The Decoy (27 page)

'Corinne. From A1.'

He lets her in, standing back so that she can go past him into the room. She's not bad looking for a whore, a little trashy, to be sure, but the package is good. Beneath her raincoat she's wearing cutoffs and a little T-shirt with a V-shaped neck. Blond hair, five foot five inches high, just as it said on the A1 Agency's website. He smiles with relief.

Misunderstanding, she smiles back at him. 'Hi, I'm Corinne, and I'm from A1 Escorts. I'm very pleased to be here. Why don't you tell me your name and what you have in mind for us this evening?' she says mechanically.

'I'm Harold,' he says.

'Well, Harold, you've already paid an introduction fee, but maybe before we get to know each other you'd like to hear about some of the extras I can offer you.'

'Thank you,' he says. 'I'd like to hear that very much.'

'Full sex is two hundred. Without a condom is three. Oral sex, also with a condom, is one hundred and fifty. Massage is fifty.'

'And what if I want something… more specific?' he says.

'Well, that would depend on what you had in mind. So why don't you share it with me and we'll see what we can do.' He seems to hesitate, and she prompts, 'I'm a pretty adventurous person, Harold. Nothing's off limits for a good-looking guy like you.'

'This is something quite… unusual,' he says, and the smile flickers momentarily, revealing not doubt but cold, naked greed.

'Good,' she says. 'Why don't we get comfortable and you can tell me about it?'

===OO=OOO=OO===

They're in luck. The commuter traffic has cleared now, and the convoy of cop cars makes it onto the freeway in fifteen minutes, their massed sirens cutting a swathe through drivers eager to demonstrate their sobriety by pulling promptly out of the way. As they leave the city it starts to rain, great sheets of water that melt the windscreen and turn the surface of the road to soup. Durban peers past the wipers at the tail lights of the car ahead, struggling to keep them in focus, and swears under his breath as they take an exit ramp too fast.

Next to him, Positano grabs at the doorstrap as the back end slides precariously on the slippery road.

When the phone goes again, Frank tucks it between his shoulder and his ear so he can keep both hands on the wheel. 'Yep?'

'Weeks. I've just been talking to Ellis — he did a stint in Vice? Apparently, standard operating procedure is that the escort will phone her booking agent as soon as she gets to the room. Which means the agent will warn her we've been making inquiries.'

'Fuck. OK, get on to the local cops. Get them to lean on the agent, quickly. Tell him that if the girl realizes something's wrong she'll put herself at risk. Make it clear we're already in position, the girl won't come to any harm.'

There's a short silence. He wonders if Weeks is about to quarrel with his decision. But all he says is, 'Fine,' before the connection's broken.

If the girl in that hotel room dies, Frank knows they're going to have a lot of explaining to do.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'I just have to authorize this,' Corinne says. She swipes his card through a hand-operated credit card machine which she takes from her bag, then she gets on the phone to Visa. He hadn't anticipated this. He isn't sure whether the card number's going to be good for another such scrutiny.

'Hopkins, Mr H. J. Hopkins,' she says into the phone. 'Two thousand dollars.'

While she waits, tapping her long fingernail on the card, she says to him, 'Do you wanna get us some drinks from room service, Harold?'

He doesn't want anyone coming to the room.

'Sorry,' he says politely, 'I'm in AA.' She shrugs. The operator must have come back on the line, because she says into the handset, 'Oh eight nine two zee. Thanks.' She writes it on the credit slip and hangs up.

Then, 'Just one more call.'

More waiting.

'Judy? I'm here. No, I'll be a while. Tell him I'll call him tomorrow. Yeah, pretty good. An all-nighter. I'll call you tomorrow, OK?'

Corinne puts down the phone.

'Right,' she says, getting to her feet. 'That's all taken care of. Would you like to sit and chat a while, or would you prefer to get started?'

'I think I'd like to start,' he says.

'OK.' She pulls off her T-shirt. Underneath she's wearing a push-up bra. 'Where is it?'

Silently, he pulls the case from under the bed and opens it. The Hallowe'en costume is folded up on top. The skeleton, picked out in luminous paint, glows a little. He puts it on the bed.

Corinne flicks her hair up and turns around. 'Would you unhook me, please?'

He feels the dampness from the rain on her skin as he undoes her bra. She turns back around, holding her bra against her breasts with one arm, then lets them spill in front of him. She glances at the costume and giggles.

'This is going to be great,' she whispers.

===OO=OOO=OO===

They turn off the sirens and headlights about a mile from the motel. Someone's radioed ahead: a cop car is waiting at the intersection. It leads them at a more careful pace to the side of the building.

They jump out, leaving the car doors open. No point in alerting their quarry with the sound of slamming metal.

The local cop has a word with the clerk on the desk and comes out again. 'Room twelve. The one at the end. He asked for it specially.'

They've already broken the rifles out of the trunk of the lead car. Frank draws his sidearm, using it to wave the others into position.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The girl is on the bed now, encased in the costume. It's made for a child, so it's tight on her, but that doesn't matter. There are two tiny air holes, one under each nostril, but they're too small to bother him, to spoil the moment. He grips her arms, feeling her bony flesh through the thin plastic. As he eases himself into her, a small sound escapes his own mouth, a moan of satisfaction, and it coincides exactly with the double crash from the doorway, the first as the flimsy lock gives way and the second, a moment later, as the force of the blow sends the door slamming back against the wall. He looks up, his eyes narrowing as the room fills with uniforms and guns. For just a second he's balanced on her, then he goes sprawling to the floor as Corinne sits up, tears the rubber mask from her face and spits, 'What the fuck is going on?'

Christian picks up the phone. 'Yes?'

He listens, then says, 'Thank you. Well done. We shall certainly celebrate.'

'What is it?' Claire asks.

'The police have just captured someone. They're pretty sure it's him.' Carefully, he replaces the handset in its cradle. 'We're free, Claire. That's it. No more protection, no more bodyguards, no more cops hanging around. It's over now.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

They bring Glenn Furnish back to the city that night for processing. At the NYPD's headquarters in New Jersey, his clothes are taken away for fibre analysis and he's given a white paper jumpsuit to wear. First, though, he's given a physical examination as thorough as those given to rape victims. Hairs are taken from his head, his chest and his groin; scrapings are made under his fingertips; DNA material is swabbed from the roof of his mouth, and a sample of blood is syringed from the crook of his arm.

When the medic has finished taking bloods, the puncture mark leaks a few drops. The medic's about to swab the wound when the young man forestalls her by putting it to his mouth and sucking it.

'I read somewhere that when a shark is bleeding,' he says conversationally, 'it can drive itself crazy trying to feed on itself.'

The doctor says nothing. She's seen a lot of people pass through this examination suite, but she's never seen anyone so relaxed.

===OO=OOO=OO===

At precisely 8.30 a.m., Furnish asks to make a phone call. He's taken to a holding cell and left alone with the phone. He dials a number he memorized a long time ago. A woman's voice answers. 'Chance, Truman and partners. Good morning.'

'Mr Truman, please.'

Despite the early hour, he gets Truman's secretary. Or maybe it's an intern, picking up the phone.

'Is he there?'

'Mr Truman is in conference. May I—'

'Tell him it's Charon,' Glenn interrupts. 'He owns some of my, uh, artwork. I think he'll want to speak with me.'

Two minutes later a man's voice comes on the line. 'Truman.'

'Listen,' Glenn says. He tells the voice at the other end everything that's happened to him.

There's a pause. 'And you're sure that's all the police have got?'

'Certain.'

'OK,' Truman says. 'I'll be there in an hour or so. In the meantime, I'm faxing a letter of contract for you to sign, appointing me as your attorney. My firm bills eight thousand a day.'

'That's more than I was expecting.'

'It's a standard rate, Mr Furnish.'

For the first time this morning, Glenn feels a flash of irritation. He, the artist, the one who takes the risks, probably makes less money in a year than this corporate scumbag. 'What about a discount?' he says.

Truman's voice is cool. 'Why would we give you a discount, Mr Furnish?'

'I think you know why.'

'And I think you'd better just forget that line of thinking altogether. I don't know who referred you. As far as I'm concerned, you're just a client who needs my services. If you don't accept that, then I'll put the phone down right now and you can find yourself another lawyer. Is that clear?'

'Uh, OK,' Glenn says. He decides he can always blackmail Truman later, if he needs to. 'Fax the letter through and I'll sign it.'

'On that previous subject,' Truman says, 'I take it the police don't have access to a list of your, ah, customers?'

'No. There is one, but it's safe. Fax me the letter, Truman. I want to get out of here.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Durban and Positano take the first shift in the interview room. Behind the two-way mirror, the observation area is crowded with other cops who have worked the case. Glenn Furnish looks calm. Occasionally he scratches under the white paper jumpsuit.

'Well, Glenn,' Frank says when the tapes are running, 'it's taken us a while, but we got there.'

The pause lengthens. Eventually the man in the jumpsuit says, 'What does that mean? Got where?'

The lawyer puts a restraining hand on his arm. 'What's your question, detective?'

The lawyer is well-dressed, urbane and disinterested. Frank ignores him. 'You've had a good run, Glenn. A whole bunch of women are dead. But you know what? I bet a part of you is pretty glad we finally caught up with you. Stopped you hurting any more innocent ladies.'

Again the lawyer interrupts. 'Your question—'

'But maybe you didn't see them as ladies,' Durban muses. 'Maybe you thought those whores deserved everything they got.'

Glenn Furnish smiles. 'You've got this wrong,' he says. 'I'm not the guy you want.'

Truman says, 'My client mistakenly picked up his boss's credit card instead of his own. He presumes that's why he's here.'

Frank laughs. 'What about multiple murder?'

'What about it?'

Frank takes some pictures out of a thin brown folder and pushes them across the table. 'This is your work, Glenn, isn't it?'

The lawyer picks up the photos first and looks at them. He passes them along to his client, who glances at the topmost one and hands them back. 'I worked on those bodies, yes. I'm a qualified mortuary technician. Who arranged them like that?'

'You tell me.'

'Whoever it was, he must have used a lot of lubricant. Who'd have thought Alicia's little wrist could have got all the way in there?'

Durban stares at him.

'In any case,' the lawyer adds, 'no crime has been committed here, that I can see. Except perhaps the felony of trespass by whoever did this.'

'That's where you're wrong,' Frank says. 'First, forensic re-examination of Alicia Hopkins' body suggests that she may not have died by her own hand. She could have been strangled with a belt similar to one that your client has been seen wearing. Second, if any photographs were taken by whoever did this,' he taps the folder, 'and they were downloaded from, say, a digital camera onto a laptop, then material that would be likely to deprave or corrupt has been stored in a retrieval system, which is also a felony.'

Glenn Furnish yawns ostentatiously.

'Let's take a step back,' Positano says. 'Glenn, are you aware of a website with the address pictureman.com ?'

'Yeah,' he says dismissively.

'I don't see the relevance—' begins the lawyer.

Positano presses on: 'Have you ever visited that website, Glenn?'

'Maybe.'

'As far as I'm aware it isn't a crime,' says the lawyer, 'to visit a website, no matter what its content.'

'
Did
you visit it, Glenn?'

Encouraged by his lawyer's comments, the young man shrugs. 'Yeah, OK, I've been there.'

'Did you access it from your home address yesterday at four fifteen p.m.?'

'I guess so.'

'In what capacity?'

Glenn gazes at him. He's guessed where this is leading now, how they traced it back to him.

'Did you enter the access code for the site administrator?'

He shrugs.

'You're smart, Glenn. You know about Internet stuff. That means you know that if we traced you, we've got everything we need to identify you as the killer. And don't forget, we've got your laptop. Our people are going through the hard drive now.'

Glenn leans back in his chair. 'I guess it's time to come clean,' he says. His lawyer glances at him quickly, a warning glance, but Glenn ignores him. 'I set up pictureman.com. I am the webmaster. But it's all bullshit, man.'

'Go on.'

'I haven't killed anyone. I just got off on pretending I was the killer. Kind of like a
hommage
to a pretty cool guy.'

'Uh-uh, Glenn. The name pictureman.com first came to our attention when it was written on the body of one of the killer's victims.'

'Then I guess the killer must have liked it, too.'

'Where did you get the pictures?'

Glenn shrugs. 'Some dude on the Internet. You can find all sorts of stuff if you know where to ask.'