The Night Caller (24 page)

“I promise.” She raised her chin and met his gaze directly. “But there’s something you should know. I’m not giving up on this no matter what happens. There are still some people who knew Ann who I want to talk to.”

“I thought she led a more or less reclusive life.”

“She did. But she had a knee operation at Mercy Hospital last year, and she took therapy and was an outpatient there for several months.”

Mercy Hospital. More coincidence. Or was it? Mercy was one of the largest hospitals in the city. “She was a jogger?”

“Ann? Not hardly. She wasn’t into sports or much of any kind of physical activity. She wrenched her knee stepping down from a bus.”

“Good,” Coop said. “At least I don’t have to jog to keep up with you.”

The stubborn expression gradually left Cara’s features. She’d been expecting more of an argument. But Coop figured it would be worthless to try talking her out of whatever she’d decided might reveal Ann’s killer. He was getting to know her; determination was her long suit.

He leaned across the table and kissed her cheek. “I hope it works.”

“Works?”

“Your prayer at St. Alexius. I hope you get whatever you were praying for.”

“I already did,” she said.

He lifted her hand from the table and kissed it. Very gallant.
Look at you,
he thought, surprising himself yet again.

“Was this a lovers’ quarrel?” she asked, caressing his cheek.

“Definitely,” he said.

“If I’m only a few hours late for work,” she said, “maybe I can explain it away.”

This time, in the same hotel room, they made love less desperately, taking their time, getting used to each other. There was a lot to learn and every turn was a delight.

She lay on top of him when they were finished, her head resting on his bare chest. The room was warm and smelled of sex—he would always associate this hotel with that scent. He had been stroking her hair, but now his hand was still in it, his fingers intertwined with it as if captured there.

“Have you noticed,” she said without moving, “that we’re compatible?”

“Some,” Coop told her.

She bit his chest hard enough to get a reaction. He could feel her cheek crinkle in a grin.

“I want you,” she said. “Jesus, I want you!”

“Again?”

“No, not that. I mean I
want
you.”

“It seems,” Coop said, “that you’ve got me.”

“Do you want me?”

“I want you,” he said, “and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Like lose my job?”

“Not like lose your job,” he said, and rolled her off him, then pinned her against the soft mattress. He held both her wrists over her head and leaned down so his face was close to hers. He almost said,
Like lose your life.

Instead he kissed her.

If she hadn’t learned it from one of her police contacts, Coop decided that when he phoned Deni he wouldn’t talk about the Theresa Dravic murder, or Deni’s paperback novel found at the scene. Especially the novel. That was one Porter might be holding back from the press and public to use as his ace when they found a suspect. And it was possible the killer’s prints were on the glossy cover. If he knew, there was no telling what he might do. Coop remembered a guy in Brooklyn who cut off the tips of his fingers to avoid a murder conviction after he’d choked his—

Deni picked up on the second ring, and she didn’t mention the Dravic murder. Maybe she hadn’t heard about it yet or made any connection. Or maybe she was focused and excited about what she was telling him, what she recognized as the break in their hunt for the serial killer—the fax of the shoe print found at the Georgianna Mason murder scene. Coop wished he’d phoned her sooner. He’d been wrong; this wasn’t some wacky idea like her airline attendant theory. This was something solid.

If it was as she described.

The shoe sole print in Seattle would all but confirm that there was a devious and prolific serial killer operating in different cities, and smart enough to alter his MO so that even the FBI wouldn’t connect the crimes—if the locals even thought to bring the FBI in on the case.

This new evidence would bring the FBI running. Fred Willingham should be notified and given a copy of the Seattle print as soon as possible. And maybe the NYPD would decide it was time to share the plastic saint information, if Georgianna Mason had suffered the same posthumous humiliation as the other victims. Coop was sure they hadn’t shared it yet. The kind of territorial imperative in law enforcement the killer counted on was working for him.

But Coop had been misled by Deni before. The smart thing would be to see the shoe print himself before calling Willingham. He told Deni he’d drive over to her apartment and look at the fax image.

“You don’t trust me?” she asked over the phone.

“Don’t make me answer that, Deni. I’m on my way as soon as I hang up.”

“You’ll see you should have trusted me all along. And had more respect for my investigative abilities.” If gloating could ooze through a phone line, it would be all over Coop. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Coop, but I do expect congratulations for breaking the case.”

“I wouldn’t describe it as broken, Deni. We don’t know what connects the victims. And we don’t know the identity of the killer.”

“That’ll happen.”

“We’re a lot closer to it, if you’re telling me the truth and this fax is what you say it is.”

“It’s a clear image, and with expert witnesses to back it up in court.”

Coop had been here before; he knew Deni would tell anyone anything in order to work her will on them. “When I get to your place,” he said, “I don’t want to hear the dog ate the fax.”

“I don’t have a dog,” she said huffily. “I have a cat.”

“Since when?”

“I’m thinking about getting a cat.”

He’d forgotten his car was locked in by snow and ice.

The subway again. This time slower, more crowded. New Yorkers were out and about in force, flaunting their ability to shrug off any weather. Throwing out a dare to everything from Godzilla to nuclear attack. It was an attitude Coop had always admired.

Almost an hour had passed before he pressed the intercom button for Deni’s apartment and she buzzed him in.

The first thing he noticed was that the place smelled like too much perfume or deodorant not up to the job of disguising body odor. And the living room was a mess. A pillow and tangled quilt filled a corner of the sofa. Empty soda cans stood guard around a pizza crust on the coffee table. Deni was in wrinkled slacks and what looked like a flannel pajama top. Obviously she’d been holed up against the storm here and stayed in this morning. The TV was on but muted, Oprah silently exhorting viewers to buy a book. Maybe someday she’d be hawking Deni’s book.

“How was driving in this mess?” Deni asked, as she ushered him inside.

“Nonexistent for me. A snowplow has my car locked to the curb.”

“Fucking New York,” she said, sending a whiff of terrible breath his way. The pizza, he guessed.

Without further conversation, she swaggered over to her desk, picked up a sheet of white paper, and returned to show it to Coop.

When he reached for it, she held it clamped between thumb and forefinger hard enough to turn her nails white. “I’ll make you a copy,” she said with her fierce grin.

He examined the fax without touching it. The shoe print was as advertised. Once the Seattle techs had found it and brought the bloodstains up, they had a complete sole print that looked identical to the others, with the same irregular crisscross pattern. In this print it was obvious that most of the pattern was on the portion of sole that covered the ball of the foot. The sole’s toe was apparently smooth leather or rubber.

“Lyons in Seattle faxed you this?” Coop asked, making sure.

“Not Lyons, Sanderson. Lyons was on vacation in some happy, healthy place where the sun is shining. He remembered the print and called Sanderson, told him to fax it to me. That’s what I get for bugging them about looking for a shoe print. They thought I was a pain in the ass, I could tell.”

Coop agreed with Lyons and Sanderson, but he said, “Congratulations, Deni.”

She grinned wider, not so much joyfully but with a sadistic pleasure. Coop had said uncle.

“Make my copy,” he told her.

He watched while she went to her desktop copy machine and ran off a duplicate.

When she’d handed it to him, he said, “I’ll get this to Fred Willingham.”

“Willingham? The FBI?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we oughta wait a while,” Deni said. “See where this leads us. Maybe we can tie the victims together somehow.”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do,” he reminded her.

“Not entirely. We’ve also been trying to establish they were killed by the same person. I think we pretty much covered that one, so why don’t we start from where we are now and get the jump on Willingham and the FBI?”

“Nobody’s better at closing down serial killers than the FBI, Deni.”

“That hasn’t been the case here so far. Hell, we couldn’t even get them interested in our serial killer theory.”

Coop waved the fax. “They’ll be plenty interested now.”

“Not if we don’t tell them now.”

“It’s a crime, you know, withholding evidence in a homicide.”

Deni glared at him. “Sounds like a threat. You gonna rat on me, Coop? Send me up for the big fall, shweetheart?” Not a bad imitation of Bogart.

“It wasn’t a threat, Deni.”

“So it’s some more of your macho crap? Some fucked-up sense of duty?”

“We don’t turn this over to the FBI, the killer has more time to take another victim. Maybe more than one.”

She shook her head and laughed at him as if he were hopeless. “Two things, Coop: The FBI couldn’t catch a cold even on a day like today. And the FBI isn’t writing a goddamn book.”

“The FBI nails somebody every now and then. And the book takes a backseat to catching a killer.”

“Not my backseat!”

“You’re obsessed.”

“Oh? With what?”

“Your book. Your career.”

Her expression was one of anger and aggression, but her lower lip trembled. “You’re damned right I’m obsessed. I’m a celebrity, a successful writer. And I intend to make it even bigger than I have.” A tear tracked from the corner of her eye down her cheek. “Try to understand, that’s all the fuck in this world I’ve got! Everything! Without it, I’m…scared….”

“I’m sorry for you. I mean that, Deni.” He headed for the door.

“A little time, Coop. Just so I have a chance to work my computer, jump on the Web, check my sources. You’d be surprised, the cybermagic I can work. A little time. Please!”

“A little,” he agreed, on his way out. “I can do that.”

“Days?”

“Hours.”

He slammed the door hard behind him with the force of pity and anger. He was disgusted with himself for what he’d just agreed to. If another woman was murdered…

Cara…

Coop stopped at a Kinko’s two blocks from his apartment and made two copies of the fax Deni had given him. Then he trudged toward home, glad to see that the sky was clear and no more snow was likely. The fresh-fallen snow had been beautiful; the gray slush it had become was not. Snowplows were still beeping and growling about, widening the lanes in side streets. As Coop was walking past his parked Honda, he saw that a plow’s blade had scraped away much of the snow that was blocking it. Maybe he had wheels again.

He got into the car to see if he could free it, but it was still locked in tight. The snowplow blade must simply have shoved and packed more slush beneath the undercarriage and against the tires. Hopeless, he decided. Maybe it would be spring before he drove again.

He climbed out of the low-slung car, relocking it to protect the radio, then continued on his way.

Standing inside the door to his apartment, he peeled off his gloves and coat. He was tired, probably from the rarified cold air, but he couldn’t be sure. His heartbeat seemed slightly rapid, too. That scared him, and he removed his shoes and stretched out on his back on the sofa for a while.

From outside came the muffled rush and hum of traffic, the distant blaring of horns, something hard banging away on concrete, the chatter of a jackhammer, faraway construction and destruction. Close by, a man shouted something unintelligible and a woman answered; a bus roared and rumbled away from the stop near the corner. It was all a vivid dream. Coop didn’t want to lose any of it, and he became aware that his eyes were moist.

Self-pity. God, he hated self-pity! When he was a rookie and had tromped all over evidence at a crime scene and been chewed out, an older cop had told him he might as well not waste time feeling sorry for himself, because nobody cared if he did. The antidote for self-pity was to do your job. Harsh but true, Coop had discovered. It was advice he’d carried with him ever since.

He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the sofa, and put his shoes back on. He wasn’t so weary now, and his heartbeat had evened out. Even a perfectly healthy man might have felt as he had, after spending time with Deni, then trekking long city blocks through arid cold.

Thirsty, he briefly considered a beer, then instead went into the kitchen and ran cool tap water into a glass. He carried the glass back into the living room, sat down at his desk, and addressed an envelope to FBI agent Fred Willingham at the Bureau’s New York field office. In it he slid a carefully folded copy of Deni’s fax, along with a brief note explaining to Willingham what it was. This way Coop would have mailed the information to Willingham only hours after he received it, and the postal service would give Deni the time she wanted so badly.

Then he phoned Billard and told him about the faxed shoe print and that he’d mailed a copy to Willingham. Covering his ass, and he hadn’t promised Deni he wouldn’t notify Billard immediately.

Billard asked for a copy, as Coop knew he would, and after hanging up he addressed and stamped another envelope.

He bundled up in coat, muffler, and gloves again, then walked to the mailbox at the end of the block and dropped in both envelopes, noting that the next pickup was at five that evening. Then he returned to his apartment.

This time when he lay down on the sofa, he fell asleep.

Cara roused him from a deep sleep with a phone call a few minutes after six.

“Did I wake you, lover?” she asked, after hearing his sleep-thickened hello.

“Stretched out on the sofa a while ago,” he said, “next thing I knew it was now. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Are you more awake than you sound? I want to tell you something.”

He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, not liking the taste or the enormous size of his fuzzy teeth. “Sure. Tell away.”

“I thought I should call you right away and let you know I got my purse back.”

He sat up straighter. “How?”

“It was sent to me anonymously in a big padded envelope. I found it in my mail when I got home from work.”

“Are you sure there was no note with it?”

“Positive. I checked carefully.”

“Was there a return address?” But he already knew the answer to that one.

“No. And the envelope had a Grand Central Station postmark. I’m sure whoever did it didn’t want to get involved. In fact, my guess is that whoever stole it felt guilty and had second thoughts.”

“Cara, you’re not cynical enough.”

“You’re cynical enough for both of us, Coop. And the thief did remove the money from my wallet before he or some good Samaritan returned it.”

“What about your credit cards?”

“Well, they’re gone, too. But that’s all.”

“Some guilt. Some second thoughts.”

“So whoever took my purse was simply a sneak thief, maybe somebody desperate for money who gave in to temptation.”

“In a church,” Coop said.

“The big thing is, this suggests the theft had nothing to do with Ann’s murder.”

Coop figured she was probably right.

“I miss you,” he said. “You want to go to dinner?”

“The weather’s still too lousy to go anywhere tonight. Besides, I already called out for pizza.”

Still stubborn, he thought. Still determined. Maybe obsessive.
Like me?
“You’re not going to invite me over? I can afford some red wine without a metal cap. Goes well with pizza.”

“Not tonight, lover. Too many things have happened. I need to do some thinking.”

He decided not to press. “Me, too, I guess.” He wondered if he should tell her about Georgianna Mason’s murder and Sanderson’s fax to Deni. Better not, he decided. It would be best if nobody was informed before Willingham got his copy. He had to smile at himself. Department politics. Cover as you move. Old habits hard to break.

“Sleep well,” she told him.

“I already have.” He heard the yearning and suggestion in his voice.

She laughed softly. “I guess it’s the cop in you. You never give up.”

“Never.”

Another old habit.

While he had the phone in his hand, he made another call, long distance to Seattle.

He was prepared to track down Marty Sanderson and wake him in his bed if necessary.

But it wasn’t necessary. Sanderson was on duty and took Coop’s call within a few minutes.

Coop identified himself and established his authenticity, then confirmed that Lyons was indeed on vacation in North Carolina and Sanderson had sent the fax Deni showed him.

“Anything else I can help you with?” Sanderson asked, after giving Coop the information he requested.

“I’ve got a question,” Coop said.

“If I can answer it, I will.”

“Two words, actually. St. Augustine?”

“Yeah,” Sanderson said, after a while.

“A few more questions, then,” Coop told him.