diana Bennett. ‘As charged,’ he said, wincing, instantly regretting it.

‘This is Diana Bennett. How are you?’

Paris felt like he had a water balloon between his neck and his collar. ‘I’m just fine, thanks.’

‘I just wanted to let you know that the grand jury voted not to indict Marcella Lorca-Vasquez.’

‘No kidding? Something I said?’

Diana laughed. ‘Maybe. You were
awfully
persuasive.’

‘Yeah, but I was the one supposedly bringing evidence against her.’

‘Albeit reluctantly.’

She had him pegged. ‘That obvious, huh?’

‘I can always spot a softie. Especially when I get him on the stand.’

Was she flirting with him? Amazing! And Rita the Barmaid from last night too? Maybe this side of forty wasn’t so bad after all. ‘She probably did it, you know,’ Paris said.

‘I’d hate to think so, detective. That would mean that neither of us did our job properly. And
that
would mean that we’re taking our money under false pretenses.’

‘Speaking of false pretenses,’ Paris said, feeling a little of the old Paris charm returning. ‘Would it be terribly out of line if I asked you to have lunch with me today?’ He closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.

‘Lunch would be lovely.’

He opened his eyes. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ she echoed.

‘Okay. Am I supposed to pick the restaurant?’

‘Let’s see,’ Diana began. ‘I have that handbook right here.’ Paris heard the sound of rustling paper. He smiled. ‘Yep, here it is, you pick the restaurant and I pay. For dinner it’s exactly the opposite. Of course, if one of us cooks, it complicates matters geometrically. Wine, flowers, dessert – stuff like that.’

‘Okay, how about Fat Fish Blue?’

‘That will be fine,’ Diana said. ‘One o’clock?’

‘Who says you get to be in charge of the time?’

Diana laughed. ‘See you at one, Detective Paris.’

She hung up.

Diana Bennett, Paris thought. Tommy was going to fucking
kill
him.

And he would love every minute of it.

She was already at the table and cruising a menu when Paris arrived. He was ten minutes late.

‘Ms Bennett,’ he said awkwardly, extending his hand. ‘Nice to see you again.’ They shook and Paris immediately noticed how smooth her hands were. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

Diana Bennett wore a conservative navy-blue belted dress. Her hair was pulled back. She wore no jewelry. ‘I’m on the same clock, Detective Paris. I know how it goes.’

‘Okay then,’ Paris began, seating himself opposite her and placing the napkin on his lap, ‘should I say it or do you want to?’

‘You.’

‘Okay.’ He cleared his throat and sat up straight. ‘Please, call me Jack.’

‘Diana.’

‘Good,’ Paris said. ‘I’m glad we got that out of the way.’ He opened his menu. ‘And in the words of Woody Allen—’

‘“Now we can digest our food,”’ Diana said, offering the rest of the line from
Annie Hall
, one of Paris’s favorite movies of all time. In fact, the film was in his DVD player at home. He was impressed.

Their waiter brought water and rolls, took their orders.

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, buttering their bread, sipping water, straightening themselves in their chairs, sensing each other’s sexual presence. Finally, Paris spoke. ‘So you think I soft-pedaled my testimony?’ he asked, not really knowing what else to talk about.

‘Let me put it this way,’ Diana said. ‘No one’s going to accuse you of trying to railroad Mrs Lorca-Vasquez.’

‘That’s the last thing I wanted to do, believe me.’

Diana leaned forward and fixed Paris with a slight arch of an eyebrow. He noticed that her eyes were no longer the ice blue of the other day, but now a deep forest-green. The magic of contact lenses.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ Diana asked, almost whispering.

‘I’m a cop,’ Paris said. ‘So I guess the answer would be no.’

‘I didn’t press too hard on this one myself.’

Paris smiled. ‘And you think that’s a secret?’

‘That obvious, huh?’ She leaned back as the waiter brought their plates. When he left, Diana added, ‘I just don’t know how deeply the world is supposed to mourn the loss of one more gang-banger, you know?’

‘Amen,’ Paris replied.

The conversation flowed easily as they ate their lunch. Caesar salad for her, burger with blue cheese for him. By the time they were served their coffee, Paris had learned Diana’s story: thirty-two, never married, no children, born in Norwalk, Ohio, where her mother still lived. An only child. She had been with the prosecutor’s office for six months; before that, three years with the Summit County office. There was no current boyfriend because she had had her fill of lawyers, and that’s about all she ever met anymore. Except for criminals.

And, she confessed, the line was getting increasingly blurred between the two. So she had decided to drop out for a while.

‘And what about you?’ Diana asked.

‘Not much to tell, I’m afraid.’

‘Tell me anyway,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m a prosecutor. We need all the evidence we can get.’

Paris gave Diana the
Cliff’s Notes
version of his life. Born and raised on the near west side of Cleveland, graduated St Ed’s, four years at John Carroll University. Father passed away when he was sixteen. Cop, married, divorced, one incredible daughter: his life.

Diana seemed genuinely interested. ‘Do you have a picture?’

‘You want to see a picture of my ex-wife?’

‘Smartass,’ she said. ‘
Melissa
.’

‘You kidding?’ Paris said, producing Melissa’s sixth-grade school picture in less than three seconds.

‘She’s beautiful, Jack.’ She studied the photograph intently before handing it back.

‘Thanks.’ It sounded like she really meant it, and Paris liked that. ‘So,’ he said, replacing Missy’s picture in his wallet, wondering if he was about to blow it, ‘what made you say yes to lunch with an old flatfoot like me?’

‘Oh,’ Diana said, ‘I figured you were going to ask me out the day of the grand jury. But no such luck.’ She smiled again. ‘So a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? Besides, you’re going to be famous when you catch this psycho.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I wanted to be able to say, “I knew you when.”’

Paris ran his hands through his hair like he always did when a woman gave him a compliment. ‘Well, it’s going to be a team effort, I assure you.’

‘Wouldn’t mind making the team myself.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘I mean I would
love
to prosecute this guy. Everybody in the office is drooling over it. It’s all that anybody’s talked about for the last three days.’

‘We have to catch him first.’

‘I have no doubt that you will.’ She looked at Paris with, what? Admiration?
Adoration?
‘The man who put Cyrus Webber on death row can catch a little old serial killer.’

Paris was surprised for a moment. The Webber killings nearly four years old. ‘How do you know about Cyrus Webber? You weren’t even in Cleveland then, were you?’

‘I have my ways.’ She finished her coffee, her blue-turned-green eyes rimming the cup. ‘Okay. I googled you. There. I said it.’

Paris laughed, mainly because he had considered doing the same thing. He tried to shift the conversation back to Diana. He was always a little uncomfortable talking about his accomplishments. Especially with pretty women. ‘So what’s so appealing about a case like this? The chance to put a big-time wacko away?’

‘That, and the chance to smash the insanity defense we all know will come when you catch him. It’s what we prosecutors live for, you know. Taking on some sociopath who thinks he can go around doing what he wants.’ She crossed her legs beneath the table, accidentally brushing up against Paris’s leg. He nearly jumped. ‘But personally, I’m not all that interested in the fame. I
am
interested in clout, however. Clout trades higher.’

She was a little more ambitious than Paris had thought, but it was sexy-ambitious. It was a kind of single-mindedness that Paris liked to see in himself, in his fellow cops. Goal without greed. Or, at least,
obvious
greed. He was enchanted.

The waiter approached their table. ‘Are you Detective Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a phone call for you, sir.’

‘Thanks,’ Paris said, silently berating himself for turning off his phone. He was on duty, so he had signed out at Fat Fish Blue. He hoped this wasn’t an emergency ‘Excuse me.’

‘Certainly,’ Diana said.

Paris followed the waiter to the front of the restaurant. He picked up the phone.

‘This is Jack Paris.’

‘Jack, it’s Tim Murdock.’

‘
Timmy
. Twice in twenty-four hours. You must need some serious bailing. Lay it on me, babe.’

‘Got a stiff at the Radisson East you might be interested in.’

Paris’s heart plummeted. For a moment, his skin broke out in stiff gooseflesh.

‘
What?
’

‘Female, white, twenties,’ Murdock said.

Paris felt the bile start to rise. ‘Pretty blonde?’

Murdock exhaled quickly and Paris had his answer. ‘Not anymore.’ Paris heard some rustling papers. ‘Victim’s name is, let’s see here, Eleanor Catherine Burchfield, age twenty-five. Weapon was probably a knife. Razor maybe. It’s a pretty bad scene though, Jack. Hacked up in the bathroom of one of the empty suites. One of the cleaning crew found her early this morning. Thought it might dovetail with the psycho you’re looking for, you know?’

Paris was speechless for a moment, his mind reeling, his heart thrumming a little too quickly, a little too loudly in his chest. ‘Is the
Plain Dealer
on it yet?’

‘Cicero’s around here somewhere. His photographer, too.’

‘What about TV?’

‘No,’ Murdock said. ‘But any minute.’

Paris had to tell him. ‘It gets better, Timmy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was with her last night.’

Murdock went silent for a few moments. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Jack?’

‘I saw her last night.’

‘What?
Where?
’

‘There,’ Paris said. ‘At the Radisson.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Yes,’ Paris said. ‘I mean no. I mean, I just met her last night. I met her at the Radisson to interview her about the multiple. She was a little hesitant at first. She thought she had met our boy and she was too scared to come in. So I met her out there.’

‘And …’

‘And we did part of the interview. She went out to smoke a cigarette and she never came back. I just figured she bailed on the whole thing.’ Paris flashed on the woman’s face, the way she flicked her hair from around her ear. He had known the woman less than an hour and he was mourning her little ways.

‘What time was this?’ Murdock asked.

‘I don’t know exactly. Why? You have a time of
death
already, Timmy?’

‘Oldest known method,’ Murdock said. ‘Smashed watch. Looks like ten thirty-five. Presumptively speaking, of course.’

‘
Fuck
.’

‘What?’

‘I was with her right around that time.’

Murdock waited a few beats, out of respect for the twenty years they’d known each other. ‘Get down here, Jack. Room one-eighteen.’

* * *

The lobby looked much different in the daylight. Gray-suited men, blue-suited women, all name-tagged, all hustling, all doing some sort of commerce with one another. A suburban hotel in its midday swing. Conferences, meetings, luncheons. Paris wondered how many of these people knew that a woman had been sliced up in one of those tastefully appointed guest rooms. He also wondered if it would matter one bit. As long as all the widgets get sold, why should anyone give a shit?

When Paris cut short their lunch, he had told Diana Bennett only that duty had called, no details, knowing full well that she would learn of this homicide by the end of the day. They had exchanged phone numbers, made the usual promises.

Tim Murdock stood on the opposite end of the lobby, folding over his notebook, wrapping up an interview with one of the housekeepers. He noticed Paris with his cop’s third eye and walked leisurely across the quiet carpeting. ‘What a world, eh?’ he said softly.

Paris said nothing.

Murdock flipped to a clean page of his notebook, clicked his pen. ‘What happened, Jack?’

Paris related the details of the previous night, walking the chronology as he remembered it. Even though he anticipated each and every one of the detective’s questions, he let Murdock ask them anyway. It just went a lot more smoothly that way.

‘And you left the bar when?’

‘Elevenish, I guess.’

‘With anybody?’

‘Timmy.’

‘I’m asking.’

‘I can’t do that anymore. I’m an old man. Who the fuck’s going to go home with me anyway?’

‘If you’re old, what the hell am I?’

‘You’re a perennial, Murdock,’ Paris said. ‘It’s better than being young. But to answer your question, I left alone and I went right home. Thanks for the thought though.’

‘All right,’ Murdock said, putting his notebook away. ‘Let’s go in.’

The arterial spray that had resulted from the woman’s throat being cut had decorated the shower curtain in the bathroom of room 118 to look like a Kmart version of a Japanese mountain scene. Red, snowcapped peaks against a light blue sky. Distant gulls.

The body had already been taken to the morgue on Adelbert Road and Paris was somewhat relieved to see only the taped outline remaining on the floor, sharp and angular at the base of the toilet bowl. He had not been looking forward to seeing Eleanor Burchfield’s torn flesh scattered about the room after having sat and talked with the woman less than twenty-four hours earlier.