Don't Look Now (25 page)

The file boxes for the Pharaoh case took up the entire front and back seats of Paris’s car. In all, it amounted to a cargo of nine legal-size storage containers. The boxes were empty of course, but Paris had to play the game, had to maintain appearances until he clamped the irons on this motherfucker. The complications of actually
bringing
the files with him – legal, ethical, logistical – were enormous, so that was never an option.

Besides, this operation wasn’t going to take anywhere near that long, or get anywhere near that far.

Paris found a space directly in front of the florist on the northwest quadrant. He cut the engine. It had rained briefly and gotten completely dark during the ride out to the square. Except for a few window-shoppers and late RTA commuters, the area was relatively empty of activity. He positioned his rearview mirror and side mirrors to his best advantage and slumped down in the seat.

Soon, a woman approached the window at the florist. She wore an oversized tam-o’-shanter and an overcoat that looked to Paris to be a bit bulky for the fifty-degree evening. She perused the display of flowers for a few moments, hesitated, looking left and right, then moved on. She rounded the corner onto South Moreland and disappeared.

Five minutes later, just as unease began to set in, Paris noticed a white rectangle stuck into the hedges directly in front of the hood of his car. It briefly fluttered into view, then out. It looked like it might have been an envelope, but it was partially hidden in the dark recesses of the hedge. Paris got out, retrieved it and found that it was, in fact, an envelope, sealed, bearing the initials J. P. Inside was another typed three-by-five card, which read:

Leave car unlocked and walk across the square. Stand in front of the theater. Will flash headlights when done
.

Shit.

Paris looked around the quadrant, at the scores of shops, office buildings and apartment complexes. He was sure he was being observed, so he shifted to plan B. He closed the car door and walked the 100 or so yards to the far side of Shaker Square, crossing South Moreland against the light, counting his steps, calculating how long it might take him to sprint back across. He stood directly under the brilliant marquee of the Shaker Square Cinemas, and felt the temperature around him increase a degree or two.

Soon a figure approached his car, but due to the distance and the darkness, Paris couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The door swung open and the figure entered from the driver’s side. Paris moved to the edge of the sidewalk. He could see a flashlight moving around inside the car, its beam playing off the white interior ceiling. Paris stepped out on to Shaker Boulevard and waited for the traffic to pass, hoping he could take advantage of that small window of opportunity between the time his suspect saw the boxes were empty and the time his suspect turned to bolt.

Paris drew his weapon and ran.

Before he had taken three steps, the car door slammed hard and the figure ran through the breezeway between the shops, toward the parking-lot on Drexmore.

Paris gave chase, racing across the square at full speed, nearly slipping twice on the rain-slicked RTA tracks in the process. By the time he reached the parking-lot it was dark and empty. Just a few cars scattered around. Nothing moving.

He caught his breath slowly. When he was satisfied that he had fucked up the one and only lead he was ever going to get in this case – a case that was officially closed – he walked back to his car and looked inside. A few of the cardboard boxes were slashed, as was the upholstery on both the front and back seats. Paris got in and pounded his fists against the steering wheel.

And that’s when he saw the third white envelope on the dash-board. He opened it. Inside was a picture, a photograph that told Jack Paris that nothing was closed.

Nothing at all.

‘HI, HOW WAS
the show?’

Beth found it hard to believe that she was sitting there chatting on the telephone with her husband’s new girlfriend. What a difference a few years can make, she thought. At one point in their relationship she and Jack had even resorted to eavesdropping on each other’s telephone conversations because of their petty jealousies, and here they were schmoozing with each other’s significant others. As soon as Beth heard the woman’s voice on the phone, with its take-charge aplomb, any and all doubts she’d had about the woman disappeared.

‘It was wonderful. I think Missy has permanently moved into the model home they’ve built down here. You should see the little-girls’ room.’

‘Justin Bieber posters and lots of ruffles?’ Beth asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Every entertainment device at the Apple store?’

‘You’ve got it.’

Beth laughed. ‘Did she behave herself?’

‘Oh my, yes. You’re raising a very polite and intelligent little girl here.’

‘That’s very kind of you to say.’

‘Did you know she had an interest in pyramids? There’s a huge one here and Missy did five minutes on the history of the pyramid. I was
very
impressed.’

‘I had no idea,’ Beth said, not at all sure how she felt about her daughter moving from ‘Melissa’ to ‘Missy’ in two short afternoons. ‘But, I have to say, she’s been curious her whole life. Her father’s a detective, after all.’ Beth was
so
thrilled that she had brought Jack up at that moment. She flashed to the two of them in bed.

‘I’m afraid we’ve cooked up a few more outings in the near future. I hope I’m not overstepping any boundaries.’

‘No,’ Beth said, lying through her teeth. ‘Not at all.’

‘Well, the reason I’m calling is that I’m afraid I won’t be able to drop her off as planned. I just got paged and I have to rush back to work tonight. We’re just about finished eating and I was wondering if it would be okay if I dropped her off at Jack’s. I’m only a few blocks away.’

‘Sure,’ Beth said. ‘I do appreciate you calling, though. Just tell Jack to give me a ring when he’s ready to drop her off.’

‘Not a problem. I know how mothers can worry. I also wanted to say thanks for a lovely afternoon with Melissa.’

‘Anytime,’ Beth answered.

Beth decided that she would sort out her feelings later For now, as she hung up the phone, she had to admit that she felt a little jealous and a lot surprised that Jack Paris – he of the endless litany of short con games – would end up with someone quite this nice.

PARIS’S HANDS TREMBLED
as he turned the photograph over and over in the red light thrown from the traffic signal. The image was of a girl – bound with rope, hand and foot – lying in the trunk of a car. A white car, by the look of the trim.

As Paris stared at the picture, even though the girl’s face was turned away from the lens, it didn’t take long for him to identify the red cardigan sweater and plaid kilt.

It was Melissa.

On the back was a message:

‘Saila does Chinatown.’

Beneath that, an address he did not recognize.

SAILA CLICKED OFF
her cell. It was a burner phone, untraceable. Jack Paris’s ex-wife was as gullible as she had hoped and it had given her more time with Melissa, more time to work Jack.

Because, you see, Jack Paris had fucked her at Shaker Square. Jack Paris had bent her over and fucked her like a common harlot.

And now it was time to pay the whore.

The woman making the wounded-animal sounds from the trunk of the BMW was beginning to wear down. Thank God. The little girl was now sitting in the front seat of the car, perfectly calm, burning holes in her with her fiercely defiant brown eyes. What a
beauty
she was.

Saila dialed another number.

‘Hello?’ the man’s voice answered.

‘Guess who?’

‘I
know
who.’

‘How is my Pharaoh?’ Saila asked.

‘I miss your cunt.’

‘Bad little
tom
,’ she replied. ‘My cunt misses
you
.’

‘Yeah?’

‘My tail is
so
high.’

‘When and where?’

‘It’s why I called,’ Saila said. ‘Not tonight.’

‘But I—’

‘
What?
’

‘Sorry.’

Saila closed her phone. There was something fundamentally wrong with the deductive processes of a certain type of man, she thought.

She’d see about Paris.

THE HEADWAITER AT
Kowloon Garden, a slight, nervous man named Anton Fong, said he had seated a girl and a woman matching Diana and Melissa’s general descriptions earlier in the evening, but he also remembered clearly that they weren’t alone, that he had seen a man and a woman sitting with them, but only from the back. Then, Fong said, he went into the kitchen. When he returned to the dining room, ten minutes later, they were all gone and a fifty-dollar bill tented on the table.

‘Fifty dollar,’ Fong said. ‘Can you imagine? Fifty dollar for water and
tea
.’

None of the other five waiters were able to say for sure that they had seen the foursome actually leave the restaurant.

Paris headed down Chester Avenue to East Fifty-fifth Street. Then he turned south, toward Carnegie and University Circle.

Tarleton Street was an odd enclave of twenty or so small bungalows that sat atop University Hill, surrounded by scores of dormitories, classroom buildings and high-rise residences for the students and faculty of Case Western Reserve University. The houses were built in the early fifties to accommodate visiting faculty. Yet, despite the ethereal orange glow from the nearby RTA train stop, the street had a pretty active crime element, consisting mostly of burglaries and reports of radios being stolen from the cars that were forced to park on the street. There had once been a series of rapes in the long tunnel leading to the RTA stop. Paris had been in on that collar as a rookie.

But this night, the incandescence from the train platforms didn’t even make it up the hill. At least half the lamps were out and the remainder of the light seemed to be swallowed by the hedges and trees. Tarleton Street was bathed in darkness.

The address on the back of the photograph was 15203.

Paris found the house, third from last on the dead end street, cut the headlights and the engine, then rolled quietly to a stop. He checked his weapon and got out of the car.

The front door to the cottage was unlocked and slightly ajar. Paris pushed it open with the barrel of his weapon and felt along the wall for a light switch. Within moments he found one and flipped it on. A table lamp, set on the floor directly beneath the switch, blazed to life, showing him that the front room was empty. He stepped inside.

The living room had a worn, shabby look to it. The furniture consisted of a stained maroon couch against one wall, a coffee table, a small desk with an all-in-one fax machine/phone/ copier, a crate with a TV. There was also a broken-down hutch at the other side of the L-shaped dining room.

As Paris drew closer to the dining area, his weapon raised, he noticed that the coffee table was seventies vintage, covered with ash trays and magazines, a few condom wrappers, a tipped wineglass. He also noticed a pair of half-smoked joints sticking out of the forest of lipstick-stained filters in one tray. To the left of the living room was the kitchen, small and filthy, also empty. Straight ahead Paris could see what looked to be a bedroom. He sidled up to the doorway, reached around the jamb and found another switch.

The bedroom was long and narrow. It had obviously been two rooms at one time. At one end was a double mattress on the floor; next to it sat a camcorder on a tripod. At the foot of the bed was a small pile of women’s lingerie and nightclothes. The other side of the room looked like a smaller version of a Gold’s Gym: exercise bicycle, rower, lat machine, as well as a set of free weights.

But the display in the bedroom didn’t come close to the display inside the crudely crafted walk-in closet. Inside was an extensive pegboard array of oils and perfumes, handcuffs and leather restraints, whips and dog collars, a wall of hoods and masks and leashes and head-pieces. One side held virtually every sex toy that Paris had ever encountered in his life, as well as a good many he had not. Another wall held an elaborate collection of wigs and leather clothing: skirts, vests, chaps, thigh-high boots.

On the floor was a small cardboard box full of photos. Most were standard bondage fare, similar to the ‘Saila does Quality’ photo. Women in leather restraints. Men in rubber suits, clamped into a bizarre collection of devices. Most wore leather masks, and for that reason, no one was immediately identifiable. As Paris began to flip through the pile, he found the photos near the bottom to be increasingly more graphic and violent, more sadistic. Some were close-ups of lacerations and cuts; some, pictures of dark purple welts against soft white flesh, wounds most likely caused by a whip.

But it was one of the last photos in his hand that stopped him cold. Suddenly, in the midst of all this madness, Paris saw a room he recognized. It was the bathroom of room 118 at the Radisson. The photograph showed Eleanor Burchfield curled up on the tile floor, fetal, her throat laid wide open, a shiny pool of blood gathering beneath her head.

Although Paris had seen hundreds and hundreds of crime-scene photographs in his career, thousands of color and black-and-white images of carnage and violence and mayhem, the fact that Melissa was in the hands of a monster at that moment, a monster to which he could not put a face, made all the difference in the world.

He barely made it to the sink.

Three minutes later, the fax phone rang. The built in answering machine got to it before Paris did.

‘
Hi … If you’re sending a fax, send it now. If you’d like to leave a voice message, wait for the beep. Thanks
…’

‘Pick it up,’ came the voice from the speaker. Cold and sinister. Paris instantly recognized the sound of the voice scrambler. It was a woman, but Paris could not identify the voice. It sounded like computer speech.

Paris lifted the phone in a blind fury. ‘Who the
fuck
is this?’