Stuart Kaminsky - Blood On The Sun

He moved slowly to the door he had already checked. They had left it unlocked. They always did. They had nothing to steal but their faith.

He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, stepped through the door, closing it behind him, and stood in the semidarkness of the small storage room, listening. He knew their routine. In a few minutes, they would all go out together to the park, kosher sandwiches in brown bags. They'd be gone a little less than an hour, eating, talking, listening to Joshua.

They always left someone behind. Someone to remain in the storefront synagogue, to be ready in case someone appeared to ask questions, to show interest.

He opened the door slightly, hoping it would not be a woman who was left behind. Yes, a woman would confuse the police, but it would also slightly change the pattern he wanted to establish. Luckily, it wasn't a woman. It was a thin, young man with a beard, dark slacks, a clean, neatly pressed short-sleeved off-white shirt. The young man's back was to the storage closet. He was absorbed in what he was reading. He had no sense of the person in the rubber-soled shoes who, leaning low, silently crept up behind him.

When he was no more than two feet behind the young man, he pressed the palm-sized.22 caliber semiautomatic Walther in his hand against the man's head and fired two hollow-point bullets, knowing the sounds of the street and the dying man's thick hair and skull would muffle the shot. The young man slumped forward, clinging to the book. The man pushed the body to the floor and looked out the window. He picked up the brass bullet casings and pocketed them.

Satisfied that no one was looking, he stepped over the body, moved quickly to the door to lock it. He swiftly dragged the corpse to the storage room. Once inside, he opened the briefcase he had left there, put the gun inside and took out a heavy hammer, four thick pointed bolts and a piece of white chalk.

Then he went back into the alley and through the door to the narrow magazine shop. He had something to tell the man behind the counter, something that would change his life.

"Possibilities?" asked Mac, a cup of machine-brewed cappuccino in his hand.

He was standing next to Danny Messer in the spotless chrome snack room with uncomfortable black plastic-covered chairs. Along one wall a battery of machines- sandwiches, candy, soft drinks, coffee- hummed and glowed colorfully. They were the only people in the room.

"Shelton killed the boy, buried the body," said Danny, working on a Diet Coke he held in his non-trembling hand. "We just haven't found it. Went over the ground where we found the clothes and bikes with probes, detection machines. Nothing."

"Maybe Shelton buried him somewhere else," said Mac.

"Why? He gets the kid to take off his clothes. Now he has a naked scared kid. Why not just kill him there and bury him?"

"Maybe the boy's not dead," said Mac.

Danny nodded. He had considered it.

"Shelton's hiding him somewhere?" asked Danny. "Pedophilia?"

"Nothing in his record that would suggest it," said Mac.

"The girl?" Danny tried.

"Hawkes says there are signs of recent sexual activity," said Mac. "Interrupted or stopped. Shallow penetration, no semen."

"Could still be sex," said Danny, taking a deep gulp, trying not to look at his hand.

"Could be," Mac agreed, "Or maybe he's into torturing children."

"Again," said Danny. "Nothing in his record to support that."

"Okay," said Mac. "That still leaves us with four questions. One, where are the boy's glasses? Two, why did I find the boy's single bloody shoe fifty yards from the crime scene? Three, why would Shelton kill the Vorhees family and lay the women out respectfully and leave the father in a twisted heap on the floor? And four, why kill the father last instead of first?"

"Want to play a video game?" asked Danny.

Mac shrugged, gulped down the last of his nearly tasteless cappuccino. Mac knew that Danny was suggesting creating a virtual room on the computer in the lab. Danny finished his Diet Coke and dropped the empty bottle in the recycling bin.

The two men walked down the hall to the computer lab. There was no one else in the room. Danny moved to one of the computers, pressed a key and watched as the desktop images began to appear. Both men sat.

"I've got it programmed in," said Danny, controlling his right hand, which seemed to be somewhat better. He had taken the pills Dr. Pargrave had given him. They made him feel lightheaded, or maybe he just hadn't had enough sleep.

Danny moved the mouse to an icon marked VORHEES HOME and clicked. A photograph of the outside of the house appeared almost instantly. Danny hit another button and the image became a photograph of the foyer of the house, dominated by fresh white paint on the walls, a brightly lit, carpeted stairway to the left.

Using the mouse, Danny moved them up the stairs onto the upstairs landing and into the murder room. On the screen, the bodies of the two women were laid out on the bed, hands folded on their stomachs, eyes closed. The man was on the floor at the foot of the bed, contorted.

"Hawkes says the man had a badly bruised and cracked bone in his right arm," said Mac. "There's also a bruise, a cut and a cracked bone in his right cheek."

"Killer hit him," said Danny. "No blood on any object in the room that could have caused the blow."

"So," said Mac. "We may be looking for a killer with bruised knuckles."

Danny nodded.

"Finally, the knife wounds," Danny said, zooming in on the body.

"The knife wounds," Mac echoed. "The two women were stabbed, but not otherwise touched, except for the attempted penetration of the girl. Give me the room without the bodies and blood," said Mac.

Danny nodded, made the adjustments, and the girl's bedroom on the screen was now clean, the bed made, the blood gone, no bodies.

"Likely scenario?" asked Mac.

Danny moved the mouse, punched keys and a reasonable but not photographic likeness of the dead girl appeared on the screen. She was on the bed, clearly alive.

The door opened. A male figure stepped in. Danny hit more buttons on the keyboard and a knife appeared in the right hand of the male figure.

"Shelton?" said Danny.

"Why did he stop in the kitchen to get a knife?"

"He planned to kill her?" Danny asked, moving the figure across the room.

"Why come through the house?" asked Mac. "He could have come through the window," said Mac. "It's not much of a climb."

The male image disappeared and suddenly the image on the screen was the side of the Vorhees' house. The male figure appeared at the window, opened it, climbed in and moved to the bed, where the image of the girl smiled up at him.

"The knife," Danny said. "If he came through the window, he'd have to go downstairs, get the knife and come back."

"Maybe he visited the girl regularly. She left the window open. He climbed in," said Danny.

"Let's play that one out," said Mac.

"Now," said Danny, working on the keys. "Mom hears them, comes in."

An image of Eve Vorhees came through the door, looked at the bed where there was now an image of her daughter on her back with the Shelton figure on top of her.

"Shelton panics," said Danny, manipulating the image. "Gets off the girl, kills her and then kills the shocked mother."

"And why kill the girl first?" asked Mac, looking at the screen, trying to come up with an alternative tale. "Hawkes says the wounds show he did. You'd think he would shut the mother up instead of continuing to stab the girl. The knife would have taken at least ten seconds to make those wounds, plenty of time for the mother to scream, rush out of the room."

"But she didn't run. He killed her next," said Danny.

"Where was the father?" asked Mac. "The odds are good that the mother or daughter would have started screaming."