Blood Crimes Page 5

  “The guy who was murdered,” Hayes said, pointing again at Wilkerson’s picture.

  They both thought about it. The bartender nodded slowly. “Fuck, I think he was talking to her. Yeah, goddamn, I think he bought her a couple of drinks.”

  “Did he leave with her?”

  The bartender’s eyes glazed over as he tried to remember. “I dunno. I don’t think so.”

  One of the patrons sitting at a table had lifted an empty beer glass and was signaling to the waitress. She asked the bartender for another Bud. While he poured her a draft, she put a hand on Hayes’ arm and told him she had to get back to work. “It’s been fun, Hon,” she said. “You come by after my shift ends at one and maybe I’ll be able to think of something else.”

  Both Hayes and the bartender watched the movement of her barely covered ass as she brought the draft to the table.

  “I’ve been trying to get in her pants for a year now,” the bartender complained, mostly talking to himself. He gave Hayes a look that basically said What the fuck does she see in an ugly sonofabitch like you? All Hayes could do was shrug. The bartender’s face reddened. He moved over to the beer taps and started to replace an empty keg. Without bothering to look at Hayes, he said, “We’re done here, right? I gotta get back to work, pal.”

  Hayes was done. Besides, he had two Kansas City police detectives he needed to talk to. On his way out, the waitress gave him a look to let him know that she wasn’t kidding him earlier; that if he came by at one she’d be waiting.

  Hayes felt his heart skip a beat. Maybe all this time looking for “Jim” a bit of the serial killer’s charisma had rubbed off. Goddamn. Hayes’ imagination started working overtime as he pictured where he was going to be uncovering secret tattoos on the waitress, and even better, additional body piercings. It was sobering, though, stepping out of the bar and seeing a half-dozen or so street predators leaning against storefronts turning their eyes towards him. Sighing heavily, he forced his attention away from what the waitress was offering and back to the job at hand.

  * * * * *

  Detectives Bobby Brindle and Lou Marzon got a kick out of the story Hayes told them about why he was interested in Devon Wilkerson’s murder. It was total bullshit but the same story had played well with detectives in other cities so he kept using it. A lesson he learned while on the force was the more outlandish the lie the more willing people were to buy it. If he tried feeding a perp some bullshit about having a witness they’d just start smirking. If he told them instead that he had CIA satellite photos of them in the act of the crime they’d invariably start bitching about how it was a violation of their privacy.

  “So who’s this famous writer?” Brindle asked while shoveling a chunk of steak into his mouth. Hayes was buying the detectives steak dinners and beers in exchange for what they had on the Devon Wilkerson murder.

  “Sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

  “Come on,” Brindle said, his eyes shining with amusement. “You can confide in us. Who are we going to tell? It’s Stephen King, am I right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then that guy who wrote the DaVinci Code, right?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Well I’m out then,” Brindle said, a look of constipation falling over his round face as he tried to think of other names. “How about you, Lou. You think of any other big shot writers?”

  Detective Marzon paused from chewing on a piece of steak to shake his head. He asked incredulously, “This guy really wants to write a book about this scumbag’s murder?”

  “That’s what he’s thinking.”

  “Unbelievable.” Marzon shook his head again, scowling. “And he sends you to research it for him?”

  “Yep.”

  “Pays for your airplane ticket and all your expenses?”

  “You got it.”

  “Fucking unbelievable,” Marzon said. “What a waste of money. Devon’s not worth spending a cent on.”

  “You can’t tell us who this big shot is?” Brindle asked.

  “Only that he’s a best selling author,” Hayes said with a wink. “Millions are going to be reading this book. A lot more will see the movie.”

  Shit, Brindle mouthed silently.

  Marzon swallowed a mouthful of food, then took a swig of beer. “I still don’t get why any writer would care about what happened to a shitbag like Devon,” he said.

  “Who the fuck knows with these writers? He read about the murder over the Internet and something about it inspired him.”

  “Who’d ever think Devon would inspire anything other than a good argument for capital punishment?” Brindle asked, chuckling lightly.

  “I don’t know. There were times he came close to inspiring me to unload my service revolver in his mutt-ugly face,” Marzon said.

  “You have to admit something’s a little funny here,” Hayes cut in. “Even if he was nothing but a scumbag, you still have him found in an alley with his throat mostly cut out and almost all his blood drained.”

  Brindle speared a chunk of meat with his fork. He held his fork out towards Hayes as if making a point with it.

  “Nothing so unusual about it, not for a shitbag like Devon. He was dead forty-eight hours before we found him. It rained like hell for those two days. All that happened was he bled out and his blood washed down a sewer grate.”

  “Maybe it was vampires,” Hayes said with a smile.

  Marzon looked up from his food. “Where’d you get this shit about vampires?” he asked.

  Hayes’ smile stretched half an inch. “At the crime scene. A homeless guy pushing a shopping cart told me it was vampires.”

  That cracked Brindle up. Marzon shook his head.

  “Fucking ding dongs,” Marzon said. “That’s what they’re saying out there, huh? Vampires? Fuck.”

  Hayes gave him a questioning look.

  “Ding dongs, you know, those cupcakes with the crème filling,” Marzon explained as he tapped his skull with his index and middle fingers. “Nothing but mush for brains.”

  Brindle had to spit some food into a napkin to keep from choking. “Jesus,” he said, wiping some tears from his eyes, “Vampires. No kidding? Sorry to disappoint them. It wasn’t vampires. We know the guy who did it. We just don’t have enough yet to pick him up.”

  “Who do you have?”

  “A scumbag drug supplier Devon worked for. Word on the street, Devon was taking a bigger slice than he was entitled to and this even bigger piece of shit wanted to make him an example.”

  “What was used?”

  “What do you think?”

  “A knife?”

  “That’s all it was. An ordinary hunting knife. No teeth, no fangs. It might’ve been pretty brutal, but it was nothing you or I couldn’t do if we wanted to. Nothing spooky about this. Only exactly what it looks like—one scumbag killing another. Sorry if your client’s going to end up disappointed. This is going to make one boring novel if you ask me.”

  “Well, it is what it is.” Hayes smiled thinly. “Doesn’t mean, though, that’s how he’s going to write it. You’re sure of the time of death?”

  Brindle nodded. “Medical Examiner pegged him dead for forty-eight to sixty hours before the body was found. No witnesses yet. With it raining as hard as it was there was no reason for anyone to wander into that alley.”

  “Was there a reason for Wilkerson to be there?”

  “Only the obvious one. He was probably waiting to pick up a new supply when someone snuck up behind him and cut his throat. He had no defensive wounds, so that’s probably how it played out.”

  “Sounds pretty cut and dried,” Hayes said, forcing a straight face.

  “Nothing for anyone to shed any tears over,” Marzon volunteered.

  Hayes signaled the waitress for another whiskey and soda for himself and more beers for Marzon and Brindle. The trail was only two weeks old, maybe Jim and his girlfriend hung around after Wilkerson’s murder. He couldn’t help feeling excited abou
t being this close to the killer, he also couldn’t help feeling some guilt over not filling these detectives in on what they were really dealing with. Dinner ended up being a leisurely one with Hayes trading stories with the two detectives about his days on the force in Brooklyn. Cigars were lit and a half dozen more beers were bought for each detective while Hayes milked his last whiskey and soda so he could limit himself to three drinks. It wasn’t just so he’d be ready for that waitress later, he still had more work to do that night. He also didn’t want to sound at all tipsy when he called his client.

  After dinner, he hit the low-budget motels around the airport. He knew the type of motel that Jim and his girlfriend usually stayed at. Dirt cheap, no frills, and always at motor lodges where the rooms had their own street level entrances. Hayes guessed that Jim wanted to be able to enter and leave his room without a desk clerk noticing him. These were places that were usually used for hours instead of nights—the type of motels favored by drug addicts and prostitutes.

  After Hayes ran out of motels around the airport, he cracked open a Kansas City yellow pages and expanded his search. Two hours later he found the one Jim and his girlfriend had been staying at. It was as seedy as all the others Hayes had tracked them to, and it was less than two miles from the alley in which Wilkerson was killed in. The desk clerk, a thin man in his twenties with a sallow complexion and bad teeth, looked bored, and clearly had little interest in talking to a PI. Stifling a yawn, he examined the sketch Hayes showed him. He nodded, recognizing the girl.

  “She wasn’t a blonde, though,” he said. “That babe was definitely a brunette. And it was no dye job.”

  “You paid close attention to her then?”

  He grinned, showing off bad gums and crooked teeth. “Shit, take a look at her.” He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice “Why wouldn’t I pay close attention to a piece of ass like that?”

  Hayes showed him Jim’s sketch. The desk clerk gave it a quick look and told the PI he didn’t recognize the guy. “She was the only one I saw from her room, but I’m pretty sure she had company. Whether it was this guy, I couldn’t tell you,” he added. This didn’t come as any surprise to Hayes. So far it had been the same story with every desk clerk Hayes had spoken to; the girl always checked in and out while Jim stayed out of sight.

  “Did she give a name? Maybe a car registration?”

  The desk clerk made a face at Hayes as if he were nuts. “She paid cash for the room. No name, and I didn’t pay attention to what type of car she had. Probably some junker, but I couldn’t tell you positively.”

  Again, that didn’t surprise Hayes. Same old story. He leaned closer to the desk clerk and laid twenty bucks on the counter.

  “When was she here?”

  “We don’t keep a registry.”

  “I’m sure you could figure it out.”

  The desk clerk looked at the money, nodded, and slid the twenty dollars into a shirt pocket. Counting it out on his fingers he told Hayes that she was there for ten days. “She left Sunday,” he added.

  Hayes felt a buzz of excitement. Sunday was only four days ago. This was the closest he’d been to their trail.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Shit, yeah, I’m sure.”

  “She didn’t say where she was going next?”

  “No.”

  “Any clue at all? Did you see any road maps? Did she ask for any directions?”

  “Sorry. Nothing.”

  “Anything unusual left in the room?”

  The desk clerk shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the maid. She’ll be in tomorrow morning at seven.”

  “How about a phone number?”

  The desk clerk again made a face indicating Hayes was nuts. He started tapping impatiently along the counter. “You think this is the kind of motel where we keep a maid on twenty-four hour call? Or where she’s not an illegal and we actually care about keeping her phone number and address? Buddy, just come back here tomorrow at seven, give her twenty bucks also, and I’m sure she’ll tell you whatever she can, okay? In the meantime I have to get back to work.”

  Hayes gave the desk clerk his cell phone number, along with another twenty, and asked him to call him if he thought of anything else that could help. As he left he felt a skip in his step, and had to keep his jaw clenched tight to prevent a broad smile from coming over his face. He had been on this assignment for over a year and this was as warm as he had gotten to Jim. But as excited as he felt, he also had some trepidation. He was going to have to call his client and explain to her how he ended up in Kansas City. Thinking about that dampened his spirits.

  Up until this recent trip, she’d been calling him and telling him where to go next to look for Jim. After four or five months of that he started to make the connection about where she was sending him and recent murders of very bad men in the same cities, all of which were missing a good amount of blood. He had no doubt that Serena suspected Jim of these murders and was sending Hayes to these locations after scouring police reports. He also knew she was intentionally withholding this from him, and further, that she didn’t want him to make the connection. He knew she wouldn’t be happy that he figured it out, and knowing that made him nervous. As sexy as she was—as much as he longed to experience her in the sack, there was something about her that creeped the hell out of him. Big surprise, huh genius, he told himself, after all, all she’s doing is hiring you to track down a serial killer. But he knew that wasn’t it, at least not entirely. There was something else about her. Maybe it was the way he caught her a few times looking at him as if he weren’t even an insect. Those looks would be fleeting, nothing more than a shadow passing over her face, and it would leave him wondering whether he really saw what he thought he had or whether it was just his own insecurities acting up—after all, she was so damn sexy, and the best you could say about him was that he was an average-looking guy. Maybe he imagined those looks, maybe it was something else about her that gave him the willies. Whatever it was, he instinctively knew he didn’t want to get on her bad side.

  He waited until he was back in his car before calling Serena. She answered her cell phone after the third ring, her voice as always with a soft sing-song lilt to it.

  “Donald,” she half-purred, “this is a surprise.”

  “Yeah, I’d expect so,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I found that our target was in Kansas City four days ago.”

  She didn’t respond to that, instead she let a heavy silence hang between them while she waited for him to explain further. When he didn’t volunteer anything, she asked how he discovered such a thing.

  “I had a hunch.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  Her tone had shifted from amused to something that sent a chill down Hayes’ spine. There was no longer a lyrical quality to her voice, more like the faint unpleasantness of glass breaking. Hayes found himself sweating.

  “Something happened recently in Kansas City that made me want to check it out,” he said.

  “Which was?”

  Hayes took out his handkerchief and wiped it along his neck and forehead. He felt shaky. Deep inside he knew this was a mistake letting her in on what he knew. As if his voice were coming from outside of himself, he heard himself tell her about the pattern of murders he had recognized, and about the latest murder in Kansas City. There was a cold silence on her end that she eventually broke by asking Hayes if he had mentioned his theory to anyone else.

  “You mean the authorities?” he asked.

  “I mean anyone.”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “You’re paying me for my confidentiality. As long as you’re not asking me to break the law, I’m under no legal obligation to go to the police with any hunches I have.”

  “You do realize this hunch of yours is ridiculous?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What you’ve so ingeniously discovered has been nothing more than a series of bizarre coincidences.”

/>   “I realize that’s possible.”

  “No, Donald,” she said confidently, her sing-songish lilt back, “it is most definitely only a coincidence. But still, it’s been a lucky one since it led you to Jim. And only four days ago he was in Kansas City?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He could hear a slight purr on her end as she considered that. Then, “Any ideas where Jim might’ve gone next?”

  “None yet. But I have a few more leads to check out. From our previous sightings, he seems to be heading to the East Coast.”

  “It does seem that way.” Some more soft purring, then, “Donald, keep me informed if you find anything.”

  “I will.” He hesitated, and wiped his handkerchief along his face and neck. “Serena, there is something else. Jim is traveling with a young woman, probably in her early twenties. I have a sketch of her that I am confident is of a good likeness.”

  A painful silence, then her voice crackling like a whip, she asked, “Why haven’t you mentioned this to me before?”

  Her tone took Hayes by surprise. He found himself stammering, telling her he needed to confirm this first, but that he was now convinced of Jim’s traveling companion.

  ‘Is…Is she pretty?” Serena asked hesitantly, sounding a bit like a little girl.

  “A matter of taste,” Hayes said.

  “Would you say she’s pretty?”

  “Not really my type,” Hayes lied.

  “I see…Have you identified her?”

  “No, not yet. I’ve sent her drawing to my old police partner in Brooklyn, and no matches to any missing persons reports.”

  “Fax me her sketch as soon as you can,” she said; then impatiently, “Anything else?”

  “I have an idea on how to flush them out,” he said. “I’d like to have my staff send her sketch to motels around the country. I have a good idea of the type they’ve been staying at, and we could target them offering a reward to anyone who spots her and contacts us. In a month we could have full coverage. It wouldn’t take long after that.”

  “That is an excellent idea.” Her voice had softened back to its earlier sing-songish lilt. “I knew there was a reason I hired you other than simply your rugged good looks.”