Lightning Read online

Most of the scraps in the wastebasket were handwritten notes Marcia Schaffer had made for the paper she’d been writing. There was a grocery list. There was a letter she had started and then crumpled. It began with the words, Dear Mom and Dad, I hate to ask you for money again so soon after…There was a worksheet with a list of figures she had added and then crossed out and added once again, apparently seeking a correct checkbook balance. There was a card from a place that delivered pizzas. That was all.

  They went into the bathroom. Several pairs of plain white cotton panties were draped over the shower rod. An open box of super-absorbent menstrual napkins was resting on the sink below the mirror. Carella tried to remember if the Medical Examiner had mentioned anything about menstruation. He felt suddenly like an intruder. He did not want to know about anything as private and personal as Marcia Schaffer’s period. But a soiled menstrual napkin was in the wastebasket under the sink. He opened the medicine cabinet. Hawes was going through the hamper near the scale, pulling out dirty pieces of laundry, examining each article of clothing.

  “Bloodstains here,” he said.

  “She was menstruating,” Carella said.

  “Better have the lab check them out, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Carella said.

  Hawes began gathering the soiled clothing into a heap. He went out of the bathroom to ask the technicians about the dirty laundry. They told him to put it in a pillowcase. Carella looked into the medicine cabinet. He did not expect to find any controlled substances, and he didn’t. There was the usual array of nonprescription medications, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioners, nail polish, combs, brushes, adhesive bandages, Ace bandages—presumably because she’d been a runner and prone to muscle pulls and sprains—mouthwash, barrettes, bobby pins, and the like. J. D. Salinger would have made very little of Marcia Schaffer’s medicine cabinet. Carella closed the door.

  A robe was hanging on a wall hook.

  He took it down. The robe was a winter-weight garment, navy blue with white piping on the cuffs and around the shawl collar. The label indicated that it had been purchased at one of the city’s larger department stores. The words “100% Wool” were fortified on the label with the universal symbol:

  The label was further marked with the letter “L” for “Large.” Carella felt in the pockets. One of them was empty. The other contained an almost-full package of Marlboro cigarettes and a gold cigarette lighter. Carella dropped these into separate evidence envelopes. Hawes was just coming back into the room with a pillowcase printed with little blue flowers.

  “Were there cigarettes in her handbag?” Carella asked.

  “What?”

  “The girl’s handbag. Do you remember cigarettes?”

  “No. Why would there be cigarettes? She was on the track team.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Why? What’d you find?” Hawes asked, beginning to transfer the laundry into the pillowcase.

  “A pack of Marlboros. And a Dunhill lighter.”

  “Is that a man’s robe?” Hawes asked, looking up.

  “Looks that way.”

  “How tall was she?”

  “Five-eight.”

  Hawes looked at the robe again. “Couldn’t be hers, do you think?”

  “It’s a large,” Carella said.

  Hawes nodded. “The lab’ll want it for sure,” he said.

  The technicians were still working in the living room when Carella and Hawes came back to return the cotton gloves. Over the hum of the filtered vacuum cleaner, the one Carella thought was named Joe winked at his partner and said, “Half a day today?”

  “When do you think you’ll be finished?” Carella asked.

  “A woman’s work is never done,” the other technician said.

  “Think you can lock up and get the key back to us?”

  “Back where?” the first technician said.

  “The Eight-Seven. Uptown.”

  “All the way uptown,” the second technician said, rolling his eyes. “I got a date tonight. You want to be responsible for the key, John?”

  John, that’s it, Carella thought.

  “I don’t want to be responsible for no fuckin’ key,” John said.

  “Well, can you call when you think you’re almost finished?” Hawes asked. “We’ll send a patrolman down for it.”

  “They got pick-up and delivery service, the Eight-Seven,” John said, and again winked at his partner.

  “What’s the number up there?” the other technician asked.

  “377-8024,” Hawes said.

  John turned off the vacuum cleaner. “Let me write it down,” he said. He fished in a coverall pocket for a pencil. He patted his other pockets. “Who’s got a pencil?” he asked.

  Hawes was already writing his last name and the precinct telephone number on a page in his notebook. He tore the page loose and handed it to John. “Ask for either one of us,” he said. “Hawes or Carella.”

  “Horse?” the second technician said. “We got ‘A Man Called Horse’ here,” he said to John.

  “You part Indian?” John asked.

  “Mohawk,” Hawes lied. “Full-blooded.”

  “How come you ain’t in construction work?” the other technician asked, and both he and John laughed. John looked at the page Hawes had torn from his notebook.

  “This how you spell it in Mohawk?” he asked Hawes.

  “That’s the way my father always spelled it,” Hawes said. “Running Deer Hawes was his name.”

  “What’s your first name?” the other technician asked.

  “Great Bull Farting,” Hawes said, and followed Carella out of the apartment.

  “That reminds me,” Carella said in the hallway outside. “Why did the Indian buy a hat?”

  “To keep his wigwam,” Hawes said.

  “Ouch,” Carella said.

  In the waning sunlight, he ran.

  He had left his apartment at 5:15, driven up here in less than ten minutes, and then parked his car on Grover Avenue, outside the park. The park at this hour of the day was virtually empty of mothers with their baby carriages, populated now with youngsters tossing footballs, lovers strolling hand in hand, old men sitting on benches trying to read their newspapers in the fading light. Yesterday at this time, there’d been more people in the park than was usual. Yesterday had been Columbus Day—or at least the day set aside for the official observance of Columbus Day—and many of the shops and offices had been closed.

  It annoyed him that they no longer observed a famous man’s holiday when they were supposed to. Columbus Day was October 12, so why had they celebrated it two days earlier? To take advantage of a long weekend, of course. Not that he’d enjoyed that advantage at all. He was his own boss, and he set his own work schedule.

  God, what a beautiful day it was!

  Still light enough at a quarter to 6:00 to see clearly every twist and turn of the footpath along which he ran, a far cry from a cinder track, but better than nothing in this city of concrete and steel. The clocks would go back on the last Sunday in October— Spring ahead, Fall back, he thought—and it would start getting dark around 5:00, 5:30 then, but in the meantime there was still the fading glow of sunshine and a cloudless blue sky overhead, he loved October, he loved this city in October.

  He ran at a steady pace, nothing to win here, no one to defeat, not even a clock to race. Exercise, that’s all, he thought, just exercise, running along a park path for exercise, running anonymously, a tall, slender man in a gray warm-up suit without letters, running at an easy, steady pace that soothed and comforted, as did the knowledge of what he’d done and would continue to do.

  He stopped running when he came abreast of the police station across the street, visible beyond the low stone wall bordering the park. Even in the late afternoon light, he could make out the numerals 87, lettered in white on the green globes flanking the entrance steps. Two men in plainclothes were entering the building, both of them hatless, neither of them wearing coats—well, on a
day like today, who needed a coat? Still, he always thought of detectives as men wearing overcoats. If, in fact, they were detectives. Perhaps they were only citizens coming to make a complaint. Plenty of citizens in this city, all of them with complaints.

  He wondered if his little package had arrived yet.

  He had mailed it on Saturday, took the subway all the way out to Calm’s Point to drop the package in a mailbox there. Flat enough to squeeze into the mailbox opening, he’d made certain of that. Weighed it at home first, made sure the proper postage was on it. He didn’t want that package to go undelivered because of insufficient postage. There was no way it could be returned to him because he hadn’t put a return address on it. That was why he hadn’t taken it to a post office. He hadn’t wanted to chance some dumb postal clerk telling him they couldn’t accept his package because there was no return address on it. He didn’t know what the exact rules were, but he didn’t want to risk a hassle. Drop it in a mailbox, the letter carrier would shrug and figure if there was enough postage on it, somebody down the line would attempt delivery. The guys who emptied those big mailboxes probably never even looked at what they were picking up, anyway. A post office was different. Clerk might see there was no return address and even if it wasn’t against the rules, he might point it out. No return address on this, you know that? Have to explain that he was sending it as a surprise, something like that, too much explaining to do. Man might remember him later on. Simpler to drop it in a mailbox. Flat enough so that it fit in a mailbox. He didn’t want anyone remembering him just yet. There was plenty of time later for people to start remembering him.

  All of the post offices in the city had been closed yesterday, no mail delivery anywhere; he knew for certain the package could not have been delivered yesterday. But today—unless there’d been an unusual pile-up because of the holiday—yes, it should have been delivered today.

  He wondered what they’d made of it.

  Getting her handbag in the mail that way.

  He smiled, thinking about the looks on their faces.

  Maybe next time he’d leave identification right at the scene. Make it a little easier for them. Let them know who the victim was right off. Leave the identification right in the street, under the lamppost. Didn’t want to make it too easy for them, of course, not till the thing started building momentum. Friday’s newspapers had barely mentioned the dead girl. Nothing at all in the morning papers, and no front-page headline in the sensational afternoon paper. They’d put the story on page eight, big story like that, girl found hanging from a goddamn lamppost! Next time around, they’d know there was a pattern. The cops would know it, too, unless they were even dumber than he thought they were. Headlines next time around, for sure.

  He looked once again at the police station across the way, and then began running, smiling.

  Soon, he thought.

  Soon they’d know who he was.

  The two women were sizing each other up.

  Annie Rawles had been told that Eileen Burke was the best decoy in Special Forces. Eileen Burke had been told that Annie Rawles was a hard-nosed Rape Squad cop who’d once worked out of Robbery and had shot down two hoods trying to rip off a midtown bank. Annie was looking at a woman who was five feet nine inches tall, with long legs, good breasts, flaring hips, red hair, and green eyes. Eileen was looking at a woman with eyes the color of loam behind glasses that gave her a scholarly look, wedge-cut hair the color of midnight, firm cupcake breasts, and a slender boy’s body. They were both about the same age, Eileen guessed, give or take a year or so. Eileen kept wondering how somebody who looked so much like a bookkeeper could have pulled her service revolver and blown away two desperate punks facing a max of twenty years’ hard time.

  “What do you think?” Annie asked.

  “You say this isn’t the only repeat?” Eileen said.

  They were still sizing each other up. Eileen figured this wasn’t a matter of choice. If Annie Rawles had asked for her, and if her lieutenant had assigned Eileen to the job, then that was it, they both outranked her. Still, she liked to know who she’d be working with. Annie was wondering if Eileen was really as good at the job as they’d said she was. She looked a little flashy for a decoy. Spot her strutting along in high heels with those tits bouncing, a rapist would make her in a minute and run for the hills. This was a very special rapist they were dealing with here; Annie didn’t want an amateur screwing it up.

  “We’ve got three women say they were raped more than once by this same guy. Fits the description in each case,” Annie said. “There may be more, we haven’t run an m.o. cross-check.”

  “When will you be doing that?” Eileen asked; she liked to know who she was working with, how efficient they were. It wouldn’t be Annie Rawles’s ass out there on the street, it would be her own.

  “Working on that now,” Annie said. She liked Eileen’s question. She knew she was asking Eileen to put herself in a dangerous position. The man had already slashed one of the victims, left her face scarred. At the same time, that was the job. If Eileen didn’t like Special Forces, she should ask for transfer to something else. Annie didn’t know that Eileen was considering just that possibility, but not for any reason Annie might have understood.

  “All over the city, or any special location?” Eileen asked.

  “Anyplace, anytime.”

  “I’m only one person,” Eileen said.

  “There’ll be other decoys. But what I have in mind for you…”

  “How many?”

  “Six, if I can get them.”

  “Counting me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who are the others?”

  “I’ve got their names here, you want to look them over,” Annie said, and handed her a typewritten sheet.

  Eileen read it over carefully. She knew all of the women on the list. Most of them knew their jobs. One of them didn’t. She refrained from voicing this opinion; no sense bad-mouthing anybody.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “Look okay to you?”

  “Sure.” She hesitated. “Connie needs a bit more experience,” she said tactfully. “You might want to save her for something less complicated. Good cop, but this guy’s got a knife, you said…”

  “And he’s used it,” Annie said.

  “Yeah, so save Connie for something a little less complicated.” Both women understood the euphemism. “Less complicated” meant “less dangerous.” Nobody wanted a lady cop slashed because she was incapable of handling something like this.

  “What age groups?” Eileen asked. “The victims.”

  “The three we know about for sure…let me look at this a minute.” Annie picked up another typewritten sheet. “One of them is forty-six. Another is twenty-eight. This last one—Mary Hollings, the one last Saturday night—is thirty-seven. He’s raped her three times already.”

  “Same guy each time, huh? You’re positive about that?”

  “According to the descriptions.”

  “What do they say he looks like?”

  “In his thirties, black hair and blue eyes…”

  “White?”

  “White. About six feet tall…well, it varies there. We’ve got him ranging from five-ten to six-two. About a hundred and eighty pounds, very muscular, very strong.”

  “Any identifying marks? Scars? Tattoos?”

  “None of the victims mentioned any.”

  “Same guy each time,” Eileen said, as if trying to lend credibility to it by repeating it. “That’s unusual, isn’t it? Guy coming back to the same victim?”

  “Very,” Annie said. “Which is why I thought…”

  “With your rapists, usually…”

  “I know.”

  “They don’t care who they get, it’s got nothing to do with lust.”

  “I know.”

  “So the m.o. would seem to indicate he has favorites or something. That doesn’t jibe with the psychology of it.”

  “I know.”

&n
bsp; “So what’s the plan? Cover these victims or cruise their neighborhoods?”

  “We don’t think they’re random victims,” Annie said. “That’s why I’d like you to—”

  “Then cruising’s out, right?”

  Annie nodded. “This last one—Mary Hollings—is a redhead.”

  “Oh,” Eileen said. “Okay, I get it.”

  “About your size,” Annie said. “A little shorter. What are you, five-ten, five-eleven?”

  “I wish,” Eileen said, and smiled. “Five-nine.”

  “She’s five-seven.”

  “Built like me?”

  “Zaftig, I’d say.”

  “Bovine, I’d say,” Eileen said, and smiled.

  “Hardly,” Annie said, and returned the smile.

  “So you want me to be Mary Hollings, is that it?”

  “If you think you can pass.”

  “You know the lady, I don’t,” Eileen said.

  “It’s a reasonable likeness,” Annie said. “Up close, he’ll tip in a minute. But by that time, it should be too late.”

  “Where does she live?” Eileen asked.

  “1840 Laramie Crescent.”

  “Up in the Eight-Seven?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a friend up there,” Eileen said.

  The friend again, Annie thought. Her lover. The blond cop in the squadroom. King, was it? Herb King?

  “Does she work, this woman?” Eileen asked. “‘Cause if she runs a computer terminal or something…”

  “She’s divorced, living on alimony payments.”

  “Lucky her,” Eileen said. “I’ll need her daily routine…”

  “You can get that directly from her,” Annie said.

  “Where do we hide her, meanwhile?”

  “She’ll be leaving for California day after tomorrow. She has a sister out there.”

  “Better give her a wig, case he’s watching the apartment when she leaves.”

  “We will.”

  “How about other tenants in the building? Won’t they know I’m not…?”

  “We figured you could pass yourself off as the sister. I doubt he’ll be talking to any of the tenants.”

  “Any security there?”