Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (39 page)

It rang for maybe three seconds. Then stopped.

I stared at it. Curious. Then the cell shook in my hand. I answered. Keeping an eye on the room phone.

‘Gracie.’ I said. ‘They work you too hard.’

But it wasn’t Grace’s sweet southern tone that answered.

This new voice was deep and characterless. Imagine Darth Vader swallowing a
Speak & Spell
and you might be close.

‘Are you enjoying the view?’ It rumbled in my ear.

I glanced at the anonymous number and frowned. ‘Bill, if this is you and your voice changer stunt again, I swear –’

The machine-driven voice cut me off with a haunting laugh. It was the kind of din I expect a photocopying machine would make if it had a sense of humor.

‘It’s a great view from the nineteenth floor, isn’t it? Up there in the Emerald Tower.’

My blood ran cold.

I made my way over to the door. Peeped through the spy-hole: nothing in the fish-eye lens. Not even the Deputy.

‘Whatever it is you’re selling,’ I said, ‘I’m not buying.’

‘Even redemption?’

‘Send me a brochure. By the way, who is this?’

‘Who do you think it is?’

‘Someone with too much time on their hands? A journalist looking for a weird new angle? Somebody who wants an autograph and thinks they’ve got to be Ted Bundy to get it.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ The voice laughed. ‘I’m not even a fan.’

I threw open the door. Frightened the living daylights out of the Deputy sitting on his chair. There was nobody else in the corridor. Either way. Just a maid’s trolley almost out of sight. I went back inside. Closed the door on the Deputy’s astonished face.

The anonymous caller was laughing on the other end of the line.

‘Why don’t you go bug somebody else?’ I said.

 
‘And miss out on all this fun? Aren’t you even a little bit curious to know who I am?’

‘I’m more curious to know how you got this number.’

‘You’re a public figure. Try googling yourself.’

I hung up.

The last thing I needed was a stalker tailing me around Vegas. You see, I get crank calls regularly. It’s the bane of public life. Callers offering misdirection. Callers getting off on fake confessions. Every cracked and leaking teapot this side of the Mississippi.

Three seconds later the room phone rang.

I watched the little red light blink on and off. Let it ring. Maybe a dozen times. Thinking that there was no way the stalker could know exactly which room I was in. Then I picked up. Heard heavy mechanical breathing.

‘Stalking is a crime.’ I said into the hand piece.

107

^{___________________________}

Almost immediately my cell started bouncing around like a June bug on a hot plate. I dropped the room phone back in its cradle. Breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the name on the tiny screen.

‘Hello, Bill.’

‘Gabriel, are you near a TV?’

I glanced at the big flat screen facing the empty bed.

‘Strangely enough, yes.’

‘Take a look at Channel Ten News.’

‘Why?’

‘Trust me, Gabriel. You’ll want to see this. They’ve been repeating it on the nines for the last hour. Prepare to be pissed. I’ll call back later.’

I found the remote control. Channel-hopped until I came to the desired station. The screen filled with the image of an old, weary-looking guy. It was the same rough-cut guy sitting on the matching bed in the closet mirror, watching an identical TV. The guy on the screen was climbing out of a black sedan. Sunlight glinting off chrome work. Tourist camera’s held high like ostrich heads. He was being jostled by a crowd. Looked like he hadn’t slept properly in a year.

I cranked up the volume. Heard a voice I recognized: Stacey Kellerman. Her nasal drone accompanied the looped footage:

‘… new terror now stalking our city streets. Seen here, Detective Gabriel Quinn – made famous by his capture of The Star Strangler during the Star Strangled Banner murders here in Vegas several years ago, and laughably quoted by Newsweek as being one of the most formidable homicide detective in America today – declined to comment.’

A standard school-year photograph of a young boy with blonde hair and blue eyes appeared in the top corner of the screen. Immediately, a pang of anger blossomed in my chest. I had the same photograph on my basement wall back home.

‘Since failing to save Leo Benjamin eleven months ago from the hands of The Maestro, Detective Quinn has deliberately remained out of the public eye. Some say both his physical and mental fitness are no longer up to par. Is this the reason he was unable to save yet another innocent life here today, we ask? Has the Great Celebrity Cop become sloppy on the job?’

The blood in my veins started to simmer.

The footage moved on to Stacey Kellerman herself, standing across the street from the
MGM Grand
entranceway. She had her back to the furor. Filmed while I was up here, locking horns with Pinch Face.

‘Now in his fifties, the question on everybody’s lips is whether Detective Quinn is overdue retirement. Is he really up to the task of protecting our children
 
from a serial killer responsible for five other murders in Los Angeles this week, and countless more in other States? Or should he have been hung out to dry when he failed to protect young Leo Benjamin from a murderer still at large even today?

‘As a sick side note, this reporter has learned that one of the latest victims, Jennifer McNamara – a ten-year-old from Seattle – was found murdered in the very same spot where poor Leo Benjamin cruelly lost his own life less than a year ago.

‘This reporter asks: when it comes to protecting our children from mortal danger has the Great Celebrity Cop still got what it takes? Has Gabriel Quinn the capacity to stop this killer? Or should he be put out to pasture before the lives of more innocent children are lost to his incompetence?

‘In the last few minutes, a spokesperson for Clarke County had this to say …’

I muted the TV. Clenched teeth. Rubbed feverishly at my brow.

In one fell swoop, Stacey Kellerman had undermined my credibility and made me look like an old imbecile. Worst still, she’d made our case public domain.

108

^{___________________________}

Jamie Garcia had been brought up with the philosophy that if a job was worth doing it was worth doing properly. But nobody had warned her that such dedication came at a price. Her eyes were seriously beginning to throb. It felt like somebody had looped a metal tourniquet around her head and was tightening it with a key.

Within the last forty minutes, both the Coroner’s Offices in Chicago and Philadelphia had faxed over the requested pathologist’s notes. Jamie had spent the last thirty-seven minutes poring over the three sets of reports. Trying to make connections. Nothing so far.

The desk she shared with Gabe was strewn with typed documents, hand-drawn anatomy sketches and black-and-white prints of morgue photography.

Intuition told her there was a connection here. But instinct alone wasn’t enough to do the job properly. She was aware that her apprenticeship in Robbery-Homicide had a limited lifespan. In three weeks’ time she’d be out on the streets. Doing regular policing. Proving herself there before she could even apply for Detective here.

Her tutors back at the Academy had stressed upon the necessity to make a great first impression – because great first impressions would open doors and facilitate swifter promotions.

But Jamie didn’t want to impress.

She wanted to get it
right.

She picked up a handful of monochrome snapshots: the two deceased prostitutes from Chicago and the dead psychiatrist from Philly. The photos had been taken on the mortuary slab. Different angles. A few close-ups of blue lips, ruddy dilated eyes, injection bruising. Death had a look about it, she realized. It was more than the fact that the bodies were unmoving and the faces empty. It was almost as though death itself was a disposition. A state in which the physical body adopted a strange muscular arrangement. Where light itself became deadened.

The phone on the desk rang, making her jump. She brushed aside papers and picked up:

‘Jamie Garcia, Robbery-Homicide.’

‘Nadine Carr, Crime Lab.
I ran those tests on the ash you submitted and compared it against our exemplar range.’

‘Okay.’ She almost said
I’m new to all this
, but didn’t.

‘A cigarette’s chemical composition is like a unique signature. In this case, the levels of propylene glycol, calcium carbonate and Sorbitol point to a brand of smoking tobacco called Ukraine Gold.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Maybe because it’s manufactured in Europe under the Senate trademark.’

‘So the killer smokes imported cigarettes?’

‘I can’t say that he does with any certainty – only that the ash you submitted comes from that brand of tobacco.’

‘Thanks, Nadine.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Something on one of the photographs caught Jamie’s eye:

It was a shot of the murdered psychiatrist from Pennsylvania.

She dug out the woman’s notes. The psychiatrist’s name was Jeanette Bennett. She’d been a Medical Doctor and the director of a psychiatry practice on Walnut Street, Philadelphia. She’d lived in the leafy suburb known as Carroll Park, a short hop to the west of the city. According to the homicide report, Jeanette had been bound to the bed with lengths of cord before being raped and then murdered. In the photograph, the naked body of Jeanette Bennett was spread-eagled across the top of her bed. She’d had a fairly good figure for her age. A little podgy in the love handle area – but mostly in good trim. A swimming costume suntan line from some hot vacation and the remnants of an appendectomy scar.

Unlike the two women from Chicago, Jeanette Bennett had been the victim of a brutal attack and a terrible sexual violation.