John Lutz - Chill of Night

“The jurors are the ones responsible for the defendants going free,” Nell pointed out. “And if you had to hang it on any one of them, it would be the foreperson.”

“So it’s the system our killer doesn’t like,” Beam said.

“You could say that,” Nell told him, “unless there’s a common thread we haven’t discovered yet.”

“What about a common thread connecting the freed defendants?”

Nell and Looper glanced at each other.

Looper emitted a volley of hoarse coughs, raising a yellowed finger to implore Nell and Beam to be patient. Each time he coughed, the scent of peppermint wafted across the desk.

Finally he stopped coughing, cleared his throat twice, and swallowed phlegm before trusting himself to speak. “The defendants: One wife killer; one gang member making his bones by shooting three people in a diner; one kidnapper-torturer who did a twenty-year-old NYU student.”

“Female student?” Beam asked.

“Yeah. The victims are three females and two males. Females are the dead wife and dead student. And of the three victims in the diner shooting, one was a woman.”

“So by way of defendants who got lucky and walked,” Nell said, “we got a jealous husband killed his wife, a gangbanger trying to impress his peers, and a sex maniac who liked college girls. Not much in common among defendants.”

“Except that they went free,” Beam said.

“Not for the same reasons. The gangbanger had a phony alibi that couldn’t be disproved, the sex maniac hadn’t been sufficiently informed of his rights, the wife killer simply got off even though the evidence against him was overwhelming.”

“So they all should have been convicted,” Beam said.

Nell took another swig of bottled water. “Read the court transcripts and you’d have to say that.”

Beam unlaced his fingers and sat forward, causing his swivel chair to squeak. “What we’re gonna do,” he said, “is pore over these murder files again-I haven’t had a chance to read them yet. Then we’ll revisit the crime scenes, talk again to witnesses, go over ground already covered, see if anybody’s memory can be jogged.” He looked at Looper. “You say it was the same gun used in all three murders, so what do we know about it?”

“Thirty-two caliber. That’s about all they can tell about it so far, with just the slugs to work from. No ejected cartridges were found.”

“So he cleans up after himself. What about the possibility of him being a professional?”

“Maybe,” Nell said, “except for his choice of victims and that red letter J he always leaves at the scene. That’s not very professional.”

“J for justice?” Beam asked.

“That’s what we both figure. Or maybe Judgment.”

“Most logical thing,” Looper said. “We figure it’s Justice.”

“Our guy hates the justice system,” Nell said, “but loves justice too much.”

“Yet he doesn’t hit the obviously guilty defendants who got off,” Looper said, playing with his shirt pocket again in search of phantom cigarettes.

“That would be the prosecutor’s job,” Beam said. “Retry them if possible. Nail them on a different charge. Don’t let them walk.”

“But they do walk. The cops, the prosecutors have moved on and are too busy worrying about the present and future to be able to reconstruct and repair the past. Crimes keep getting committed. Other assholes are moving through the system.”

“It’s the system that he hates,” Nell reiterated.

“So?” Beam stared at her, smiling, waiting.

She began to squirm, then suddenly sat still and gave him a level, appraising look, appreciative of the fact that he’d gotten there ahead of her. “He’s trying to change the system.”

Nobody spoke for a few moments.

“Could be,” Looper said finally. “Could very well be.”

“We can’t assume it yet,” Beam said, “but-”

He was interrupted by the phone chirping on his desk.

When he lifted the receiver and identified himself, he was surprised to hear da Vinci’s voice:

“Corey and Looper there yet?”

“Yeah. We were just discussing things.”

“You’ve got another one to discuss, Beam. Upper West Side, not far from your place. The letter J is written in lipstick on a mirror this time.”

“Shot to death?”

“That’s the preliminary.

“Got an address?”

Da Vinci gave it to him, in an area of apartment buildings and townhouses about five blocks away. “Uniforms have got the scene frozen. CSI unit is on the way.”

“So are we,” Beam said.

“The victim, Beverly Baker, worked as sales manager at Light and Shade Lamp Emporium on the West Side, not far from her apartment on West Eighty-ninth Street. Hubby Floyd returned from a golf outing with his buddies about five thirty-forty-five minutes ago-and found her dead body.”

So said the uniform guarding the Bakers’ apartment door, a young guy named Mansolaro. He had an improbably long chin, would always need a shave, and looked vaguely familiar to Beam. Looper seemed to know him.

“That hubby in the living room?” Beam asked, noticing beyond Mansolaro, in the apartment, a smallish, plump man in plaid slacks and a white golf shirt, seated slumped forward on a maroon sofa.

Mansolaro nodded. “One Floyd Baker.”

As if there were a two Floyd Baker, Beam thought. He’d been away from cop talk long enough that some of it struck his ear wrong.

“Floyd was gone all day,” Mansolaro continued, “out on the links with his fellow hackers.”

“With his alibi,” Looper said.

“And not a bad one,” Mansolaro said. “He came back, found his wife’s body, and called 911. Me and my partner Al caught the complaint and got here almost immediately after the call.”

“You go right in?” Beam asked.

“Floyd Baker met us at the door, looked like he’d been crying, and led us to the body. Swore he never touched anything, just like he learned on Law and Order. I saw the big letter J on the mirror near where the victim must have been sitting, so me and Al froze the scene immediately and called it in as an obvious homicide.”

“Where’s Al?”

“Downstairs manning the lobby. He told the doorman to stick around, we were gonna talk to him.”

“Excellent,” Beam said, and Mansolaro sort of puffed up. It impressed Nell, what some of her fellow cops obviously thought of Beam. Maybe this odd-ends investigative team would work out. Maybe something positive would come of it beyond capturing or killing whoever was murdering these people.

“Crime scene unit’s inside, along with an assistant ME,” Mansolaro said. He glanced at his watch, anticipating Beam’s next question. “They been here about twenty minutes.”

“Get the neighbors’ statements,” Beam said to Nell and Looper. “Somebody probably heard the shot, even if they thought the noise was something else. We might be able to determine time of death.”

He patted Mansolaro gently on the shoulder in passing, a gesture of approval, as he moved into the apartment.

Another uniform was standing near a fake fireplace-the kind that had a red light in it that was supposed to look like glowing embers-with his arms crossed. Beam nodded to him, and nodded to the distraught man on the sofa. The man on the sofa didn’t nod back, merely gave Beam a distracted, agonized glance.

Beam went into the bedroom, where most of the action was taking place. Crime Scene personnel wearing plastic gloves were standing, bending, reaching, down on hands and knees, searching. They were examining, luminoling, placing minute objects in evidence bags as if they’d found rare and extravagantly expensive gems. And what they found could be extravagantly expensive. It could be life and death.