Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost. J. Kerley A.
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turned to a thunder of footsteps approaching down the hall followed by Folger’s bray.
“Waltz? Are you back there?”
The footsteps turned into three agitated faces, Lieutenant Folger and Tweedledum and -dee from this morning – the hulking Bullard and Abel Cluff, a smaller and older guy with bulging eyes and the forward-pointing facial structure of a stoat. Cluff was wheezing, like he’d run a dozen flights instead of walking up a five-step stoop out front. Both men were in dark suits and white shirts, Bullard’s plank-thick wrists hanging two inches from his sleeves, like he’d grown since he’d bought the suit.
The trio moved past, stepping around the blood pools and smears. Cluff bent and lifted the cover from the corpse. His eyes showed neither surprise nor emotion and I figured being an older detective with the NYPD, he’d seen every possible permutation of horror.
“Oh Christ,” Folger moaned when she saw the body. “Tell me I’m dreaming, we don’t have a mad butcher out there.”
“Removing the head could be an attempt at depersonalization,” I ventured, trying to be helpful. “But inserting it in the abdomen could be a show of control: Behold my power. Or it might –”
Folger snapped her face to me. “What the hell are you doing here?” She sniffed, wafting her hand past her nose at my scent. “Jesus, they don’t have soap or deodorant where you’re from?”
Waltz said, “I invited Detective Ryder, Lieutenant. Given his experience with disturbed minds, I thought he might –”
“He’s not needed,” she said. “Stick him on a bus and aim it south.”
Bullard pinched his nose and gurgled a laugh. “You may want to spray him with something first.”
“Have you seen all you need, Detective?” Waltz asked. He shot me a look that said he knew I hadn’t, but it was time to let the Lieutenant win one. I nodded yes for the sake of harmony, and we retreated outside. There were now three cruisers on scene, one ambulance, an ME vehicle, a forensic vehicle, a large command vehicle and Waltz’s dinged-up blue Chevy Impala. The area was cordoned with yellow CRIME SCENE tape. The kid from Tech Services, Cargyle, jogged by, phone to his face and a heavy case slung over his shoulder.
I said, “Looks like you people are about to ramp into full investigative mode, Shelly. I’ll catch a cab.”
“One question, Detective. The eyes of the two victims. What do you make of the eyes?”
“That they’re open?” I said. “Not closed or covered or mutilated?”
“Yes.”
“He feels no shame at his actions, Shelly. There’s a good chance he feels pride his victims get to watch him at work.”
Waltz nodded sadly and turned as white as a man struck by lightning. Photoflash. I spun and saw a photographer a dozen feet distant.
Flash.
“Hey, Detective Waltz, s’up in there? Who’s dead?”
Flash Flash.
I saw blue squares floating in the air. Waltz gestured for a uniform to move the guy away. The photog retreated on wide and flat feet, grinning like a donkey, holding his hands up in the I surrender pose. He was a short guy, round, round, and round – face, belly, and butt, respectively.
I looked at Waltz. “One of the local media elite?”
“That piece of waddling excrement is the infamous Benny Mac. The prize scribbler-slash-camera jockey from the New York Watcher. It’s the newspaper for citizens who don’t like to read. We’ll be in it tomorrow, unless something important takes the space, like a celebrity getting a DUI or a cat that uses a toilet.”
I watched the guy pad across the street, shooting an arm into the air like an imperious wave. An engine roared to life down the block and a double-parked white Hummer sailed to Benny Mac’s side. He climbed inside, barked some command to the driver, and was whisked away, smirking through the window as he went.
“Meester Ryder? Room service. I brought breakfas’.”
The Spanish-accented voice and knocking seemed too close. I felt something hard against my nose, something gritty pressing my cheek.
“Meester Ryder?”
My eyes popped open. I was on the floor by the door, nose against the wood, cheek on the carpet. I’d been dreaming.
“Just a minute,” I mumbled, staggering upright. “Be right there.”
I saw covers, sheet and pillows trailing from the bed to the door. Having dreams so disturbing I’d try to crawl away from them happened several times a year. The imagery was consistent: moaning shadows, faces comprised solely of teeth, a house where all windows faced inward … dreams generated during childhood.
I scooped the bedclothes up, threw the pillows and covers on the bed, wrapped the sheet around my naked body to answer the door. If the room service lady thought it unusual to find guests in ad hoc togas, her face didn’t let on. In fact, she beamed with recognition, and grabbed a newspaper from her cart. The woman waved the paper in my face, said, “Ees chew.”
“No thanks.” I thought she was offering me the paper. “Ees chew,” she repeated, snapping the paper open and pushing it to my face again. “Chew ees famous.”
I pushed it aside to look at her. “Pardon?”
“Aqui,” she said, tapping the third page with her finger. I saw a photo of Waltz and me. Beside the photo was a brief article.
Savagery in SoHo
New York’s Finest are close-lipped about a woman found with her abdomen sliced open in a vacant SoHo property. Perhaps the gruesome crime scene explains the look on the face of renowned Detective Sheldon Waltz, here conferring with an unnamed colleague …
At the housekeeper’s request – “Chew so famous!” – I autographed the article and took my breakfast tray inside. Naked on the bed with plate in one hand, fork in the other, I displaced the bad-dream bilge in my stomach with overcooked eggs and undercooked bacon and yearned for cheese grits with andouille. I showered for fifteen minutes, wishing I were at home on Dauphin Island, a hundred yards from the Gulf of Mexico, cool at this time of year, invigorating.
I dressed and walked to the cop shop, finding it kin to every station house in the civilized world: agitated bodies and loud voices, the smell of burnt coffee and all-nighter sweat, phones ringing, jammed-together desks piled with files. Waltz was in a glass-windowed office along the far wall. When I entered his office, he held up a copy of the New York Watcher turned to our photo.
“Must not have been any celebrity malfunctions overnight. You take a better picture than me. Have a seat.”
I sat. Waltz fixed me with a despondent gaze. “The techs are at their wits’ end, Detective. The hair you noticed on the floor at the scenes? It’s from hundreds of people. Men’s hair, women’s, different races. Plus dozens of fiber types, all mixed together.”
“What?”
“They did some tests, figure the killer collected hair from barber shops and beauty salons, fibers from anything. It’s an evidentiary nightmare.”
“Jeez, Shelly, even if you found something in the room that ID’d the guy …”
“The evidence would be polluted,” Waltz finished. “No sane DA would bring it to trial. It’s brilliant. How many madmen could figure out a ploy like this?”
I