A Killer in the Wind

  I found the coffee shop I wanted. The Grind. That’s where the now deceased Stark twin had used his phone. The place was busy when I got there. A gusting breeze made its green and white striped awning shudder and flap, but despite the cool weather, the tables on the sidewalk beneath the awning were filled with kids nursing their coffees and pecking their laptops. The tables were filled up inside too and there was a line at the counter, people waiting to place their orders.

  I leaned over the end of the counter. Flagged a girl barista as she rushed by me carrying an empty pot. I told her I wanted to speak to the manager. She was the manager. Funny. She looked to me to be about twelve years old. Five foot nothing with her brown hair in pigtails that stuck out of the side of her head like bike handles. Only her smart, suspicious eyes looked as though they had reached majority.

  “I’m looking for someone who was here three days ago.”

  “Why? Why are you looking for him?” she asked.

  “I’m a police detective. He’s a bad guy.”

  “Oh, yeah? You have, like, a badge or something?”

  I didn’t have a badge anymore, but I had my business cards with the sheriff’s star on them so I gave her one of those. I kept asking questions so she didn’t have time to think about it too much.

  “Were you here three days ago? Seven-thirty to nine A.M. You work that shift?”

  “Yeah. Three days ago? Yeah. It’s a busy time, though. It’s, like, rush hour.”

  “Guy I want has a pretty distinctive look. Looks like a skeleton. Really like. White face, hollow cheeks, big—great big—spooky eyes. You might’ve noticed him.”

  “No.” She handed the card back to me, shaking her head. “I don’t remember a guy like that. So many people come in here at that hour, though. When you’re working, you mostly have your head down.”

  “Mind if I ask your people?”

  She glanced toward the registers. “Only Jack was here. Jack,” she called to him.

  The kid came over. He looked like he was twelve too. Scrawny blond guy with spotty skin. I asked him about the skeleton-man. No, he hadn’t seen him either.

  “Listen . . .” the girl said. She tilted her head toward the line of waiting customers. “I gotta go.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She went through a door into the back of the place, taking her empty pot with her.

  I went outside and stood on the sidewalk beside the shop’s tables. My eyes scanned the neighborhood.

  The Grind was on the corner. There was a small white office building to my left. Across the street, there was a line of shops, buildings rising above each one, two or three stories of brick. I thought of Stark sitting here at the café three mornings ago. At least ninety minutes, seven-thirty to nine. Calling his twin brother three times, checking in, bringing him up to date. He must’ve been waiting for something or watching for something, I thought. Waiting for someone to come in or for someone to go by . . .

  My phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket, still watching the shops, still thinking it over.

  “Champion,” I said.

  “Where the hell are you?” It was Grassi.

  “I’m right here,” I told him.

  “Here where?”

  “Here. At home.”

  “Yeah, well, bullshit, okay? Because I just came from your home.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s right. I went out. I forgot.”

  “Did you leave the county?”

  “No. No. I’m in the county.”

  “So where are you?”

  “In the county. Driving around. I’m driving around the county. Hey, did you get an ID on the dead skeleton yet?”

  “No. And it’s none of your fucking business so shut up. You better get back here, you hear me? I’m serious. I got questions I gotta ask you.”

  “Like what?” I stepped off the sidewalk. Turned my head to check the traffic in both directions. Crossed the street, my phone to my ear. “Ask me whatever you want.”

  “No, no, no. I want you here, Champion. At the shop. I want to look you in the eye.”

  On the opposite sidewalk, I stood between a drugstore and a gourmet deli. There was a glass door here, an entry into the apartments on the floors above the deli. There were two rows of doorbell buttons by the door, eight in all. One button was labeled “Super.”

  The cool wind whipped up and came down the street again. It smelled faintly of fertilizer from the farmlands.

  “I’ll come in on Monday,” I said into the phone.

  “No. Not Monday. Now.”

  “Now? It’s Saturday.”

  “Right now.”

  “Oh, all right. I’m on my way. Hey, what about the girl? You get a hit on the girl’s prints?”

  “Fuck you,” he said—and he hung up.

  “Hell of a coincidence,” I muttered, slipping the phone back into my pocket. “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

  I rang the super’s doorbell.

  The super was a bookish little man in his sixties. The aesthetic saggy-cardigan type with a theoretically peaceful demeanor. Long white hair, small round glasses. I handed him my card.

  “I’m Inspector Champion from the Tyler County Sheriff’s Department,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman who might live here.”

  He held up the card. He smirked. “This county is in New York. You’re out of your jurisdiction.”

  I smiled at him the way you smile at an idiot. “It’s not a matter of jurisdiction, sir. She’s not in any trouble. I just have some information to give her.” Then I kept talking to ride over whatever stupid thing he was going to say next. “She’s in her thirties. Very pretty. A lot of dark red hair—auburn hair. Blue eyes. Good figure.”

  “You don’t know her name?”

  “I don’t.” She had only told me the name Samantha in my drug dream, after all.

  “But you have information to give her?” the super said suspiciously.

  “That’s right,” I said, showing him the idiot smile again and waiting him out.

  “Well . . . that’s Samantha Pryor,” he said after what I guess he considered an appropriately suspicious hesitation. “She lives upstairs in 3B.”

  Made sense. The skeleton-man had sat across the street, waiting for her, watching for her. Who else could he have come here to find?

  “Great,” I said. Still smiling, I pressed the button for 3B.

  “I’m pretty sure she’s away,” said the super. “I haven’t seen her for a couple of days. Her mailbox is full too.”

  “You know where she works?”

  “I don’t know if she would want me to tell you that.”

  “Believe me, she’s going to want to talk to me,” I said.

  “Well, I suppose there’s no harm in your knowing. She works at the public library over on Cannon Street.”

  “Leaves for work every day around eight, eight-thirty.”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll try her there. Give her my card if you see her, would you?”

  “All right.”

  I lifted my hand in a fond farewell to the pompous son of a bitch and walked away. There was a security camera above the door, so I kept walking even after he went back inside. I walked around the whole block. It gave me a chance to enjoy the spring weather, visit the historic Civil War monument on Main Street, and make sure no one was following me on foot. I also took a moment to stop off at my car and get the pocket-sized leather pouch full of burglar picks I kept in the glove compartment.

  Finally I came full circle back to the apartment building. I figured the super had probably stopped watching the security monitor by then.

  The lock was a simple dead bolt and I was always handy with a pick. I got the door open quickly. I moved to the stairs without a pause and started up before the door swung shut behind me. I went two steps at a time to the second floor, then around the bend to the third. Apartment 3B was right off the stairs in the middle of the landing. Another dead bolt there
. Half a minute later, I slipped into Samantha Pryor’s apartment.

  I turned on the lights. I recognized the skeleton’s work right away. He’d trashed her place, same as he’d trashed mine. Sofa cushions slashed and gutted. Tables overturned. Drawers and closets emptied onto the floor.

  I drew my Glock. I moved through the rooms quickly, kicking debris out of my way, turning lights on as I went. Just wanted to make sure I was alone in here. There was a kitchenette off the front room—all the drawers and cabinets opened, all the silverware and plates and pots and pans dumped on the counters and the floor. There was a bedroom—the mattress gutted, lady clothes piled up everywhere, the closets emptied. I caught sight of a picture frame on the carpet, a photo of three women behind the broken glass. The woman in the middle of the group was my Samantha, sure enough, exactly as I remembered her.

  I went on into the bathroom off the bedroom. All the toiletries had been dumped into the sink and the bathtub. There was lots of broken glass sparkling under the top light. Lots of girl gunk that had dried in gelatinous streaks of color as it oozed toward the drain.

  I was about to pull back into the bedroom when something stopped me. I hesitated in the doorway. Drew a series of short breaths in through my nose. I smelled something. I moved back into the bathroom again, sniffing around like a dog on the trail. Finally I found what I was looking for in a corner of the tiled floor. A bottle of perfume. The glass was too thick to have broken during the search but the stopper had come out. There was only a small yellow puddle left inside. The rest had spilled out onto the floor.

  I lifted the bottle to my nose and drew in the scent. It was her scent—Samantha’s. I remembered it from when she’d sat beside me on the sofa in my apartment. In fact, the smell brought back the memory of her so powerfully it made me ache with longing.

  What the hell? I thought. How do you hallucinate a thing like that?

  I holstered my gun as I stepped back out into the bedroom. I kicked aside a pile of clothes. Some sort of chiffon nightgown or top or something clung to my leg. I picked it off, lifted it, smelled it: the same scent as the perfume. Samantha.

  As I stood there, holding the fabric to my face, I contemplated the wreckage around me. Obviously skull-boy hadn’t found what he was looking for or he wouldn’t have had to toss my place too. But whatever he was after, I was pretty sure I didn’t have it, so maybe Samantha did. Maybe she kept this much-desired thing at the library. Or maybe it was here somewhere and Stark had missed it. His searching methods were comprehensive but not exactly methodical. Maybe her hiding place was just too good for him.

  The minute I thought that, an idea struck me—and I let go of Samantha’s chiffon. It wafted slowly to the floor.

  I knew where to look. It didn’t make any sense that I knew. Why should I know? But nothing made any sense. I knew.

  I went to the corner of the wall behind the bed. Crouched down and examined the wainscoting at the bottom. I probed and pulled at it, but it didn’t move. I got up and walked around the bed to the opposite corner and tried again. Again, nothing.

  I stood up and looked around. I looked at the bedroom door, the bottom of the door. The door interrupted the wainscoting on that wall so that on one side the panel was only about eight inches long. I went to the short panel. Crouched down. Worked my fingernails into the top of it. A spark of excitement went through me as the section of panel came away in my hand to reveal the hole that had been broken into the plaster behind it.

  Amazing. Amazing and weird. And even more amazing was the fact that I wasn’t surprised at all.

  I reached my hand into the hiding hole and felt the slim paper object inside it. I worked it out. A small manila envelope. I undid the clasp and reached into it. Drew out a sheaf of folded pages. Crouched there, I unfolded them. I looked at the top page. I felt the breath come out of me in a long slow involuntary hiss.

  I was looking at a photograph. Originally from a newspaper, I thought, but it was reprinted on a sheet of standard paper. I recognized the picture instantly. It was an NYPD surveillance shot of Martin Emory—the same photo that had first got me interested in his case. There he was, sitting in a sleek black Mercedes parked at the curb outside the Sutton Place brothel. And there was the driver, barely visible behind the tinted window: a fat woman with a piebald oval of flesh where her face should have been. The ghostly image had been circled with red marker.

  I shuffled the top page to the bottom of the pile and looked at the page beneath. A news story. From the Post. “House of Evil.” I pulled that aside to look at the next page—and as I did, something slipped out from amidst the pages and glided in a swift arc to the floor.

  It was a square of paper. It had landed facedown but I could tell it was an old snapshot. I picked it off the carpet. Turned it over.

  What a bizarre sensation. To see the face in that photograph was as bizarre as anything that had happened to me yet. It was heartbreaking too somehow: the formality of the pose, the child all dressed up in tie and jacket, the smile put on for the camera—but the eyes . . . the eyes lonesome, lost, and sorrowful, helpless in a world of adult cruelty and corruption. The color of the photo had faded to little more than a range of yellows, and the paper was crimped and wrinkled, making the image unclear. But I could see it as well as I needed to.

  I recognized the living image of the ghost child: Alexander.

  My hands were unsteady as I stuffed the picture and papers back into the envelope. I slipped the envelope into my jacket pocket. Then I worked the wainscoting panel back onto the wall.

  I stood up. My phone rang, startling me. I made a face, figuring it must be Grassi again. I pulled the phone out of my pocket with one hand as I flicked off the bedroom lights with the other, getting ready to leave.

  “Champion,” I said. I went into the bathroom and reached for the light switch there as well.

  “In Africa, I learned how to skin a man alive.”

  My hand froze on the switch. My mouth went dry in a finger-snap. A cold sweat started at my temples and at the back of my neck. I remembered that voice—that rasping whisper; how could I forget it? In a flash of memory, I remembered the death-head vanishing into the shadows, that harsh sound trailing after it: I’ll make you beg to die.

  “We’d do it to slaves who tried to escape, mostly,” he went on. “We’d tie them up, still living, in a bag made of their own skin and let the others watch them struggle so they knew not to try to run away. There were always some who would try, but we always caught them. Always, Champion. Every time.”

  I drew a trembling breath as I forced myself to move again. I pulled the switch and shut the bathroom lights off.

  “You sound like a fun guy, Stark. Or maybe like a sick, evil, twisted bastard—I always get those two confused.”

  He laughed. It was a sound I never wanted to hear again.

  I drew my gun. Holding the phone in one hand, the gun in the other, I edged out the door, into the living room.

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Stark said. “Something like that—skinning a man, flaying him—that’s just for show really. To spread fear, you know. The Arabs like that sort of thing. Well, they’re savages, aren’t they? The truth is, if you want to cause pain, just pure pain over a long period of time, you don’t need all that blood and guts. It gets in the way really. It works against you. With the right tools, you can go straight into the brain, neat and clean. Right to the pain centers of the brain. You can keep a man alive indefinitely that way—forever, in effect. You can cause him an agony beyond anything imaginable—forever and ever.”

  I swallowed. It wasn’t easy. It felt like I’d eaten a rock. I moved slowly across the living room, scanning the corners.

  “A more sensitive man might take that as a threat, Stark,” I said. “But I know you’re just making conversation.”

  “You killed my brother.”

  “He was getting on my nerves.”

  “I loved my brother. He was all I loved.”


  “That’s a touching tale. I’m all misty, Stark. No, really.”

  I reached the light switch in the kitchenette. Turned off the light in there. Moved through the debris in the living room to reach the last light switch by the front door.

  “You know what I do now?” Stark rasped. “With all that love, you know what I do? I think about you, Champion. I think about you all the time. I make plans. I plan what I’m going to do to you.”

  “It’s nice to have a hobby. Takes your mind off your troubles.”

  “I’ll be seeing you, Champion.”

  “Why? What do you want, Stark?”

  “Just you.”

  “What’re you looking for?”

  “Just you.”

  “Someone sent you after me. Who was it?” My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Stark said. “That’s over now. Now it’s all about you. You and me. It’s all about what I’m going to do to you.”

  “Was it the Fat Woman? Is she the one who sent you? Aunt Jane—isn’t that what they call her? She’s the one who got your brother killed, Stark. Who is she? What did she send you to find?”

  “Count the minutes till it begins, Champion. That’s all there are now. Minutes. Hours maybe. Not even a full day till it begins. And once it begins, it will go on and on and on. Like hell, a hell on earth. I made a promise to my brother’s soul. Hell won’t be the half of it.”

  Fear set a red burst of rage off inside me. I nearly choked on the words as they sputtered out. “You better hope you get to me, you son of a bitch. You better hope you get to me before I get to you.”

  But nothing came back except that laugh again. That awful sound. Then silence. He was gone.

  Still holding the phone to my ear, I leaned my head against the wall. Then I slowly lowered the phone, lowered my trembling hand to my side. My scalp was clammy with sweat. The back of my shirt stuck to me, damp. I still couldn’t swallow. Mouth too dry. Throat too thick.

  A team of killers after me with orders to bring me alive to that skull-headed monster. And him set on torturing me forever and ever. Not a pleasant situation. Hard to see the sunny side of it.