Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

After all her agonizing, Merlowitz wasn’t taking calls. Instead, she got to speak with a secretary who ran through a whole repertoire of moves from the elaborate tai chi of commercial intercourse, concluding with the statement that Mr. Merlowitz was “in conference.” Kristine left a message, and immediately regretted it. Now she would be waiting, if only subconsciously, for the phone to ring. Merlowitz had her on a string. She should have hung up and called again at her leisure, instead of handing him that power.

Only ten minutes had gone by, but she called the Seattle Police back anyway. Not only was Don Krylo there, he had the information she’d requested.

“I was kind of doubtful for a while,” he told her. “We’re going on-line here and everything’s ass over tit, whole boxloads of stuff I could put my hand on a week ago’ve just like, you know, disappeared. Watch it be one of those, I told myself, either that or someone’s circular filed the damn thing. Anyway, looks like you lucked out. The previous CRS on this guy originated in-you got a pen? — Evanston, Illinois. Detective Eileen McCann’s the name right here on the docket.”

“Right. And thanks for coming up with this so quickly. I sure appreciate it.”

“Hey, that’s what we’re here for! Your tax dollars at work.”

“Have a great one, Don.”

“You too.”

Kristine Kjarstad lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her breath came irregularly, in spasms. It was almost like being in labor again. She called the switchboard and got the numbers of the Atlanta and Evanston City Police, and then a kind of paralysis descended on her. Every time she dialed, she found herself setting the receiver down the moment the ringing tone began. This was the moment of truth. The whole edifice she had constructed in her mind was either about to be revealed as a delusion, or not. It was hard to say which prospect she found more disturbing.

Finally she just steeled herself and dialed the Evanston number. She discovered that Eileen McCann did in fact exist-for some reason even this had seemed doubtful-but that she was “away from her desk.”

“My name is Kristine Kjarstad. I’m with King County Police, in Washington State. It’s about a suspect named Dale Watson. Could you please have her call me?”

Once again, Kristine found herself in the classic female position of waiting helplessly for the phone to ring. She was just about to call Atlanta when it did.

“Kristine? Paul Merlowitz.”

“Oh! Oh, hi. Hi, Paul.”

“You called.”

“Right. I did, yeah.”

“So how you been?”

“Good. You?”

“Good.”

“Good. The thing is, you caught me at kind of a bad moment, I’m expecting a call, but I was wondering, maybe could we get together sometime? The thing is … It’s kind of difficult to explain on the … There’s this house …”

“Thursday any good for you?”

“Thursday? That’s …”

“Or I could do Tuesday next week. We’re talking lunch, right?”

“That sounds …”

“The Painted Table, Thursday, noon, OK?”

“OK.”

“Great to hear you, Kristine.”

The line went dead. But the moment she put the phone down, it started to ring again.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking with Officer Carstad?”

It was a woman with shoulder pads built into her voice and a crisp, pedantic delivery.

“That’s right.”

“This is Detective Eileen McCann, Evanston City Police. I understand you have information concerning our inquiry with regard to an individual named Dale Watson.”

“I may have.”

There was a pointed silence at the other end.

“And when will you be sure?”

Kristine Kjarstad took a deep breath. This was clearly going to be one of those calls.

“I’d like to know a little more about the present status of the case,” she replied.

The Evanston detective sniffed audibly.

“The basic information is on the inquiry we sent. It is not the policy of this department to give out progress reports regarding ongoing investigations over the telephone.”

“Wait a minute!” Kristine snapped. “I don’t work for some tabloid TV show. Can’t you cut me a little slack here?”

“I repeat, it is not department policy to-”

Kristine cracked.

“OK, if you won’t talk, listen! The reason I’m calling is because I’ve received notice that a Dale Watson is currently being sought by another law enforcement agency in connection with a case which has certain resemblances to one on our files. Let me just run the outline past you. If it means nothing, go ahead and hang up. All right?”

“I’m listening.”

“Our case involves an apparently motiveless quadruple homicide. The attack took place in broad daylight at the family home. The victims were restrained with handcuffs, gagged with lengths of duct tape and shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. The weapon was a.22 handgun, probably a revolver, loaded with Stinger cartridges.”

She had spoken fast, the words gusted along on a tidal current of adrenaline and anger. Now she’d done, and sat tight, grasping the receiver tightly, probing the long silence at the other end.

“You are describing a crime which you currently have under investigation?” the Evanston detective inquired at last.

“Correct. And I know of at least one more.”

Another silence.

“Then I consider it expedient that we should meet up as soon as possible,” Eileen McCann pronounced at last.

Success went to Kristine’s head.

“Thursday any good for you?” she demanded. “Or I could do Tuesday next week. We’re talking lunch, right?”

“That’s logistically problematic,” was the unruffled reply.

“OK,” said Kristine, getting a grip on herself. “Fax me through details of your case, and if it looks like we’re on to something here I’ll get out there to see you within forty-eight hours. How’s that sound?”

“Let’s diarize.”

Whatever Eileen McCann lacked in charm, she made up for in efficiency. Twenty minutes later, Kristine had the entire dossier of the Maple Street shootings on her desk. She was still poring over it when Steve Warren appeared. He handed her a waxed cup filled with a creamy foam.

“Thought maybe you could use this,” he mumbled. “Double tail’s how you like it, right?”

Kristine barely looked up.

“Steve, you’re a fucking genius!”

Warren flinched. He didn’t deserve this! OK, so he’d screwed up earlier, but he’d tried to make it up to her, running over to the espresso stand and getting her a latte. There was no call for mockery.

“This thing has hair all over it!” Kristine exclaimed almost hysterically. “And if it hadn’t been for you, it would have passed us right by. No one else would have bothered to read those details about the MO that tie in with the Renton case.”

Steve Warren shrugged awkwardly.

“Hell, I’m just an average Joe …”

Kristine shook her head decisively.

“No, you’re not, Steve. You’re one of a kind.”

He looked at her as though she’d slapped his face, then turned without a word and walked out. Kristine shook her head and returned to her reading. She kind of liked Steve, but there was no getting away from the fact that the guy was a total fruitcake.

It took her another thirty minutes to get a clear fix on the Evanston case. As soon as she had, she called Atlanta. At first it seemed that she was in for another round of the old crapola with some dickette who’d flunked out of charm school, but the woman who answered the phone turned out to be merely a call catcher. Detective Wingate, she informed Kristine, wouldn’t be on duty for another three hours.

Kristine glanced at the clock. The idea of waiting seemed intolerable.

“Can you give me his home number?” she begged.

The steel magnolia replied that she was not authorized to give out such details, and offered instead to connect her to Wingate’s colleague, one Charlie Freeman. There was silence, then another ringing tone.

“Homicide,” said a male voice.

“Detective Freeman?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Kristine Kjarstad, I’m a homicide detective working out of King County Headquarters in Seattle. You want to call me back, check my credentials?”

“That’s OK, ma’am, I know a cop when I hear one. Besides, this way it’s your nickel. What can we do for y’all?”

Freeman’s voice was deep, slow and sexy. Kristine found him easy to talk to. It remained to be seen whether the opposite was true.

“I’ve just seen a CRS from your Detective Wingate regarding an individual named Dale Watson. I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about that case.”

She braced herself for another bout of stonewalling, but Charlie Freeman apparently took a more relaxed view of his work than Eileen McCann.

“Sure. Not a whole lot to say, though. Two white guys go for a stroll in a black neighborhood, for some reason we don’t get. They meet up with three of the brothers and someone pulls a gun. One guy on either side gets dead and the white survivor is in IC. Half an inch to the left and he’s history too, the doc says.”

“And he’s Dale Watson?”

“No, Watson’s the one who got whacked. He was shacked up with a teenage runaway. We got the name from her, plus the idea he was maybe from Seattle, which is how come we faxed you guys. You got anything on him?”

“Not under that name. But we’ve got a case on the books which looks similar.”

Charlie Freeman sounded skeptical.

“You sure about this, ma’am? I have to say the incident here looks like one of those classic street things.”

“This guy in the hospital, have you got a name?”

“Booked himself in as John Flaxman at the hotel, but that don’t mean jackshit. He’s out of danger now, but he still won’t say a word about what they were doing that evening. Just lies there staring up at the ceiling.”

“Does he have any links to Seattle?”

“Not that we know of. I searched his hotel room, but he didn’t have no ID, no tickets, no nothing. These guys were stripped. All I found was a pile of clothes and some athletic shoes, could have been bought anywhere.”

“Athletic shoes?”

“That was his own stuff. They dressed up as holy rollers that night, see? Bought themselves the outfits right here in town.”

Kristine stared at the wall. It seemed to be moving, bulging in the center like a sail.

“What kind of athletic shoes were they?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t rightly recall, ma’am. Some kind basketball shoe. But this is a doozy whichever way you look at it. Take the hardware they went in with. You go looking for trouble in a neighborhood like that, you gotta pack enough gun. Now sure, a two-two can be a work of art, I got a couple at home, but out there on the streets you’re up against Uzis, Cobrays, you name it. The toddlers pack magnums in their diapers, even our guys are outgunned half the-”

“If we could just get back to the shoes for a moment …”

Freeman sighed.

“What can I tell you? They were standard basketball shoes, the kind all the kids wear.”

“What brand?”

Her tone was almost rudely abrupt. Charlie Freeman sounded taken aback.

“I don’t recollect, ma’am. What’s with the shoes, anyhow? They were black, far as I recall. Yeah, and there was some kind of logo, a little red outline. Some guy doing a slamdunk.”

“Was the brand Nike?”

“How’s that?” asked Freeman.

“N, I, K, E.”

“Is that how you say it? I always thought it rhymed with ‘Mike.’ Let me just look up my report here. Yeah, that’s right. Nike Air Jordan. You sure it’s spoke like that? Sounds kind of weird.”

Kristine Kjarstad let out a long, slow breath.

“That’s because it’s a Greek name, Mr. Freeman. Nike was the goddess of victory.”

“Well, hey, learn something new every day. Nike, huh? So who was she? Some kind of feminist?”

“Just a woman who hated to lose. You’re talking to another. One more thing. Were there traces of paint on the soles of the shoes?”

This time there was a lengthy silence.

“Now you come to mention it,” Freeman replied in a different tone, “I think there was something on them. I figured it was bubblegum or some-”

“Because it was pink, right?” Kristine interrupted.

Another long silence.

“Now how in hell did you know that?” asked Charlie Freeman quietly.

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

“You’re coming down south?”

“Correct. I’ll call you back once I have my reservation. I’ll want you to set up an interview with this guy in the hospital. Make it as long as possible. I plan to go to work on him, and I don’t want the doctors getting in the way. This is our one chance to crack this case. It may be the last we ever get.”

“But I told you already, he refuses to say a goddamn-”

“I think he’ll talk to me, Mr. Freeman. I’m pretty sure I can get him to talk to me.”

18

I awoke shortly after dawn to find a figure standing beside my bed. My dreams had been unusually vivid and elaborate, and for a moment I thought the intruder was another illusion, an escapee from that nocturnal melodrama. Then it moved, and I saw that it was female, and naked.

The covers were stripped back and I felt flesh touch mine at many points, chill on the surface but brimming with internal warmth. A face was buried in my neck and hands roved over my body. Firm breasts were crushed against my chest, the nipples knotted with cold. My cock, already thick with early morning tumescence, stirred and hardened as wiry pubic hair brushed against the bud.

I was still in that ambiguous state between sleep and waking, where the normal rules and standards do not apply. The woman was shivering, so I hugged her. It must be Andrea, I thought drowsily, come to bring me comfort and news of my son. Then the woman turned and raised herself slightly, looking down at me. The light was dim, seeping in through the cracks in the exterior walls and under the door, but it was enough to reveal my mistake. This was not Andrea. It took another few minutes, by which time we were almost coupled, before I realized who it was.

My erection immediately began to sag. I pulled away, giving myself space, studying the plain, feral face with its high cheekbones and stubby nose. My companion was none other than Ellie, the plump nymphet whose enthusiastic compliance Sam had so brutally vaunted the day before.

“Fuck me,” she whispered imploringly. “Please fuck me.”

It should have been a perfect wet-dream scenario. Maybe it was its very perfection which gave it away, that and the fact that her desperation was evidently not erotic. Certainly she played her part well. She sucked on my lips and her knee pushed in between my legs, and as my traitorous cock stiffened up she grasped it and squeezed so hard I gasped. In any other situation I would have been only too happy to go along and ask questions afterward, but I knew I couldn’t afford that luxury.