first saw her practically drooling in a liquor store. He’d judged her accurately, picking her up right there using a bottle of scotch for bait. Later he’d found out she wouldn’t drink anything but Southern Comfort, unless there was no Southern Comfort around. Bobby was right; it wasn’t Will’s drink. But he’d made it his drink the second time he’d met Roz.
The first night, they’d walked and talked and he’d convinced her he was a gentleman and acknowledged she was a lady. He commiserated with her about the lost daughter her bastard of a husband had talked the court into placing in his custody during the divorce. Fucking injustice was everywhere! He agreed with her that her idiot boss at an insurance company had been wrong to fire her and assured her that her infrequent work as an office temp would inevitably lead to steady employment. How could they not hire somebody like her? Not everybody in the world was too stupid or blind to see what she had to offer.
When they’d reached her house, he hadn’t tried to talk his way inside. Instead, he’d left her the bottle they’d both only taken a few sips from, a little nudge to help her tumble off the wagon and onto her back with her legs spread.
Their next date, about halfway into the Southern Comfort, she was wildly enjoying her second addiction.
Roz was back with two juice glasses, both full. His had ice in it, the way he liked it, or could stand it, anyway. Usually he was a straight Bud man.
“Before we drink these,” she said, “I want to show you something.”
Will followed her into the spare bedroom.
There on a table in the center of the room was one of his smaller works,
“I bought it at that gallery in the Village. Three hundred dollars.”
He didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was angry. He couldn’t be sure. “I’m. . uh, flattered,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have spent the money.”
“I wanted to. You’re going to be famous someday, so it’s an investment.”
Will knew it was an investment she was making in him personally. He didn’t like that. They had an unspoken agreement about their affair, and he intended to keep his part of it.
She handed him his glass, kissing him again on the lips.
“You love me?” she asked, backing up a step.
“You know I don’t,” he said, “and you don’t give a fuck.”
She downed half her glass and grinned in a way that showed most of her teeth. “I’m gonna show you how wrong you are about that last part.”
Fifteen minutes later she was smiling down at him, seated on his bare chest with her thighs spread wide. He could smell her sex and feel her heat and wetness against his skin. A drop of perspiration clung to her left breast as if reluctant to leave it and then plummeted to land on his neck.
“Any place you’d rather be?” she asked.
“Can’t think of one.”
“You home?”
“Home,” he said.
Thinking this was about as far away from home as he could get.
And when he returned home, it would be as if he’d never left.
Linnert looked slightly disheveled the morning after Paula had talked to him. He’d still been in bed when Paula, who’d detoured on her way to pick up Bickerstaff, buzzed from downstairs. His hair was flat on one side, and he was wearing a white T-shirt, brown slippers, and the same pleated pants he’d had on yesterday. She thought he didn’t look bad a little messy.
Occasionally, Paula dropped in unexpectedly for a brief follow-up interview to catch a suspect off guard. Sometimes they contradicted themselves, or came up with a piece of information even they didn’t know they possessed or was important. Sometimes it gave her a new and completely different view of a suspect. That could be valuable for a lot of reasons.
“I came back because it occurred to me you might provide some insight,” she said, as he stepped back to invite her inside.
He grinned as he sat slumped in a chair across from her. She’d noted that he limped getting there. “I’m plenty insightful,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, but it was in his voice. She amused him. It kind of pissed her off.
“You were SSF yourself. If the Night Spider has a background like yours, what do you think might make him assume he can get away with it?”
“Arrogance, plain and simple. Taking the kinds of risks we did, an ungodly amount of arrogance was required.”
“Oh? Are you still arrogant?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “A guilty suspect wouldn’t tell you that, would he?”
“Because it is justified. Besides, women find arrogance attractive.”
“Some do.”
“You, Officer Paula.”
“Detective Ramboquette,” she said, standing up and thanking Linnert for his time. Abrupt, but what the hell? He had a way of taking the play away from her, turning her in on herself, and she couldn’t quite cope with it-with him.
“Hey! You don’t have to leave again so soon.”
But she knew she did and that he understood why. Insightful bastard.
Not to mention arrogant.
“Have you had breakfast, Paula?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Paula.”
His voice stopped her at the door.
“You forgot your umbrella again.”
29
There was no record that Aaron Mandle had ever had trouble with the law. His last known address was three years old and in St. Louis, in a neighborhood where it was dangerous to grow up or to grow old. He’d lived in a six- family apartment building long ago torn down to make room for a highway exit ramp.
Horn had checked with the St. Louis police and was told Mandle didn’t have a record there, either. VICAP and NCIC had nothing on him. The man seemed to no longer exist.
But he’d definitely existed in St. Louis. The detective Horn talked to, a guy named Homolka, recalled a four- year-old unsolved homicide: a woman wrapped in her bedsheets and stabbed to death.
The next morning, Horn said, “We’re catching his act after he perfected it on the road,” as if Mandle were someone who’d recently opened on Broadway.
“Then we don’t know how many women he’s killed,” Paula said. “There might be dozens more, in other cities.”
“Not that I could find, other than the probable in St. Louis. But it’s still being checked out.”
“Wouldn’t he have been in the military around that time?” Paula asked.
“Maybe,” Horn said. “But if he was in the States, he’d have occasional leave.”
“The army should have his fingerprints,” Bickerstaff said.
“Should, but they don’t.”
They’d been in the Home Away for more than an hour, trying to figure out what to do with what seemed to be their best lead. Horn was finished with his corn muffins, and Paula and Bickerstaff had sneaked a stop at a Krispy Kreme and told him they were skipping breakfast today. Horn had congratulated them on their dietary virtuousness,
