“BRANDON,” I say, fighting to wipe the darkness from my eyes. I struggle to my feet, staggering toward the cries in the front room of the condo. I find him in the fetal position, blood squirting between his fingers, which are covering his face.
“Tell me where he cut you,” I say.
“My cheek,” he shouts, his voice muffled with his hand. “Help me!”
“Ambulance is coming. Hang on, Brandon, you’ll be okay.” I manage my way back to the kitchen and find a damp rag, resting in the sink. I bring it to Brandon and press it against his face. He tries to sit up, pressing the rag against the wound, blood all over his shirt and the rug. I squat over him, examining him. Looks like it’s just the cheek. Shouldn’t be fatal, but the face has a lot of blood vessels and you bleed like hell. “Keep the pressure on it.”
“Oh, my God,” Brandon mumbles, gripping my sleeve with his free hand. “Oh, my God, thank-thank you.”
“Do you know him?” I sit on the couch near him.
“A-cop,” he manages, spitting the words out, unable to control his breathing.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s gone now, Brandon, okay? You’re safe. This guy was a cop? Or he said he was?”
Brandon nods, his body shivering, both hands now on the rag against his cheek. This guy must have pretended to be a cop. I look back at the door, then around the place.
“He wasn’t wearing gloves,” I say.
“He knew about-he knew about the fa-the-”
From outside the opened front door, I hear footsteps pounding up the staircase.
“He knew about what, Brandon?” I ask, my face close to his. This doesn’t look fatal, but this may be the last chance I get to talk to him. “Brandon, this is important. He knew about-”
“The father,” he says, as two uniformed police officers burst through the door.
33
You DON’T BARGE into the offices of Harland Bentley unannounced,” the commander says. ”Not based on your gut, Detective.”
McDermott grips the phone, looking at Stoletti and shaking his head. It was her call-a good one-to get clearance before bursting in on one of the wealthiest men in the world. If something went south, the governor would hear about it, the mayor would hear about, the commander would hear about it, and McDermott would hear about it.
“Sir, this is about his daughter-”
“I understand what this is about. You can interview him, and you can do it fast. But you set it up. You don’t barge in. You tell him it’s urgent, but you show him every courtesy.”
McDermott stays quiet. He’s afraid of what might come out of his mouth.
“Listen, Mike-you tell me he’s a prime suspect, I give you a different answer. You may be onto something with what you’re telling me. But you might be dead wrong. This might be some psychopath who wants to bring back Terry Burgos’s crusade.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Set it up, Detective. Handle it right.”
The line goes dead.
“Shit.” McDermott hangs up the phone. “Christ on a bike, he wants me to stop a serial killer, but only if I mind my manners. Set it up,” he says to Stoletti. “We have to set it up.”
He checks the message on his cell phone. A call from the morgue. Susan Dobbs returning his call.
“Working late, Susan?” he says when she answers the phone.
“I’m eating dinner, Mike. You called my cell phone. Don’t tell me it was an accident.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“I don’t know why I ever gave you that number.”
“Because you’re a dedicated public servant.”
“You were calling about the Ciancio autopsy?”
“Yeah, it says there was an incision between the-hang on.” He grabs the autopsy report. “A postmortem incision at the base of the fourth and fifth tarsal phalange.”
“Right. The fourth and fifth toes. There’s a web of skin between the fourth and fifth toes. He sliced it. After the guy was dead.”
“Why you think he did that?”
“You’re the cop. But it was deliberate, I’ll say that. You’d have to go out of your way to separate the two toes and make the incision. You don’t do that accidentally.”
She’s right about that. Ciancio was wearing socks when he was found, tortured and murdered. The offender went to the trouble of making that incision after everything else he did to Ciancio and then putting the sock back on.
Deliberate, like Susan Dobbs said. This offender isn’t doing anything by accident. He’s doing everything he wants to do. And he’s doing it well.
PART OF THE JOB. It never goes as planned. You improvise. It’s what makes you good.
The adult video store is boarded up, seemingly abandoned, but Leo knows that it’s open. He pushes through the door, walks past two aisles of magazines and videos, and heads directly to the counter.
The man sitting behind the counter is thick through the neck and shoulders, reading a newspaper and mumbling under his breath.
The man peeks over his paper with disinterested eyes.
The man speaks through the newspaper, still poised over much of his face.
The man directs him down the street, but Leo already knows. The warehouse has no sign, just a single unmarked door along the alley. Leo knocks on it. After several locks are opened, another oversized man, with a belly fighting to get out of a dirty white shirt, opens the door, turns his deeply set eyes past Leo, and lets him in.
He smells bad. Like grease and booze. Booze and grease.
Inside, stolen cars are being stripped for parts. The sounds of the equipment at work echo off the high ceiling. Even with the wide-open space, the smells of body odor and tobacco fill the air. Another reminder of Lefortovo. Men smoked continuously to pass the time. Time was meaningless, but it
