Claimed there was a broken lock in the basement?'
'Yeah,' Lee answered. 'It turned out there was a broken lock, but no one seemed to know about it at the time.'
'You think that was him, coming in to check on his handiwork?'
'I think it's likely. He's been close to the investigation all along, it seems, in one form or another.'
'Too bad we didn't detain him for questioning then.'
'How could we know?'
'Yeah,' Butts said. 'I guess you're right. Still, it really burns me that he was right there-'
'Never mind, Detective,' Chuck Morton said. 'Let's concentrate on the task at hand.'
They sat for about twenty minutes, dutifully collecting names and addresses of owners, when Lee chanced to put in a call to a place called Locktight Security Systems. It had a big ad splashed over half a page in the Yellow Pages.
We make sure that you stay safe-it's our business! All the latest technology in locks and security systems
Lee dialed the number. A kid answered-unenthusiastic, bored.
'Locktight Security.'
'May I please speak with the owner?'
'Uh, he's not here right now.'
'When will he return?'
'I dunno, really.'
'What's his name-can you tell me that?'
'Uh, sure, I guess. It's Sam. Sam Hughes-or Samuel, he likes to be called.'
'And he lives in…?'
'Queens. Not far from here. Can I ask who's calling?'
'I'm an old friend. I'll try back later-thanks.'
He hung up and sank back in his chair.
'What is it?' Chuck said, noticing him. 'You got something?'
'I'm not sure. Remember how we kept seeing the name 'Samuel Beckett' on all those church volunteers lists?'
'Why, did it come up again?'
'Not exactly. Guy's first name is Samuel, though. I just have a feeling. Let me try something.'
He called back, and when the boy answered, did a passable stab at an upper-class British accent.
'I say, my good man, I'm trying to get in touch with Mrs. Hughes, Samuel's dear mother, old school chum of hers. He lives with her, I believe?'
There was a pause. Lee was afraid the kid wasn't going to buy his act. But then he snickered.
'Yeah, sure he does. Guy's pushing thirty, and he still lives with his mother.'
'I see. Do they still live on the same street-oh, what was it…?'
'Lourdes Street.'
'Yes, of course! Number-'
'Number 121.'
'Right. Thanks ever so much. Cheerio.'
He hung up, to find everyone staring at him.
'Cheerio?' Nelson said. 'Cheerio?'
Lee made a face at him. 'I was improvising.' He looked at Butts. 'Want to go out to Queens and check this out?'
Butts muffled a sneeze in a wad of Kleenex. 'Yep-you bet!'
Fifty minutes later, Lee and Detective Butts emerged into the diffuse glare of an overcast sky, the sun struggling to assert itself through a thick gray cloud cover. Lourdes Street was a few blocks from the subway, right across the street from St. Bonaventure Catholic Church.
The Queens neighborhood had the smell of defeat. The houses were depressing little boxes with peeling paint, crumbling bricks, and cheap aluminum siding, stained and battered with age, overlooking cramped lots with rocky lawns-if you could call them that-of crabgrass and overgrown weeds. The occasional lawn ornament-mostly plaster dwarfs and religious figures-only reinforced the aura of hopelessness.
The same attitude of resignation was stamped upon the faces and slumped shoulders of the residents, who shuffled along the ill-kempt sidewalks, heads down, eyes focused on the cracked slabs of concrete, probably to keep from tripping and breaking their necks.
'This is it,' Butts said, pointing to a little white house crammed between its equally undistinguished neighbors. Like many of the other properties, it was surrounded by an ugly chain-ink fence. Number 121 was a little neater than some of the others. The walk was swept, and a small concrete pond was adorned with a white plaster Virgin Mary, perched next to a statue of a fawn drinking from the pond.
The front gate on the chain-link fence creaked when they opened it, and their footsteps clicked loudly on the concrete path leading up to the house. When they reached the front door, Lee lifted his hand to knock, but saw that the door was cracked open. He pushed on it, and it swung forward on well-oiled hinges but then stopped, as though something was blocking it. There were no lights on inside the house, and no sign of life within its whitewashed stucco walls.
'Mrs. Hughes?' he called out through the opening.
No response.
He called louder.
'Mrs. Hughes? Are you there?' He rapped the door sharply with his knuckles. He was burning to burst into the house, but they had no search warrant, and the last thing they needed was to have the whole case thrown out of court.
'I don't think anyone's in there,' Butts said, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet. He, too, looked impatient and anxious.
'The door is open,' Lee said, 'do you think we should-'
But at that moment he realized what was blocking the door. As his eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he could make out a pair of woman's shoes-still attached to their owner. She lay partially out of sight, in the small front foyer, but even in the darkened room, Lee could see her feet, her legs, and-was that blood?
He turned to Butts. 'We're going in. Cover me.'
'I don't think we should-' Butts began, but that was all he managed to get out.
Lee didn't wait for Butts to pull his gun. He pushed against the door with his shoulder, and it gave.
What he saw made him catch his breath.
The dead woman in front of him was nude, just like the rest of the Slasher's victims. But there was no neat positioning of the body with the arms spread out evenly from her shoulders. Instead, she lay splayed out on the floor, her hands flung above her head, a jagged scar where her throat had been cut. A dark rivulet of dried blood snaked crookedly from her throat across the white linoleum floor.
'Jesus,' Butts said softly, behind him, looking around the room. Blood spatter was everywhere-on the floor, the walls, the furniture, even the ceiling.
The victim was slight of build-like her son, Lee thought-and, unlike the other victims, she was middle-aged, but slim and trim, what was once called 'well-preserved.'
On her chest had been carved the words, Deliver us From Evil.
He was looking at a textbook example of overkill. In addition to slashing her throat and carving on her chest, the killer had ripped her clothes from her body, and they lay in tatters around her. Her limbs were splayed out in every direction. It's possible she had fallen like that, but Lee thought it more likely that the killer was making a point by leaving her this way. He had staged every other crime scene, and would probably have staged this one-unless he was falling apart completely now, which was also possible.
He knelt and felt for a pulse, but knew there was no point. Her dead eyes stared reprovingly at the ceiling.
