Don’t Look Now Page 9

  But the image of Maryann Milius in front of her now – the likeness that soon told Ellie it was not a scarf at all but rather a broad swirl of blood from the gaping wound in her neck – was hideous beyond belief. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound that came forth instead was small and thin.

  A doll’s scream.

  Earline Pender wrapped one leg around the base of the toilet for leverage and bore down with all her strength.

  At the moment the steel slid silently across Ellie’s throat, exposing her trachea to the cornflower-blue bathroom in room 118 at the Radisson East, Eleanor Burchfield looked at her shoes and thought about the day she had bought them.

  Funny, Ellie thought, to think such a thing at such a moment as this.

  Soon she thought nothing at all.

  11

  SAILA GOT BACK into the car and I knew immediately that she had been bad. Her lips were slicked with saliva, her breast heaved, her eyes were rimmed with red and full of fire. Before I could shift into reverse and pull out of the space, she placed her hand on my forearm, and from the strength of her grip, I could tell she was wired. She pulled the release on the side of her seat and slid back, falling into a reclining position, unbuttoning her coat, spreading her legs. Her thighs were perfect in the light that drifted in from the parking-lot. I shut off the engine as Saila ran her left index finger slowly down her thigh, back up.

  She told me the details of what she had done.

  When she was finished, I moved closer. Saila placed her right foot on the dashboard and, with the draining hull of a woman she had cut with a razor lying no more than a hundred feet from where we sat, she took my head in her hands and directed it down between her legs.

  She stroked my hair as I did her bidding.

  Hers. Again.

  Within moments she began to hum a tune, one to which she had been a slave all evening.

  An old song by Peaches and Herb.

  12

  PARIS ASKED THE first person he saw. Black woman, well dressed, early fifties.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you could help me. My cousin Eleanor left the bar about a half-hour ago, and I thought perhaps you could pop into the ladies’ room here and see if she might be in there, see if she’s all right.’

  ‘Sure,’ the woman said, pushing open the door. ‘You say her name’s Eleanor?’

  ‘Yes. Ellie, actually. About this tall, blondish, wearing a light brown cardigan.’

  ‘Hang on,’ the woman said, and disappeared into the ladies’ room.

  Paris leaned up against the wall and looked both ways down the hallway. Empty. The front-desk clerk had told him that Eleanor Burchfield had walked across the lobby, and around the corner toward the ballrooms and convenience lobby. The small alcove, which contained a Coke machine, an ice machine, and a candy machine, along with a tiny gift shop, was empty when Paris glanced in. Whoever had worked behind the counter had closed and shuttered the shop for the evening. His heart had leapt when he saw the deep-red stain on the carpeting, but when he knelt down, he saw that someone had spilled some wine. No bogeyman, no razors, no blood.

  But no Eleanor Burchfield either.

  The door to the ladies’ room opened and the woman came out, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s empty. I even looked in the stalls.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks very much.’

  ‘You’re quite welcome,’ the woman said, and walked toward the lobby.

  Paris made a once-around the first floor, listening at the doors of some of the guest rooms, looking into the pool room and the arcade. She was gone.

  She had seen a real-life cop with a badge and a gun and a notebook and realized that the whole thing just wasn’t worth it.

  Fuck the next victim, right?

  Right, Paris thought as he sauntered back into the lounge, which was now reduced to a handful of only the most desperate of holdouts. There were two women in their forties sitting in one of the booths by the dance-floor. One of them kept looking over at Paris every time she used her hands to make a point to her girlfriend.

  Rita waved Paris over to the bar.

  ‘I remembered something else,’ Rita said.

  Paris said nothing, retrieving his notebook.

  ‘I seem to recall this guy talking to another woman. Over there.’ She gestured to a darkened corner to the right of the dance-floor. ‘Not for long, but I’m pretty sure it was before he and your friend got together.’

  ‘Did they look like they were a couple?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘Young and pretty. Like everyone else. Kind of on the tall side, I think. Although, when you’re five two, everyone’s on the tall side.’ Rita curled a fingerful of hair. ‘But that’s about all I remember. It’s dark in here. Couldn’t even tell you her hair color, which for me is pretty rare.’ She poured coffee into Paris’s cup. ‘Let me think about it. I don’t know why, but I seem to think he may have even come in with this woman.’

  ‘Okay,’ Paris answered, absently tapping his index finger on the edge of the cup. Rita grabbed a bottle of Crown Royal, slid a California shot in the side door of his coffee.

  ‘You know,’ Paris said, tilting the coffee cup to his lips, ‘you are damn good at what you do, you know that?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Tips don’t always show it though.’

  Paris dropped a twenty and his card on the bar. ‘If you think of anything, give me a call. Or just stop down at the station when you have time and we’ll hook you up with the police artist.’

  ‘Okay, captain,’ Rita said, saluting. ‘Be careful out there.’

  Paris pulled out onto the boulevard, functioning on autopilot. All he wanted was a good night’s sleep and a big, fat lead.

  When he turned right, onto Lee Road, he didn’t notice the white BMW that made the turn behind him.

  Paris got to the office at just after eight am. He dialed Eleanor Burchfield’s number at eight forty-five, but there was no answer. Nor was there voicemail.

  The storefront window at 1190 East 185th Street held an intricate web of neon lighting which, from the other side of the street, could be deciphered as the slogan for the Ultimate Line Tattoo Company, Inc. ‘From Roses to Dragons!’ it exclaimed in pink and blue tubing.

  Inside, the counter area was small, crammed even tighter with wobbly plastic chairs and charity gumball machines. The man who stepped through the soiled red curtains separating the reception area from the parlors was forty, bearded, wearing a sleeveless denim jacket and well-travelled Levi’s.

  ‘My name is Detective Raposo. This is Detective Paris. We’re with the Cleveland Police Homicide Unit,’ Tommy said, flashing his shield.

  ‘Homicide,’ the man said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘And your name?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Chuck Vasko.’

  ‘Mr Vasko,’ Tommy continued, ‘we’d like to ask you a few questions in regard to a homicide we’re investigating.’ He placed the suspect sketch on the counter-top. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

  Vasko looked at the sketch. ‘That’s the guy from the newspaper,’ he said. ‘This is the guy who’s killing those women, right?’

  Paris saw a thin, paste-white woman peer out from between the curtains. She was mid-twenties, holding an infant in her arms.

  ‘Do you recognize him, Mr Vasko?’

  ‘Only from the newspaper. I mean, he’s not a customer, if that’s what you’re asking. Does he have a tattoo?’

  Paris stepped forward. ‘If you don’t mind, could you let Detective Raposo ask the questions for the time being?’

  ‘No problem, boss man.’

  He’s done some time, Paris thought. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Do you do a lot of rose tattooing, Mr Vasko?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Oh yeah. Very popular,’ Vasko said. ‘In fact, our motto is—’

  ‘Yeah, we caught it on the way in,’ Tommy said. �
�Mr Vasko, what kind of people get rose tattoos?’

  ‘Well, women, of course.’

  ‘Young women?’

  ‘Absolutely. Teenagers too. Then of course, there’s your occasional, you know, freak.’

  ‘Freak?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, guy comes in, a little pervy-lookin’, wants a tattoo of a rose on his dick, his ass, his balls. I do ’em. Can’t say I enjoy ’em, but I do ’em. On the other hand, I sure as hell ain’t gonna let my wife handle it.’ Chuck Vasko let out a loud snort of laughter and uncovered a thick row of uneven yellow teeth.

  ‘Do you keep records of everyone who gets a tattoo here?’ Tommy asked, once the man had composed himself.

  ‘Some,’ Vasko said. ‘But this is mostly a cash business, as you might imagine. Tattoos are a strange thing, gentlemen. People get ’em, but then they don’t want anyone to know they have ’em.’

  ‘Who has access to your customer list?’

  ‘Just me and my wife,’ Vasko said. ‘Me ’n’ Dottie.’

  Paris looked at the skinny woman and the fat baby in the doorway and tugged once on Tommy’s coatsleeve.

  They were wasting their time with the Vaskos.

  The two detectives spent the remainder of the morning talking to Karen Schallert’s mother, Delores, in the woman’s two-bedroom ranch in Parma Heights. They learned that Karen had had a long relationship with a man named Joseph Turek, an airline mechanic, but the affair had ended nearly two years earlier over a slight difference of opinion regarding Mr Turek’s avocation of hydroponic pot growing. A quick check revealed that Joseph Turek had died in an automobile crash in January.

  Karen, Delores Schallert told them, had been a lot more involved in community work in recent days than she had been with men. But Delores also said that once in a while, maybe four or five times a year, Karen would let her hair down and go out to bars with one of her girlfriends. Or sometimes, over the strenuous objections of her widowed mother, on her own.

  Delores Schallert gave them a recent photograph of Karen, the same one that had run in the Plain Dealer, and as they rose to leave, Paris scanned the collage of framed pictures on the wall over the couch. There, above the cream and brown afghan, were photographs of the toothless baby Karen Schallert, the high-school Karen, the college Karen, the career-girl Karen, all grown up now, handing an oversized check to a grayhaired man in front of the United Way building.

  As he stepped into the bright sunlight and raised his sunglasses to the assault, Paris thought of the pictures over his own couch.

  They grabbed a coffee at The Cup on Brookpark, and Paris tried once again to contact Eleanor Burchfield, with no success. He also had her paged at Lake West Hospital, but was told she wasn’t answering. Thanks to the thousands of orange barrels that made four lanes magically turn into one on I-480, Paris didn’t arrive at his desk until noon.

  As soon as he sat down – a pile of message slips on his desk, the coffee starting its march uphill – the phone rang. He debated on whether or not to let his voice mail get it, but he remembered that he was in demand now. He was management. He picked it up on the third ring.

  ‘Homicide.’

  ‘Detective Paris?’

  He couldn’t believe it. It sounded like Diana Bennett. ‘As charged,’ he said, wincing, instantly regretting it.

  ‘This is Diana Bennett. How are you?’

  Paris felt like he had a water balloon between his neck and his collar. ‘I’m just fine, thanks.’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that the grand jury voted not to indict Marcella Lorca-Vasquez.’

  ‘No kidding? Something I said?’

  Diana laughed. ‘Maybe. You were awfully persuasive.’

  ‘Yeah, but I was the one supposedly bringing evidence against her.’

  ‘Albeit reluctantly.’

  She had him pegged. ‘That obvious, huh?’

  ‘I can always spot a softie. Especially when I get him on the stand.’

  Was she flirting with him? Amazing! And Rita the Barmaid from last night too? Maybe this side of forty wasn’t so bad after all. ‘She probably did it, you know,’ Paris said.

  ‘I’d hate to think so, detective. That would mean that neither of us did our job properly. And that would mean that we’re taking our money under false pretenses.’

  ‘Speaking of false pretenses,’ Paris said, feeling a little of the old Paris charm returning. ‘Would it be terribly out of line if I asked you to have lunch with me today?’ He closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.

  ‘Lunch would be lovely.’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ she echoed.

  ‘Okay. Am I supposed to pick the restaurant?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ Diana began. ‘I have that handbook right here.’ Paris heard the sound of rustling paper. He smiled. ‘Yep, here it is, you pick the restaurant and I pay. For dinner it’s exactly the opposite. Of course, if one of us cooks, it complicates matters geometrically. Wine, flowers, dessert – stuff like that.’

  ‘Okay, how about Fat Fish Blue?’

  ‘That will be fine,’ Diana said. ‘One o’clock?’

  ‘Who says you get to be in charge of the time?’

  Diana laughed. ‘See you at one, Detective Paris.’

  She hung up.

  Diana Bennett, Paris thought. Tommy was going to fucking kill him.

  And he would love every minute of it.

  She was already at the table and cruising a menu when Paris arrived. He was ten minutes late.

  ‘Ms Bennett,’ he said awkwardly, extending his hand. ‘Nice to see you again.’ They shook and Paris immediately noticed how smooth her hands were. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Diana Bennett wore a conservative navy-blue belted dress. Her hair was pulled back. She wore no jewelry. ‘I’m on the same clock, Detective Paris. I know how it goes.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Paris began, seating himself opposite her and placing the napkin on his lap, ‘should I say it or do you want to?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Okay.’ He cleared his throat and sat up straight. ‘Please, call me Jack.’

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘Good,’ Paris said. ‘I’m glad we got that out of the way.’ He opened his menu. ‘And in the words of Woody Allen—’

  ‘“Now we can digest our food,”’ Diana said, offering the rest of the line from Annie Hall, one of Paris’s favorite movies of all time. In fact, the film was in his DVD player at home. He was impressed.

  Their waiter brought water and rolls, took their orders.

  They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, buttering their bread, sipping water, straightening themselves in their chairs, sensing each other’s sexual presence. Finally, Paris spoke. ‘So you think I soft-pedaled my testimony?’ he asked, not really knowing what else to talk about.

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ Diana said. ‘No one’s going to accuse you of trying to railroad Mrs Lorca-Vasquez.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I wanted to do, believe me.’

  Diana leaned forward and fixed Paris with a slight arch of an eyebrow. He noticed that her eyes were no longer the ice blue of the other day, but now a deep forest-green. The magic of contact lenses.

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ Diana asked, almost whispering.

  ‘I’m a cop,’ Paris said. ‘So I guess the answer would be no.’

  ‘I didn’t press too hard on this one myself.’

  Paris smiled. ‘And you think that’s a secret?’

  ‘That obvious, huh?’ She leaned back as the waiter brought their plates. When he left, Diana added, ‘I just don’t know how deeply the world is supposed to mourn the loss of one more gang-banger, you know?’

  ‘Amen,’ Paris replied.

  The conversation flowed easily as they ate their lunch. Caesar salad for her, burger with blue cheese for him. By the time they were served their coffee, Paris had learned Diana’s story: thirty-two, never married, no children, born in Norwalk, Ohi
o, where her mother still lived. An only child. She had been with the prosecutor’s office for six months; before that, three years with the Summit County office. There was no current boyfriend because she had had her fill of lawyers, and that’s about all she ever met anymore. Except for criminals.

  And, she confessed, the line was getting increasingly blurred between the two. So she had decided to drop out for a while.

  ‘And what about you?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Not much to tell, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Tell me anyway,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m a prosecutor. We need all the evidence we can get.’

  Paris gave Diana the Cliff’s Notes version of his life. Born and raised on the near west side of Cleveland, graduated St Ed’s, four years at John Carroll University. Father passed away when he was sixteen. Cop, married, divorced, one incredible daughter: his life.

  Diana seemed genuinely interested. ‘Do you have a picture?’

  ‘You want to see a picture of my ex-wife?’

  ‘Smartass,’ she said. ‘Melissa.’

  ‘You kidding?’ Paris said, producing Melissa’s sixth-grade school picture in less than three seconds.

  ‘She’s beautiful, Jack.’ She studied the photograph intently before handing it back.

  ‘Thanks.’ It sounded like she really meant it, and Paris liked that. ‘So,’ he said, replacing Missy’s picture in his wallet, wondering if he was about to blow it, ‘what made you say yes to lunch with an old flatfoot like me?’

  ‘Oh,’ Diana said, ‘I figured you were going to ask me out the day of the grand jury. But no such luck.’ She smiled again. ‘So a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? Besides, you’re going to be famous when you catch this psycho.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I wanted to be able to say, “I knew you when.”’

  Paris ran his hands through his hair like he always did when a woman gave him a compliment. ‘Well, it’s going to be a team effort, I assure you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind making the team myself.’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean I would love to prosecute this guy. Everybody in the office is drooling over it. It’s all that anybody’s talked about for the last three days.’