“Miss Kelt? This is Jean Manasco. We met at Port of Call the other night? I told you I might need some help with decorating my apartment?”
“Sure. I remember. Decided to take the plunge?”
“Yes. I got home last night and looked at the place and it’s just so depressing. It reeks of newly divorced. I was wondering if you had time this afternoon to come out and take a look.”
“Let me see what I’ve got going on this afternoon.” She put the phone down. He could hear her moving things around on her desk. If it didn’t work this afternoon he would try again tomorrow. She came back on the line.
“Where is the place? I have a couple of hours free if we do it now and you’re not too far away. I think you said you were by the Lakefront?”
“Yes. Right now I’m with some friends at The Barrel. Corner of Elysian Fields and Robert E. Lee. We’re getting ready to leave. If you pick me up, we can be at my place in five minutes. I do appreciate this.”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” Kelt said. “I’m not far away.”
The rest was easy. And so very satisfying. She picked him up in her car, a red Honda Accord. The talk back to the apartment was about the neighborhood, the trials of divorce and starting over, a few ideas on decorating. As they drove he felt his blood beginning to run, humming through his veins. His vision grew sharper. She was wearing a grey skirt accented with lines, a black and a yellow silk shirt unbuttoned at the top two buttons. A necklace carrying an owl shaped in silver wire accented her cleavage. He wondered if she wore it for him to draw his eye. She was divorced after all and he was an eligible man. It occurred to him that all his victims came to him willingly, drawn by some need they didn’t know. They offered themselves to him and he accepted the sacrifice gladly, filling their need and his own. It was the way of the universe, he thought, as they turned the corner to the apartment.
He had her pull her car up into the covered driveway, away from the street. She looked over the backyard, shaded
with untrimmed trees and bushes gone wild.
“Oh, my,” Kelt said. “This place does need some sprucing up doesn’t it?”
“Well, my landlord doesn’t like to spend money. I plan on cutting the grass and trimming some things up when I get the chance. I’d like to be able to have some people over for a barbecue or something one day.”
He opened the door, letting her in first. She was three steps in when he punched her in the back, a slammin
g blow that shocked the air out of her lungs. She fell to the floor immediately. He kicked her in the stomach. The duct tape was ready and he made a quick loop around her legs, then her arms. He wrenched her head back by the hair and covered her mouth.
“I think you’ll decorate this place very nicely,” he said.
Now, on his terrace, he thought back over the experience. She was conscious, very much aware, though stunned. The eyes, he thought, it was all in the eyes. With her hands secured to the headboard she fought back the only way she could, kicking at him as he separated her legs, taping them to the bottom bedposts, a spread sacrifice. She whimpered when he cut her clothes off with a scissors, moaned when he entered her for the first time. The eyes watched as he wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed. He saw desperation, fear, and finally acceptance of her sacrifice as the light faded away. When he entered her the second time it was with the knowledge they had both fulfilled their roles and all was right with the universe. Such is life, he thought, and left his mark, etching the fine letters into the curve of her belly just above her pubic hair. Sitting on his terrace now, he could still feel the give of the flesh. No mutilation or disrespect to the gift she offered. It was a simple celebration, an acknowledgement. He sipped coffee and thought of future sacrifices.
“Our friend is back,” Jim Case said, looking up when Dupond came through the door. He pointed to the lower belly. Dupond leaned in to look. The same set of letters, CLV, were scratched into the white flesh, just below the tan line where Cindy Kelt’
s bikini bottoms would start.
“He took his time with these. He must have felt pretty safe here. You can see they’re a little neater and a little deeper than the ones on Chaisson.”
“What do you think that means?” Dupond asked.
Case shrugged. “You’ll have to talk to a psychologist about that. To me, it means he’s getting more confident. Maybe he knew he had more time. Maybe he’s setting things up that way, you know, giving himself more time to enjoy it. Chaisson had the feel of a quick hit to me. Get in, get it done, get out. Here, I don’t know, I think he put more planning into this one.”
Dupond moved up to check out the neck of the victim. “Strangled,” he said. Light bruises were showing around the entire throat.
“Any idea how he subdued her?”
Case shrugged. “Not yet but I haven’t had a chance to look over the whole body. I’ll let you know what I find after I get her down to the office.”
“What does the woman who owns the place say?”
“Haven’t talked to her,” Case said. He was examining the body again, his nose inches from the skin. “That’s your job.”
Dupond left him to it, returning to the front portion of the house where he found Adan sitting in the living room with Livia Schumaker. She was smoking a cigarette when he walked in, waving it around as she talked.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know the guy’s name. He gave me a hundred bucks to hold the place for a week. What do I need a name for? I got the money.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?” Adan asked.
Schumaker thought for a minute. “He didn’t look like no killer, that’s for sure. A pretty clean cut guy, not no long hair or hippie or nothing like that.”
“Height? Weight?”
“He wasn’t that big, maybe five-ten or so. Decent build I guess. He was wearing a T-shirt but he didn’t look like one of those weightlifters.”
“What color hair?”
Schumaker thought about that, finally shaking her head. “He was wearing a hat, a Saints hat with the Fleur de Lis on it.”
“
What else? Did anything stand out about him? The way he walked? Any limp? ” Dupond asked. “Take a minute and think about it. Anything you can tell us might help.”
Schumaker lit another ciga
rette while she mulled it over. Adan and Dupond waited. Finally she said “He looked maybe a little older than most of the kids that have rented the place. Not a lot, but like he was more settled. And he was polite.”
“And he didn’t leave a name? Do you usually rent the place without getting a name?”
“I don’t usually rent the place at all lately. I would, but I don’t put up with any shit and most of these college kids move out when I call them on the carpet for all the parties they like to throw. These walls are pretty thin and that thumpy music they play comes right through.”
“Have you heard anything the last few days?” Dupond asked.
Schumaker shook her head. “Nope. Haven’t heard a thing. I was wondering if he was going to come back. I was hoping. I need the money. Social Security ain’t much and my husband’s pension is next to nothing. Not like my sister. She married a lawyer and they live Uptown in a fancy place. You’d think she’d help me out but that hoity-toity bitch don’t hardly ever even call.”
“What about your neighbor’s? Any chance they saw anything?”
“You can ask, but most people around here keep to themselves. We ain’t nosy. People come and go anyway. These college kids don’t stay in one place long.”
“So the guy shows up, looks the place over, and gives you a hundred bucks to hold it?”
“Yep. Like I said, I was hoping he’d come back cause I need the money. When he didn’t show back up I asked Henry,” she gestured over her shoulder with her thumb, “he lives next door, to go in and look the place over. Make sure he didn’t take anything. I can’t afford to buy new furniture for it.”
“Anything else you can think of that might help?”
“Nope,” Schumaker said. She shook her head. “Just a guy. Can I keep the hundred bucks?”
Adan stood up with Dupond. They both gave her a card. “Anything you might think of later
, give us a call. Anything.”
Outside, the coroner’s van was waiting to take the body away. Two attendants stood by the back door, smoking and laughing about
something. A group of neighbors gathered across the street. The day was warming up, the humidity almost palpable in the air. Dupond and Adan went and sat in the car, cranking up the air conditioning.
“What do you think?” Adan asked.
Dupond sighed. “I think we have a problem, my friend. I want you to go back and look at any other stranglings we have that went unsolved. We’ll let Case get us the autopsy reports from Chaisson and this girl and we’ll sit down and compare the too. This guy is smart. He didn’t leave anything at the other place and I don’t think we’ll find anything here. No fingerprints or semen samples anyway. We’ll have to get lucky on this one or he’ll have to screw up somehow.”
He was looking out the window, watching as a black Lincoln pulled up in front of the house. A young woman got out, a girl really. She was dressed in a
grey business suit too hot for the day. Average height, with a full head of brown hair pulled back into a ponytail that fought to keep the curls in place. She approached the uniform out front. He pointed to Dupond and Adan, watched her hips roll as she walked away. She moved with the gait of an athlete, brown eyes that fixed on Dupond as she approached. He rolled the window down.
“Detective Dupond?” he nodded. She stuck her hand in through the window to shake.
“I’m Cassie Reynold. I was told to report to you.”
“Have you been around dead bodies before?” Dupond was watching Cassie Reynold with interest. When Reed told him he was getting a woman agent to train, he formed a picture in his mind of a stocky, bullish, man-like creature with short hair and the beginni
ng of a mustache. This woman was none of that. He found himself instantly attracted. She moved easily, and despite the business suit, he could see she carried a good figure underneath. When he asked the question, he caught something in her eyes. Very good eyes, deep brown, just a touch of liner.
“More than I wanted to see,” she replied. They were standing outside the apartment where Cindy Kelt still lay inside on her deathbed. Case was wrapping things up, his attendants still waiting patiently by the van.
“Five minutes,” Case said, packing away his things. “I’ve got an accidental drowning waiting.” He finished packing, eyed Cassie with indifference, and walked out. Dupond stepped back, gesturing for Cassie to go ahead.
Stepping inside, the body on the bed was the obvious focal point. Cassie chose to ignore it for the moment. She took note of the thick dust covering everything, the dresser, the floor, the windowsills. The place had the feel of being locked up and unoccupied.
“How long since the room was rented?” she asked.
Dupond shrugged. “The landlady says six months. Why?”
Cassie shrugged back. “Too late now but we might have learned something from footprints. If nobody has been in here except the victim and the murderer, we might have learned something from footprints. We learned to estimate height from stride. We also might have been able to see if he wore any kind of special shoes. Too late for that now.”
Emile Adan turned and walked out. Dupond stayed.
Cassie continued around the room, finally spiraling in to the bed and the victim. “We have an ID?”
“We have a purse with an ID. No picture. She’s driving on a speeding ticket. Someone’s checking it out now. Cindy Kelt, a decorator according to her card.”
“Did anyone look for an appointment book?” Cassie asked, looking up.
“Yes. Nothing in her purse. She may have had one and he took it in case his name was in it. Or, she may not have had one. We’ve got people who will look at her office if we verify it’s her.”
“It’s her,” Cassie said. “No reason for it not to be. Women don’t leave their purses in abandoned apartments.”
“Agreed.” So far, Dupond saw no hesitancy on her part. She examined the body, pausing at the scratched initials on the stomach and the ravaged throat, examining the bindings on the hands and legs.
“Did you say he used rope on the last one? Why do you think he went with the duct tape on this one?”
Dupond sighed. “He’s getting better. Think about it. Why bother with rope when she’s already bound? Duct tape is stronger than you think. The average person wouldn’t be able to break it with more than a couple wraps. Less to carry.
Cassie nodded. “Okay. That makes sense.” She stood up. “Do you think these are the only two? Maybe there are others?”
“It’s possible. Adan is going to pull all the unsolved deaths for the last couple of years, especially if they were strangulations. Where are you from?”
“Right here. I was born in New Orleans. I’ve been gone for a few years though. It was just a coincidence I got assigned here for this.”
“Where were you?”
Cassie looked at Dupond closely for the first time. He was a good looking man, well dressed, a man who carried himself with confidence. With the blue eyes and the blonde hair and the good build it was an attractive package. Three years since the loss of Ronnie wasn’t enough time she told herself. Best to stay back. She told herself she wasn’t interested, but she could see where a woman might want to get to know Detective Kurt Dupond. The job wouldn’t hurt either, she thought. Plenty of women were attracted to police officers.