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  ‘We have to catch him first.’

  ‘I have no doubt that you will.’ She looked at Paris with, what? Admiration? Adoration? ‘The man who put Cyrus Webber on death row can catch a little old serial killer.’

  Paris was surprised for a moment. The Webber killings nearly four years old. ‘How do you know about Cyrus Webber? You weren’t even in Cleveland then, were you?’

  ‘I have my ways.’ She finished her coffee, her blue-turned-green eyes rimming the cup. ‘Okay. I googled you. There. I said it.’

  Paris laughed, mainly because he had considered doing the same thing. He tried to shift the conversation back to Diana. He was always a little uncomfortable talking about his accomplishments. Especially with pretty women. ‘So what’s so appealing about a case like this? The chance to put a big-time wacko away?’

  ‘That, and the chance to smash the insanity defense we all know will come when you catch him. It’s what we prosecutors live for, you know. Taking on some sociopath who thinks he can go around doing what he wants.’ She crossed her legs beneath the table, accidentally brushing up against Paris’s leg. He nearly jumped. ‘But personally, I’m not all that interested in the fame. I am interested in clout, however. Clout trades higher.’

  She was a little more ambitious than Paris had thought, but it was sexy-ambitious. It was a kind of single-mindedness that Paris liked to see in himself, in his fellow cops. Goal without greed. Or, at least, obvious greed. He was enchanted.

  The waiter approached their table. ‘Are you Detective Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a phone call for you, sir.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paris said, silently berating himself for turning off his phone. He was on duty, so he had signed out at Fat Fish Blue. He hoped this wasn’t an emergency ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Diana said.

  Paris followed the waiter to the front of the restaurant. He picked up the phone.

  ‘This is Jack Paris.’

  ‘Jack, it’s Tim Murdock.’

  ‘Timmy. Twice in twenty-four hours. You must need some serious bailing. Lay it on me, babe.’

  ‘Got a stiff at the Radisson East you might be interested in.’

  Paris’s heart plummeted. For a moment, his skin broke out in stiff gooseflesh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Female, white, twenties,’ Murdock said.

  Paris felt the bile start to rise. ‘Pretty blonde?’

  Murdock exhaled quickly and Paris had his answer. ‘Not anymore.’ Paris heard some rustling papers. ‘Victim’s name is, let’s see here, Eleanor Catherine Burchfield, age twenty-five. Weapon was probably a knife. Razor maybe. It’s a pretty bad scene though, Jack. Hacked up in the bathroom of one of the empty suites. One of the cleaning crew found her early this morning. Thought it might dovetail with the psycho you’re looking for, you know?’

  Paris was speechless for a moment, his mind reeling, his heart thrumming a little too quickly, a little too loudly in his chest. ‘Is the Plain Dealer on it yet?’

  ‘Cicero’s around here somewhere. His photographer, too.’

  ‘What about TV?’

  ‘No,’ Murdock said. ‘But any minute.’

  Paris had to tell him. ‘It gets better, Timmy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was with her last night.’

  Murdock went silent for a few moments. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Jack?’

  ‘I saw her last night.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘There,’ Paris said. ‘At the Radisson.’

  ‘You knew her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paris said. ‘I mean no. I mean, I just met her last night. I met her at the Radisson to interview her about the multiple. She was a little hesitant at first. She thought she had met our boy and she was too scared to come in. So I met her out there.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘And we did part of the interview. She went out to smoke a cigarette and she never came back. I just figured she bailed on the whole thing.’ Paris flashed on the woman’s face, the way she flicked her hair from around her ear. He had known the woman less than an hour and he was mourning her little ways.

  ‘What time was this?’ Murdock asked.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Why? You have a time of death already, Timmy?’

  ‘Oldest known method,’ Murdock said. ‘Smashed watch. Looks like ten thirty-five. Presumptively speaking, of course.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was with her right around that time.’

  Murdock waited a few beats, out of respect for the twenty years they’d known each other. ‘Get down here, Jack. Room one-eighteen.’

  * * *

  The lobby looked much different in the daylight. Gray-suited men, blue-suited women, all name-tagged, all hustling, all doing some sort of commerce with one another. A suburban hotel in its midday swing. Conferences, meetings, luncheons. Paris wondered how many of these people knew that a woman had been sliced up in one of those tastefully appointed guest rooms. He also wondered if it would matter one bit. As long as all the widgets get sold, why should anyone give a shit?

  When Paris cut short their lunch, he had told Diana Bennett only that duty had called, no details, knowing full well that she would learn of this homicide by the end of the day. They had exchanged phone numbers, made the usual promises.

  Tim Murdock stood on the opposite end of the lobby, folding over his notebook, wrapping up an interview with one of the housekeepers. He noticed Paris with his cop’s third eye and walked leisurely across the quiet carpeting. ‘What a world, eh?’ he said softly.

  Paris said nothing.

  Murdock flipped to a clean page of his notebook, clicked his pen. ‘What happened, Jack?’

  Paris related the details of the previous night, walking the chronology as he remembered it. Even though he anticipated each and every one of the detective’s questions, he let Murdock ask them anyway. It just went a lot more smoothly that way.

  ‘And you left the bar when?’

  ‘Elevenish, I guess.’

  ‘With anybody?’

  ‘Timmy.’

  ‘I’m asking.’

  ‘I can’t do that anymore. I’m an old man. Who the fuck’s going to go home with me anyway?’

  ‘If you’re old, what the hell am I?’

  ‘You’re a perennial, Murdock,’ Paris said. ‘It’s better than being young. But to answer your question, I left alone and I went right home. Thanks for the thought though.’

  ‘All right,’ Murdock said, putting his notebook away. ‘Let’s go in.’

  The arterial spray that had resulted from the woman’s throat being cut had decorated the shower curtain in the bathroom of room 118 to look like a Kmart version of a Japanese mountain scene. Red, snowcapped peaks against a light blue sky. Distant gulls.

  The body had already been taken to the morgue on Adelbert Road and Paris was somewhat relieved to see only the taped outline remaining on the floor, sharp and angular at the base of the toilet bowl. He had not been looking forward to seeing Eleanor Burchfield’s torn flesh scattered about the room after having sat and talked with the woman less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  The blood on the floor had spread to a tortured circle about four feet in diameter and was already brown and sticky. A huge Rorschach on the smooth tile.

  The room, Paris learned, had been vacant, and Nels Morrison had already determined that the electronic lock had been tampered with. The process was a lot easier than most people think, if you know what you’re doing. Electronic locks in modern hotels were by no means tamper-proof.

  Murdock and Paris agreed that whoever had carved up Eleanor Burchfield was either a professional thief or had been partnered with one. They also agreed that the new wrinkle narrowed the investigation considerably. Serial killers rarely came from the ranks of second-story men. And they almost always acted alone.

  I think he may have come in with th
is woman …

  ‘So is this where you tell me not to leave town?’ Paris asked as he and Murdock stood in the doorway.

  ‘Get the fuck outta here,’ Murdock said.

  Edgy tone, Paris thought. Not good. ‘I’m serious, Timmy. I know how this looks.’

  ‘You’re not a fucking suspect, Jack.’ Murdock leaned forward, lowered his voice. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re heading the task-force. This is probably going to be on your desk in twelve hours.’

  13

  THEY DIDN’T TALK about their escapade all week. Nor did the blond wig make another appearance. Andie had put the wig in an empty hatbox on the top shelf of the linen closet and that’s where it stayed.

  Saturday night it had been clear that they were still running on Friday night’s leftover animal energy. Sunday afternoon found them on the floor of the living room, screwing like college students. Andie had put on her cheerleading outfit. It was a little tighter than it had been at Normandy High, but that was just fine with Matt Heller.

  Monday took Matt to Buffalo and a project he was working on for their Port Authority. He spent the night at a Holiday Inn and made a cursory, hands-in-pockets stroll around the parking-lot at two in the morning, glancing at the few windows that were still lit.

  Nothing exciting.

  When he made last call at the hotel’s small lounge, all he could think about was his wife on one of the bar-stools. He went back to his room a little bit buzzed and chock full of lead.

  Wednesday morning, back home, as he absently buttered his English muffin, Andie got a phone call from her sister Celeste. She sat on the counter letting her skirt ride up her thigh as she talked, the lace edge of her slip peeking ever so coyly from beneath the hem, taunting him.

  To his dismay, by the time Matt stepped out of the shower, Andie had already left for work. But she had left him a small billet doux to tide him over until that evening.

  There, on her dressing table, perched on a velvet rostrum, sat the blond wig. Beneath it sat a white tea rose, a lone petal pierced with a ruby earring.

  Enthralled, engorged, Matt Heller turned on his heels and walked back into the bathroom.

  14

  BY EIGHT O’CLOCK Wednesday morning there had been a half-dozen confessions to the killings, spurred on, no doubt, by the Plain Dealer headline that screamed Fourth Victim? next to a rather unflattering picture of Eleanor Burchfield. The usual group of nut-house Napoleons had come in and spilled their guts, but none of them had known enough of the specific details to warrant the task-force following up.

  The truth was, every alley Paris and the task-force had ventured up in the past seventy-two hours – the friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances and casual contacts of the victims – was blind. And for a string of homicides that had produced such copious amounts of human liquid, and thus the potential for a forensic banquet, there was nothing.

  The weight of nothing was becoming unbearable around the sixth floor of the Justice Center.

  At eight forty-five, Paris’s phone rang again.

  ‘Homicide, Paris.’

  ‘I know where to find them,’ a woman’s voice said.

  Paris knew right away that the woman on the phone was using a computer-generated voice-altering device of some sort. It had a soulless sound, flat and electronic. He had become very familiar with such devices when Cyrus Webber, a twenty-eight-year-old Wadsworth, Ohio, schoolteacher responsible for the death of five young girls, had used a small digital processor to make his voice sound younger when he telephoned his victims, claiming to be from their school, asking to meet them at the playground. ‘What do you mean?’ Paris asked.

  Silence for a few moments, then: ‘Look in the backyard. Next to the sandbox. What do you see?’

  Paris should have known. ‘Well, I’m not sure what I see,’ he said, rapidly losing interest. ‘I don’t have my glasses with me. Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to see?’

  ‘Four girls gone,’ the woman said, her voice changing pitch, up and down, as the synthesizer cycled.

  ‘Right. Okay,’ Paris said. ‘Thanks.’ He absently made a note about backyards.

  ‘Four roses cut and laid to rest in long, white boxes.’

  The word sat him upright. The rose tattoo information had not been made public. ‘What about the roses?’ he asked, pressing the record button on the tape machine connected to his phone via an in-line microphone.

  First came the loud hiss of the woman’s voice device, followed by a low, warbling sound. Finally, she said, ‘The one you seek is like the Rose of Jericho, Detective Paris.’

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t you let me have your name and phone number and I’ll call you back in a little bit,’ Paris said, but even before he had finished the sentence, he knew the woman – if it indeed was a woman – had hung up.

  Reuben called at nine-ten. ‘I got good news, I got better news, I got great news,’ he said. ‘How do you want it?’

  ‘Ascending, Reuben,’ Paris said. ‘Always ascending.’

  ‘The good news is that Eleanor Burchfield had a large piece of skin missing. Of course, that isn’t good news for her, but damned if the pattern of the rectangular cut isn’t the same as the other three. I’m positive this is the same cutter, Jack.’

  ‘Do you have the skin?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t found at the scene.’

  ‘Where was it?’ Paris asked. ‘I mean, where was it cut from?’

  ‘It was about two inches wide by four and a half inches long and it came from the back of her neck.’

  Paris had looked for a tattoo on Eleanor Burchfield but of course he hadn’t seen the back of her neck. Her hair was down.

  ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘We have a match on the face powder for the first three. Haven’t gotten to Burchfield yet. Brand called Chaligne. An import of Cinq, Limited.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cinq.’

  ‘How do you spell that?’

  ‘It’s French for the number five, Jack.’ Reuben spelled it for him as Paris erased what he had originally written on his pad: S-o-n-k. Eventually he would also revise his spelling of S-h-a-l-e-e-n for the face powder.

  ‘It’s a moderately expensive powder,’ Reuben continued. ‘But the other stuff is cheap. The lipstick and blush and mascara. Strictly bargain-basement shit, so it’s going to take a while to pin down the formula. Need the feds for that one, though. Anyway, Cinq has a field office in Cleveland, if you want to talk to them or get a client list. Over at Tower City. But there’s no doubt about it. All of these women were made up post-mortem.’

  ‘You’re positive on that?’

  Silence.

  ‘Reuben?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Okay,’ Paris said, moving on, remembering that silence was one of the many endearing ways Reuben Ocasio had of saying, ‘Fuck you, I can do my job, can you do yours?’

  ‘I also found something else on two of the victims’ upper lips that I can almost guarantee they didn’t put on before leaving the house,’ Reuben said, letting Paris off the hook for the moment.

  ‘Lay it on me, babe.’

  ‘Spirit gum.’

  ‘Lay it on me again, babe.’

  ‘Jacquito,’ Reuben said. ‘You are so uncultured.’

  ‘What? I watch PBS.’

  ‘The main use of spirit gum is in the theater. It’s used to keep on beards and eyebrows and sideburns and birthmarks and—’

  ‘Mustaches.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You have something for me, don’t you, Reuben?’

  ‘I would say that we’ve got a psycho in disguise out there. Your boy’s mustache is a phony.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Paris said. ‘Anything available in there?’

  ‘In the spirit gum?’ Reuben asked, incredulous. Ever since DNA testing had begun, cops expected MEs and labs to find it everywhere. ‘I doubt it. But we still may be able to get something anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’
r />   Pause. A long dramatic pause. ‘Got the mustache, Jack.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘It was tangled up in Karen Schallert’s hair. Nobody saw it until last night. We’ll have to send it out, but I think there may be something we can use on the mesh backing.’

  ‘I love you, Reuben.’

  ‘Should I start shopping for a dress?’

  ‘I don’t think you can wear white.’ Paris looked through his doorway, into the common room, and caught Greg Ebersole’s attention. He waved him into his office.

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as I have brand names on the other cosmetics and the details on the mustache,’ Reuben said, clearly pleased with himself. ‘In the meantime, tell your partner that he has won, hands down, the Cocksman of the Year award.’

  ‘Tommy?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you yet?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Connie Maitland – you know Connie, right?’

  ‘Do I know Connie …’

  ‘Yeah, stupid question,’ Reuben said, considering that Connie Maitland, one of the assistant MEs, looked exactly like Anne Hathaway. Everybody in the department wanted to jump her bones so, for Tommy Raposo, it was like a mission. ‘Anyway, Connie’s on third shift last night and she’s walking through the fridge and she sees a light on. She opens the door and there’s Tommy Raposo nosing around a couple of stiffs.’

  ‘What do you mean “nosing”?’

  ‘I guess he had a couple drawers open or something,’ Reuben said. ‘So anyway he tells her that he’s working a case, yak, yak, yak. Connie comes in this morning walking like a penguin and speaking Italian. Kenny Mertenson saw them leave together last night.’

  ‘You’re telling me Tommy bagged Connie Maitland?’

  ‘That’s the way it looks, amigo. The Formaldehyde Princess herself.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘I’ve seen men go to great lengths,’ Reuben said. ‘I’ve gone to a few myself. But over a fucking stiff?’

  Paris said goodbye and hung up, thoroughly envious, once again, of Tommy Raposo’s astounding prowess with women.

  It was that quiet time of the afternoon, that brief corridor between lunch and dinner when the calm before the deluge flattens out into silence on the sixth floor of the Justice Center.