J. Konrath - Rusty Nail

“Dammit, cat!”

It was always my left leg too. He’d clawed me a dozen times, but never on the right leg. Sadism, with an agenda.

I tore off a paper towel, dabbing it at the blood while picking up papers with my free hand. My fist closed around the Diane Kork file, and I paused.

An image, unbidden, flashed into my head, of the first time I’d seen Diane Kork, half naked and bleeding in Charles Kork’s basement. I remembered her pleading, crying face. Her ugly wounds, weeping blood. And something else. Something familiar.

I paged through the file, but there weren’t any pictures of her wounds. Made sense; the case was closed, and evidence was no longer needed.

But I did have images of Diane. Videotape #12, “Slipping the Knife to the Wife.”

“You’re off the case, Jack,” I said aloud.

I didn’t listen to myself.

I found tape #12 and took it into the bedroom. I hit Play and then Fast-forward, cycling through Diane being tied up, up to the scene where he sliced off her clothes.

I paused the tape.

The image jittered, two lines of snow framing the edges of the screen, but I could clearly see what I’d been looking for: a heart-shaped tattoo, the size of a dime, on Diane’s hip bone just below the bikini line.

I stared for a moment, then went back to the kitchen and dug out the copy of the tape of the latest murder – the original was still at the lab.

I swapped cassettes and again viewed the slow approach to the Kork house, the walk into the basement, and the zoom in on the naked victim.

I couldn’t see any tattoos because the woman was sitting, and the crease in her lap obscured her bikini line.

I let the tape play in slow motion, watching her struggle and die frame by frame, and five minutes into her pain she arched her back and her pelvis came briefly into view.

Pause.

The heart tattoo was the same.

I felt my breath catch, and hashed out the possibilities. Either the killer had put a fake tattoo there to make it look like Diane Kork, or else the victim was indeed Diane Kork.

I had Diane’s phone number in my jacket pocket, from when I’d called Information earlier. When I dialed it, I got her answering machine for the second time.

“Shit.”

Two options. I could call the station, have them send a car over to check out Diane’s place. Or I could go myself, even though Bains had ordered me off the case.

Diane lived on Hamilton, and I was more than a mile closer to her than anyone at the 26 thDistrict.

I slid into some Levi’s, shrugged on a sweater, strapped on my.38, and was out the door before I gave it any more thought.

ALEX CHECKS THE caller ID. It’s Jack Daniels.

Alex knows the number.

Alex knows a lot about Jack. Jack has been part of the plan from the very beginning.

It’s a little after ten p.m. and the lights are off in Diane’s house. This has been a good base of operations, but Alex knows it can’t last. Jack will come by eventually. She might even be on her way now.

What to do, what to do?

“An ounce of prevention,” Alex says, and smiles. In the bedroom are a suitcase and a trunk. Alex begins to pack – clothes, shoes, gear, the video recorder, all of the equipment. Alex takes it through the back door, through the yard, and into the tiny, unattached garage adjacent to the alley.

The trunk goes into the backseat of the rental car, and Alex finds a tire iron and a length of garden hose in the garage.

The car has a safety device in the gas tank that prevents siphoning, but Alex breaks through it with the crowbar. The hose snakes down the tank, and a few foul-tasting sucks on the other end brings forth the gas.

Alex fills two old buckets and a washtub, then removes the hose.

It takes two trips to carry the gas back to the house. Slosh-slosh-slosh . First the bedroom. Then the kitchen. Then the den. The place is filthy with Alex’s fingerprints, and this is much faster than wiping it all down.

When the gas has been poured, Alex begins to search Diane’s cabinets for matches. There’s a box on top of the refrigerator. Alex takes a deep breath, tastes gasoline fumes, and smiles.

The doorbell rings.

Jack.

Alex selects a matchstick and drags it along the side of the box, annoyed at the interruption.

Arson should be savored.

The match is dropped, igniting the linoleum floor with a soft whoomp .

Next to the sink is a semiautomatic pistol. Alex picks it up and walks into the living room, through a path in the flames, and waits patiently for Jack.

I RANG DIANE Kork’s doorbell again, not expecting an answer. The tattoo match in both videos was enough to suggest a crime had been committed, giving me probable cause to enter her house without a warrant. The front door was heavy wood, dead-bolted, and I doubted even my best tae kwon do spin-kick would open it.

The neighborhood was dark, quiet, parked cars lining the unlit street. Kork’s house was typical for Chicago, a two-story red brick duplex with a black iron fence encircling a postage-stamp-sized lot. Similar buildings bookended this one, less than two yards between them. I walked down the porch stairs and took the narrow walkway to the rear of the house, looking for a basement window to break.

The windows along the side had decorative bars on them. I followed the perimeter, advancing into the backyard, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. We were in the heart of downtown, but with the lack of any lights it might as well have been the woods.

The backyard also had a porch, with two small windows framing the back door. I climbed the wooden stairs, tugging my.38 from my holster, keeping my elbow bent and the barrel pointed up.

Two things hit me at once: the smell of smoke, and the orange light flickering through a crack in the drapes.

Fire.

I tried the door. Locked, but the knob was cool. Switching the grip on my revolver, I tapped the glass out of the left-hand window and yanked the curtains through, smoothing them over the ragged shards.

“Police! Is there anyone in here?”

No answer. I tasted hot, foul air, shoved my gun back in my holster, yanked out my cell, and dialed 911. Then I pulled myself through the window.

I fell into the kitchen hands first, palming the linoleum floor and dragging myself along until my feet followed. Two countertops, and the floor in front of me, were ablaze, and the flames seemed to notice my arrival and launched themselves at me.

Smart move, Jack, breaking a window and feeding the flames with O 2.

I reached behind me in a panic, pulling the heavy drapes over my head, feeling bits of glass caress my hair, just as the fire surrounded me.

It got stifling hot, like I’d crawled into an oven. My fingers singed, and I released the burning drapes and rolled toward the door, becoming tangled in flaming, smoking fabric.

My head popped through the front, and a patch of my hair stuck to the melting floor. I peeked through one eye, noting I’d rolled through the worst of it, but the curtains cocooning me were sporting some serious flames of their own. Plus, whatever the curtains were made of, it didn’t burn cleanly, and choking brown fumes clouded my eyes and provoked a coughing fit.

First things first. I freed my left arm and tried to unwind the curtains, grabbing for the patches of fabric that weren’t on fire yet.

A wave of heat turned my attention to the right, and I witnessed the flames lick up the wall, enveloping the window I’d gone through. No exit there.

My eyes were useless now, my nose running like I’d turned on a faucet, and my coughs racked with phlegm. What kind of material were these curtains made from? Arsenic? I knew I’d choke to death before I burned to death, so I tore away the fabric, kicking and clawing, getting singed over and over until I was finally free.