He had blown into town, broke, in 1983. Today he was involved in two $30 million shopping center deals and owned property all over the city. There are guys who have a streak of genius for generating money, and Jackie, I will admit grudgingly, was one of them. He owned an estate in undeveloped Jefferson County, where he lived alone and liked it, and reportedly he was connected to what passes in Denver for the mob. This alone brought him to our attention before we learned that he murdered drunks for a hobby. It was a strange case that way: we knew who the killer was before the first victim was killed. A cop in Santa Monica told us not to be surprised by a sudden rise in derelict deaths. This had happened in California and in Newark, where Jackie lived fifteen years ago. We knew before the fact what Newark knew, what Santa Monica knew, and we still couldn’t stop it and we couldn’t prove it once it had started. It had almost seemed too pat, and we went through a phase of exploring other ideas— the skinhead, the unknown sadist—before we learned, without a doubt, that Jackie was our boy.
In the killing of Harold Brubaker, we’d had a witness. Jesus, you never saw such a beating, our boy had said: this guy has sledgehammers in his fists and what he does with his feet…it’s like something inhuman. The witness was a highly credible young man who had watched from a dark doorway less than ten feet away: a kid working overtime who had stepped out for a smoke and seen it all. It was like Providence was suddenly in our corner. A light had come on and Jackie had looked straight up at it. The kid had seen him clearly, not a doubt in the world. I had the son of a bitch where I wanted him at last. I brought Jackie in and ran him through a lineup. The kid had no trouble picking him out: he was a first-rate witness all the way. I did everything according to Hoyle and the Miranda ruling: the last thing I wanted was for the bastard to slide on tainted evidence or technical bullshit. We threw a protective shield around the witness, for Jackie had friends in slimy places, but what can I say? Things happen… court dates get postponed, his attorneys drag it out, weeks become months, and in all that time there’s bound to be a breach. They got to our boy, and when they were done he had no heart for testifying against anybody. They never put a hand on him, but they sure made him see things their way. He stammered in court, he hesitated, he wasn’t sure… and the case against Jackie Newton went down the drain.
Jackie had been quiet since then: we had scared him with Harold Brubaker and he had been lying low. Now he was starting up again, and I’d bet there’d be another one before long. Success breeds success. There’s nothing worse than a cunning killer who strikes down people he doesn’t know, for no reason other than a blood lust.
I waited until the coroner was finished, then I moved in for a look at the body. They had turned him over, and he lay on the pavement with his arms crossed gently over his chest. He looked like he might get up and walk away. His eyes were closed and he had the unwashed, unshaved look they all had. But there was something different about this one, something vaguely familiar, as if I had known him once, long ago.
“What can you tell us, Georgie?” I said. The coroner, a spectacled man in his fifties, spoke while his assistant looked on.
“It’s a lot like the others, but there are some significant differences. As you can see, the victim is a guttersnipe, body not well nourished, white male, probably mid-thirties, five foot seven inches, hundred fifty, sixty pounds. Murder weapon was a heavy blunt instrument, a pipe wrench or a crescent wrench or some steel tool would be my guess. The victim was hit twice in the center of the rear cranium, once for business and once for good measure. There was no doubt in the mind of the killer what the objective was. I think the first one did it—we’ll know more in the morning. Time of death was within the last three hours.”
“Call came in about one-thirty,” Hennessey said.
“He had probably been dead a little over an hour then,” the coroner said.
I looked at the face of the dead man and again felt that disquieting rumble deep in my brain.
“There’s some evidence he was killed somewhere else, then dumped here,” the coroner said.
“That’s new,” Hennessey said.
“What evidence?” I asked.
“I think there’s a good deal of blood unaccounted for,” the coroner said. “Again, we’ll know more in the morning, but let’s say I’m about eighty percent sure. That pipe really opened his head up. A wound like that will bleed like a geyser, but this one didn’t, or, if it did, where’s the blood? This little puddle’s just leakage, as if the heart had stopped some time prior to his being put here. I think that’s what happened. Somebody did this man in somewhere else, then dropped him here.”
“Any signs of a beating?”
The coroner gave me a look. “You don’t consider this a beating?”
“I mean injuries to other parts of the body… indications that he was beaten severely before he was killed.”
“Nothing so far. Looks like he was hit twice and that’s that.”
I shook my head. “I’ve seen this guy somewhere. I can’t make him.”
Hennessey asked the coroner if they had a name. The coroner looked at his notes and said, “The deceased had no driver’s license. There was a fragment of a social security card. Most of the number had worn away, but we were able to get a name. Robert B. Westfall.”
The name clicked. “Yeah, I know him,” I said. “He’s a bookscout.”
“A what?”
“A guy that hunts for books. That’s where I’ve seen him, selling books in the neighborhood stores.”
“I always heard you were the intellectual type, Janeway,” the coroner said.
“Is that what you hear?” I said dryly.
“It’s a small world, my friend, and the night has a thousand eyes.”
“You’ve been observed reading books again, Clifford,” Hennessey said. “I guess I’m the man of action on this
