handle.
“Two counts of attempted murder, second degree, two counts criminal use of a firearm, two felony counts assault, one misdemeanor count.” Now Rizzo gave a slight smile. “And what ever else the college boy A.D.A. can find in his penal code Cliff notes.”
Jurgens compressed his lips. “I want a fuckin’ lawyer,” he said. “A lawyer!”
Priscilla took the knife from Rizzo. “Okay, Carl,” she said. “We heard you.”
“What’s that?” Rizzo asked Jurgens, indicating the knife.
The man’s eyes darted to the weapon. “That’s my pocket knife,” he said. “I’m a sportsman.”
Rizzo nodded his head. “Yeah, Carl,” he said, taking the man by the arm and turning toward the door. “We already figured that out.”
As they walked him out, Priscilla began Jurgens’s Miranda warning. “You have the right…”
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS ASTONISHING, REALLY. After all the fear, apprehension, and doubt, all the painful reflection.
The man grunted with satisfaction. Killing, as it had turned out, came easily to him. It was the simple enactment of a well-conceived plan, oddly not unlike any other plan, financial or professional, for instance, one faced as one’s life progressed.
He looked down at the lifeless mass collapsed at his feet. How strange, he thought, that he had never before realized his capacity.
Imagine, to have lived a lifetime within the confines of his own consciousness and not have been aware of such a rich and useful resource-the ability to kill without remorse, without misguided sympathy, without the inconvenience of weakness or moral dilemma.
The man’s satisfaction deepened, and he sighed. It was a relief, really. Now he knew, knew without question, that he was capable of doing it, and what’s more, doing it so very easily.
Thank the devil, he thought, for there remained one more murder to commit.
One more act of self-preservation.
He turned to leave the small, sad basement apartment.
As he stepped out onto the rain-swept, darkened streets of Brooklyn, he scanned his surroundings.
His next murder, his next per for mance, would be in a far more splendid setting. One so more fitting for a man of his position.
JOE RIZZO sat bolt upright in bed, perspiration covering his body, the ghostly musty odor of the old Plymouth radio car distinct and sour in his nostrils, a guttural yelp escaping his throat.
He glanced quickly around the darkened room, saw the red digital alarm on the night table: 6:12 a.m.
His heart racing, Rizzo turned in the darkness toward Jennifer. His sudden, violent movement had awoken her, and he saw her reaching for the bedside lamp to switch it on.
“Joe?” she said. “Joe? Are you okay?”
Rizzo, breathing deeply, willing his heartbeat to slow, extended a gentle hand to his wife.
“Yeah,” he said, more breathlessly than he would have liked. “Yeah, hon, fine. Just a dream. Shut the light, Jen, go back to sleep.”
Jennifer sat up, glancing at the clock. “It’s okay,” she said, studying the near feral, yet bewildered look in his eyes. “I have to get up soon anyway.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again, gently.
Rizzo ran a hand through his hair and managed a smile. He tossed the bedcovers back, away from his body, allowing the cool air of the room to touch his damp skin.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just a friggin’ dream, that’s all.”
Jennifer’s dark eyes reflected warmly in the bedside lighting.
“A
“Was it
Rizzo nodded, using his T-shirt sleeve to clear sweat from his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. Then after a moment, he shook his head in disbelief. “Can you imagine this? With all I’ve seen over the years? The dead babies, the dozens of murders, the burned corpses, the shooting vics, every goddamned thing. All of that, never a nightmare. But that one kid, that one poor kid, still haunting me after all these years.” He shook his head again. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Jennifer shifted her body, facing him more directly.
“Well,” she said, rubbing gently at the knot of muscle in his powerful shoulder. “Like I’ve said before, you were just a kid yourself. Probably the same age she was. And you had just started on the force. An experience like that can stay with you.”
Rizzo reached to his night table for a Nicorette packet. “Yeah,” he said, tearing at the cellophane. “But still. Twenty-seven years later, almost. Enough already.”
Jennifer nodded, unsure of what else to say. “Well, it’s over now. Try to relax.”
Later, as he lay in bed listening to Jennifer’s shower hiss from the master bath, he replayed that long-ago day in his mind for the thousandth time.
It had been his very first morning tour, in the old Seventy-fifth Precinct, on the Brooklyn-Queens border. It was a Sunday morning, just past seven a.m., less than an hour remaining on the tour. His training officer, a twenty-year veteran who had harbored no ambition beyond a sector car patrol, had parked the Plymouth on a wooded, deserted stretch of ser vice road lying north of the Belt Parkway. The cop, Sonny Carusso, sat asleep behind the wheel. “Cooping,” the old-timers had called it back in those days.
Rizzo had watched the skies over Jamaica Bay dawn with a new April morning and now sat struggling with the Sunday
Magically, at the sound of the dispatch, Carusso’s eyes opened. With hooded lids, he glanced first at the radio, then to Rizzo.
“That’s us, kid,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Bad fuckin’ timin’ to be pickin’ up a call.”
Rizzo reached out and took the hand mike, keying it and sending a terse “ten-four” back to dispatch.
Carusso sat up in his seat and slipped the car into gear, wiping the sleep from his eyes with his left hand.
“Write the time on the recorder sheet,” he told Rizzo. “Oh-seven oh-six. And the job location.”
Carusso accelerated harshly, the valve train in the battered Plymouth V-8 rattling with the sudden strain. He raced eastbound along the ser vice road, the car’s red dome light swirling, then slowed sharply, swinging a harsh U-turn and hurling the car onto the westbound entrance ramp of the Belt Parkway.
They reached the scene in moments. Rizzo noted the half dozen autos randomly scattered on the highway, blocking two of its three westbound lanes. Carusso wove the radio car deftly through the crowd of citizens who stood in the roadway, touching the horn rim and sporadically sounding short “wup-wup” siren bursts.
A body lay facedown on the concrete of the highway, straddling the entrance merge and right-hand traffic lanes.
Rizzo hurried to the body, that of a young woman-blond, naked, her body raked with bloody scrape marks. The back of her skull glistened with gray-red slime, the bone crushed, blood and exposed brain matter pulsating with each of her rapid heartbeats, welling from the skull and flowing in meandering rivulets across the pale skin of her neck and back.
Rizzo bent to one knee, his throat constricting, his own heart rate rapidly increasing. He tentatively reached out a hand, unable to bring himself to touch the naked flesh.
“It wasn’t my fault!” he heard someone say, and Rizzo turned to look over his shoulder. A man, about thirty, tall, hair disheveled by the wind blowing across the highway, was imploring Carusso. “She ran out right in front of
