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  Paris glanced up. ‘Anything else?’

  Tommy lifted his hands in surrender. ‘I’m done.’

  ‘Good, then take it around the corner. No mood.’

  Tommy Raposo was the precinct fashion plate, always dressed to the nines. He had been Paris’s partner for only a few months, having transferred from the Akron PD when Paris’s partner of three years, the legendary Dom Tomei, had taken his twenty and headed to Florida. Tommy’s style, to Paris’s taste, was a little too slick, but he seemed to be a damn good detective.

  This day Tommy wore a navy, double-breasted suit, blinding white shirt and maroon jacquard tie. ‘Let me know when you want to hit the street.’ Tommy knocked twice on the desk, left the office. Paris suddenly felt like an asshole for snapping at him.

  ‘Hey G,’ Paris yelled. They called Tommy Raposo ‘G’ for GQ.

  Tommy poked his head around the doorjamb. He hadn’t moved.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The bear claw you owed me, paesan. The first of many. The coffee was, I’m sure, out of the kindness of your heart.’

  ‘Of course.’ Tommy stepped back into Paris’s office and picked at a microscopic piece of lint on his forearm. ‘So how’d it go at the grand jury?’

  ‘Grand jury’s a pain in the ass sometimes,’ Paris said. ‘But they should give the woman who threw that little shit off the roof a fucking medal.’

  ‘You get Diana?’

  ‘Jesus, Tommy. You ever zip that thing away?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘It’s gonna get you in trouble.’

  ‘You think it hasn’t?’

  Paris shook his head.

  ‘What was she wearing?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘She was wearing a bright orange Danskin and black hot pants,’ Paris said, dumping a spoonful of sugar into his cup. ‘She also had on these spike black patent-leather heels and an ankle bracelet made out of puka shells.’

  ‘No hat?’

  ‘Didn’t I mention her hat? She had a silver derby on, too.’

  ‘C’mon, Jack,’ Tommy pleaded. ‘How’d she look?’

  Eventually, Paris caved in and told him, which resulted in Tommy saying that he had to take another serious run at Assistant Prosecutor Diana Bennett. As if bedding half the available women in the department and half the working court reporters in town wasn’t enough, Tommy now wanted to work his way through the prosecutor’s office. Paris felt a needle of jealousy – or was it rivalry? – when Tommy mentioned Diana Bennett in those terms. It was as if he had shared something with her already.

  Tommy walked over to the file cabinets and thumbed through the files in the top drawer. ‘I read the report from last night,’ he finally said. ‘Was it as bad as you wrote it up?’

  ‘Worse,’ Paris said. ‘You know I’m no good with the gory details.’

  ‘Same MO as …’

  So he had put the cases together. ‘Reinhardt?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tommy said. ‘And Mills?’

  ‘Milius.’

  ‘Who caught that case again?’

  ‘Greg.’

  ‘Yeah. I remember the photographs.’

  ‘Let me make a few calls,’ Paris said. ‘Then we’ll go terrorize some citizens, okay?’

  ‘Fuckin’ A.’

  Tommy winked at Paris, straightened his tie, spun in place and strutted down the hall in an exaggerated homeboy roll.

  The man who stepped between Tommy and Paris’s door was built like a Maytag – five eight, thick-waisted, oak-necked. He looked to be in his early sixties but he still held on to a full head of unruly, cloud-white hair. The man stared at Tommy’s back for a few moments, watching him walk down the corridor. Then he said, ‘You keep usin’ that language and I’m gonna kick your ass.’

  Tommy stopped and slowly turned around, a broad smile on his face.

  The two men embraced, talked for a few moments, then turned toward Paris’s office. Paris got up and walked around his desk, sensing an introduction.

  ‘Jack. This is my father, Nick.’ The two men stepped into the office. ‘Pa, Jack Paris. Best nose in the unit.’

  Nick Raposo held out his hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Paris said.

  ‘Likewise,’ Nick answered. ‘Heard a lot about you.’

  ‘You haven’t heard my side of things yet.’

  Nick Raposo laughed.

  ‘So what are you doing downtown?’ Tommy asked Nick.

  ‘Taking Uncle Sal to the VA. Everything’s fucked up with him, all the time. He can’t eat, he can’t piss, he can’t fart, he can’t get it up. You know how he is.’

  Tommy and Paris exchanged a glance.

  ‘So I tell him, “Sal, you’re ninety years old. You’re not supposed to get it up.”’ Nick shook his head. ‘And what the hell is he gettin’ it up for anyway? The guy’s a mess. All the time.’

  ‘Pa,’ Tommy said. ‘Jack doesn’t need to know every detail, you know?’

  ‘You’re right. Anyway, I gotta go,’ Nick said. ‘Sal’s down in the car and he’s probably blowing the horn by now.’

  ‘I’ll walk you down,’ Tommy said. ‘C’mon,’

  ‘Okay,’ Nick said, holding out his hand for a second time. ‘Good to meet you, Jack.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘I’ll be back in ten and we’ll roll,’ Tommy said to Paris.

  Nick and Tommy turned and headed down the hall. By the time they got to the end of the hallway, they ran into Greg Ebersole, and the three of them shared something that resulted in Greg stamping his feet and laughing his high-pitched goat-laugh.

  Paris dialed the coroner’s office, hoping Reuben was still home sleeping and that sweet blond lab tech would pick up. No such luck.

  ‘This is Reuben Ocasio,’ said Reuben’s voice mail. ‘I’m either away from my desk now, on the phone with one of Cleveland’s finest or up to my elbows in somebody’s innards. Leave your message when you hear the beep. Adios.’

  ‘Reuben, Jack Paris. Call me the minute you have the Schallert preliminary.’ He moved to hang up, stopped. ‘Oh yeah, adios.’ He hoped the sarcasm dripped through.

  Paris pulled out the rubber-banded stack of business cards that were in Karen Schallert’s wallet out of a clear-plastic evidence bag. He looked at the top card. Arthur Banks, Investment Counselor. If only it said Arthur Banks, Psycho Fucker, my job would be a lot easier, Paris thought. He flipped the card over. Blank. He flipped it back.

  Did you do it, Artie? Huh? Are you tall and partial to Irish walking-hats? Got a mustache? Were you dumb enough to give her your card, wine her and dine her and screw her, then carve her up like an Easter ham?

  Are you hung like a Shetland pony, Artie?

  Paris got up, pulled the files on Reinhardt and Milius.

  It had been five months since the murder of Emily Reinhardt; three since Maryann Milius. Both were career women. Maryann Milius was twenty-two, a short, trim brunette with a three-year-old daughter, Desiree, who was now living with grandparents. Maryann worked as a teller at the Key Bank branch at Eightieth and Superior, which was located only a mile or so from the Red Valley Inn. Her body was found in an abandoned building on East Fifty-seventh Street, slashed and beaten, a patch of skin removed from her left calf.

  Emily Reinhardt was much taller, blond and willowy. She had worked for an accounting firm at Ninth and Euclid, and as Paris stared at her picture, he wondered how many times she had been part of that rushing herd: flirtatiously coy, handing out her phone number with cautious optimism, swimming her part in the frenzy that is the downtown happy-hour life, never suspecting that one night someone would feed upon her.

  Emily was twenty-four when she was murdered. She was found in a room at the Quality Inn on Euclid Avenue and East Fortieth, her throat cut. She also had a piece of skin missing, this time from her right shoulder blade.

  And now Karen Schallert.

  Hers was the first patch of skin that had been recovered.


  A rose tattoo.

  Side by side, it was obvious. Maryann, Emily, Karen. Six eyes so full of life, so full of promise. The tableau looked not unlike a page out of a yearbook. And that is what made the first domino tumble. It could have been out of a yearbook. A high-school yearbook. Because if there was one thing that leapt out at Paris when the photos sat in a row it was how young the three women looked. Reinhardt was twenty-four but she could have passed for eighteen. Maryann Milius looked sixteen, maybe younger. Karen Schallert might have been a varsity cheerleader.

  Paris made a note to roust the pedophiles, the teen-baiters.

  He also made a note to compile a list of all the tattoo parlors between Toledo and Erie, Pennsylvania.

  Paris was just about to pick up the phone, when it rang.

  ‘Homicide, Paris.’

  ‘Hey Jacquito.’

  ‘Talk to me, Reuben,’ Paris said. ‘Gimme something good.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have much yet. Karen Schallert was drunk. One-five.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Cause of death? Shit, Jack. She stopped breathing and her fucking brain shut down. It’s been twelve hours. You think you got the only stiff in town?’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘I got a drive-by lying here from Central this morning. No face. Legs, arms, chest, shoulders, dick, balls, everything else is there. No fucking face. And Medavoy’s up my ass for cause of death. Can you believe that? How about “no face”? The victim died because he no longer had a face. That’s my ruling. Death by lack of face.’

  Reuben was cooking. Paris tried to jump in. ‘Okay, just give me—’

  ‘To top it off, I got a stack of messages from QB on this Choo Choo asshole.’

  Choo Choo Green was a homeless black man who had died while in police custody three weeks earlier. White police custody. QB stood for Queen Bitch: Ardella Patterson-Jones, Cleveland’s chief prosecutor. Reuben had deposed that the man had choked on his own vomit, but the perennial cop-haters were out in force on this one and wouldn’t let up on the case surrounding the beloved Choo Choo Green, who nobody seemed to give a shit about until he ended up in the newspaper. Patterson-Jones kept whacking the ball back into the coroner’s office. Somehow, somebody was supposed to craft the evidence into something that would support a charge of excessive force at the very least, but there was simply nothing there this time.

  ‘So, you want cause?’ Ocasio continued. ‘How about death? She died. Next case.’

  ‘Jesus, Reuben,’ Paris said. ‘Ease up on the NyQuil there, pal.’ He tried to shift gears. ‘Whenever you get the chance – and there’s no huge rush on this – I’d like to know about her make-up, too. Especially her lipstick. I want to know if it was applied after she was killed.’

  ‘Why does this sound so familiar? You got something, Jack?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Paris said. ‘Check it out and get back to me.’ He paused, then added, ‘And I want to know what she ate and when.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Where she ate would be nice. Who with would help.’

  ‘Reinhardt,’ Ocasio said. ‘And there was another one.’

  ‘Milius,’ Paris said. ‘Maryann Milius.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Pretty girl. Young.’ He paused, formulating. ‘We have a serial, Jack?’

  ‘Not sure. But try and keep it quiet for the moment, okay?’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now I’m interested. Fuck you, Paris.’

  ‘Maybe later, Reuben. But I want dinner and dancing first.’

  ‘Gringa.’

  ‘Call me.’

  He clicked on line three and dialed the number.

  The man who answered was Gunther Reinhardt, Emily’s father.

  ‘Mr Reinhardt, this is Detective John Paris with the Cleveland Police Homicide Unit. I’m the investigator—’

  ‘I remember you quite well, detective,’ the man said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m just fine, sir.’

  ‘Have you caught him?’

  Paris had heard the question a thousand times before, but never, he thought at that moment, quite so clinically put. Reinhardt was a colonel in the Austrian army, long retired. He was not a man who wasted time.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not, Mr Reinhardt. I do have a few more questions for you, though. And I’m afraid they’re kind of delicate. You’ll forgive me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you know if your daughter had any tattoos?’

  ‘Tattoos?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re talking about the skin that was missing from my Emily’s shoulder, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is that why my daughter was murdered, detective? Is that what you’re telling me? Because she had a tattoo?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite that simple.’

  ‘I disapproved of it, of course. Such things. But you see, when Emily’s mother died, I had to raise her myself. Emily was only six. What a job for a soldier to do on his own! She was ordinarily so shy, but sometimes she could be so willful. Tattoos.’

  Paris waited for the man to continue. When he didn’t, Paris moved on. ‘It’s just that we believe the party responsible may be singling out women who—’

  ‘It was roses,’ Reinhardt said softly.

  The word seemed to echo on the phone line. ‘Sir?’

  ‘The tattoo on her shoulder,’ Reinhardt said. ‘It was roses.’

  5

  WHEN HAD HIS voyeurism begun? Watching Judy Minnissale change at the Essex Heights pool? Sixth-grade camp when he spied on the girls’ cabin and saw Darcy Adelman taking a shower? Maybe it was the time he happened upon the couple having sex in the MetroPark, the two thrashing around in the leaves, so fully consumed by their passions that they didn’t hear the twelve-year-old Matty Heller nearly fall off his bike and scramble behind the boulders that surrounded Squire’s Castle?

  As he pulled on to I-90 he concluded that the whole thing had been decided for him long before he realized that anyone else had anything different in their diapers than he did.

  The fact that he liked to watch strangers was one thing. But when had it begun with Andie? When had he started to think about his wife in those terms? They had been married for two years before it had even crossed his mind, and even then he hadn’t dared discuss any of it with her.

  Because Andrea Della Croce had been raised a ‘good-a Catholic-a girl’, as her grandmother would often remind them when they were dating. Which meant, of course, that every chance that Andie got she would screw Matt Heller’s eyes out. Over the years they had tried every position, had played around with a ‘marital aid’ or two, had even made love in their semi-private backyard in Shaker Heights on a few warm summer nights. But for the most part, the kinky things were relegated to the back of Matt Heller’s mind.

  Yet Andie did have her moments.

  Twice they had gone grocery shopping, in a manner of speaking, by driving to a west side Heinen’s. Andrea wore a short skirt and a very thin tank top, while Matt took a separate cart and walked the store behind her, fielding the looks Andie’s perfect legs and soft, pendulous breasts would fetch. Both times, the escapades had heated their sex life for weeks afterward.

  Matt was certain that there wasn’t one of his male friends – single, married, divorced or otherwise – who didn’t envy him, didn’t want to do the Sealy samba with his sexy wife.

  Andrea Heller was a shade over five four and very well proportioned. She had a tiny waist, a Pilates-toned body. Although her hands were petite and young-looking, she rarely painted her nails. This was a cause of great concern for a woman who made her living in the cosmetics business. Her skin was an alabaster white, her hair a rich brunette that complemented the natural red of her lips.

  Of the few times they had gone out to play – mostly when they were out of town, usually nothing more than a casual flirtation in a bar while Matt watched – Andrea’s outfits wer
e planned down to the smallest detail. Like what kind of shoes she wore. How short her skirt should be. Would she wear a slip, hoop earrings, nylons, a bra, jewelry.

  Matt Heller was a pro. A voyeur’s voyeur. In his six years as a civil engineer he had helped design huge multimillion-dollar municipal projects with less attention to detail than a single Andie Heller outfit. But he wanted more. It was time.

  He wanted … what?

  When he rounded the corner and saw his wife standing in the lobby of the Terrace Room Restaurant, wearing a blond wig, he knew.

  For Matt, of course, the fantasy began the moment he saw his wife in the lobby.

  For Andrea, this first time she walked the edge of her own fantasies, it began midway through dinner.

  Their waiter, an Italian-looking kid about twenty-five, couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off Andie. Lots of extra butter for their table. Lots of extra rolls. Gallons of water. Much repartee. Matt could see that the attention was not lost on his wife. Andie seemed to arch her back a little more often when the waiter was around.

  Matt waited for him to leave. ‘Are you flirting to turn me on?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ Andie raised her wine-glass to her lips.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never had a blond wife before.’

  ‘Do you really like it?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Matt whispered. ‘Of course I like it. I’m just a little …’

  ‘Shocked?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Me too.’ Andie laughed and threw her head back, knowing that every man in the restaurant wanted to take her to bed; every woman wanted to be like her.

  While Andie looked around the room, Matt considered his wife. She looked like a different woman. A total stranger. He could have her, even in the car if he wanted to, and he wouldn’t be cheating on Andrea.

  No guilt!

  ‘You know, I’d die if we ran into someone we know,’ she said.

  Matt spoke quickly. No negative thoughts, please. ‘So, what possessed you to do this?’