He is waiting for the woman in the hallway of her building when she gets home. It is, he thinks, as if the universe has conspired to make this, his little act of revenge, easy for him. The building where she lives is an old brick three flat and her apartment is on the second floor, but he is not concerned with that. What he does find helpful is the foyer, which is shallow but wide, with a deep, handy “blind spot’ on each side of an entry door that only has glass in the top half and bears a lock that is pathetically easy for him to slip. There are heavily frosted windows to each side of the door, but they aren’t wide enough to cause any problem—he can easily stand beyond where his shadow might show against the outside glass.
His emotions are a mixture of cool calculation and anger…no, rage. It expands and contracts inside him like a red spider working long, prickly legs every time he hears the words she said to him on the telephone that last time—
“Listen, you lying son of a bitch, because this is the last time I’m going to tell you this. Don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t even think about me. If I pick up the phone and it’s you just one more time, I’m going to call the police. They’ll take care of you once and for all.”
—and then the red spider inside him actually bites down, filling him with venom at the memory of the final words she said before she slammed down the phone—
“I don’t know you, and I don’t want to. You are one sick fuck.”
No, he thinks as the door opens and she comes inside, you don’t know me at all. The door eases shut behind her and she is looking toward the mailboxes on the west side of the foyer, so she doesn’t see where he waits a few feet away, like a giant, silent version of the vicious spider inside his mind. There will be a second or two when the spider, this dark, vengeful side of himself, is visible to all in the window of the entry door, but that cannot be helped. The mailboxes have doorbells below each and he must move her to avoid the chance that she will slap her hand against one of them as he performs his task.
Keys in hand, she is reaching for her own mailbox when he darts forward and clamps his left hand hard across her mouth. Her keys drop as he drags her backward and spins her toward the interior entry, bending low to avoid the window in the door behind him, using her body weight and momentum to slam her against the wall on the opposite side. There is a narrow wooden table there and the jarring movement bounces it away from the wall and leaves an eighteen inch space; she is too stunned to resist as he forces her to bend over the tabletop, pressing against her from behind as he shoves her head and shoulders down and into the gap, keeping her pinned against the wall. He lets go of the back of her head, quickly reaches into the deep right pocket of his black windbreaker, and brings out his weapon. The knife is a beautiful K2K Folder with a drop point and a serrated edge, slightly more than two and a half inches of deadly stainless steel blade. Revenge would be, as they say, a much sweeter thing if he had the time to enjoy it; he does not and so without wasting any more movement he reaches under her neck and draws the blade left to right across her throat.
She thrashes and goes deeper into the space, voiceless, and he holds her there, keeping the spray of blood directed toward the left outside corner of the foyer and away from his clothes, sees it splatter against the wall like an abstract scarlet painting. Warmth covers his hand, seeping through the heavy latex glove he’s stretched up and over his wrist to protect the cuff of his windbreaker. When her struggling stops, he lets her fall, not caring about the awkward position of her body or the leather purse that drops to the side of it. He backs away, pleased when he sees that he hasn’t stepped in any blood and so he won’t have to use the bottle of ammonia in his other pocket to wash away any footprints. There is an arc of ruby colored liquid climbing across the wall and ending midway on the east pane of frosted glass, so he wipes the blade of his knife with the gloved, bloodied fingers of his left hand and puts it away, then reaches up with his right and loosens the dim, bare bulb overhead.
The foyer drops into darkness and he stands at the door for a moment, studying the sidewalk out front. It is dark and comforting, lined with thick-leafed maples that rustle in the pleasant fall evening and scatter the already weak glow of the overhead streetlights. No one is out there and he quietly pushes the door open and slips onto the porch, quickly stripping the latex gloves inside out and pocketing them before descending the stairs and strolling, unconcerned, to where he’s parked his car beneath the elevated train tracks only a block to the west
The trauma team at Illinois Masonic Medical Center was waiting when the Chicago Fire Department ambulance, lights flashing and siren screaming, careened into the driveway and lurched to a stop beneath the protective overhang at the entrance to the emergency room. The men and women—two doctors and two trauma nurses—were experienced and capable, and no one among them had been with the group for less than a year, plus they’d gotten a heads up from the driver, so they all knew what was coming, had all the equipment ready.
That she was alive, still, was a shock.
“Female, early twenties, knife wound to the throat!” one of the EMTs shouted as he and his partner propelled the Gurney out of the back of the bus and into the half dozen reaching hands. There was blood everywhere, and beneath an oxygen mask the victim’s face was as white as the marble cross that hung in the chapel in another wing of Illinois Masonic. Over the past several years, Dr. Ireta Tansey had seen that cross many times, too many, and she had also seen this young woman before.
“Ready the suture tray,” Dr. Tansey ordered. As the patient was rushed into the ER, she paused only long enough to shoot a question back to the paramedics who stood stripping off blood-soaked gloves and looking disgusted at the mess inside their vehicle. “ID?”
The older one jerked his head toward a police car swinging over to the curb at street level. “Randall’s got it.”
The doctor gave a crisp nod. “Tell him to bring it in, stat. This girl’s been here before and we can look up her records, save time on the blood type.”
He turned and headed toward the cop as she slammed back through the ER doors and followed the trail of blood into chaos.
The trauma team had put the woman in the crash room, on the right and closest to the entrance. Everyone was moving at once, juggling IVs, hooking up blood pressure and pulse sensors, hands changing off holding a wad of scarlet soaked gauze in place over the gaping, happy mouth of a wound that nearly circled her throat as tasks were switched back and forth.
“Pulse is fifty nine, respiration is steady, and blood pressure is holding at…one-twenty over seventy?” Jeremy, one of the trauma nurses, scowled. “What the—that can’t be right!”
Before the doctor could make her way up to the examination table, everyone in the room just… stopped. And stared.
“Move your asses, people,” Dr. Tansey snapped as she strode forward. “Unless you want this girl to bleed to death in front of you!”
“I don’t think so, doctor,” said Camila, the other nurse. Still, at least the others were moving again, if only to step forward and peer at the ivory-skinned girl lying quietly on the table. The other doctor, a young man named Sajag Bharat, looked back and forth from the monitors to the patient, then cautiously lifted his gloved hand from her throat. It came away filled with sopping red gauze, but there was no fresh red pulse behind the material. “She’s stopped bleeding on her own.”
“What?” Dr. Tansey scooted in closer and leaned over the victim. The cut on her throat was fresh and deep, the edges separated enough to show muscle and the thin, creamier colored layer of adipose tissue. If it hadn’t been for the steady beep beep beep of the heart monitor, Tansey would have thought the girl was dead—at least that would have explained the abrupt halt of the blood flow.
“Her name is Hannah Danior,” the charge nurse called from the doorway. Dr. Tansey glanced over and saw the older woman flipping rapidly through a bunch of cards obviously just handed to her by a policeman a few feet away. “Here—she’s got an IM card. I can pull up her data on the computer.” She shoved the rest of the cards back into the policeman’s hands and disappeared down the hallway.
Dr. Tansey straightened, feeling the gazes of the rest of the team. She knew what to do next, of course, but for the first time in her career she couldn’t explain what had just happened on the examination table in front of her.
“Maybe it wasn’t as deep as we thought,” Jeremy suggested. He sounded as unconvinced as she was, but at least it gave them all something to grasp, a lifeline in the midst of inexplicability.
Dr. Tansey stared at the young woman, her eyes narrowing. Yeah, even without the records pulled up, she remembered this patient. It had been awhile, back in the spring perhaps, but recollections like that didn’t die easily in someone trained to hang onto the most minute of details, and when she brushed the girl’s hair away from her jaw line, the doctor’s memory was confirmed.
“Stitch her up,” she said abruptly. She pulled off her gloves and tossed them into the waste receptacle, then pushed back the strands of streaked blond hair that had fallen across her own forehead. “Make sure she’s stable and have her transferred…into the psych wing.”
~ * ~
“Welcome to another exciting Friday night.”
As he climbed the steps of the apartment building, Detective Greg Jedrek raised one eyebrow at the nearly light-hearted sound of his partner’s voice. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad, he thought…then again, a homicide was a homicide, and what could ever be good about something like that? When Greg didn’t say anything in response, Tony Rutland regarded him impassively. The blue bubble lights atop the three squad cars parked in front cut across Tony’s face at half second intervals. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Got my taste of that Friday night spirit you’re so excited about,” Greg retorted. “It’s called DePaul traffic. Must’ve spent fifteen minutes stuck on Fullerton between Clark and Lincoln—nobody gives a damn about lights and a siren anymore.”
Tony nodded, then stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He jerked his head toward the porch of a small brick apartment building at the end of the short walkway behind him, where a couple of uniformed cops stood unhappily flanking the entrance. Dim light bled out of the doorway and lit two murkily textured windows on either side of the door; something dark was streaked in a semi-circle across the one on the left. “Well, wait’ll you get an eyeful of what’s up there,” he said as he ran a hand through his hair. “I bet it makes you wish you were still sitting on Fullerton and listening to the radio.”
Greg bit back a sharp reply and shouldered past the older man, who made no move to follow. “Aren’t you coming?” Greg finally asked as he paused on the last step.
Tony shook his head and one corner of his mouth turned up in a vaguely cruel smirk. “No, thanks. I’ve already seen enough to make me blow dinner. Your turn, farm boy. Enjoy.”
Greg turned back toward the entrance to the building and said nothing despite his annoyance. What was the use in arguing? Some people were just how they were. Tony wasn’t that much older than him but he’d been on the job here in Chicago a lot longer, had been exposed to levels of brutality that Greg would readily admit hadn’t been found in his hometown of Grinnell, Iowa. Maybe it was the job that had made Tony the way he was, a young guy who radiated the same emotionally dead spirit that Greg had so despised in his own father. In a comparison like that, Tony came out the winner—at least he had a reason for the way he was; Boyd Jedrek had made a lifetime career out of turning away from his wife and children, fine tuning the art of cold-shouldering his loved ones.
The beat cops by the door nodded to him and stepped aside as Greg moved toward the entry door. He frowned when he saw it was open but there were no telltales smears of print dust on it.
“Evidence techs are on the way,” one of the uniforms told him before he could ask. “I don’t know what they’ll be able to salvage, though—the lady who lives on the third floor found the victim, said she had her hand all over that knob when she opened the door. The light was out, too, but she reached up and tapped it with her newspaper and it came on. That’s when…” He shrugged.
“Damn it,” Greg muttered under his breath. Louder, he said, “What else?”
The older of the two took a deep breath. “Female, middle twenties. We can’t tell from the position of the body, but the amount of blood makes it look like her throat was cut. Her clothes are intact and her purse is still inside.” He jerked his head toward Tony, still standing and smoking calmly at the foot of the porch. “Rutland already snapped a couple of Polaroids, but nobody’s moved anything.”
“The woman upstairs—she found her?”
The policeman nodded. “The victim’s name is Eloise Addison. The neighbor was a friend of hers, so she’s pretty freaked. Couple of the guys are up there with her now. Rutland said you’d do the interview.”
Greg nodded. Yeah, Tony would have left it to his softie partner to question the crying witness—which was fine with Greg. If there was ever a classic good cop/bad cop twosome, they sure filled it; too bad they didn’t actually get along and make it a perfect match. “I’ll get to her in a minute,” he said, and toed open the door.
As places to off someone went, this had been a good choice—very little visible from the outside and plenty of space to work with inside. He watched where he was stepping, but the killer had made a clean exit and there were no footprints to worry about. On the floor beneath the mailboxes was a set of keys, and it didn’t take much brainpower to guess the victim had been about to open her mailbox when she’d been grabbed from behind. He could see a line of envelopes behind the slots of the box marked ADDISON. She hadn’t made it that far and had probably been grabbed and pulled to the other side so she couldn’t ring any of the bells.
Greg ground his teeth, then turned to look at the other end of the foyer.
At first he didn’t register what he was looking at, then Greg realized what the murderer had done. Mindful of the pool of blood around the small, wooden table over which the corpse was bent, the detective stepped closer. There wasn’t much he could see until the body was moved, and they wouldn’t do that until the techs got here and bagged the victim’s hands, dusted the keys and the other surfaces in the foyer. Lying on its side in the blood beneath the table was a black leather handbag, its zipper closed and clotted with blood—no robbery motive here. Eloise Addison’s skin was a dull, bled out gray and her eyes were slightly open; she’d had her hair, long and dark, twisted into some kind of a chignon and part of it had come loose and was now covering most of her face. From what Greg could tell, the dead woman was wearing an expensive navy blue business suit under a lightweight London Fog trench coat; the coat had gotten tangled to the right when her head and upper body had been forced between the table and the wall. Her skirt and stockings were still intact and tear free, so there’d been no rape. The atrocity that had been committed here had gone down fast and, for what it was, neat.
The inside door on the right was slightly open and beyond it Greg could see a stairway leading up. He nudged the door with his shoulder so he could get inside, though he knew the neighbor had probably turned the doorknob when she’d run to her apartment to call the police. The detective climbed the stairs slowly, his mind turning over what he’d seen so far. No robbery, no rape, no break in. What was the motive here?
When he got to the third floor landing, that door was also open so Greg walked inside without knocking. It was a nice place and probably had the same layout as the victim’s directly below, but they’d have to contact the landlord to let them in before they could look around down there—that was standard procedure, and no doubt one of the uniforms had already called. He was standing in a living room that had been painted a cheerful yellow to complement a feminine looking living room set. Vases with silk flowers were set here and there amid lots of floral paintings and china and crystal knickknacks, Victorian lace curtains and embroidered pillows. Nice place but it made him nervous; he wasn’t a big man, but he felt like he could move the wrong way in here and break something without even trying.
He heard voices down the hall and turned that way, followed an oak-floored hallway to a kitchen that could have come right out of a Martha Stewart magazine. More yellow—lots of it—trimmed with a generous motif of tiny pink and white roses. A border of the stuff encircled the room at the juncture of the wall and ceiling and on one wall hung a four foot square cabinet with an exhibit of collectible miniature teapots and matching plates. The counters showed off an assortment of carefully placed cookie jars and serving dishes in colors that matched the kitchen and the ruffled, painfully floral curtains at the windows. By the time Greg’s brain had taken in all this, he’d resigned himself to dealing with someone his grandmother’s age.
But the woman who sat clutching a cup of tea at the table was only a few years older than the victim, in her mid-thirties at the most. Built a little round at the edges, her attractive face was pale and streaked with tears below a messy head of reddish curls that fell to her jaw line and she’d thrown a dainty crocheted sweater over a ribbon-trimmed dress that Greg wasn’t surprised to see was in another heavily flowered pattern.
When he saw Greg, one of the officers in the kitchen stepped forward. “This is Mary Kidman,” he said. “She found the victim.”
“Eloise,” Mary Kidman said. Her voice was a little loud and brittle, like little pieces of wood being shaken in a bag. “Her name was Eloise. She was my best friend.”
Ow, thought Greg, but Mary didn’t lose it. “I’m sorry,” he said simply, then squatted in front of her. “I’m Detective Jedrek. Can you tell me what happened here?”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her eyes, strikingly gray beneath reddened lids, filled up and a double line of tears joined the moisture already on her cheeks. “I just…found her like that, in the hallway, when I came home. I didn’t see anyone and I could tell that she was—” She gulped air and dropped her hands to the twisted Kleenex in her lap, then managed to keep going. “She was already dead.”
Greg nodded and gave her a second or two before asking his next question. “Do you know if there was anyone who would do this to her? Was she married, or did she have a boyfriend?”
The woman worked her fingers together. “She wasn’t married, and she didn’t have a steady boyfriend.” She bit at her bottom lip for a second. “There was this one guy she had a little trouble with, but I don’t think he knew where she lived—she said she’d never told him and her phone number was unlisted. And she hadn’t heard from him in almost two weeks, since she told him off.”
Greg’s eyes narrowed and he pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket, flipped it open and readied his pen. “What kind of trouble? Did you meet him?”
“No. And I just know what she told me.” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.
“And what was that?”
Mary frowned as she tried to remember. “Eloise was an account executive at Leo Burnett Advertising,” she told him. “They’re downtown and she met this guy, Blake, in line at one of those fast food places everybody goes to for lunch. They had lunch a couple of times—nothing more serious than that—then she couldn’t go the next time he called her at work and asked her out. She was busy and wanted to call him back, but he wouldn’t give her a number, said he wasn’t reachable because he was out in the field or something.”
Greg scribbled a few notes on his pad. “Where did he work?”
“I don’t know. I remember it was some kind of security company, but when she called there, they told Eloise they’d never heard of him. So she put it all together and decided he must be married, and when he called her back, she told him not to call her again.” Mary looked vaguely embarrassed. “Eloise was rather…outspoken sometimes, and I’m afraid she was rather crude when she did it.”
Greg resisted the urge to smile. There wasn’t anything about this that was funny, but he found it amazing that the fragile Mary Kidman could be best friends with someone like Eloise Addison, whom he suspected had been a polar opposite. “Then what happened?”
Mary blinked. “He kept calling her, at work, at home, at least twice a day. Finally she told him that she was going to call the police on him if he didn’t stop.”
“And did he?”
She nodded. “Yes. Eloise was on edge for a couple of days, but her threat must’ve worked. She never heard from him again.”
Oh, yes she did, Greg thought without looking up. One last time. “Did she mention what he looked like?”
“She said he was tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Handsome.”
Just like a million other guys in Chicago. “All right, Ms. Kidman. Thanks for your help.”
She looked up at him, her wide, gray eyes penetrating. “I wasn’t really much help at all, was I?” Her voice trembled.
“Don’t be so certain of that,” he said, but it was an automatic response. He’d run the Addison woman’s phone records, but the wannabe boyfriend had likely called from pay or untraceable cell phones, especially if he had murderous tendencies. Greg glanced at the two uniforms. “Is there someone you can call to…?”
She sniffed. “I already did. My fiancé will be over as soon as he gets off work.” She looked at the two officers. “You can go ahead and leave— I’ll be all right. I think I’ll just stay in here until…” Her words faded and she stared at the floor.
Greg knew exactly what she was talking about. “That would probably be best. If you think of anything else, you can call me at this number.”
He handed her one of his cards, then headed back downstairs, stopping at the second landing when he saw the door to Eloise Addison’s apartment was open. There was a heavyset middle aged man standing just inside, shock still etched into the lines of his face. Greg could hear noises from deeper in the apartment. “Who are you?” he demanded. “And who else is in here?”
“I’m the landlord,” the man said, stepping back at Greg’s sharp tone. “The detective downstairs said to let him in—that’s all.”
Greg relaxed a bit as he registered the crowded ring of keys in the man’s hand. “It’s fine,” he said, not bothering with any more of an explanation. He hurried down the hall—a matched layout to the Kidman apartment upstairs—and found his partner in the bedroom, methodically looking through the dresser drawers. “Find anything?”
Tony shrugged. “Bunch of frilly underwear, socks, sweaters, the usual. Nothing kinky. The super says as far as he knows, she never gave anyone else a key, not even that woman upstairs. Seemed to like her privacy.”
Greg looked around the room thoughtfully and left Tony to his search, though he had a hunch the other man wouldn’t get much out of this place. No number for this Blake guy, no last name, no employer; he’d do a follow up with her coworkers and a canvas of the neighborhood, but he was betting no one but the late Eloise had actually seen him. When he passed the techs on the way outside, they looked at him and shook their heads—that meant no fingerprints or, at least at first glance, anything else usable. Guy had probably been wearing gloves.
He sighed and went down by the car to wait for Tony. Too bad they didn’t have anything to go on, but at least they weren’t dealing with a serial killer.