That snapped Comafield’s eyes right open. “No, you bastard!” He swallowed, and Savich knew the morphine was slurring his brain as well as his speech. “Well, maybe, but I knew she’d never hurt me. Do you know, after her kills, she’d come back to our hotel and she’d always be flying high? She’d want sex and booze, and she’d want to dance and hoot. You know what else she did? She always dressed up like the woman she’d just killed. She liked to play that role as well as play the lead, she’d say. She had all these wigs, and she’d put on the one most like her woman-of-the-hour, she called them. And she’d sometimes let me play the kill and she’d—” His voice faltered.
“Yes?”
“—pretend to strangle me with the wire. But she never really hurt me—” His voice was fading.
“Bruce, were you her acolyte?”
Comafield’s eyes focused on Savich’s face. “Her acolyte? That sounds like I wore a black robe and chanted. No, you’ve got it all wrong, damn you. I didn’t wear robes and chant Latin. I was her rock; I tethered her to the world so she wouldn’t fly off the planet. She needed me. She loved me.”
“Did you love her?’
Comafield whispered, “Oh, yes. She could do what I never could. She was a whirlwind, always racing to catch her daddy. She was doing a countdown. I asked her how many women she had to kill to catch up to her daddy, and she said one hundred. She never told me how she came up with that number.
“Now it doesn’t matter. I won’t ever see her again.” His eyes were suddenly hard on Savich’s face. He whispered, “At least I know she’ll kill you. Wherever she was going, it’s off now, because she’s coming to kill you. Sweet Jesus, I’m going to die and I’ll never see her again.”
“You’re not going to die, Bruce.”
“Yes,” Comafield said very quietly, his voice nearly singsong with the morphine. “I know I am. I feel it. I wish I could see Kirsten just one more time, but I know I can’t.”
And Bruce Comafield turned his head away.
Savich went back to Sherlock’s room, ordered her to stop moving around and lie still, no arguing, and listen. Then he said to her, Coop, and Lucy, “Let me tell you about a very strange and sad couple.”
CHAPTER 47
They spoke to Mr. Ricky Levine, skinny and tall, standing at attention behind the small reception counter of Handler’s Inn. Savich thought he could still be in high school, with the acne on his chin, his belt pulled tight to keep his tan uniform pants up. He was so nervous his hands shook when they introduced themselves. He kept chewing on his lower lip, and had a hard time meeting their eyes. No, he told them, no, really, he didn’t know a Mr. Bruce Comafield. He’d remember a dude saddled with a name like that. He offered to let them see that he wasn’t registered in the computer.
Lucy sidled up to him, all friendly face and sweet smile, so he wouldn’t drop over in a dead faint with Savich and Coop standing over him, that or start babbling nonsense.
“Mr. Levine, who did you give room one-fifty-one to late Monday night?”
Mr. Levine’s nervous fingers worked the computer keyboard. “Here it is—Mr. Cane. He checked in, said his wife was joining him later. Cane—Comafield. I see, that’s pretty close. Well, he seemed like a nice guy—young, you know? Yuppie-looking, had a gold credit card, I saw it in his wallet, even though he used cash to pay for the first night. I remember I asked him how long he was going to stay, and he said two, maybe three, days.”
“How late was it Monday night when he got here?”
“Wow, it was nearly one o’clock in the morning.”
Lucy nodded. So he and Kirsten had driven directly here from New York City. And she started partying the very next night.
Coop kept his mental fingers crossed. “Does the Handler have a policy of getting the license plate number?”
“Yes, we do, but I always go check myself, since guests never know. Mr. Cane drove a light blue Chevy Cobalt. Look here, the number’s by his registration. It’s a Maryland plate, that’s white, with black lettering, CTH six-two-five. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“That’s fantastic, Mr. Levine,” Lucy said and beamed at him.
Coop asked him, “Did you ever see his wife, Mr. Levine?”
Mr. Levine nodded. “They ate breakfast together the past two mornings here in our dining room. I eat when I come on duty, that’s one of my perks, and so I saw them. That’s how I know. She ate a bowl of prunes and a load of muffins. I remember that because she was so skinny and those muffins are loaded with fat. Go figure. As for Mr. Cane, he ate cereal, I believe, and a banana. More healthy. He looked really fit, a sharp dresser. I heard several of the waitresses talking about how cute he was, with his thick hair, and especially in his aviator glasses.”
“How did she look? How was she dressed, Mr. Levine, do you remember?”
“She had long blond hair, real thick, sort of curly, hanging down her back. She was wearing blue jeans and one of those skinny knit tops. That’s how I could tell she was so skinny. I thought it was kind of chilly out for that getup. She looked, well, arty, I guess you could say. She was wearing bloodred lipstick, I remember thinking exactly that, and her face was real white. I think it was makeup.”
Lucy said, “Do you remember anything else about them, Mr. Levine? Anything they did that was out of the ordinary?”
Ricky thought about that, then slowly nodded. “It was the oddest thing. I was doing a double shift last night. I happened to be looking outside and saw him walking to his car. Like I told you, most times I saw him, he was dressed really sharp. But last night he was dressed more like my brother the nerd, you know, down to the black thick-framed glasses, pants too short, showing his white socks, and this crappy tweed jacket? And he had this dorky hat pulled down low over his head. Then she came out; her blond hair was gone, so I knew it was a wig. Now her hair was all short and black, and she was wearing a red blazer. I wondered if they were going to a costume party—” Mr. Levine swallowed, looked like he was going to throw up.
“And what, sir?”
Ricky leaned forward on the counter. “Well, before they left, they came in here to buy some gum, and she looked me right in the face. I’ll tell you, that look of hers was real hinky, and then she licked her lips, like she wanted to stick a fork in me. It scared the bejesus out of me.”
Ricky Levine wasn’t stupid, Coop thought. “Did she say anything to you?”
“No, but when they left to go to their car, she looked back at me, and then she started laughing.”
Lucy said, “Have you been watching the news on TV, Mr. Levine?”
He nodded slowly. “Some, you know, when I get a chance, the way you do when people are always interrupting, with kind of half an ear. Why?”
“Did you hear about the shoot-up last night at the Texas Range Bar and Grill here in Baltimore?”
“Yeah, I heard there was some trouble.” Then Ricky shook his head. “Didn’t hear what happened, though.”
“Did you happen to see a woman’s photo shown on the news?”
This was clearly a stretch, then Ricky said, “Yes, wait, I do remember seeing a woman’s photo on the tube.”
Lucy said, “She’s the same woman who stayed here. She’s Mrs. Cane. She’s Ted Bundy’s daughter, Mr. Levine. If the opportunity arose, she would have stuck a fork in your face.”
Mr. Levine’s fingers went to his cheek. Then he cocked his head to one side, looked at her blankly. “Who’s Ted Bundy?”
Savich was putting out an APB on the blue Chevy Cobalt while they walked down the hall to room 151.
Coop said, “So they stole the car here in Maryland. I hope they didn’t kill anyone.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Lucy said. “I hope it doesn’t occur to Kirsten to steal another car just yet.”
Coop said, “I wonder where Daddy is guiding her steps now?”
