He flopped and strained against the chains and grunted, and she shook her head: “No, no, no. No negotiation. We’d just waste more time screwing around. So I’ll drill first.”
And she did it. He bucked against her, but with his neck and feet tightly chained, was unable to move enough to lose her. She rode his legs, and with brutal efficiency drove the drill bit through his kneecap, the drill whining and sputtering, bringing up flakes of white bone, and black blood, driving it in until the drill chuck touched his jeans. Rolo bucked against it, his screams muffled by the tape; at the end, with the drill silent, he made an eerie dying-animal sound, a high keening groan. Across the room, Rinker turned away, finally walking to the living room, where she sat down on a chair and put her hands over her ears.
When the drill bit had gone in as far as it would go, Carmel wiggled it, and said, “Feel good, fucker? Feel good? Tape is in the bank? What a crock of shit . . .” A little spot of white saliva appeared at one corner of Carmel’s mouth; Rolo fainted.
“N OW, YOU PROBABLY think I’m just gonna take the tape off and ask you again; but I’m not gonna,” Carmel said, conversationally, when he was conscious again. “I’m gonna drill a hole in your other knee, instead.”
And she did it all over again, Rolo strangling himself on the chain, kicking his heels, Carmel riding his legs.
Then, “You know what I bet would really hurt? A hole in your heels.”
And she drilled a hole through both of his heels, taking her time, developing a technique. Halfway through the first heel, Rolo fainted again; and again, halfway through the second.
“Get me some ice cubes out of the sink,” Carmel called to Rinker. “If there are any left.”
There were a few, and Carmel dumped a bowl of ice water and cubes on Rolo’s face. A minute later, his eyes flickered open.
Carmel said, “A guy like you, you know what would really hurt? What would hurt a lot?” Her fingers went to his belt line and she unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and started to drag them down. Rolo lay limp, unresisting. Carmel got his pants down on his thighs and then the animal keening began again, and Carmel stopped and said, “What? You don’t want me to drill out your dick? I’d be happy to do it.”
He went, “Uh-uh, uh-uh,” and Carmel asked, “Are you gonna tell us where the tape really is?”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh.”
Carmel pulled the tape off his face and he turned toward her, his eyes glazed, and groaned. “I’m dying,” he said. “My heart busted.”
“Look, if you’re gonna bullshit us, I’ll put the tape back on and start the drill again. I could do this all night.”
“Tape’s in the car,” Rolo said. “In with the spare.”
Carmel looked at Rinker and she said, “Oh, shit. How could we be that stupid?”
“I’ll go get it,” Rinker said. “You’ve got some blood . . .” Carmel looked down at her blouse: the droplets of blood looked like fine embroidery.
Rinker went out; another nice evening. She could hear music playing up the block, through an open window somewhere. She stopped to listen, but couldn’t identify the music, then went to Rolo’s car, popped the trunk and pulled the cover off the limited-use spare. The tape was tucked behind it. She looked at it, weighed it in her hands, sighed and went back inside.
“Get it?” Carmel asked.
“Got a tape,” Rinker said. She pushed it into the VCR. The picture came up immediately, and Carmel came to watch.
“Good light,” Rinker grunted.
“He had all the windows open. That’s another thing I should have noticed. He’s not an open-windows guy.”
“Boy . . .” Rinker said as the tape wound out. “You were gone, if the cops got this.”
“That’s why I had to get it back,” Carmel said.
“You think this is it?” Rinker asked.
“I don’t know. I could go drill him some more,” Carmel said.
Rinker looked toward the bedroom. “He looked pretty rough in there . . . I don’t think he could take any more, and I don’t think we’ll get any more out of him. More’n what we’ve got.”
“So we gotta call it,” Carmel said.
“It’s your face on the tape.”
Carmel looked at the bedroom door for a moment, then said, “All right. We’re done. If there’s a copy, we’ll have to deal with it later. But I think we’re still gonna have to kill him. After the drill, he might be so pissed he’d go to the cops.”
“You wanna do it?” Rinker asked. “I mean, you yourself?”
“Sure. If you want,” Carmel said.
“Not if you’d feel bad,” Rinker said.
“No, no, I don’t think I would, not really,” Carmel said. “What do I do?”
Rinker explained as they went back into the kitchen. Rolo saw them coming with the gun and didn’t bother to struggle. “See you in hell,” he said.
“There’s nothing as silly as hell,” Carmel said. “Don’t you know that yet?” And then, to Rinker, “What, I just put it at his head, and pull the trigger?”
“Easy as that.”
Rolo turned his head away, and Carmel put the muzzle of the pistol at his temple and then waited a few seconds.
“Do it,” Rolo said.
“Made you sweat, didn’t I?” Carmel asked. Rolo started to turn his head back; a little hope? She could see it in his eyes.
Carmel shot him six times; then the bullets ran out.
RINKER AND CARMEL spent another ten minutes in the house, closing up, obscuring anything that might even theoretically provide evidence against them.
“We can drop the guns in the Mississippi—I know a good spot down by the dam,” Carmel said.
“And burn the tape,” Rinker said.
“As soon as we get back to my place. We oughta go back to my place and change, and get rid of these clothes, and get showered off and everything.”
“Maybe we could go out someplace tonight,” Rinker said. “My plane isn’t until the day after tomorrow.”
“That’d be fun,” Carmel said. “Maybe we could rent a movie or . . .”
She stopped in midsentence, looking back at the kitchen. “What?” Rinker asked.
Without answering, Carmel went back to the kitchen, squatted next to the video camera that Rinker had tossed on the floor. Touched it, turned it over.
“What?” Rinker asked again.
“That fuckin’ Rolo. This camera is a VHS-C. This tape . . .” She held up the tape they’d found. “This tape is a full-sized VHS tape. If you were making a copy using your cheap-ass VCR and the camera, this is what you’d use to pick up the copy. So there’s another tape—a VHS-C.”
“You’re sure?” Rinker asked.
“Look,” Carmel said. She picked up the camera, turned it over, opened the cartridge compartment. The tape they had was at least twice as big as the compartment.
“Bad news,” Rinker said.
Carmel glanced at her, sideways and quickly: if Rinker were to shoot her now, at least all of Rinker’s troubles would be over. She could walk away and not have to worry at all.
“You worry too much,” Rinker said.
“I anticipate,” Carmel said. She looked at Rinker. “Let’s get back to my place. Do you still have those address books?”
“Yeah.”
“And let’s get his wallet and the phone book and whatever else that might have names in it . . . I’ve got to think about this.”
“You don’t think it’s in a safe-deposit box?”
“He’s a drug dealer. He’d never have a safe-deposit box, not under his own name, anyway. We didn’t find any fake IDs that he could use to get to a box under a different name, and we didn’t find any keys. I suspect he did what drug dealers usually do: he left it with somebody he trusts.”
“Like who?”
“Like a lawyer. Except that I’m his lawyer. He could have another one, I suppose; I can find out. But he’s a spic, so it’s probably a relative. Anyway, we??
?ve got to do some research. In a hurry . . .”
“I’ll cancel my plane ticket,” Rinker said. “I guess we keep the guns.”
• • •
ON THE WAY back to Carmel’s, Rinker glanced at her and asked, “How much did you enjoy that? Back there?”
Carmel started to answer, then changed directions and asked a question of her own: “Have you been to school? To college?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Really? I didn’t think . . . you know.”
“Professional killer and all,” Rinker said.
“Yeah.” Carmel nodded. “What’d you major in?”
“Psychology. Actually, I’m about eight credits away from my B.A. I should have it finished next spring.”
“Good school?”
“Okay school.”
“But you’re not going to tell me which.”
“Well . . .”
“That’s okay,” Carmel said. “Anyway, I did sort of enjoy it, just a little bit, maybe. Whether I did or not, he had to go.”
“You enjoyed it just a little bit? Maybe?”
“Didn’t you?” Carmel asked.
“No. I couldn’t stand that sound he was making. That smell when he . . . you know. I didn’t like it at all.”
Now Carmel took her eyes off the road for a moment, to look at Rinker. “Don’t worry, I’m just a sociopath. Like you. I’m not a psychopath or anything.”
“How do you know I’m not a psychopath?”
“From what Rolo told me—what he’d heard about you. Quiet, professional, clean. You do it because you can, and because you can make money at it, and because you’re good at it; not because you have some slobbering lust to kill people.”
“Slobbering lust?”
“Listen, I’ve handled a couple of cases . . .”
Carmel had Rinker laughing by the time they got back to her place. And as they got out of the car, Rinker looked at her over the roof and said, “Wichita State.”
“What?”
“That’s where I go to school.”
Carmel had the sense that Rinker had told her something important. After a few moments, she realized that she had. She’d told Carmel where she could be found.
Where home was.
SIX
Three St. Paul cop cars and a crime-scene van were parked outside the Frogtown house when Lucas arrived. Up and down the street, people sat on their short wooden stoops, looking down at Rolo’s house, watching the cops come and go. Lucas parked, climbed out of the Porsche and started toward the house. A St. Paul uniformed cop saw him coming and squared off to stop him, but a plainclothes cop stuck his head out the door and yelled, “Hey, Dick. Let that guy in.”
“You’re in,” Dick said, and Lucas nodded and went up the steps. Sherrill was standing just inside the door. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed Madonna in a crisp yellow blouse, with a gray skirt in place of her usual slacks, and a black silk jacket to cover the .357 she carried under her arm.
“All dressed up,” Lucas said.
“A girl’s gotta do what she can, if she wants to catch a guy,” Sherrill said, batting her eyes at him.
“Too early in the morning for bullshit,” Lucas muttered. He looked past her into the house, which had been ransacked. “What’s going on?”
“Come look. You’ll like it.”
“Too early,” Lucas said again. But he went to look.
A St. Paul homicide cop named LeMaster showed him the body on the bed, chain around the neck, ankles and hands, pants pulled down around the thighs. “One of the neighborhood junkies found him. About two hours ago—he came by looking for a wake-me-up. The dead guy used to be a big-time dealer.”
“No more?”
LeMaster shook his head: “He got his nose in it. Lately, he’s been down to selling eight-balls.”
“Ain’t that the way of the world,” Lucas said. “One day it’s kilos, the next day, it’s one toot at a time.” He kept his hands in his pockets as he squatted next to the bed: “Bunch of twenty-twos in the head.”
“Yup. Could be your Barbara Allen killer. Or could be somebody who read about it in the paper and liked the sound of it.”
Lucas nodded and stood up, scratched his nose and looked at the still-damp pools of blood around the body’s feet and knees. “What’s all the blood from? And what’s his name?”
“Rolando D’Aquila was his name; everybody called him Rolo. And the blood comes from some drill holes in his kneecaps and his heels. And his leg was bleeding from what might be a gunshot wound . . .”
“Drill holes in his heels?”
“Yeah—look at this.” The drill was lying on the floor at the end of the bed, three inches of stainless-steel drill bit sticking out of the chuck. Dried blood mottled the steel bit.
“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said. He looked back at the body. “They drilled him?”
“Looks like. Gotta get his pants and socks off to know for sure, and the ME’s guy hasn’t been here yet . . . but that’s what it looks like.”
“Bet that hurt,” Lucas said, looking at Rolo’s face. His face looked compressed, leathery, like a shrunken head Lucas had seen on television. He looked hurt.
“See the pieces of duct tape on the floor? You can still see what look like chew marks on some of it. They probably taped up his mouth while they drilled him.”
“And the house was all torn up, so they were probably looking for something,” Lucas said. “Like cocaine.”
“Yeah, but, boy—the gunshots in the head, all together like that, just like in the Allen case. None of the neighbors heard anything—and there are a lot of windows open these hot nights. Just like nobody heard anything with Allen. And the way they tortured him, it all looks professional. They had the tape and the chains and the padlocks and the drill— they knew what they were gonna do before they got here. It looks professional; like Allen.”
“You keep saying ‘they,’” Lucas said.
“I can’t figure out how one guy could get him on the bed and get him all locked up like that. Had to be awkward. The way I see it, there had to be one to hold a gun on him, and at least one more to do the chains.”
“Get the slugs to the lab—they need to do a metallurgical-analysis. If they’re like the slugs in the Allen shooting, they’ll be so bent up that they’re just about useless for trying to match by the land marks.”
“We’ll push it through,” LeMaster cop said. “If they’re the same . . .”
“Gonna be trouble,” Lucas said.
SHERRILL WAS THUMBING through a men’s magazine when Lucas picked his way through the trashed living room. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think this magazine is gay,” she said. “It’s basically a gear catalog, overlaid with pictures of guys who are gay.”
“You can tell from a picture?”
“Sure. Look at this guy.” She showed him a photo of a slender, shirtless, sweat-covered biker with a shock of dark hair falling carefully over his moody black eyes. “He’s either gay, or he wants you to think he is. They’re all like that. Mountain climbers, canoeists . . . and look at the clothes. You see a guy walking along the street dressed like this and you say . . .”
“I coulda looked like that when I was a kid,” Lucas said.
She made a face, rolled her eyes up: “Lucas, believe me, you did not look like this. He looks like he’s been hurt by somebody. They all look like they’ve been hurt by somebody. Look at the bruised lips. You, on the other hand, always look like you just got back from hurting somebody else. Like a woman.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“No charge.”
“I just don’t think you can make that judgment based on a picture.”
She looked at him closely, then smiled and said, “Ah. I get it. You’ve been reading the Wholeness Report, or the Wellness Thing, or whatever it is. The Otherness Report. You gotta stop reading that shit, it’s putting holes in your brain.”
“Yeah, it’s . . . I don’t
know. But listen, what do you think about this?” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Copycat? Coincidence? I haven’t been that much on top of it.”
“Not a copycat, I don’t think. We didn’t give the details to the papers—we didn’t tell them it was a twenty-two, we didn’t tell them that the shots were all grouped like that, we didn’t tell them how close it was. You see the same tattooing on the scalp. And it was cold.”
“Nobody colder’n a wholesaler who’s trying to make a point,” Lucas said. “Maybe he held out on somebody, was trying to get back into the big deals.”
“Sure, but it’s not just the coldness. It’s all the other stuff that goes with it. It just doesn’t seem like a copycat.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Lucas said, then admitted, “But it’d be a pretty amazing coincidence.”
“You know the rule on coincidences.” “Yeah: It’s probably a coincidence unless it can’t be. ” “You gonna jump in now?” She grinned at him. “Come on. We haven’t worked together since old Audrey McDonald tried to take us off.”
“We have spoken a few times, though.”
“Is that what you call it?” She was teasing him.
“I’m thinking of getting in, if you and Black don’t mind,” Lucas said. “The Otherness Commission is driving me nuts. This would give me an excuse . . .”
“Glad to have you,” Sherrill said. “That’s why I invited you over.”
“The first thing we gotta do,” Lucas said, “is we gotta get that lawyer in—Allen—and bust his balls a little. Does he know Rolando whatever-his-name-is? Does he use cocaine? Has he ever?”
“His attorney’ll be on us like a chicken on a June bug.”
“Like a what?”
“A chicken on a June bug,” Sherrill said.
“Jesus, I’d almost forgotten about talking to you,” Lucas said. “Anyway, don’t worry about Carmel. I can handle Carmel.”
“THE QUESTION,” Carmel said as Rinker bent over a display case at Neiman Marcus and peered at the Hermès scarves, “is whether whoever has it will look at it, and if he looks at it, if he’ll come to me, or go to the cops.”