threw the toggle on all three, releasing their metal tongues. The fourth lock was a deadbolt mounted inside the door. There was little Sparco could do about that. He pulled the door shut firmly, setting in place three of the four locks. When, in twenty to forty hours, the body’s decomposition announced itself to neighbors, the police would have to kick the door, splintering and destroying the jamb, perhaps covering up that the dead bolt had not been used.
It was dark out, and bitterly cold, and Wallace Sparco felt the heart of Walter Zeller beating strongly in his chest, as if it were he who had been drugged. He felt none of the remorse that he understood any sane man would feel but stopped short of judging himself insane. Conversely, he took no vain pride in his work-it was something that had to be done, that was all; someone had to dispose of the trash.
Zeller pulled the sweatshirt hood up over Sparco’s baseball cap and gray hair, looking once again like an executioner or a Franciscan priest. He forced himself to walk slowly down the stairs, not wanting to attract attention or to appear a man in a hurry.
Image was everything. An act: one man playing another; one man living, one man dying. A murder turned into suicide.
And Walter Zeller-
CHAPTER 34
Ted Bragg was kneeling by the door to the second-story apartment at 21 Norwich Street. The suicide had been called in at four in the afternoon, and Dart alerted shortly thereafter.
Bragg informed the detective, “A woman in the apartment downstairs smelled him. I’m guessing he’s two days old.”
“Who’s primary?”
“I am,” answered Greg Thompson from behind. “Just interviewed the neighbor. Didn’t see or hear a thing. Just smelled the Jordon is all. Shit like this guy, stinks bad,” he added.
Looking around the room, Bragg said to Thompson, “What we’re going to see, what we’re going to find, is a suicide-a drug overdose. What we’re looking at,” he corrected, “is a homicide.”
Thompson appeared bothered. “Says who?”
“Says the evidence,” Bragg answered. “I think I can show you, but it’s going to require several hours, and everyone coming and going wears shoe covers, hair nets, and gloves.”
“It’ll never happen,” Thompson said.
“That’s the way it’s going to be,” Bragg insisted.
Dart pulled out the piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it. Greenwood’s name was a third of the way down Ginny’s list of men whose medical insurance had been paid for by Roxin. He had written the letters NP alongside Greenwood’s name-No Phone.
For Dart, the room felt dark and cold, the burden of this man’s death weighing on him. For the past two days he had been using this list to try to anticipate Zeller’s next kill. He had interviewed or spoken to six of the list of twenty-four. Dennis Greenwood had no phone, and Dart, not liking the neighborhood, had not traveled out here-not during the night shift. Now Greenwood was dead-though exactly how Zeller might have accomplished this still mystified him.
“The guy had a sheet,” Thompson said to Dart.
“Sex crimes,” Dart said back, glancing over at the dead man’s gray face with its swollen eyes.
Greg Thompson’s jaw dropped. “Now just how in the hell did you know that?”
CHAPTER 35
Dart needed the support of the department if he was to convince Dr. Martinson to suspend her clinical trial, turn over all the names, and then for either Proctor or HPD to provide protection for these men until Zeller was apprehended. Greenwood’s murder confirmed for Dart that this was the only course of action.
Worse, he now needed to break the news of Zeller’s involvement to Haite, convincingly, and yet carefully, without mentioning Zeller’s name, never putting Haite in the position of being required to report Zeller to Internal Affairs and thereby losing control. Until Zeller’s actual arrest, it would be better if he were thought of as Wallace Sparco. That would keep both Internal Affairs and the upper brass out of the investigation. If the pursuit took on task force proportions, Zeller would never be caught. He was far too savvy.
Dart waited outside Christ Church Cathedral, not properly dressed for the cold weather, shifting back and forth on painful feet, nervous, cold, and tense. One of the first Gothic Revival churches built in the New World, the cathedral, with its tall spire shaped of brown stone, was said to have been created to bring the congregation to “heavenly thoughts.” Dart’s thoughts were on a baser level, though he looked skyward and asked for some help.
John Haite winced as he spotted Dart from afar. A man who liked to leave the office at Jennings Road and not bring it home with him, Haite motioned his wife and son inside the church. Coming over to Dart with a determined look, he said, “What’s the meaning of this?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“My son is in his first Thanksgiving pageant. I’m not on duty tonight. I traded with-”
“I know,” Dart interrupted, “but it has to be you. And it can’t wait until tomorrow’s shift. I’m sorry, Sergeant.”
“This is bullshit,” Haite said. “Impossible.”
“There’s been another suicide,” Dart informed him. “Another
Haite glanced around. He waved to a few of the other parents just arriving with their preschoolers. He seemed embarrassed. He whispered angrily, “Nice fucking timing.”
Vespers had just concluded in the chapel, and Dart spotted a priest at a side door. He approached the man, showed him his shield, and asked for a room in private for a few minutes. The priest quickly agreed. Dart waved Haite toward the door, and the sergeant approached reluctantly, apologizing and gesticulating deferentially to the priest, who showed them into a small choir room with rich, dark wood paneling and a lush red carpet. Dart found it interesting to see Haite’s more humble side; he was a more religious man than Dart would have guessed.
Haite was clearly uncomfortable here. A large dark table occupied the center, surrounded by four straight- back chairs. In the main hall, a pianist and guitarist could be heard practicing the program’s children’s songs, including “Old MacDonald’s Farm.” The setting felt surreal.
Dart placed an impatient Haite in one of the chairs and then leaned a shoulder against the paneling, alongside some choir robes on hangers. “We have a difficult situation,” he began.
“We have a psycho who’s killing sex offenders, is what we have,” Haite interjected.
“If it were only so simple,” Dart said, winning the man’s surprise and full attention.
“Go on.”
“I have to be careful how I put this.”
“You have seven minutes,” he said, checking his watch. “Otherwise, we do this little dance tomorrow night.”
“I have a list of names…. You don’t want to know how I came by it. Stapleton, Lawrence, Payne, and tonight’s victim, Greenwood, are all on this list. So are twenty others. I have reason to believe that a similar if not identical list is in the possession of a drug research company located out in Avon. All men. All test subjects for some kind of hormonal therapy-genetic therapy-that I believe is aimed at changing or eliminating their violent behavior toward women. Kind of a Prozac for sex offenders.”
Haite looked as if someone had slapped him across the face, except that both cheeks were bright red. He
