Eichord played the tape and BeBop said. Yeah, that's the dude that knifed the other one. Same voice for sure. And he asked was this guy twenty-five, thirty years old? And BeBop told him. No, this is an
And after the evidence crew and the ME and everybody cleared out and the inside of the EGA was back in the black, Eichord sat in one of the ratty seats (special this week, kids, free gum under every seat) and looked up at the darkened screen letting it all wash over him.
He sat there for along time, free-associating, thinking about the madman who was killing, trying to make it take a shape, his mind taking great leaps, suddenly refocusing without logical connectives, making wild ellipses, meaningless non sequiturs, random ramblings. And he began talking quietly to himself as he waited for Weyland the artist to finish with the snitch who might have seen enough to give them something, but he wasn't counting on it.
He mumbled to himself in a whisper, maundering like some nutbasket who'd lived alone too long, which in fact he probably had. Testing, theorizing, probing, bullshitting, trying to get some kind of a handle on all the sudden deaths.
Sitting there in the pitch black of the musty, crumbling dream factory where another innocent victim's blood had just stained one of the faded seats a sickening incarnadine. Another human being murdered by a madman, and he looked for the commonality that wasn't there, and chewed it all over again.
He'd go back and take a look at the backgrounds of the doorman in the Schindler Building and this latest victim, an agency art director who was getting a tag tied around his toe. Another innocent man dead. One more piece of a puzzle that wouldn't fit. But now, at least, he had a lone watcher at the Russo house, and a lone killer here.
It was one man. A madman. Acting alone.
* * *
He was still talking to himself the next morning in the squad room but soundlessly, running it all over in his head as he doodled aimlessly, letting the swirl of the cop-shop talk eddy and flow over him as he doodled and meditated and chewed his cud.
'No, ma'am,' he could hear T. J. Monahan telling some woman on the phone. 'You gotta go to the District of Occurrence on that. You need to call the LAPD or if that's in the county it might be like the East L.A. substation, okay?' L.A. Christ! He couldn't get away from the fucking place.
' — had 'em by six points but I wouldn't give you a nickel for that worthless, no good —'
' — know those projects out there and I guarantee there's a bunch of hypes living out there who don't do anything but steal credit cards for —'
' — just as soon go to Vegas and drop it all on Red and let 'er fly, if —'
' — fruit hustler working Tower Grove we think he tailed the boy in Carondelet Park last —'
'Jack,' Lt. Springer said, snapping Eichord out of his reverie, 'can you come on in my office?' And they head toward the end of the hall. Springer picking up bodies as they went. He had Glass, Leech, Skully, Monahan, a couple of the others from the unit in there with them.
'Look,' Springer said to him, 'none of us can find our ass with both hands on this thing. We've got the lab report on the weapon that did Mr. Cooper yesterday. We got a dorky eyewitness jammed up on a dope bust. We got a half-assed Identikit sketch that could be my brother-in-law. Jack, you're the serial-murder expert here. What the hell are we lookin' at?'
'I wish I could tell you something.' Eichord shrugged. 'But I'm in the dark with this too. I can't make a connection between the two civilian stab-bings and the gang murders — but you know how it is with hunches, I think they're connected.'
'You can't make a connection,' Richard Glass said, 'because there isn't any, Jack. Bet on it. Two different perps. Apples and oranges.'
'Maybe,' he breathed deeply, 'but I don't think so.'
'What's your intuition on the thing. Jack? You say you have a hunch. Hell. Let's hear it,' Springer said.
'A hunch is all it is. Nothing more. Nothin' solid at all. I can tell you what I'm afraid it is and can't even give you one firm indication of why I feel this way.' Nobody spoke so he went ahead. 'I discount the Rutledge ID. Bud, you got a space cadet,' he said, smiling. They laughed. 'You got BeBop. A flaky snitch headed for the joint behind a coke bust. He wants to sing our song. So even with him ID-ing the voice on the Rozitsky tape I'm afraid we don't have anything.
'But' — he tilted his head as if it suddenly weighed too much — 'on a visceral level I think it's the same perp, and if it is, we're looking at something pretty frightening. I've never come up against anything like it before.
'You got your psychopath, your assassin or hit man who will have an organized mind, and a psychotic: somebody who is disorganized in his kill pattern. The first guy — sometimes above average in smarts. Plans what he does. The second perp has psychoses that cause him to murder at random. The psychopath knows the difference between right and wrong and he has a motive for what he does. If he kills it may be emotionless and carefully planned in execution. The psychotic on the other hand, he or she kills according to mood, the traditional crime of passion, the unplotted and sometimes motiveless random kill.
'As you know, the main way we catch psychotics is by the murder weapon which they often will keep in their possession or leave at the scene of the homicide. The psychopath of course carefully destroys the murder weapon or he hides it. In a psychotic we have to look at what the perp does to the victim before he kills them. Does he tell them to say hello to Mary Garner or whatever? In other words if these killings are somehow interconnected, and I feel like they may be, we're looking at a perp who is BOTH a psychopathic killer and a psychotic looney. A professional assassin of some kind such as a trained mercenary or a hit man who is also, simultaneously, going out of control and killing people at random. We're looking at a hybrid killer, in my opinion.'
'Jeeezus,' somebody said as the phone on Springer's desk rang.
'Lieutenant Springer.'
'Right.' He hung up and jumped to his feet, moving. 'Let's go. He just firebombed Measure. Four dead.' They all rushed for the door in a cop logjam, Leech and Eichord rode with Vic Springer and a detective sergeant named Thompson.
Homicide and Arson, Intelligence, ET, all screaming down Missouri Avenue in the River North area behind Fire. Redballs and light bars flashing, sirens screaming past the condos and rehabs, chic boutiques and galleries, plant-choked eateries and ferny bars on the way to the Measure house.
'What the fuck.' People milling around. Guys getting pissed at one another. Some signals had got crossed and it hadn't been a firebombing, after all.
'Where's the fire?' somebody said.
'Fuck you,' somebody replied.
There were four dead inside. And one they didn't know about yet. Spain had hit James Measure, Gino Sclaffani, Edward Sidenfadden a.k.a. Eddie Sides, and Tony Alba. All deader than last year's Christmas trees.
'Holy shit.'
'Man, they look like they been used for targets at a firing range.'
'Unreal.'
'Whatya got?'
'It was a fire in the other room, is all. One of these things caught the drapes on fire. Little smoke. No problem.'
It looked like some sort of a gas canister.
'Lieutenant, here's another one.' He showed him another of the canisters.
'Must be how he took 'em down. If it was gas I don't smell any trace of it.' He glanced at a man examining one of the bodies. 'Any idea how long, Doc?'
'Not really.' Wonderful. 'An hour, two hours, maybe longer. I ain't what-sisname on TV f'r chris-sakes.'
'What'ya think? An Oozey?' he pronounced it. 'Or an Ingram? Something?'
'Shit. Hadda be. Probably something like an Uzi. He gathered up the mags but he left all the brass. Why the
