Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 24

“It’s still a forty percent chance that he’ll make it,” Dr. Weiss said.

“So nothing’s changed?”

“I’m afraid not. Have you learned anything from talking to him?”

“Maybe. We’re gonna have him work with a police sketch artist.”

“That can’t be until after the operation,” Dr. Weiss said.

Here was a complication. “Are you sure, Doctor? We can have a sketch artist here in fifteen minutes.”

“Absolutely not. The nurse is preparing him for surgery, and the OR is set up and ready.”

“What kind of operation?”

“An urgent one.”

“I mean, what kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a neurosurgeon,” Dr. Weiss said.

A nurse Sal and Harold hadn’t seen before passed in the hall with Emma Vinson. Emma looked miserable and had obviously been crying.

“What’s all that about?” Harold asked.

Dr. Weiss said, “They’re going to say good-bye.”

“Christ!” Sal said.

Dr. Weiss looked thoughtful. “We could use His help.”

On the way down in the elevator, Harold kept softly repeating, “We’re hard-boiled cops, we’re hard-boiled cops . . .”

Sal said, “Keep telling yourself that, Harold.”

“What are you telling yourself, Sal?”

“Forty percent. How it’s so much better than nothing.”

“Especially if it’s your forty percent,” Harold said.

25

The killer slept late but still got up to sit in on the news on television. Some of the news, anyway. Most of it was just above the level of gossip related by beautiful blondes who for the most part were smarter than he was. Certainly more well-informed.

He had to admit he admired Minnie Miner ASAP. Minnie, a small and dynamic African American woman, was more interested in the story than the news. Not that she was the only journalist/entertainer who worked that way. But she was the best at fitting things together so everything seemed newsworthy. She skillfully blended mayhem and murder with fashion and gossip. She was obviously fascinated by the Gremlin. She’d heard the survivor of what she called “The Elevator Nightmare” mention on another talk/news show that a police sketch artist was going to use what evidence the law possessed to create the Gremlin’s likeness. Though small, he was also distinctive. If the sketch was close, chances are someone would recognize him.

If it wasn’t close enough, it might send the investigation off in the wrong direction.

The Gremlin laughed out loud. He was sure no one had gotten a good enough look at him—or indeed any look at all—so far in his New York adventures.

He didn’t think it unlikely that Minnie Miner would cooperate with the police in trying to manipulate the public, but she was in over her head with this one. He not only wasn’t worried, but he was anxious to see this “likeness” of him. It should help to put a picture in people’s minds that looked little like him. It should be a help to him, having all those wannabes swarming the police with their worthless confessions.

He settled back in his tan leather sofa to watch the rest of Minnie Miner ASAP. It was a phone-call or tweet-in program. Maybe someday he’d give Minnie a call or a tweet. Or maybe he’d even surprise her and meet her personally. People still did that, didn’t they?

When he tired of watching television, the killer removed robe and slippers and ran a hot bath. He shampooed his hair with a product that gave it body, then pleasured himself with images of Margaret Evans.

After a while, the images were replaced by mental snapshots of an elevator packed with dark blood, red meat, glistening white bone, and expressions of horror. It was something that the great painter of Hades, Hieronymus Bosch, would be proud of, and see as among his best work.

Wouldn’t it be something, the killer thought, standing up and showering down, if that was what people saw when they opened their doors on Halloween?

Better stock up on those treats.

After dressing in designer jeans, a Yankees T-shirt, and soft-soled leather moccasins, the Gremlin unpacked the blue gym bag in which he kept his knives, tape, and various other instruments of his obsession, and replaced them with half a dozen books on the subject of elevators. Their history, variations, uses, and safety features. He’d bought the books at the Strand bookstore, where aisle after aisle was packed with used books covering everything fictional or factual. He paid cash so there would be no charge record of the purchase.

He had learned virtually everything about elevators, from their invention to their present state. They got progressively safer, but still, there were occasional accidents. And there was human error in construction, installation, usage, performance.

When the bag contained the books, along with a few other contents, he saturated them with bleach. Then he carried the bag out to the deserted hall and to the chute to the building’s basement compactor.

He fancied that he heard it hit bottom. Even heard the sound of the compactor’s harsh welcome. Trash pickup was scheduled for tomorrow.

So much for incriminating books, or bag. Other evidence the killer wiped clean and placed in cabinets, drawers, or toolbox.

Soon everything was where it might reasonably be found, or not found at all because it could be easily replaced. The killer could always buy another, different color bag, different rope, cigarettes of another brand. Different knives.

Helen the profiler could have taken the elevator up eleven floors to the rehab-center gym, but decided instead to take the stairs. She told herself it was because the building was cool and she needed the exercise. Sure.

Charlie Vinson was using an aluminum walker to get around, but his therapist said he’d soon be graduating to a cane. He’d come through the operations better than anyone would have thought, since what looked like serious injury in the MRI images turned out to be congested blood.

He was on a treadmill, wearing knee-length shorts, an untucked sleeveless shirt, and worn-out-looking jogging shoes. The outpatient rehab center was in a brick and stone building that also housed apartments and a corner deli. The exercise room was on the eleventh floor. On the tenth was a rooftop garden area with small, decorative Japanese maples in huge concrete pots. Beyond the pots, bright red geraniums lined the roof. There were a few webbed chairs. Sometimes, when it wasn’t so hot and the roof garden was in the shade of taller buildings, it was pleasant to sit outside.

It was ninety in the shade this afternoon, and no one at rehab was sitting in the garden. In the bright light streaming through the window, a shapely woman in tights was bicycling to nowhere. Helen was pretty sure it was Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife. An attractive Asian woman was on a nearby stationary bike, pedaling almost as fast as Emma Vinson but seemingly with less effort. She looked over now and then at Emma, as if she’d like to challenge her to a race.

Emma didn’t look up as Helen walked over to Charlie Vinson. She might have been taken for an instructor, with her six-foot-plus frame and muscular legs. She was wearing a lightweight green dress today that somehow made her look even taller.

Helen got closer and could hear the rasping breathing emitted by Vinson. They had an appointment to meet with a police sketch artist today. She hoped he hadn’t forgotten.

When she was only a few feet away she glanced at the complex instrument cluster on the treadmill, and saw that several wires ran to Charlie Vinson’s ears, and to what looked like a blood pressure cuff on his left arm. What appeared to be the treadmill’s odometer read 1,055 miles.

Pointing to it, Helen, who wasn’t the athlete she appeared to be, said “If I’m going that far, I’m taking the bus.”