But it's mostly taking care of old folks. We can give you all the stuff, if you want it, but we don't see anything.'
Mallard looked at Lucas, then at Benson, the assistant AIC, then said,
'Goddamnit,' in a professorial way.
'Tell us,' Lucas said.
'The woman who did it is a pro,' Mallard said.
'She's not very tall – maybe five-three or five-four.
She once lived in St. Louis, or the St. Louis area. She might have a southern accent. She became active about twelve or thirteen years ago, and we think she's killed twenty-seven people, including your Mrs. Allen.
We think she's got some tie with some element – maybe just a single person – in the St. Louis Mafia crowd. And that's wh^t we got. We would really like to get more.'
'Twenty-seven,' Lucas said, impressed. 'Could be more, if she's taken the time to get rid of some of the bodies, or if it took her a while to develop her signature – the silenced pistols, close up. But we're sure it's at least twenty-seven. She does good research, gets the victim alone, kills them and vanishes. We think she does her research to the point where she picks out the precise spot for the murder, in advance…'
'How would you know that?' Black asked.
'Because the caliber of the pistol is always appropriate for the spot. If it's out in the open, it's usually nine millimeter or a. 40. If it's enclosed with concrete, like it was here, and a few other places, it's always a . 22 – you don't want to be in a concrete stairwell with nine millimeter fragments flying around like bees. She uses standard-velocity. 22 hollow points which turn the brain into oatmeal but stay inside the skull, for the most part.'
'That's it? That's what you've got?' Black asked.
'Not quite. We think she drives to the city where the hit takes place. We've torn passenger manifests apart for the airlines, all around the suspect killings, looking for anything that might be a pattern.'
'And nothing,' Black said.
'Oh, no. We found patterns,' Mallard said. 'All kinds of patterns. We just didn't find her pattern. We've looked at several hundred people, and we've got nothing.'
'She always works for pay?' Sherrill asked.
'We don't know what she works for. Some of the hits have been internal Mafia business – but some of them, maybe half, look like straight commercial deals.
We just don't know. Twenty-seven murders, and there's never been a conviction,'
Mallard said. 'There have been a couple of situations in which wives were killed, and we suspect the husband was involved, but there's nothing to go on.
Nothing. In none of the cases was it even remotely possible that the husbands were present for the killing: they were always in some well-documented other place.'
'Can we get your files on her?'
'That's what I'm here for,' Mallard said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a square cardboard envelope, and slid it across the table at Sherrill.
'Duplicate CDs: everything we've got on every case where she's been involved.
Names, dates, techniques, suspects, photographs of everybody and all the crime scenes. The first file is an index.'
'Thanks.'
'Anything you get,' Mallard said. 'No matter how thin it is, please call me. I want this woman.'
Louise Clark decided that she could talk to Carmel only after Hale Allen convinced her it was okay. 'I'm a lawyer, Louise,' Allen said. 'It's all right to talk to Carmel – the cops are just busting our balls.'
'If you're sure,' Clark said anxiously. She was a thin, mousy woman with lank brown hair, a fleshy nose, and nervous, bony hands. 'It's just that the police said…'
Clark did not look like any sex machine Carmel had ever seen; but, she thought to herself, you never know. 'He's sure,' Carmel said abruptly. They were sitting in Denny's, and had been talking for ten minutes and the woman had started whining. Carmel didn't like whiners. She looked at Hale Allen. 'Why don't you take a walk around the block? I want to talk to Louise alone.'
So Hale Allen went for a walk, his hands in the pockets of his light woolen slacks, wearing a great blue- checked sportcoat over a black t-shirt. The coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, and both women watched him as he held the door for a woman coming into the restaurant with a child; the woman said something to Allen, who gave her the great grin, and they had a little conversation in the doorway.
After a few seconds, Allen continued on his way; and Carmel and Louise had their talk.
Carmel had a king-sized bed with two regular pillows and a five-foot-long body pillow that she could wrap her legs around when she slept. Although she told people that she slept nude – all part of the image – she actually slept in an extra-large Jockey t-shirt and boxer shorts. With the shirt loose around her shoulders and her legs wrapped around the pillow, she lay in bed that night and re-ran mousy Louise Clark.
For the most part, Clark's story was the same oF story. She and Allen spent time alone, in their work. They shared a lot of stress. His wife didn't understand him. They developed a relationship based on mutual respect, bla-bla-bla-bla. They fell into bed at the Up North Motel. Then the
Mouse stuck it to Carmel.
'The first time I saw him naked in the motel there, it was afterwards. Really, after we made love, he was just so… beautiful. He's a beautiful man.'Then her eyes flickered, and she added, girl-to-girl, a little giggle, a half- whisper,
'And he's really large. Beautiful and really, really, large. He filled me up.'
Carmel squeezed the pillow between her legs and tried to squeeze the image out of her head. Hale Allen and the Mouse. Large.
The alarm went off at seven o'clock sharp. Carmel pushed out of bed, slow and grumpy, robbed of her usual sound sleep. Large? How large? She scratched her ass, yawned, stretched and headed for the bathroom. A half- hour later, she was drinking her first cup of coffee, eating her second piece of toast, and checking the Star- Tribune for leaks about Allen and Clark, when the phone rang.
'Yes.'
'Miz Loan? This is Bill, downstairs.' Bill was the doorman.
'What?' Still grumpy.
'We got a package for you, says Urgent. I was wondering if we should bring it up.'
'What kind of package?'
'Small one. Feels like… looks like… could be a video tape,' Bill said.
'All right, bring it up.'
Bill brought it up, and Carmel gave him a five-dollar bill and turned the package in her hand as she closed the door. Bill was right: probably a video.
Plain brown wrapping paper. She pulled the paper off, found a note written with a ballpoint pen on notebook paper. All it said was, 'Sorry.'
Carmel frowned, walked the tape to the media room, plugged it into the VHS player, and brought it up.
A woman's image came up, and Carmel recognized it immediately. She was looking at herself, sitting in the now-understandably bright light of Rolando's kitchen, just a little more than a month ago.
The on-screen Carmel was saying, 'Only kind I drink.' And then, 'So you made the call.'
A man's voice off-camera said, 'Yes. And she's still working, and she'll take the job.'
'She? It's a woman?'
'Yeah. I was surprised myself. I never asked, you know, I only knew who to call.
But when I asked, my friend said, 'She.''
'She's gotta be good,' the on-screen Carmel said. The off-screen Carmel decided that the camera must have been in the cupboard, shooting through a partly open door.
'She's good. She has a reputation. Never misses,' the man's voice said. 'Very efficient, very fast. Always from very close range, so there's no mistake.' A man's hand appeared in the picture, with a mug of coffee. Carmel watched her on screen self as she turned it with her fingertips, then picked it up.
'That's what I need,' she said on-screen, and she took a sip of the coffee.
