Gladyss of the Hunt (41 page)

“Tomorrow,” I replied, watching Noel laugh and sway across the vast floor.

“So why are you wearing sunglasses anyway?”

“Eye doctor appointment.”

“Oh wait, I think I saw you earlier today.”

“Where?” I noticed Noel had stopped dancing, even though the music played on. He seemed to be talking to Ji about something urgent.

“Madison and Thirty-third Street?” Crispin said.

“Nope, wasn't me,” I replied.

Ji was giggling and nodding eagerly. So was Noel. They were agreeing on something, perhaps a rendezvous.

“My doctor is on Seventy-second and Park.”

“So what's the deal?” Crispin shouted over the music. “First I heard that you'd solved your big murder case, and now you're rounding up Miriam's senile bedwetters.”

“It turned out to be two different murderers.” I yelled into his ear. I knew I shouldn't say anything, but it was pretty much all in the papers by now anyway.

“What exactly do you know about this new murderer?” he asked.

“Nada,” I said, not giving out any details.

“Check out Noel,” Crispin said, as if I could look away. “Seeing his face sixty hours a week, having to press it on celluloid, I sometimes lose track of exactly how handsome he is in the wild. Then I see some young kid like Ji getting wet off just dancing with him, and I remember the man is a living god.”

“Yeah.”

Crispin turned to me and said, “The best way is to do it is quick, like you're ripping off a Band-aid.”

“Do what?”

“End things.” Then, under his breath, he muttered, “That's how I did it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked as he grabbed a glass of vodka off the bar and swigged it down. He didn't reply, so I asked him again. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“When?” He looked confused.

“Just now?”

“Hey, cut me some slack, I've just downed about six frozen Absoluts,” he replied. I wondered if he was mocking my Rocmarni fiasco.

“You just said, ‘That's how
I
ended it.' “

“Have a drink, Gladyss.” As he handed me a glass of champagne, he squealed, “Suwee!”

“A regular stag, aren't you?” I guess I meant stud.

“Actually, that's a horny little pig, remember?” He grinned.

I tossed the drink in his face and headed out onto the dance floor. I was planning to grab Noel in the middle of his creepy sex shuffle and ask him what the hell was going on. But then I realized it didn't even matter. Whether he had screwed Venezia in LA, or Maggie here, or whether he was planning on seducing Ji later, none of it mattered. Without even knowing it, I had ceased being an investigator when I got sucked into the whirlpool. I was no better than my neighbor, pathologically infatuated with vapid celebrities.

“Gladyss!” I heard Noel shout as I sped down the front steps, around the velvet rope, and past the blinding flashes of the paparazzi. I grabbed a cab and headed home.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I got back to my apartment roughly fifteen minutes later, and before I even had time to take off the Cinderella dress my cell started chirping. I answered without checking, assuming it was Noel asking what was wrong.

“Is this Officer Gladyss Chronou?”

“Who is this?”

“I'm a reporter for the
Daily News
. I'm calling to get confirmation that you and Noel Holden have officially split up.”

“How did you get my fucking number?”

“I don't mean to be a pest. I just thought perhaps you'd want the opportunity to tell your side of the story.”

“Sure, here's my side of the story.” I turned off my phone.

I stripped, lay down, and turned off the lights. I wanted to go to sleep, but I couldn't get off that easily. I lay in bed alternately feeling used by a lying scumbag, and stupid for letting the most handsome and perfect man in the world slip away. Finally I tried watching TV, but I couldn't get off this awful roller coaster of uncertainty. First I'd think that he really hadn't done anything wrong, and whenever I envisioned his perfect face and sexy body, I'd feel myself go soft all over. The goddess Diana wasn't weakened by frail human urges, but it shook the very core of my being to imagine life without him.

At nine the next morning, after only a few hours of shallow sleep, I heard frantic knocking at my front door. Before I could say anything, I heard Maggie call out, “Are you in there, Gladyss!”

She must have heard about my breakup with Noel. After a minute or so she stopped banging, and I tried to sleep some more. My eye surgery wasn't until the afternoon. After about an hour of floating face up in a small pool of misery, I heard my doorbell buzz. My first
thought—perhaps hope—was that it was Noel wanting to apologize. Then I realized it would just be another fucking reporter. Again I decided to wait it out. It would be just a matter of time before they left me alone. After five minutes of repeated buzzing, though, I finally looked out the window.

A RMP was parked out front.

“Hello?” I said into the intercom.

“Officer Chronou?”

I buzzed the patrolman in, but he buzzed back.

“Yes,” I said into the intercom.

“Detective Sergeant Farrell asked us to remain here until you got him on the phone. He's at the precinct.”

“One second.” I turned my phone back on and called his direct line.

“Bernie?”

“Ah, Officer Sleeping Beauty,”

“Hold on.” Then I yelled into the intercom, “Okay, I'm on the phone with him. Thank you.”

“So why was I awakened by two uniforms on my day off? I'm all done with Homicide, remember?”

Suddenly my call waiting beeped.

“Get down here immediately,” he said.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked, half-fearing that someone in IAD was finally on to me—and only me.

“We arrested your boyfriend last night.”

“Who? What?”

“Noel Holden is in Central Booking.”

“What!'

“He killed Venezia Ramada and those others.”

“Venezia? And what others?”

“He's our second killer, Gladyss.”

“You're crazy.”

“Just get down here immediately. Oh, but you might want to disguise yourself. The entire Mickey Mouse fan club is camped out in front of the precinct and they're asking for you.”

He hung up.

I couldn't believe what he'd told me. Venezia dead? And Noel had killed her, as well as Jane Hansen and Caty Duffy? It was impossible.
But obviously they'd arrested him. That explained the massive number of messages I now saw had accumulated in my voicemail. My next thought was that I didn't want to miss my eye appointment, but it wasn't until later in the day, so I got ready to leave for the precinct.

It was about five degrees outside, a good excuse for overdressing. Twenty minutes later, buried under layers of clothes with my hair piled under a knit cap, I saw for myself the three-ring circus parked outside the precinct and knew that someone would undoubtedly spot me, despite my disguise. I headed around the corner. On Thirty-sixth Street, the rear of the precinct was surrounded by blue wooden barricades. I passed the patrol cars and scooters parked in the driveway and went in through the garage. Some hard ass from the 1-9 stopped me. I showed him my badge, but he shook his head.

“Enter on Thirty-fifth,” he commanded.

“I can't, it's mobbed.”

“Well this ain't the Bat Cave,” said the little shit.

“Do me a favor and call homicide. They'll confirm that this is an extraordinary situation.”

He got on the phone and called Annie, describing me in unflattering terms. She told him to let me up pronto.

When I walked into the squad room, Alex silently held up a page from the
Daily News
that I hadn't seen. It bore a photo of me walking out angry and dejected from Cithaeron's last night. A few seconds of flashbulb fame seemed to cast twenty-four hour shadow. I smiled thinly and went into Bernie's office.

“So what happened?”

“I got a personal call from the police commissioner this morning, asking about this.” He held up a
New York Post
story with the headline: NYPD ROOKIE DATING SERIAL MURDER STAR! Alongside it was a photo of Noel and me kissing on the steps of Bryant Park.

I couldn't believe it. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You didn't want to break up with him—okay, fine. But you told me you had checked the son of a bitch out, didn't you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well what the fuck did you do exactly?”

“Myself and another officer went to the airline that he took from Spain and confirmed that he was on the plane when the third murder happened.”

“So you checked out his alibi for one of
O'Flaherty's
kills?”

“Yeah, but I also ran his prints against all—” I said, as I suddenly recalled that we were never able to actually check his alibi.

“Last night when I got home, you know what I did?” he replied with an angry smile. “I wasn't completely shitfaced for once, so I sat at my computer and thought, Gee whiz, I wonder what would happen if I plugged Noel Holden's name and Marilyn Monroe's name into Google at the same exact time—and guess what came up?”

“What?”

“After a little surfing in the archives of some internet magazine called
Suicidal Pearls
, I located a long interview with Noel Holden. Apparently he played Joe DiMaggio in a TV movie of Marilyn Monroe in 1993. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“There's nothing suspicious in that in itself, of course. He's an actor. Actors get picked for roles. It just struck me as an odd coincidence.”

“Good, because I'm sure that's all it was.”

Noel couldn't butcher two women, I was convinced of that. Not because of any feelings on my part, I just couldn't see him dealing with the huge mess.

“Then I noticed another odd coincidence. The producer credit on the biopic read Miriam Williams.”

“Well, that's probably how they met.”

“Then I took the time to read the interview. In it Noel Holden said,” Bernie picked up a printout from his desk: “‘I used to believe Marilyn Monroe was my mother and that she gave me away. Not just because I was adopted, but because I was born at Los Angeles County Hospital'”—Bernie stressed the final words—“‘
on the very day she was there to have her spleen removed.'
”

“Holy shit!”

“Holy shit is fucking right. In fact, in one of the killer's poems he referred to himself as a spleen.”

“So what are you saying? That he killed these women to get back at his phantom mother?” The whole thing sounded ridiculous.

“No, I think all the crazy shit was just to mislead us. He had other reasons to kill.”

“Like what?”

“Actually, that brings me back to what I read last night on the internet. Being a voyeuristic creep, I decided to have a gander at this Venezia sex flick. Have you seen it?”

“I was told you can't see who the man is,” I said nervously.

“True, but you can see his penis. And it occurred to me that we've got someone right here on the force who might be able to ID the prick in a lineup.”

“Suppose it is Noel in the video? What would that prove?” I didn't want to confess to having seen the tape, or admit that I hadn't a clue as to the erection's owner.

“Motive,” he said simply.

“Motive for what?”

“This morning all three desk clerks at the Times Square Hyatt saw Noel Holden exiting the lobby. Half an hour later, the cleaning lady knocked on the door of Venezia Ramada's room, walked in without noticing the Do Not Disturb sign, and found her mutilated body.”

Taking a pause he held a terrifying crime photo.

“If the tabloids had any doubt, I can vouch for the fact that she had implants, 'cause they were surgically removed by the killer.”

All the air was suddenly sucked out of the room. I looked at the vivisected and duct-taped remains of the starlet who until now had only made me angry and jealous.

“Are they sure Holden was in the room?”

“Hell, yeah. He admitted it. He says he freaked out when he saw her body, and instead of calling the police he ran.”

“I just can't believe he'd . . . I mean, why?” I felt myself trembling.

“Did you know that a couple of days ago he lost the voice role of Kangaroo Lou in an upcoming Pixar project? Because of that porn flick with Venezia.”

“So what do you think? That he killed Jane Hansen and Caty Duffy just to hide the fact that he was going to kill Venezia—and he did all this because of losing a single film role that he hadn't even lost back then?”