Now or Never (17 page)

“Detective Jordan!” It was the reporter from the TV station. “How many victims are there, detective? And what do you know about the killer?”

He held up his hand. “Give me a break, will you, Lucia?” He was walking away from her. “I’ll tell you what happened as soon as I know myself.”

The sound man swooped on Lucia with his boom mike, and she turned to the camera. “News just breaking of a shooting at a local convenience store,” she began, competently taking over. “We are not yet sure how many victims, but word is there may be more than one. And no news yet on the perpetrator, though we expect more on that soon. What we do know is that it was a robbery and several shots were fired. We’ll keep you up to date on the story as it breaks.”

Inside the store Harry stared down at the victims. One was only too obviously dead—the top of his head was blown away. The paramedics were bending over the other, a young black guy, inserting IVs into his arm. There was not much blood—just several neat round holes in his chest—but when they picked him up to wrap him in
shock-foil, there was a pool of blood under his back. He was unconscious as they shifted him gently onto a gurney.

“The other guy’s all yours, Prof,” the paramedic said as they rushed the younger man into the ambulance.

Rossetti came in. He stood next to Harry, looking at the dead man. He said, “Prof, do you ever think you chose the wrong profession? You should have stuck with the law. Nice and clean and simple. It pays better too.”

Then the medical examiner arrived, and then forensics, and the all-too-familiar routine that followed a homicide began.

Outside in the forecourt the police were questioning two eyewitnesses who had seen the killer running from the shop. They said he was toting a gun and had jumped into a waiting car and taken off. The injured young man worked at the store; the older man who had died must have been a customer.

“For him, it was just the wrong time, wrong place,” Harry said bitterly as the medical examiner concluded his examination. Forensics drew a chalk outline around the victim. Then the remains were placed in a body bag and zipped up. Harry thought sadly that there was nothing left when a person was murdered, not even the normal dignity of death.

“It was an assault weapon of some sort,” the ME said briskly. “Probably an Uzi. Forensics will tell you exactly which model.”

The cops had a description of the escape vehicle—a white utility van. Harry’s ears pricked up, and he questioned the two eyewitnesses closely. One, a middle-aged woman, said she had been on her way into the store when the man had come running out.

She was pale and breathing heavily, but she managed to give them a good description. “It coulda been me,” she repeated over and over. “Two minutes earlier, it coulda been me.”

The other witness was a homeless guy who hung around convenience stores searching garbage cans for soft drink cans to trade for a few cents deposit, maybe make enough to buy a cheap bottle of liquor to ease his woes. But it was early, he hadn’t yet made enough for the day’s booze, so he was coherent about what he saw.

“A white Ford utility,” he said firmly. “Old and beat-up lookin’. Kinda rusty. A car like that shouldn’t be on the road, detective. No sir, you should get that scum off the streets.”

“You’re right, buddy.” Harry slipped him a couple of dollars when no one was looking. He wished he could have gotten him off the streets, never mind the rusty van.

An all-points was put out on the utility, but Harry knew it would have been stolen, and anyway the shooter would have dumped it as soon as he could. He’d bet his boots it was a drug-related killing. And that it was linked to the other killing a couple of weeks ago—the supposed hit-and-run. He would go to the Moonlightin’ Club that night and ask around a little. Not that the kids were informers, but if their own were being slaughtered, someone might be willing to pass on what they knew.

Forensics got on with their job, and he and Rossetti took off for the precinct.

A second call came over the radio as they were heading back: a homicide in an old warehouse on Atlantic Avenue. An Asian man decapitated. Harry figured it was drugs again—it almost always was.

“Drugs, sex, and money,” Rossetti agreed. “Pick any one, and you’ve got your motive.”

It turned out to be a long, hard, gruesome day, the kind that left memories like sores in the mind, if not in the soul, the way Summer Young’s death had.

Harry’s only break came much later, back at the precinct, when a call came through with the results of the DNA tests on the semen found on Summer Young. It was
a match with that found on the two other victims. They were definitely looking for a serial killer. He thought triumphantly of the photo-fit. He was certain the national networks would cooperate now and broadcast it. And that meant he was off the hook with Ms. Malone.

By evening, the thunderstorms had spread to New England, rattling the city, lighting it up like a Fourth of July fireworks display. Until the power went out downtown, that is. As well as in some of the suburbs, causing multiple pileups as vehicles hydroplaned and trucks jackknifed on the expressway. The emergency room at Mass General was chaotic, with victims rushed from the ambulances, lined up on steel gurneys for a doctor’s attention.

Suzie Walker worked steadily alongside the other nurses, helping stabilize the patients, doing whatever was needed, while the doctors rapidly assessed the extent of their injuries and listed the priority cases for emergency surgery.

It was all hands on deck—the chief gynecologist was helping out, as well as Dr. Waxman. Even Dr. Blake, who had been on his way home and hadn’t had time to put on a white coat, was working alongside the others.

“Wouldn’t you think they’d have the sense to drive slowly,” he muttered, carefully cleaning a long gash across a woman’s forehead. “God, it’s so senseless, people killing themselves on wet highways.” He inspected the patient and the wound critically. Her eyes were open, rolled up into her head with just the whites showing. She was breathing slowly and with a terrible rasping sound.

“Fractured skull,” he said with a sigh, “and a bad one. Get her to the scanner,” he said to the male attendant, “fast as you can. I’ll alert the surgeon.”

He turned to the next gurney, where a small boy, maybe six years old, lay watching him with dark shocked eyes. “Mommy,” the boy whispered, his eyes following the gurney being wheeled away.

Dr. Blake shook his head. The odds were, the kid would not have a mother by morning.

“It’s all right, baby,” Suzie said soothingly. “The doctor’s taking care of your mommy. And now he wants to make sure you’re okay. All you have to do is tell him where it hurts.”

Dr. Blake sighed again as he got down to business. Scenes like this only reinforced his decision to specialize in forensic pathology. His patients were a fait accompli by the time he saw them. Their children already knew their mothers were dead; all he had to do was tell them
how
she died.

Rossetti pushed his way through the door and surveyed the scene. It was like a war zone. A forty-car pileup, an eighteen-wheeler overturned on top of two automobiles, and innumerable single-car accidents, with people crushed by falling trees or skidding into walls.

“You’d think some folks never saw rain before,” he marveled to the fraught nurse at the desk. “This makes my task look piddling. I’m talking about the shooting at the Seven-Eleven.”

She punched the computer, checking her records. “Trauma ward, the usual.”

“Is he gonna make it?”

She checked again. “They removed three bullets from his chest. Two others passed through him. No, detective, I wouldn’t bet on him making it.”

Rossetti shook his head soberly. The man who had been shot was African American, only twenty-five years old, with a wife and a young son. Bitterness surged through his heart as he remembered his own big, vital Italian family. His father ran a small pizza parlor in the North End. Fast-food and takeout establishments were the hardest hit in robbery and violence, and he didn’t like it one little bit. It hit him too close to home.

He walked through the waiting room to the stairs at the
end of the hall. There were no seats left as frantic relatives flocked in search of their loved ones. Their faces were white and strained, big-eyed with fear.

Suzie Walker was walking toward him. There was blood on her white overall and she looked exhausted. She nodded to him, unsmiling, as they passed. There was no banter tonight. As she opened a door, he glimpsed a child on a gurney and Dr. Blake in civvies, tending to him.

It’s one of those nights, he thought gloomily. Just one of those awful fuckin’ nights that happen in a city every few years.

When he came downstairs again half an hour later, the waiting area had miraculously cleared and calm had descended once more.

“A lull before the storm?” he asked the duty nurse.

“I hope that’s the end of it,” she said. “Some of our staff have been on duty since this morning.”

Rossetti glanced at the clock on the wall. It was after midnight. “Good luck,” he said as he left. But luck had already run out for the victim at the 7-Eleven, and it was his job to tell the young wife that she was now a widow. He did not look forward to it.

Harry had just got home when Rossetti called with the news. It was what he had expected. He wished he had a stronger word to use than
bastard
for the shooter. And he was glad it wasn’t him who had to break the bad news to the widow tonight.

He dropped his overnight bag on the hall floor, then took the excited Squeeze for a splashy walk around the block, not caring that he left muddy footprints all through the hall when they got back. He felt glad to be alive.

He thought regretfully, it was too late to call Mal, and decided to do it first thing in the morning. He imagined her asleep in the luxurious antique French bed. There was a smile on his face as he stripped, took a long shower, and put on a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt that said
“Fuzz-Buster” in red on the front. He peered hopefully into his refrigerator. There was a carton of milk with an expired sell-by date, a box of three-day-old pizza, and a couple of cans of Heineken.

He warmed up a slice of pizza in the microwave, opened a can of beer, and carried it all into the living room. He broke off a piece with pepperoni and gave it to the dog. It was like giving Tic-Tacs to an elephant—it disappeared as though it never existed.

He set the beer can on a side table and switched on the TV.
Headline News
was full of the storm front—a hurricane they called it now—and the numerous accidents and fatalities it had caused along the eastern seaboard. He hoped, worriedly, that Mallory had not been caught in it. His eyes drooped and he leaned back in the comfortable old chair. He was asleep within minutes.

Squeeze sat at his feet. He cocked his head to one side, waiting. When Harry didn’t move, he turned his attention to the pizza on the side table. The can of beer toppled to the floor as he grabbed it, dribbling crumbs, melted cheese, and beer onto the carpet.

He checked Harry again. He was fast asleep. With a satisfied sigh he dropped down next to him, rested his head on Harry’s bare feet, and closed his eyes. It had been a long day.

The gray Volvo was parked at the end of the street, half hidden under the sweeping branches of a red maple.

He parked here most nights now, waiting for her. He needed to track her movements as precisely as an air traffic controller tracks incoming flights. He needed to know her daily routine and her work schedule, when she would be working nights, and when she was likely to be alone.

She was different from his other girls in that she had a busy social life as well as working. He would have preferred a student—they were younger and easier prey. But
it was too risky. There were too many alerts out, and the college girls were on their guard.

Of course, he already knew she lived alone in a small one-story cottage. That was necessary for her to qualify. It was too dangerous to have to climb into second-floor windows or get in and out of a busy apartment building. There were always too many people around, and you never knew who might notice. Even though he had the kind of ordinary prosperous look that seemed to blend in with the everyday background of life, he had to be careful.

He had been there tonight, in the emergency room along with the hundreds of others. He looked no different from them, just another anxious face in the crowd. He had seen Suzie Walker there, tense-faced and hurried like everyone else. It had been easy to slip behind her desk when she was called away. He already knew that she usually kept her purse in the cupboard underneath, and he’d had her keys out of there in seconds.

He laughed to himself, thinking about it. He could have had a career as a cat burgler, stealing rich women’s jewels—he was that good. Wait a minute, though—didn’t they used to be called “second-story men” in the old days? Like Cary Grant in
To Catch a Thief
? He wouldn’t have been any good after all—he had no head for heights, and it was too risky. He might get caught. He smiled again at the very idea; he was invincible by now. He knew it.

Pulling a tissue from the box of Kleenex in the console, he wiped the mist from the side window. He couldn’t turn on the demister, because he would have to run the engine and draw attention to himself. He opened the window a crack instead, letting in a blast of cold wet air.

Headlights flickered through the rain, and he quickly picked up the night-vision binoculars. It was the electric-blue Neon.

Suzie Walker turned the car into the concrete parking
area that had once been the garden of the little clapboard cottage. She sighed with relief as she switched off the engine. It was one o’clock in the morning, and she had been on duty since noon. She didn’t grumble—nursing was the profession she had chosen, and it was her job to be available in emergencies. But she was exhausted, dead on her feet. All she wanted to do was fall into bed.

She climbed from the car, slammed the door, and locked it. She fiddled in her purse for her housekeys. She never kept them on the same ring with the car keys because there were just too many, and they were too bulky. She had a front door key, a back door key, a locker key at the gym, and a key for her safety deposit box, where she kept her only possession of value—a gold watch given to her by her parents on her twenty-first birthday.