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Lark

Richard Forrest

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

In memory of Frank Sisk

1

Frank Pemperton’s finger tightened on the .357 Magnum. “I’m taking you off the streets, Tommy.”

Lark shrugged. “That’s up to you. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Consider it done.” Pemperton squeezed the trigger until the weapon bucked in his hand. Downrange a covey of birds swirled overhead and arched in perfect V formation as they flew to the east. “Damn! A perp could be down there ready to open up on me and I’d’a missed him. Never could fire a handgun accurately.”

“You did once, Frank,” Lark snapped off two quick shots, both of which struck the center body ring of the torso-shaped target.

Pemperton angrily ejected empty shell casings from the revolver and vehemently ground the fallen brass into the dirt with the heel of his shoe. “That’s what’s wrong with you, Tommy. You don’t know when to keep your mouth shut. I remember what you did for me, and I don’t need to be reminded. If you’d keep your mouth quiet, I might be your rabbi. You’d be a captain by now. You’ll never make captain, Tommy. Not as long as I’m chief, and not as long as anyone around now is chief.”

Lark’s lips curled in a skewed smile. “If that’s a promise, Frank, I’m going to hold you to it.”

Pemperton glanced over at Lark. Once, twenty-two years ago as rookie patrolmen, they had looked the same age. Frank knew that his own hair was graying and his body weight was shifting, but Lark had aged in different ways: his body was still firm, his hair not yet gray, but facial lines had hardened and an inner tenseness developed that made others uneasy. If he sat next to you on the bus, you’d want to change seats.

“Why did you put that throw-down knife on the kid for me, Tommy?”

“Who the hell remembers? What’s this crap about taking me off the streets? You know I’m not good for anything else.”

“The Méndez family are filing charges against you. When you busted their kid, they claim you threw him down the stairs.”

“He fell.”

“Keep to that story and you’ll beat it—maybe.”

“You made me a garbage collector, Frank. I busted that kid three times and each time the court recycled the garbage and I had to collect him again. This last time I got him with enough stuff to start his own pharmacy.”

“So you threw him down the stairs?”

“You said that, Frank, I didn’t.”

“You’re going to kill someone, Tommy. That’s next on the agenda.”

Lark shrugged. “When you live with garbage it rubs off.”

“That’s why I’m bringing you in. You’ve got over twenty in, take an early retirement.”

“And do what?”

“How the hell should I know? Go fishing.”

“I’m going all the way.”

Their eyes met and it was Frank Pemperton who turned away. “Report to my office this afternoon for a new assignment.”

“Doing what?”

“I’ll think of something.” Pemperton turned stiffly and strode toward his car, which was parked at the edge of the firing range. He unconsciously straightened his shoulders as if the other man’s glare at his back were a physical assault.

Lark swiveled and fired the remaining rounds in the revolver at the distant target in rapid-fire succession. The smash of sound reverberating across the hills did little to ease his anger.

He walked slowly toward the parking lot with the revolver dangling from his right hand. A warm sun brushed his face. He wanted to lie in its glare, close his eyes, and soak up its warmth until the bad years faded away. He shook off the inclination as he reached the red Dodge pickup. The utility locker attached to the cab at the rear of the truckbed contained an ice chest filled with cans of Narragansett beer, a gun-cleaning kit, and a number of other things. He flipped the tab off a can of beer, drained half of it, and began to fieldstrip his weapon. He stood at the tailgate of the pickup and worked slowly and methodically as he cleaned the pistol.

Lark didn’t care to examine his past life, for he knew that once he dredged up a certain image, others were sure to follow—and they were the painful ones that bit deep. It had happened eighteen years ago when he and Frank were still beat cops. The Corvette had been driving erratically and they had signaled for it to pull over to the curb. Instead, the sports car had accelerated and a high speed chase had ensued. While Lark drove, Frank had radioed the marker numbers to headquarters and learned that the car was stolen. The chase had ended in the river warehouse district when the driver lost control and smashed into a utility pole. Frank had leapt from the squad car and chased the suspect into an alley between two vacant buildings.

Lark was ten yards behind Frank when the suspect, only a blur in the deep shadows, suddenly stopped and turned. Frank had fired once, and the single shot had pierced the forehead of the victim. With drawn weapons at the ready, they had silently approached the still form. Revealed under the wavering beam of Lark’s flashlight was the six-foot, two-hundred-pound body of what had obviously been a very young man.

They hadn’t spoken and Lark had dropped the knife inches from the dead kid’s hand. He had wondered then as he had today, what quirk of fate made Frank Pemperton’s only shot fired in anger so deadly accurate.

It took Lark two cans of beer and a dozen gun patches to put his weapon into satisfactory condition. He jammed the Colt Python into his shoulder holster and put on a light jacket that he grabbed from the seat of the truck.

He slid behind the wheel and turned the ignition. The radio instantly blared.

“This is all talk, WGBZ radio Middleburg, and your host is Johnny Gross, the show is Gross Out! You’re on the air, babe.”

“Is that really you, Johnny?”

“No, this is Oral Roberts, helium head. Who did you think it is?”

“I’ve been trying to get through for days.”

“You’re going to be through in three seconds unless you give me an answer. For today’s Gross Out, where is the weirdest place you ever did it? And don’t crock me, babe.”

“You probably won’t believe this, Johnny, but my boyfriend and I did it in a Goodwill collection hamper and—”

“You sound like a charity case …”

Lark snapped off the radio and stared at the set a moment in astonishment before he spoke aloud. “Scum.” He pulled out onto the highway, still shaking his head.

As he drove toward the city, the other images returned as he knew they would: a young Margaret on the beach at Cape Cod, Margaret’s passion as they made love in the early days, a radiant Margaret in the hospital maternity ward at Cathy’s birth … Margaret dead in the living room.

“No!” It was an audible cry meant to drive away the devils that peopled his mind. Frank should have known, Lark could never retire. Retirement would only bring more time to think and endless repetition of images he couldn’t endure.

Middleburg, Connecticut, had once been a river town. Its now-vanished wharves had bustled with activity as riverboats plied the Connecticut. The only boating activity the city now boasted were scull races by the University of Middleburg crews; even the yacht club had moved farther upstream to less polluted waters.

In addition to the university, the city was also the location of the home office of the Nutmeg Insurance Company, a flock of small machine shops, and the large plant of an aerospace manufacturing company on the outskirts of town. From river town to mill town to technical city, the place had gone through its costly transitions, but now seemed stable with a population of 82,000.

It was his town. He felt a proprietary interest in its well-being, and any transgressions became a personal affront. This attitude had grown over the years until it nearly consumed him. He knew objectively that it was a malignant obsession, but it was all he had, for he was the garbage collector.

With a start he realized that he had driven to the outskirts of the college campus, nearly to Cathy’s house. It had been five months since he had last seen his daughter, and that was an unsatisfactory and perfunctory Christmas visit. On impulse, he swerved the pickup into Garden Street toward the two-family house halfway down the block.

Lark squeezed the truck into a parking place between a very old van whose side panels were a painted recreation of an Alpine mountain scene, and a VW bug that he recognized as Cathy’s. He flicked off the ignition and turned in the seat to glare at the wood-frame house set back from the sidewalk. The outside needed a coat of paint, and there were no curtains on the second floor where Cathy’s apartment was located.

He sat for a few minutes gazing up at the second floor while simultaneously patting his pockets for a nonexistent package of cigarettes. It had been over three years, but the craving was still there.

He loved his daughter. At one time she had been the only firm personal relationship he had. If she were only ten again and they could canoe and walk in parks as they had done so often in the past … Lark hated nostalgia and shook his head to erase the images.

He left the pickup and glanced down the street past the rows of identical two-family homes toward the university campus three blocks away. Three blocks! As far as his daughter was concerned, it may as well be thirty miles. He strode toward the entrance to the second-floor apartment.

He wasn’t surprised that the door bell for her apartment was immobile. It obviously hadn’t worked in years. He opened a punctured screen door and tried the inner entrance. It swung back to his touch to reveal a steep stairwell leading up to a dark interior.

“Cathy! You there?”

His voice seemed to echo up an endless hall. He shook his head and trudged up the stairs. The door to the apartment was cracked and he pushed it open. A hallway entered directly into a living room that ran the length of the apartment. A sparse accumulation of cast-off furniture was spotted around the bare floor. Empty beer cans and piles of magazines were scattered indiscriminately around the room. A heaped ashtray squatted on the floor next to a worn leather easy chair.

Lark bent over and pinched some of the ash from the overflowing ashtray. He sniffed the mixture slowly and then brushed it off his hands.

“If you haven’t already discovered it, it’s pot.”

Lark whirled as his right hand automatically reached for his holster. His daughter stood in the bedroom doorway. She wore a man’s shirt open one button too far that fell to midthigh. Her long blond hair was tousled and stringy. “You need to wash your hair.”

“Oh, Jesus! You haven’t seen me in five months and your first sentence is an order. Damn!” She found an empty package of cigarettes, crumpled the paper, tossed it across the room, and continued searching. “And before you snap at me, you sniff my ashtray.”

“We don’t bust people for smoking anymore.”

“I’m sure that’s ruined your decade.” She found a partially filled package and lit a cigarette before plopping down on the couch.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you, honey.”

“Why did you come?”

“Last week I stopped in to see Dean Branigan at the university. He tells me that they’ll readmit you to the summer session on a conditional basis. If that goes well, you can matriculate in September.”

“I don’t want to go back now or anytime soon.”

Lark brushed some remaining flecks of ash from his fingers. “I’m going to stop sending money. I’m in no mood to support your present habits.”

“I’ll get a job.”

“Doing what?”

“They need night help at the Seven-Eleven on Grove Street.”

“That place has been held up three times in the past year.”

“Then you had better put a stakeout on it or whatever you call it.”

“I’m not in the street anymore,” Lark said.

Her eyes flickered and she became slightly less belligerent. “Oh. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know yet. They’ll tell me this afternoon.” He didn’t want her pity. He had never indulged in it himself, and was damned if he would accept it from her. He paced the room and paused to look out the rear window down at a well-kept vegetable garden that took up nearly all of the rear yard. “I want you to go back to school, Cathy. It’s important for you.”

“I’m not ready. I couldn’t concentrate. During my last semester I’d read forty pages of an assignment, and an hour later I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what I’d read.”

Lark turned, eager to grasp at a slim straw of hope. “Go back into it gradually. Take it easy this summer, do one, maybe two courses. Take French, you always loved French and it came easy for you; then maybe a music-appreciation course.”

“Clapping for credit? I’ll think about it,” his daughter said.

A young man dressed only in Jockey undershorts appeared in the bedroom doorway and looked out at Lark in astonishment. “Holy shit!” he said before he disappeared back into the bedroom, slamming the door.

“Who the hell is that?” Lark asked.

“That’s Craig.”

“Is he a student at the college?”

“He dropped out.”

“Does he work?”

“He’s keeping a journal. He wants to be a poet.”

“A poet! Jesus H. Christ, a poet! I’m supporting him too. You know, I ought to shake this place down. I might just find enough goddamn grass to bust his ass with a possession-with-intent-to-sell.”

Cathy, her face sharp in anger, catapulted to her feet. “You do that, Daddy! Bust his ass real good. That’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it?”

Lark took an angry step toward his daughter and stopped stock-still as he fought for control. “You know me better than that,” he said in a husky voice.

“Do I? Do I know you as well as Mama? Is that why she did it?”

Lark turned away from her and walked to the door. “You had better take that job at the Seven-Eleven.” He took the steps two at a time and walked out into a bright sunlight that made him blink. He slammed into the pickup and screeched from the parking place. He gasped in a near groan as the truck reached the corner. He loved her and yet it always went so badly these days. And then, as he knew they would, the pictures returned: Cathy taking her first step, Cathy at a dance recital in her first long dress, and Cathy nearly nude with a young man living with her …

For the second time that day Lark confronted Frank Pemperton. During a time that now seemed a thousand years ago, he had played football with Frank at Middleburg High. Then, Pemperton had been a lightning end with a miraculous ability to pluck impossible throws from the air. He was now the aging athlete, his jowls were pronounced, and his belly protruded over his belt. His eyes were heavy as he shuffled through the personnel folder while occasionally glancing at Lark.

“I had thought about putting you in charge of the high-school drug-orientation program, but I reconsidered because of your language.”

“If you try to put me in the records room, I’m going to shove that folder down your throat.”

“You’ll go where I send you or get out!”

“How about school-crossing guards? That would get me out of the way.”

“You’d have everyone on stakeout for child molesters. I want you off the street, Lark. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We created you, and now we’ve got a responsibility to see that you don’t hurt anyone.”

“Jesus, where did the newfound ethics come from?”

“Some of us grew, Tommy.”

“And some of us are pompous asses.”

“You know, buddy, I can have you up on charges for a remark like that.”

“That would solve our little problem, wouldn’t it?”

Pemperton’s voice softened and his hands slid forward on the desk almost as if he were reaching for Lark. “I know it’s been tough. But we’re trying to help. We all know what you’ve been through since Margaret died and with what’s happened with the girl—”

Lark sprang from the chair in a swift movement, rushed to the side of the desk, and grasped Frank’s neck with his right hand. “Don’t ever say that again! Don’t even think that!”

With both feet braced against the desk, Frank Pemperton pushed his swivel chair backward and forced Lark to relinquish his grip. “You crazy son of a bitch! You want assault charges? Is that what you’re after? You bastard. You’ve gone over the hill!”

Lark’s fists clenched and unclenched as he turned away. “Okay, so I overreacted.”

“That’s one hell of an understatement.” The phone rang and Frank snatched it from its cradle. “Yeah … I don’t want to be … When?… Who’s on it?… What’s the first report?… Tell the crazy bastards not to touch a thing until a senior officer gets down there.” He slammed down the phone.

“What’s that?”

“A body has been found down on Mark Street. Young, girl, probably a street OD.”

“Who took the call?”

“Car thirty-two, Najankian’s driving.”

“Horse Najankian? He’ll muck up the scene in ten minutes.”

“The watch commander will put a senior man down there in minutes.”

“Give it to me, Frank.” Lark’s voice had sunk to a deep register and he realized with impatience that he almost sounded imploring. “What the hell. You don’t have anything else on tap for me right now.”

Pemperton looked dubious. “I want you off the street, Lark.”

“A kid DOA isn’t really the street.”

“I don’t know what in the hell you think it is.”

“I need a transition case, something to work off the pressure.”

“No roughing witnesses.”

“You know me better.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Come on, Frank. I’m asking you.”

Their eyes met until Pemperton looked away and picked up the phone. “What the hell. All right. Take it, and I’ll notify the watch commander.”

Lark drank a can of beer as he drove to Mark Street. The case would be routine—most were—but it would allow him to take time to decide on a future course of events. As much as he hated to do it, he would have to come up with a workable plan for his future and get Frank Pemperton to go along.

A squad car, its dome lights flashing, was parked across the entrance to Mark Street. A uniformed cop leaned against the hood and made gestures to detour traffic. Lark gave the patrolman a curt wave and angled the pickup between the squad car and the sidewalk. Mark Street was a short thoroughfare that ran a parallel course to the Interstate and was separated from the nonaccess highway by a thin strip of woods along the right-of-way. The houses were of twenties vintage and once were husky workingmen’s homes filled with the tantalizing smell of fresh-baked bread. They were now the final refuge of disparate members of society’s permanent underclass.

Number Twenty-one was midway down the street, with two squad cars, parked nose to nose, in front of the slanting front porch. A rusted car and a peeling van were jammed into a narrow driveway by the side of the house.

Lark left his pickup parked in front of the drive. He saw a small group of men and women in the rear yard and two more uniformed cops. He strode toward them while simultaneously clipping his open badge case to the front of his jacket. People parted before him. “Get on the radio and call for at least four more men,” he snapped at a bewildered Horse Najankian. “Move it!”

“Yes, sir.” Najankian bolted for his squad car.

“Get these people back,” Lark barked at another cop. “Where is it?”

“All the way to the back, right at the edge of the woods,” the second patrolman said as he began to move people away from the rear yard.

Lark stepped over two tires and moved cautiously around a rusting engine block and through ankle-high grass at the rear of the property. He saw the huddled form ten yards to his front, but purposely kept his eyes averted from the corpse. Once he became engrossed in an examination of the body, his attention to any other surrounding details would be lost. He moved slowly through the littered rear yard.

He heard the distant rumble of eighteen-wheelers on the Interstate, which he knew was only fifty yards away, but he could not see the highway due to the intervening dense second-growth timber and underbrush. Lark stepped into a small clearing and stopped.

The body lay curled on its side with one hand outstretched toward a three-foot-high column upon which was affixed a Christian cross in an upside-down position.

“Christ,” Lark said aloud. “This I don’t need.”

He walked slowly around the cross and column. It was his initial guess that the column was formally the base of a birdbath or similar lawn ornament. The cross was a cheap affair that could be purchased at any religious-goods store. He turned his attention down to the body.

Her denim-clad legs were clasped together and drawn up toward her chest. While one hand reached toward the cross, the other was pinned under her body. She lay on her side, as if she had crawled here to nap. She wore a light cotton blouse unbuttoned to the waist, and it was obvious from the protruding right breast that she did not wear a bra. She wore a pair of L.L. Bean’s Gumshoes, and as he circled her body slowly, he saw a mass of dried blood at the rear of the head.

It was not a drug OD.

After he completed the circle, he looked for the first time into her face. She was young, he would judge somewhere between seventeen and twenty-two. Her features were grotesquely frozen in a grimace of anger and hate.

He had seen that same scowl earlier in the day. It was the expression he had last seen on his daughter.

2

Two more police cars arrived at the small house on Mark Street with dome lights flashing and sirens blaring. It was going to be a goddamn circus, Lark thought. Horse Najankian lumbered back toward the murder scene and Lark raised his fist in the air and gave a pump signal for him to hurry.

“Get back on the radio and call … Wait, you had better write this down.”

“Yes, sir.” Najankian searched through his uniform pockets until he found a small pad and a stub of a pencil. He looked at Lark expectantly. “Shoot, Lieutenant.”

“I need the assistant medical examiner here as quickly as possible, an ambulance, and Sergeant Ralston with his camera. Am I going too fast?”

“I got it,” Horse said as he scribbled frantically.

“Have the watch commander call the chief medical examiner in Farmington and tell her that we need a fast autopsy on this one, and tell her that I’ll be up there tomorrow to sit in. We’ll need lights at the scene in case we work through dusk, so get the fire department to send a portable generator and lights. I want this whole area cordoned off into ten-meter search grids.” Lark pointed to two other patrolmen working their way across the littered rear yard. “Tell those two guys to start interviewing everyone in each house on the street except this one.” He pointed to the house directly in front of them. “I’ll take this one myself. Who called it in?”

“Guy who lives here, he didn’t give his name.”

“Find him.”

“Anything else?”

“Get moving!” Lark watched Horse lumber back to his car and its radio before he grabbed the sleeve of another cop. “You. Stand here by the body. If anybody comes near the scene shoot them.”

He walked slowly back to his pickup. It was time for a beer before all hell broke loose.

Lark had time to finish his beer before Horse returned, holding firmly to the elbow of a young man dressed in white. Lark crushed the beer can with his right hand and dropped it into the truckbed. Horse’s witness was in his early twenties, and dressed in knife-creased white duck pants, an immaculate white T-shirt, white tennis shoes, and had a completely shaved head. Lark groaned.

“This is the fella’ that called it in, Lieutenant. I did the other things.”

“Fine. Keep everyone back from the scene.”

The patrolman gave a sloppy salute and moved away.

“I don’t know her,” the man in white said.

“What’s your name?”

“I am the Magus.”

Lark looked at him coolly and momentarily considered slamming him against the side of the house and patting him down. That usually changed attitudes quickly. “Uh-huh, Magus. Let’s try it again? Your name?”

“There is no other. We have stripped ourselves of all outside necessities in order to reach a spiritual nirvana.”

“H. Jesus Christ,” Lark mumbled. “A cult yet. All right, kid, what’s on your driver’s license and social-security card?”

A pause. “Winthrop Rutledge.”

“And you live here with the deceased?”

“I live here with others of similar belief and persuasion, but not the departed one in the rear yard.”

Lark gestured toward the group held behind the police line. “And which of those are of similar belief and persuasion?”

“The ones in white,” Winthrop replied.

Lark saw them: four young women dressed in what looked like scruffy prom gowns. “You live here with four women?”

“At the present. We expect more converts shortly.”

“I’ll bet. All right, Winthrop, as straight as you can, tell me how you found the body.”

“We only have one bathroom and it was occupied and I had to take a piss.”

“So you went into the backyard and found her?”

“Yes. We don’t have a phone, so I went next door and dialed nine-one-one.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t touch the body.”

“Does that cross and pedestal in the rear yard belong to your group?”

“We use it for certain ceremonies.”

“That boggles the imagination,” Lark said, and wondered if they sacrificed virgins by the light of a full moon—which would of necessity be an occasional ceremony, considering the lack of virgins these days. “Don’t you and your group go anywhere for a couple of days. I’ll talk to you later.”

A dark-blue Mercedes pulled into Mark Street and double-parked by the side of Lark’s pickup. Dr. Damon Wainwright unwound from the car, grabbed a black medical bag, and came toward Lark with a frown on his face. He was dressed in a well-tailored pinstripe whose cost Lark estimated at eight hundred dollars. He was a very angry doctor.

“I have an office full of patients, Lieutenant. I don’t need this.”

“You evidently needed it twenty years ago when you got yourself on the list of assistant medical examiners,” Lark replied with a smile.

Wainwright glared. “Where’s the body?”

“In the back.” He led the way. Tomorrow, if not this afternoon, Damon Wainwright, M.D., would have his name removed from the list of assistant medical examiners of the city of Middleburg. The chief medical examiner in Farmington must have been out on another case, as she always handled the homicides, if she could, before assigning them to one of the assistants at a local level. Nevertheless, Lark knew she would be the one to perform the autopsy.

They reached the body and Wainwright stood looking down at it silently for a moment. “Anything touched?”

“I haven’t even been through the clothing for an ID.”

“Dammit,” Wainwright said as he continued looking down at the corpse.

“Is she dead, Doctor?” Lark asked ingenuously. He was almost enjoying the pompous doctor’s discomfort and wondered how long it was going to take this ass to realize that he had no choice but to kneel his pin-striped knee on the dirty ground next to the body.

“People with bullet wounds in the cranium are usually dead.”

Lark nodded. “I guess you’re right. You are going to examine her?” He had a canvas drop cloth in the truck, but he’d be damned if he would get it for this unpleasant man.

A police sergeant arrived and immediately began snapping a series of pictures at different angles of the body and its location.

Dr. Wainwright gave a sigh of resignation and dropped to his knees next to the body. He spoke in a monotone. “It would appear to be a bullet entrance wound at the rear of the cranium. I see no exit wound. Putrefaction has occurred to a minor extent, which means that she has been dead for over twenty-four hours. Rigor mortis is present and all extremities are rigid. There is lividity and algor mortis or cooling.” He stood up, brushed his hands, and stared sadly down at his stained knees. “That’s all I can say at this point. I would suggest a homicide.”

“Considering that shooting yourself in the back of the head is very difficult, I tend to agree,” Lark said as he squatted by the corpse. He carefully went through the jean pockets and even slipped a finger into the small blouse pocket, but they were all empty. He ground his teeth. “I guess we have a Jane Doe, there’s no ID of any sort.”

“Can I go now, Lieutenant?” Wainwright asked in mock formality.

“Thanks for coming, Doc.”

“I’m getting off the list, they don’t pay enough,” Wainwright said as he spun on his heel and strode toward the Mercedes.

“Want to take a guess as to how long she’s been here?” Lark called after the retreating doctor.

“Between twenty-four and forty-eight hours,” Wainwright said without turning.

Lark slipped acetate evidence bags over the small hands of the victim and secured them with rubber bands at the wrists. It was important that the hands not be further contaminated, as the medical examiner’s office would need to make prints and also take scrapings from under the fingernails in a search for bits of flesh or fabric.

A semblance of frenzied order began to replace chaos. Officers who had completed their house-to-house interviews reported back to Lark. All reports were negative. No one in the immediate area had heard any shouts, screams, or shots during the past several days.

A maze of thin white rope began to grid the crime scene and the wooded area between the yard and highway. These uneven squares were set out in ten-meter groupings and would be diagramed on a master control sheet and minutely searched by officers. The location of any discovered evidence could be accurately charted on the master sheet before being bagged.

Lark stood near the body as the paramedics lifted the childlike form into the rubber body bag and levered it on the wheeled stretcher. They awkwardly maneuvered across the rear yard to the open doors of the ambulance.

Lark watched the ambulance turn the corner before climbing into the pickup and switching on the radio. “This is Lark. We have a Jane Doe homicide,” he told the communications clerk at headquarters. “I need a computer check on possible runaways or missings of the following description. Dammit! Are you taking this down, Forbes?”

“Yes, sir, I’m ready, but this isn’t very good radio procedure, Lieutenant.”

Lark ignored the comment. “A white female between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, approximately five foot two, weight around a hundred and ten pounds. Hair and eyes brown, no visible scars.” He described the clothing in detail. “Got that?”

“Christ, Lieutenant, with a description as general as that, we’re going to have a bunch of possibles.”

“Get me a printout on all of them and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning,” Lark snapped. He’d try, but felt that it would be difficult to make any identification on the description they had unless the girl was local. She was far too ordinary, but something might turn up at the autopsy that would help; and then there were the L.L. Bean shoes. They looked fairly new and might be included in one of the printouts. “Patch me through to the chief.”

Frank Pemperton was on the air in seconds. “What do you have, Lark?”

“A young female homicide without ID.”

“For God’s sake, Tommy! Half this town have police scanners. You mean you have a sixty-ten.”

Lark ignored the comment. “Looks like a small-caliber bullet wound to the rear of the head fired at close range.”

“That sounds like a mob MO,” Frank said, ignoring his own command.

“She’s young for a hit like that.”

“All right, you know what to do. And for Christ’s sake, in the future, try to sound professional on the radio.”

Lark clicked the radio off in irritation. There was a discreet tapping on the truck window and he turned to look at Horse Najankian. “What is it?”

“We found a couple of things, Lieutenant. You should come take a look yourself.”

He followed the lumbering police officer back to the small clearing where the body had been found and the inverted cross still stood on the pedestal. “What do you have?”

“There’s something on the far side of the column that looks like blood.”

Lark circled the column and saw the stains on the far side near the base. They could be bloodstains, and he looked over at the clumsy officer with a new regard. “You spotted them?” Lark had missed them in his own inspection of the column.

“We found something else in the woods.” He led the way down a barely visible overgrown path that led from the yard through the second-growth timber to the highway beyond. Midway to the road another cop stood by a bramble bush. “Look at this.” Horse pointed. “About waist level.”

Lark bent over the bush and followed the pointing fingers. Then he saw them; a few strands of thread at waist level were snagged on a branch. “Looks like it could have come from her jeans. The state lab can tell us if they’re from the same dye lot.” He straightened and turned to the two officers. “Get me exact measurements from the edge of the highway to this bush on one side, and from where the body was found on the other.” He pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket and snipped the branch holding the threads and dropped them into an evidence bag. “I’ll take the threads so that we keep the chain of evidence simple.”

“Seems to me that if a man were carrying a body at waist level from the highway to where we found her, her pants could get snagged about here,” Horse said.

“I think you have a point,” Lark replied. “The lab will tell us if you’re right. I’m still not ruling out that it happened in the house.”

The officers nodded.

It was ten at night by the time they were finished at the crime scene. A guard was left at the site. Tomorrow Lark would prepare an “Affidavit and Application Search-and-Seizure Warrant” for the pedestal and cross. He would also try to get a judge to sign a similar warrant for a search of the house. Lark snorted. In the old days they would have just gone in and tossed the whole damn place.

After hours of searching the area, all they had was one dead girl, three threads, and a possible bloodstain on the base of a cheap pedestal. It would take him another half-hour to go to headquarters and place the threads with the property clerk to ensure that the chain of evidence was sanctified.

It was ten-forty when Lark stopped the pickup in front of his house trailer, which was parked behind the Milligan Machine Company. It was choretime. He left the truck and walked slowly around the machine shop and its several outbuildings. Occasionally he tried a door to make sure it was securely locked. It was part of his arrangement with Milligan. He checked the buildings at night, and in return was allowed to park his trailer and hook into the shop’s plumbing and electrical systems. Both parties benefited and it saved Lark money. Lark didn’t like to spend money. The final chore was to empty the melted ice from the beer freezer and then he could go inside the trailer.

The trailer’s interior was spotless and sparsely furnished in a militarylike simplicity. He had flipped open the small refrigerator to reach for a can of beer when he saw the calendar over the sink.

“Goddamn!” he said aloud. It was Monday. The rule was inviolate: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were exercise nights. Lark hated exercise. He had decided many years earlier that you were born with a heart that was genetically engineered for a certain number of beats. You could accelerate your allotted time by excessive exercise such as long jogs, or you could also diminish your survival by reverting completely to sloth. He had chosen a midpoint, a minimum amount of exercise to keep the body in trim, expunge the beer poison, and maintain muscle tone in the absolute shortest possible time. After several years of experimentation he had decided that twenty-two minutes of violent exercise, repeated three times a week, would maintain his body.

He groaned. It had to be done or the system broke down. He rolled out the heavy dumbbells from under the counter, stripped off his pants and shirt, and began.

Sets of deep knee bends, pull-ups, sit-ups, and curls were the fulcrum of his program, and he forced himself to breathe deeply with each exercise.

He watched the wall clock as its hands moved with agonizing slowness. When twenty-two minutes to the second had elapsed, he stopped, kicked the dumbbells under the counter, stripped off his shorts, and stepped into the shower. He was exhausted.

The shower helped, and he was toweling off when he heard a car pull into the drive next to the pickup. He pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and went to the door.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said without enthusiasm as she left her Olds and came into the shaft of light falling from the doorway.

She kissed his lips and slowly ran her hands over his bare chest before pushing past him into the trailer. “I drove by earlier and you weren’t here. I think I’m going to give you a telephone for your birthday.”

“They cost too damn much. Want a beer?”

“A little white wine.”

“I think I have some left from last time.” He searched in the refrigerator.

“What if they want you at headquarters?”

“They send a car by.” He found the wine and poured half a jelly glass full and flipped a beer from the freezer.

She took the wine and settled back on the divan. “You don’t seem overjoyed to see me.”

“It hasn’t been one of my better days.” He drained half the beer.

“I saw on television that you are handling that dead-girl case.”

“That’s one of the things that made my day.”

She seemed tense and began to pace the narrow trailer with loping strides. Faby Winn, thirtyish, was an athletic woman who religiously ran her three miles each morning and scoffed at Lark’s ideas on exercise. She walked as she ran, with purpose and determination and without seductive sway. Tight curls of auburn hair covered her head and she often had a nervous habit of running her hand through it. “This place is depressing, do you know that?”

Lark finished his beer before answering. “You’ve said that before.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “we have on the one side”—she peered out the right side of the trailer—“a mountain of old tires, for God’s sake.” She gestured to the left. “And over here we have a pleasing vista of early cement-block construction.”

“It’s a goddamn factory, for Christ’s sake,” Lark replied as he internally debated over another beer.

“You’ve got the money to get yourself another house. I’m tired of making love in a slum.”

“I don’t like houses,” Lark said as he decided on another beer. He opened the refrigerator door and stopped stock-still, as if he were staring for the first time into a vivid scene of several years before …

He was the one who was supposed to find her. That was the way Margaret had planned it. His shift was due to end at three P.M. that day, but his relief had been late and he had to remain on the stakeout. Cathy was supposed to be at a high-school play rehearsal until after six, but it had been canceled and she had been the one to arrive home first and enter the bloody living room.

Lark had found them ten minutes later. Margaret’s head was in Cathy’s lap, and his young daughter was swaying back and forth keening for her dead mother. Lark had lifted his daughter in his arms and carried her from the house. They had never returned to that house or to any other.

“Are you lost somewhere, Lark?”

He snaked a beer from the refrigerator and slammed the door. “Why don’t you go back to your husband? At least you could go to bed in a decent house.”

“That bastard. I wouldn’t want to interrupt his lucrative Gyn practice in West Hartford. You know, I’m tempted to take another year getting my doctorate. I’ll just diddle around with my thesis another year and cost him another fifteen thou.”

“The fifteen thou is the revenge?”

“You know it. I spent eight years putting him through medical school and his residency, and the whole time he was screwing every nurse he came into contact with and a few of his patients on the side. I’ll never forget the look on his face when the judge ruled that he’d have to pay for my doctorate.”

“One of life’s joyous moments, huh, Faby?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite the pound of flesh I wanted, but a few ounces that helped.”

“I saw Cathy today. She still insists that I killed Margaret.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to her? I knew Margaret. You don’t teach with someone for five years and not know them. She had problems that had nothing to do with you. You didn’t pull the trigger, Lark.”

“Stay out of it. She’ll have to come back to me on her own.”

Faby sipped her wine. “You’re impossible. I don’t know why I stay involved with you.”

“Why do you?”

“Probably because, deep inside me, there’s a masochistic streak that likes being around a man who constantly acts like he’s going to explode.”

“Have I ever hurt you?” Lark asked softly.

“Of course not, but I have the feeling that you’re sometimes about to.”

“That’s just something that comes from too much time in the street.”

“I don’t know about that. I think you’re a hard man, Lark.”

He stared at her a moment, but decided that he didn’t care to carry the conversation further. He pulled her toward him. “Shut up with the cheap psychology and let’s go to bed.”

3

Lieutenant Thomas Lark wondered what it would be like to make love to the chief medical examiner of the state of Connecticut. The long lab coat that draped her body made it presently impossible to see the curves of her figure, but he knew from past meetings that she was an attractive woman in her thirties with a beguiling smile that belied her grim occupation.

He realized that he was engaging in his age-old game of compartmentalizing to avoid the obscenity of the dead young woman stretched out on the autopsy table three feet in front of him. The diener moved into the space between his chair and the autopsy table and began to remove the corpse’s clothing. The medical examiner adjusted the hanging microphone she would use to dictate her running commentary as she worked. On the wall, midway down the tiled room, was a small plaque with a Latin quotation. Lark read it aloud:

“‘Taceant colloquis effugiat risus. Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.’ What does it mean?”

“What mean?” the medical examiner asked as she made the final adjustment to the stubborn microphone.

“The Latin on the wall.”

She laughed. “That’s my Milton Halperin influence.”

“Who?”

“For many years Halperin was chief pathologist for the city of New York, he also taught forensic pathology at NYU when I was a medical student. He’s the one responsible for getting me into this work, God save his soul.”

“Then it’s a joke in Latin?”

“No.” She turned and traced the words with her fingers as she reverently read the translation. “‘Let conversation and laughter cease. This is the place where the dead delight in helping the living.’ You know the old epigram, don’t you, Lieutenant? ‘A dermatologist knows nothing and does nothing, a psychiatrist knows everything and does nothing, a surgeon knows nothing and does everything, and a pathologist knows everything but a day too late.’”

Lark laughed. “I hope you’ll be able to tell me about our Jane Doe.”

The clothing had all been removed and placed in evidence bags for Lark. “No underwear or socks,” the diener announced curtly as he left through the swinging doors that exited the room.

The medical examiner arched an eyebrow. “That probably means a sexual attack, but we’ll see when we get there.” She bent over the body for the external examination.

Lark took a pen from his pocket and crossed his legs as he prepared to take down any pertinent facts as she recorded them.

The medical examiner’s voice droned in a low monotone without feeling or inflection. “External examination. The body is that of an unembalmed, young, adult white female. It is well-developed and well-nourished. It weighs 117 pounds and measures sixty-three inches in length. The hair is light brown, and matted at the external occipital protuberance where an entrance gunshot wound is noted. The wound is surrounded by an area of ecchymosis approximately three centimeters in diameter.” She turned her attention to the lower torso and hip area. “Wedge-shaped burn marks are noted along the transumbilical plane.”

“What?” Lark stood so abruptly that his chair fell backward and clattered on the tile floor. He clutched his notepad as he took two steps to the autopsy table, where he stared down at the body. “Good God!”

Their eyes met across the table until the medical examiner turned from the body and faced the plaque on the wall. She continued her monotone. “It would appear as if these are burn wounds inflicted by a heat device of unknown origin over a period of several days.” Her voice changed in inflection. “You know, Lark, she was probably conscious through all of it.”

Lark nodded.

The medical examiner turned to face the table again and once more her voice took on its professional drone. “The wounds are in a pattern across the transumbilical plane twelve centimeters in length. We’ll take pictures of this for you, Lark.”

“Of course.” He continued staring down at the tortured body of the young woman in horrified fascination.

The medical examiner continued her examination. “You never get used to the children and the tortured. That you never get inured to.”

“I can understand,” Lark said hoarsely. “It would have been very painful, wouldn’t it?”

“Considering that the outer and inner genitalia were also touched with the burning device, the pain and suffering must have been beyond belief.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“I’ll get smears from the vaginal area and other orifices, and of course, after we open her, we’ll take liver, kidney, stomach, urine, and intestine samples for a full toxicology study.”

Lark was still looking at the wedge-shaped burn marks. “What did this?”

“The marks look like they were made by a stylus of some sort. I’ve seen shapes like that on photographs of Syrian cuneiform writing on clay tablets.”

“That’s out of my jurisdiction,” Lark said with a tight smile. “I can’t go beyond Hartford without the chief’s okay.”

“Funny, Lark. Funny.”

“The patterns seem to spell out something.”

“I saw it. It’ll come out clearer in the pictures.”

“The marks across her belly … S-L-U-T,” Lark said.

The medical examiner kept looking down at the body before continuing her examination. “It would seem so. You’ve got a sex nut on your hands, Lieutenant. After I finish the autopsy, I’ll put the burn-mark configurations on the computer wire to INFORM and see what they have for us.”

“What’s that?”

“The International Reference Organization in Forensic Medicine, it’s located in Wichita, Kansas. It’s a data clearing organization for forensic medicine. Thousands of cases are stored in the computer so we can compare patterns like this. If it’s been done before, it will turn up. I hope to God the answer is negative.”

“Yeah,” Lark agreed.

She continued her external examination. It began with the victim’s toes, carefully spreading them apart to check for minute puncture or needle marks. She continued her meticulous examination, taking particular care with the elbow areas, which were a favorite drug-addict entry point. “No visible needle puncture wounds,” she said into the microphone, and then took her foot off the activator pedal and turned to Lark. “If they used an extremely narrow hypo more than twelve hours before she expired, we might not find any entry.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to check the oral cavity for possible fiber evidence. The decedent was in extreme anguish during the final hours of her life, and she must have been gagged to mitigate the sound of her screams.”

“I would expect that to be the case.” Lark knew what was coming and he averted his head away from the table.

The crack of the jawbone made his shoulders twitch. He turned back to see the medical examiner using a light to peer inside the mouth.

“Strange. There are no fiber remains or bruising around the lips or at the corner of the mouth. That’s not what I would have expected. I’ll take smears for possible semen presence, of course.”

“Then she wasn’t gagged?”

“Evidently not. If there was anything in or near her mouth, with the muscle spasms she would have experienced … There should be some evidence.”

“Uh huh.”

A photographer entered the room and began to take pictures of the corpse. The medical examiner stood, scalpel in hand, ready to make the long torso Y incision as soon as the photo session was completed. She spoke in the same monotone she used for her dictation of the autopsy notes. “If this is the first, it won’t be the last. You know that, don’t you? Men who do this—and it is a man—get to like this sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Lark said again.

The beer didn’t help. An unpleasant smell permeated his body, hung on his clothing, and filled the cab of the pickup. Lark felt sullied, as if a film of dank cemetery earth had been thrown over him. They had taken him off the street away from the scum he arrested and rearrested, only to fling him into a deeper pit of perversion.

He pulled up to police headquarters and dropped the empty beer can onto the floor of the cab. The police commissioner’s parking slot was empty, and Lark nosed the truck into the space. Every step saved was a conservation of heartbeats.

He slammed from the cab and was walking toward the main entrance when he spotted Russo lounging in his Thunderbird. “Wake up, Russo.”

“Hey, Lark. Come here a sec.”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“A second, huh?”

Lark grimaced. He and Russo had once been drinking buddies, and for a short period of time were partners when the lanky Italian had still been on the force. Now that Russo was a deputy sheriff spending all his time serving legal papers on a fee basis, Lark viewed him with slight contempt. Serving papers for money didn’t seem very coplike to him. He walked over to the shiny Thunderbird and thought that while serving might not be a cop’s job, it surely must pay well. “Whatcha want?” he asked as he leaned toward the car window.

“Got something for you.” Russo slapped a service into Lark’s hand. “The Méndez kid you leaned on is going for half a million of your hide.”

Lark looked down at the summons with disdain. “You’re a real pal, Russo. Thanks.”

The Thunderbird started with a roar. Russo shrugged. “Somebody’s got to do it.” He backed out of the parking place with a screech of tires.

Lark dropped the service into the trash receptacle by the front door and entered the lobby. He waved at the desk sergeant and communications clerk at the radio panel and walked into the watch commander’s office.

The lieutenant at the desk looked up from a roster report and scowled. He was a large black man, over six-five and 250 pounds with a massive head and shoulders. “Goddamn it, Lark! Where’s the search-and-seizure warrant for that goddamn piece of concrete out on Mark Street? We’ve had to keep a man out there for three shifts and I’m short on patrol.”

“I’ll get it, Horn. I had an autopsy to go to.”

“The stiff’s not going anywhere. You shoulda done your warrant first.”

“What did they give the papers on the case?”

“Read it yourself.” Lt. Horn thrust a morning paper at him and went back to glaring at his roster.

Lark skimmed the front-page article quickly—in Middleburg any homicide was front-page news—and grimaced when he saw his own name mentioned as the officer in charge of the investigation. Long-standing department policy required that Frank Pemperton be the news source for any major case. Details on the crime were sparse and Lark wondered what significant fact Frank had withheld. It was standard operating procedure on any unsolved crime to omit a vital point in order to have one important piece of information to use to verify the guilt of a prime suspect. He had to read the article twice before realizing that Frank had omitted the gunshot wound to the head. Significant enough, Lark thought as he dropped the paper back on the watch commander’s desk. “Doing the warrant now,” he said in parting.

Lark’s cubbyhole office on the third floor was covered with computer printouts. He flipped through a few pages. There were dozens of descriptions of young women of the approximate age and physical appearance as their victim. Each entry was a missing person or runaway, and they all seemed to be denim-clad teenagers. Perhaps the National Crime Information Center was too efficient.

He would have to do his search warrant first in order to seize the pedestal with the bloodstains, and then a separate one to try to gain entry into the house on the property where the body was discovered. He found the CCP-7 green print on white forms in a bottom drawer and inserted the first one into the ancient manual typewriter by the side of his desk.

He stared down at the form:

“Affidavit and Application, Search and Seizure Warrant. To: A Judge of the Superior Court.

“The undersigned being duly sworn, complains on oath that the undersigned has probable cause to believe that certain property to wit …”

This one would be easy. He typed the sentence carefully with two fingers. “A certain concrete pedestal approximately three feet in height with attached inverted cross on the property of 21 Mark Street, Middleburg, Connecticut.”

He scanned the boxes down the page and placed an X in one next to, “constitutes evidence of the following crime.” He typed in, “Said concrete form contains bloodstains of unknown origin and is located four feet from the place wherein a victim of homicide was discovered.”

He completed the remainder of the paper and inserted the second form into the typewriter. This one was going to be hairy. He would indicate on the form that they wished to search the house on Mark Street for personal possessions of the deceased. He’d have to be more specific than that, so he would narrow it down to purse, wallet, pocket belongings, and/or backpack of the deceased. Still too broad, but perhaps a lenient judge would let it through and not question them as to how they would know what belonged to the deceased, since they didn’t know who the deceased was.

Lark continued typing and cursed high-court judges.

He finished his warrants and confiscated a patrolman to take them over to the courthouse after lunch. He specifically directed the young officer to look for a judge who appeared to have had a couple of good belts at lunch.

He was working his way through the printouts when the phone rang. “Lark here.”

It was the medical examiner. “INFORM has no similar burn wounds with wedge-shaped markings of that size in their computer, Lieutenant. The deceased had no disease and expired from a twenty-two-caliber bullet wound. The bullet has been sent over to the state police lab. Evidence of vaginal and oral rape are present, and we’ll have the semen typed for blood groupings in a day or two. The other toxicology exams aren’t complete, but a preliminary blood run doesn’t show any evidence of drugs or other toxic substances.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Lark said automatically.

“You’ll get the full report shortly,” the ME said as she hung up.

“Sure,” Lark said to the dead phone. “In about six months.”

“There’s scuttlebutt over at City Hall, Tommy,” the voice from the doorway said.

Randall Lambert, police reporter for the Middleburg Times, lounged against the door frame. He was a rangy man of indeterminate age whose suits always seemed as rumpled as the shock of pale-brown hair that hung over his forehead. He had a wry grin that bordered on the sardonic.

“Not interested, Randy,” Lark said.

“You will be when I tell you.”

“I’m busy.” Five years ago Lark had made the mistake of getting very, very drunk with Randy Lambert. The result had been a feature story filled with comments that Lark was sure he never made or did not remember making. The article’s conclusion accused Lark of stating that everyone under thirty was a “scum bag.” The story hadn’t helped his image.

Undaunted, Lambert pressed on. “They’re saying the dead girl was a druggy, and you were slapping her around for her contacts.”

“I’m off the streets.” Lark tried to ignore the reporter and angrily flipped through the sheaf of printouts.

“They’re saying that you killed her, Lark, and that’s why you’re being pulled into the office. The stink of cover-up hovers around this place like a big-assed bird.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Lambert.”

“You see my article on the front page?”

“You misspelled my name.”

“Like hell.” Lambert thought a moment and then laughed. “Then I’m sure you noticed the missing item.”

“You know we always leave something out.”

“Like how she was killed.”

Lark pushed aside the mass of paper. “Listen, prick. You know that any release out of this office comes from the chief himself. That’s the way it’s done.”

“He’s an old buddy of yours, isn’t he?”

“Go to hell with that insinuation.”

“How did she die, Lark?”

“No comment.”

“Maybe it was what they call multiple contusions. You leaned on her and went too far.”

“Talk to Frank.”

“I just checked and he’s not in his office.”

“I’m right here, Lambert.” Frank Pemperton pushed into the office. “I’ve just been down to City Hall putting out the fires that you started. You’re a troublemaker, Lambert, you know that?”

“How did the kid die?”

“She’s being autopsied today,” Frank said.

“You can tell him,” Lark said. “We turned up something else that will be our missing detail.”

Lark’s and Frank’s eyes met a moment and then Pemperton turned to face the reporter. “She died of a single gunshot wound to the head.”

“Same caliber that Lark carries?”

“Knock it off!” Frank yelled. “She died of a twenty-two-caliber bullet wound to the rear of the head. Is that enough? Got your story now?”

Randall Lambert gave them a mock salute and slipped down the hallway.

“Weasely bastard, isn’t he?” Frank said. “What did the ME turn up that we can use?”

“The girl’s body is a mass of burns. She was tortured.”

“Oh, Christ. For God’s sake, keep that from Lambert. Sensationalism I don’t need. What else do you have?”

“I had men interview everyone on the block except the house on the property. We didn’t turn up a damn thing.”

“What about the house on the scene?”

“I’m taking that myself as soon as the warrant comes through.”

Frank Pemperton nodded and gestured to the mass of computer printouts covering the desk. “Any leads as to her identity?”

“Nothing. I went through her clothing and it’s everyday discount-store stuff except for her boots, and they came from L.L. Bean.”

“She’s not from town, is she?”

“We don’t think so. Her description doesn’t match anyone in our files; we circulated a picture to the high school, and no comparable runaways or missings are listed here.”

“Okay. Stay on it. If you’re going to need anyone to help, keep it down. I’m already over budget on this year’s overtime.”

“I need one guy assigned to me.”

“Anybody in mind?”

“I’d like Najankian.”

Pemperton looked incredulous. “Horse? He’s a clodhopper, for God’s sake. He’s been on the force for sixteen years and never taken the sergeant’s exam.”

“He’s the one I want.”

Pemperton went to the door. “Take him. He’s yours. Don’t kill yourself on this one, Lark. The kid was probably a hitchhiker who picked the wrong guy to ride with. A druggy from nowhere going nowhere.”

“You’re a nice guy, Frank,” Lark said.

4

“I don’t do overtime,” Horse Najankian announced in Lark’s office on the following morning.

Lark glared over the personnel folder at the big, ruddy cop sitting uncomfortably in the peeling straight chair. Horse’s head erupted from his stiff collar, and the slight reddish rash at the neckline created the impression of a man alien to shirt and tie, even though Lark knew that he had worn one every duty day for the last sixteen years. The uniform pants were shiny and the seams around the pockets showed several repairs. He was a seedy-looking officer.

“You’ll work overtime when I assign it,” Lark snapped. “What kind of name is Sylvester Najankian?”

“Armenian.”

“Sylvester’s Armenian?”

“Everyone calls me Horse.” The man’s florid face reddened even further and Lark wondered if he were a boozer. “I didn’t ask for this, Lieutenant. I like it on traffic.”

Lark glanced back through the officer’s personnel folder. “Jesus, you’ve got six kids. How in the hell do you support them on a patrolman’s salary?”

Horse’s smile tightened. “Badly.” He shifted his bulk, but still kept his large hands clamped over his knees. “My wife works. She’s a checker at Waldbaum’s Supermarket. The kids help out the best they can with paper routes, baby-sitting, that sort of thing.”

Lark slammed down the folder. “I’ve seen your test results taken when you joined the force. You’re bright enough to have taken the sergeant’s exam, you could have even gone for lieutenant, but you never even signed up.”

“I don’t want the responsibility.”

Lark thought about his own bank accounts. “What about the money?”

Again the uncomfortable shifting of weight as Horse Najankian chose his words carefully. “There are a couple of ways to do your time on the force, Lieutenant. You know that. You can put yourself completely into it and suddenly you’ve got no outside life or time to spend with the kids. You take it home with you, you live with it until all your friends are cops and you can’t ever get away from it. I have always worked traffic, the hours are regular and I get home when my wife does. It works out just fine.”

“How did you end up out at Mark Street where the body was found?”

“The watch commander was short that day and pulled me into a patrol car.”

Another glance back at the personnel folder. “You got a commendation back in seventy-two.”

“It was pure chance. I stopped a guy for running a stop sign and had to disarm him when he threw down on me. It turned out that there was paper out for him.”

“And you did it without drawing your service revolver?”

A long pause. “There wasn’t time.”

“Well, I only get one man for this case and you’re it.”

“With all due respect, Lieutenant, you can use one of the men from narc, or there’s a lot of ambitious guys in plain clothes—”

“I want you, Horse.” Lark had a sudden gut intuition. “Let me see your service revolver.”

“What?”

“Hand over your piece.”

Najankian’s eyes widened, but he slowly withdrew the weapon from its holster and handed it, butt first, across the desk.

Lark swung the cylinder away from the chamber and peered into it. It was as he suspected. “Has it ever been loaded?”

“Once a year, when I have to go to the range. We got little kids at home. I can’t have a loaded piece hanging around.”

Lark spun his chair and plunked his feet on the sill as he looked out the window toward a leaden sky filled with fast-scudding clouds. The day outside matched his inner mood. He was faced with trying to solve an impossible case. There was no identification on the victim, much less any solid clues; and as a partner, he had picked a traffic cop who carried an empty pistol.

He jolted the chair forward and stood up to hand Horse a five-dollar bill. “Let’s go down to Manny’s Sporting Goods and buy a box of shells. I don’t give a damn what you do at night, but when you’re with me, I want you to carry a loaded piece.”

Najankian reluctantly took the money and reholstered his pistol as the phone rang. Lark snatched it from the cradle. “Yeah.”

“Sergeant Soho at the state crime lab, Lieutenant. Negative on the blood sample on that pedestal you sent up here yesterday. As a matter of fact, the stains aren’t human blood.”

“Any idea what they are?”

A pause on the other end of the line. “Believe it or not, we think it’s bat blood.”

“Bats? Like that fly at night?”

“The same. Negative also on the girl’s fingerprints. She’s not on file here or with the FBI in Washington.”

“Thanks.” Lark hung up. It was going to be the hard way.

Lark parked the pickup in front of a fire hydrant by Manny’s Sporting Goods. He sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as Najankian lumbered from the truck and entered the shop. Horse had passed up a beer with the laconic comment that he didn’t drink. This gave Lark further doubts over his choice of partner: a nondrinking, unambitious, traffic cop who carried an unloaded piece. It didn’t matter, he was stuck with Horse. He’d requested him over Frank Pemperton’s objections, and he’d be damned if he’d admit to a mistake.

Horse must be pouring his own bullets, he thought impatiently as he flicked on the radio.

“All right, all you studs and babes, we’re down to this week’s Gross Out contest. I want tapes. That’s right, cassette tapes of you guys and gals out there doing it. Now, you know what I mean by it, and no dirty words. Just sounds for Johnny Gross …”

Lark snapped off the radio so vehemently that the button broke in his hand.

Najankian walked slowly out of the store carrying a small paper bag. He sat next to Lark and slowly loaded his pistol, taking care to leave an empty cylinder under the hammer.

Lark pulled the truck away from the curb and drove toward Mark Street. “I have a search-and-seizure warrant for the house.”

“What’s it cover?”

Lark gave a short sigh of relief. Traffic cop or not, at least Horse had listened when the rules concerning search warrants had been discussed. “It’s as broad as I could make it and covers personal belongings such as wallet, purse, or back-pack of the deceased. This really gives us carte blanche to toss the whole damn house, but for God’s sake, don’t take anything that isn’t covered in the warrant. If we find anything else, we’ll have to go for a new warrant before we grab it.”

“I know.”

“There’s one thing in particular we want to look for: a room that looks soundproofed.”

Najankian looked puzzled. “How’s that?”

“The girl was tortured without being gagged. There would have been one hell of a lot of noise.”

“Son of a bitch,” Horse mumbled, nearly to himself. The large traffic patrolman was morosely silent during the remainder of the drive to the house on Mark Street. He finally spoke when Lark braked to a halt at the curb. “Question, Lieutenant. What about those threads we found on the bush? If they came from the victim’s clothing, that means she was probably carried from the highway and dumped where we found her.”

“Maybe. Or someone could have wanted it to look that way. Let’s see what our friends in white have to say before we make up our minds.”

Lark had expected at least a minimum amount of squalor in the house, since it was inhabited by a group of weird young people. At his knock, the door was opened by a flaxen-haired young woman whose slightly frayed prom dress was pulled high above her knees and tucked around her waist. Lark’s eyes were drawn to her legs. He noticed bare feet and knees that were red with slight abrasions. In the hallway behind her was a scrub bucket and brush. It was obvious that she had been doing the floor on her hands and knees.

She averted her eyes and her voice was distant and faraway, as if she were a recalcitrant child. “Yes?”

“I’m Lieutenant Lark of the police and I have a search warrant for this house.”

The girl immediately turned and fled down the hallway. Near the bucket she skidded on the wet floor, caught herself, and continued running through a swinging door at the rear of the house.

“Want me to cover the rear?” Horse asked.

“I don’t think she’s running. I think she went to get someone.”

Winthrop Rutledge, splendid looking in a suit the color of vanilla ice cream, scurried through the door and hurried to them. “You can’t come in here!”

Lark took two steps further into the house. “We’re in, Winthrop. I have a warrant signed by a judge.” He offered the search-and-seizure warrant while simultaneously nodding toward Najankian to begin the search.

Winthrop looked at the legal paper with a blank expression. “Does this mean I have to let you in?”

“It does.”

“We’re very private here.”

“We won’t disturb anything unless it pertains to the murder.”

“She was never in here.”

“I’ll want to talk to the girls.”

“I speak for them.”

Lark stepped closer to the man in the white suit. “Listen, there are two ways we can do this: the easy way or the hard way. The hard way is downtown, and that means paperwork, reading your rights, and all that other jazz that makes me unhappy. The easy way is your cooperation. Well?”

Winthrop hesitated only a moment. “I’ll get everyone together in the kitchen.” He started back down the hall and called over his shoulder. “That is, everyone except for Reba. Reba is a new probationer and is concentrating in the green room.”

“She what?”

Winthrop sighed. “You’ll find her when you go through the house.”

“Uh huh,” Lark said as he nodded again to Horse. “Let’s go.”

The room to the right of the front entrance, which had once been the parlor, was spotless and held only a few pieces of furniture: a worn couch covered with a homemade afghan, and several straight chairs. A lobster pot had been varnished and was now used as a coffee table. It held several books and Lark examined the titles: Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice, Wheatley’s The Devil and All His Works, and Wood’s Black Magic.

Najankian efficiently looked under cushions and in back of furniture. The sparse room was quickly searched. “Whatcha looking at?”

“I think we have ourselves a cult,” Lark said. “Let’s go across the hall.”

What would have been the dining room was entered by pushing back heavy double doors. “Oh, boy,” Najankian said when the open doors revealed the room.

“What did I tell you? A goddamn cult.”

The floor and walls of the room had been painted black and heavy black drapes covered the windows. A lectern, covered with a dark blanket, was in one corner of the room and held a polished brass candelabrum. A single white circle in the center of the floor with a diameter of seven feet was the only color relief in the dark room.

“Oh, boy,” Horse said again.

“Boggles the imagination,” Lark replied. “Well, easy enough to toss. Check under the blanket covering the pulpit.”

Najankian placed the candelabrum carefully on the floor and pulled the blanket from the pulpit. “Nothing.”

“Okay, let’s check the rest of the downstairs. Then I’ll take the cellar and you can check the attic crawl space.”

The single bedroom, and the only other room besides the rear kitchen, was also furnished simply. Two large double beds were pushed together along one wall, and were covered with a mass of sleeping bags. Two worn dressers contained women and men’s clothing and undergarments, but held nothing that could be specifically connected to the dead girl. A few jackets and boots were in the single closet.

While Horse searched for the attic crawl-space entrance, Lark went into the kitchen. The three young women, all dressed in white, sat stoically at a long wooden table with their Magus at one end. They looked at him expectantly. “I want to check the cellar,” Lark said.

Winthrop shot quickly to his feet. “I’ll go with you.”

Lark arched an eyebrow at him and then nodded assent. “Come on.”

Winthrop switched on a single naked light bulb hanging over the cellar stairs. Lark went down the steep stairwell with caution. “All right, Rutledge, what in hell’s going on here?”

“We are a coven and I am the Magus.”

“Uh huh. And the girls?”

“They are novitiates.”

“I thought a coven was supposed to be twelve or thirteen?”

“We’re working on it.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Like the remainder of the house, the cellar was spotless, sparse, and nearly empty. An ancient boiler occupied one corner, three bicycles leaned against a far wall, and the right-hand corner was partitioned to form a small square room. “What’s in there?”

“That is our green room. Reba now occupies it.”

“Open it up,” Lark commanded. He speculated as to whether the small room’s location in the cellar corner would make any sound from it inaudible outside the house. He decided that it was possible.

Winthrop, who called himself the Magus, opened the door to the square room. A low wattage bulb hung from a wire in the center of the room. The walls were lined with shelving that now only contained a single mason jar holding something that once might have been peaches.

A naked girl was stretched out on a mat directly under the single light bulb. Her arms were over her head, her heels were pressed together, and a bayonet was laid across her bare stomach with its point reaching to her thighs.

“What the hell!” Lark sprang forward and knelt next to the girl while simultaneously throwing open his jacket and pulling the Python from its shoulder holster.

“Leave her alone!” Winthrop shouted at Lark. “She’s all right. She’s only doing her thirty-six hours of penitence necessary to enter the order.”

Lark’s finger touched the carotid artery and he felt the healthy pulse of life. Her eyes flicked open and stared up at him. “Are you okay?”

A short nod.

Horse Najankian stood in the doorway shaking his head. “I don’t know, but there’s got to be a law against what she’s doing.”

Lark stood up and reholstered his pistol. “If you think of it, tell me,” he said as he strode from the room.

Najankian looked down at the nude girl and spoke to her as if she were one of his own children. “You okay?”

A nod.

“You want to make a complaint?”

A negative nod.

“Are you free to leave if you want?”

Another nod.

The patrolman shook his head before turning toward the stairs. “Well, enjoy.”

Lark sat at the kitchen table and cradled a cup of tea, which he wished were a can of beer. He noticed abstractly that the table was actually a wooden door supported by two sawhorses. He was alone on one side, the three young women opposite, and the Magus at the far end.

“Exactly what are we into here?” Lark asked softly.

“Magic,” Winthrop replied.

“Uh huh.” Lark momentarily wondered what they took to keep them in this state, although they hadn’t turned up anything in their search of the house. “White or black magic?”

“White, of course.”

“And your ceremonies are held in the black room at the front of the house?”

“Or outside in the grove when the moon is right. At that spot where I found the body.”

“That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it? The body just happened to be in your sacred grove. By the way, inverted crosses are black magic.”

The Magus had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, we delve into all areas in order to mature our spiritual life.”

“And these ceremonies are all performed in the buff?”

“If you mean naked, the answer is yes. The removal of all garments means that we are all equal and free to receive the faintest of spiritual traces.”

“Sounds like orgies to me,” Horse Najankian said from the top of the cellar steps. He began to search the room.

“Do you know this woman?” Lark pulled out a Polaroid snapshot of the murder victim that the medical examiner’s office had provided. He shoved it across the table toward the three women. As they slowly examined the photograph, he thought of the autopsy and the fact that the victim wore no undergarments. It would seem that she had hastily dressed, or been dressed.

“We don’t know her,” Winthrop said.

“They can speak for themselves.”

The three women shook their heads nearly in unison.

“I told you,” Winthrop said.

“Did you hear anything unusual during the past several days, or see anyone in the area who was unknown to you?”

Again a combined denial. The women looked at Lark with unwavering gazes. They had that intense vapidity that those committed to the absurd often possess. He pushed away from the table impatiently.

“Get their names, Najankian. I’ll be in the truck.”

There was a small pile of mail on the center of Lark’s desk in the small cubicle at police headquarters. He leafed through the letters, which included not only official but personal items. It was inconvenient to have mail delivered to the trailer and he did not have the time nor the inclination to check a post-office box daily, so it all came to his office. He flipped the obvious junk mail into a nearby wastebasket. The few bills he stuffed into his rear pocket and would pay them that night. Lark always paid his bills when they arrived. There were no personal letters; few people wrote to Lark.

Najankian sat heavily in the side chair and made a broad gesture of looking at his watch. “What now, Lieutenant?”

“I thought we’d run a night stakeout on the house on Mark Street, perhaps use a light enhancer and maybe we can observe one of their so-called ceremonies. It’s about all we have to go on.”

Najankian looked at his watch again. “My shift goes off in five minutes.”

Lark’s fist lashed out and pounded the desk. “Damn it all, man! We’re working a homicide, not a fender bender. We do overtime.”

“You got authorization to pay overtime?”

“Well, no, but in a case like this we do it voluntarily.”

“I don’t volunteer, Lieutenant. I go home with the shift turnover and eat with my family. If that gives you a problem, maybe I should call the union.”

“You haven’t even been through the file on the case.”

“Near as I know, there isn’t much in the file.”

“There’s officers’ notes on the interviews in the area where she was found.”

“Didn’t turn up anything. I was there, remember?”

“You’re damn near insubordinate, Horse. What about the autopsy pictures? The girl was burned by an unknown device. Look at the pictures, damn you!” He shoved a folder full of glossy shots the ME’s photographer had taken into Najankian’s hand. “Look at them.”

Horse blanched. His voice dropped. “I don’t want to see them. I got a kid her age.”

“So do I. I was out there when the ME cut on her.”

“Then you don’t need me to look at them.”

“I still own your soul for five minutes, so look.”

“Four minutes.” Najankian reluctantly opened the folder and looked at the young woman stretched out on the autopsy table. He winced. “There’s letters burned into her.”

“They spell slut. We ran the configurations through the medical examiner’s national organization and they can’t tell us what did it.”

Najankian placed the pictures back in the folder and carefully returned it to Lark’s desk. “I’m going home.”

“You know, I can have you up on charges?”

“Maybe so, Lieutenant, that’s your choice.” He shuffled toward the door and paused. “By the way, I know what made those burns.”

“Huh?”

“Sure. I gave one to Jerry, that’s my ten-year-old, last Christmas. Those wedge-shaped burn marks are from a wood-burning kit.” He left the cubicle and hurried toward the locker room.

Lark stared at the empty hall in astonishment. A wood-burning device. Of course. He’d had one as a kid, and suspected that at one time or another almost every kid had one. He clutched for the folder of pictures and sorted through them. The wedge-shaped marks appeared to be the right size. He’d buy a kit tomorrow and take exact measurements.

Lark shook his head and laughed aloud. Horse might not work overtime, but he seemed to make up in quality what he lacked in quantity.

“Are you Lieutenant Lark?” a hesitant voice asked.

“Yeah.” Lark looked up at the heavyset man standing uncomfortably in the doorway. He judged him to be about thirty, softly overweight, with a wrinkled suit and heavy glasses. His appearance was nervous, almost furtive. “What can I do for you?”

“They told me downstairs where to find you. I understand from the newspaper that you are in charge of the investigation concerning that dead young woman.”

“Uh huh.” Lark wondered if this was going to be a false confession.

“I—I have something that I think may be involved in the case.”

“Come in and sit down. What’s your name?”

“Maurice Grossman.” The heavyset man sat uneasily in the side chair. His fingers trembled. Lark noticed that he carried a small cassette recorder nearly buried in the palm of a sweating hand.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Grossman?”

“I—I came to Middleburg from Maine a few weeks ago to start a new job. This came in the mail to me today.” He reached into his coat pocket and lay a small tape cassette on the center of the desk.

“Does this have anything to do with my investigation?”

“I think so. I should tell you that I’m a radio personality.”

Lark found this hard to believe, but he nodded assent.

“I do a show here and go by the name of Johnny Gross. Maybe you’ve heard it, Gross Out?”

“You’re Johnny Gross?” Lark asked in amazement. He found it difficult to align the personality of this soft-spoken, nervous man with the overpowering, raunchy radio personality.

“I’m different when I’m on the air,” Grossman said in a soft voice. “I’ve started running a contest and asked people to send me tapes of—”

“I heard you on the radio.”

Grossman nodded toward the tape. “That’s one of them that came today. I think you should listen to it.” He placed the battery-operated recorder-player on the desk, levered the cassette into it, and held out a small earphone toward Lark. “You should listen.”

“Why the earplug?”

“I—I don’t want to hear it again.”

Lark nodded, placed the earphone in his ear, and pressed the PLAY button.

The voice was male, guttural, and so nearly indistinct that Lark had to strain to catch the words.

“I’ve got a song for you, Johnny. A pretty, pretty song that I’m sure you will like. And there will be others just as nice. Listen, Johnny. Listen good and see if it’s Gross Out.”

An anguished scream jolted Lark’s body as if he had been shocked.

His fist slammed against the recorder twice before it mashed down the OFF lever, but it wasn’t soon enough to stop the second scream, which was cut off at its height.

“You see what I mean?” Grossman said softly.

Lark’s hands trembled and perspiration beaded his forehead as he stared down at the small machine. His finger reached slowly forward and depressed the PLAY button.

He heard the end of the scream. Although prepared, his body tensed and he clenched the edge of the desk. Words now:

“Oh, please. I did everything you said … No!” Again a scream.

“You wish you were never born. Say it. Say it!”

“I wish …” The words were temporarily lost in racking sobs. “I wish I were never born.”

It was a young woman’s voice and Lark knew who it had once belonged to.

He unplugged the earphone, walked to the single window in the narrow cubicle, and looked down at the parking lot. It was shift change and men were leaving their patrol cars to be replaced by a new shift.

He turned to face Grossman; their eyes met momentarily and then flicked away.

Lark knew he had to listen to the remainder of the tape, and he wondered if he could.

5

Lark had neglected to switch on the desk lamp, and the small office lay in deep shadows, illuminated only by a yellowish swatch of light falling through the partly open door. The small earphone was inserted in his right ear. He leaned across the desk and supported his head with both hands. His palms were clammy.

The sound fidelity of the small machine centered on his desk filled him with wonder coupled with revulsion. The voices swirled around him. The man’s guttural commands were obscenely specific and were counterpointed by the girl’s occasional whimpers and cries. It was a descent into hell that evoked a montage of incidents he had witnessed over two decades of police service.

If this were a film sequence, he would have averted his head and watched the images through peripheral vision, but sounds were more horrifying, since they created mental images more vivid than reality.

The tape ended with a single shot.

He removed the earphone and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Is it over?” the deferential voice asked from the chair in the darkened corner.

He had completely forgotten Grossman’s presence. “Yes.”

“Do you think it’s her? The one you’re investigating?”

“There’s a strong possibility.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lark stared into the shadows. His vision was filled with strong afterimages. “I’m going to find and kill the son of a bitch,” he said softly.

Chair legs squeaked on the bare floor as Grossman stood. “You’re welcome to keep it. The tape, I mean.”

Lark laughed. “Thanks.”

“If you don’t need me, my wife is holding dinner.”

Lark snapped on the desk lamp, and light spilled across the feet of the heavy man standing a few feet away. “I’d like to borrow the player for a few days, and tomorrow I want to come by the station and see the other stuff you got in the mail.”

“Oh, sure. Anytime.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t hear it all. Does it get worse?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Uh, then see you tomorrow.” Grossman turned and hurried through the door and down the hall.

The familiar pulse of the building surrounded Lark. A distant typewriter plocked, and an occasional loud laugh issued from the squad room. A mop squished as maintenance worked on the hallways. It was a familiar, usually comfortable pattern that now seemed uncaring in the light of what he had just heard.

He shook his head to dispel the demons and then searched through a bottom desk drawer for an evidence bag. He carefully bagged the wrapping paper used to mail the cassette and placed the evidence carefully on the desk.

There were other things to do, many other things, and he tried to order his priorities. Distasteful as it was, he would have to listen to the tape again and make notes. Tomorrow it would have to be transcribed into a verbatim account. Who would get that unpleasant task? He’d let Frank decide.

He rewound the tape and replaced the earphone in his ear. His index finger hovered over the PLAY button. He couldn’t do it. Not again tonight.

He locked the tape and recorder in his desk and went home.

He saw her car parked by his trailer as he pulled into the parking lot by the side of the Milligan Machine Company. He parked parallel to her car and hastily circled the factory on his security round. He wished she hadn’t come. He really wasn’t in the mood for any company.

Dark clouds scudded across the sky as if fleeing from a partial moon and a cool wind, dank from its sweep down the river, raised goose bumps on his arms.

Faby Winn poked her head out the door as he approached. “I don’t hear any ‘hi-ho hi-ho’ as we return to the little house in the dark wood.”

“Fuck you.” He slammed into the trailer and went for the refrigerator. He saw a new bottle of wine open on the table.

“My, we’re our usual sweet self tonight.”

“If your cuteness factor rises another inch, out you go.”

Her voice dropped in irritation. “Feet or head first, Lark?”

She had bought a six-pack of German beer and nestled it against his hamburger. He liked it, but considered it too expensive. He took a bottle from the carton, flipped the cap off, and let it roll across the floor. “Thanks for the beer.”

“You promised me dinner, or have you forgotten?”

“It slipped my mind.”

“We can get takeout Chinese.”

He shrugged, sat down, and plopped his feet on the coffee table. He drained half the beer. “Whatever.”

“Cathy called me today. She’s upset that you never sent this week’s check.”

“I told her I wouldn’t.”

Faby nodded and sipped wine. “She suspected as much. She’s taken a job at the Seven-Eleven on Grove Street.”

“About time she got off her ass.”

“Give the girl a chance, Lark.”

“Chance? She had a year to, quote, find herself, unquote. So, she’s lost in the wilderness. Let her join the rest of the human race.”

“If there’s anyone who needs to join humanity, it’s you.”

Lark finished the remainder of his beer. “Don’t you have anyplace else to go?”

Faby Winn jerked to her feet as a look of astonishment swept her face. “You lowdown son of a bitch,” she said in a whisper. “You arrogant pig.”

“I’ve had a bad day,” Lark replied in a partial apology.

“Did the big bad criminals say mean words to the poor lieutenant?”

“Knock it off.”

“Let me ask you something, Lark. Do you ever have any good days? Or are they all just bad and worse?”

“Today reached a particularly low mark.”

“You’ve got your twenty years on the force. Quit. Resign. Do something, anything, that doesn’t make you so unhappy.”

“I’m not good for anything else.”

“I know a lot of the men get jobs in store security.”

“And bust teeny-bopper shoplifters all day.”

Her face flushed with anger. “You know, you’re full of it. Why am I wasting my time with a man who’s such a goddamn crybaby? You feel sorry for yourself, Lark. You wallow in self-pity, and I’m tired of it.”

“Then leave,” he said softly as he stared into his beer.

“It’s not that simple. I’ve given you years of my life.”

“Months would be closer to the truth. Christ, you’re melodramatic tonight.”

“You bring out the bitch in me.”

“No wonder your husband left you.”

She stared at him with wide eyes. “At least he didn’t blow his head off.”

He moved without thought. His body catapulted across the room as his hands automatically balled into fists. His hand lashed out to be deflected at the last possible moment by a massive surge of will. “I almost lost control.”

“Do you want to hit me?”

He took two backward steps. “I almost did.”

“You know, Lark, one of these days you aren’t going to stop.”

He slumped down on the divan. “You know all the wrong buttons to press.”

“You’re not a bad button-presser yourself.” She turned and ran from the trailer.

He heard her car-starter engine whine and whine again. Her engine started, coughed, and died. He went to the doorway. “You’ve flooded it.”

“Screw you!” She jammed her foot down on the accelerator.

“Wait.”

“Up yours.” The engine caught and she threw the car in gear.

Lark ran into the car’s path and stood before it with his hands stretched toward its nose. “I want you to hear something.”

“I’m tired of insults.” She jammed on the brakes only feet from him. “Out of the way.”

He walked over to the driver’s door, opened it, and gently put a hand on her shoulder. “There’s something you should know. It might explain something about me. Come with me.”

“You take me anywhere, Lark, and I warn you, I’ll scream the whole bloody way. When you stop for a traffic light, I’ll jump out and yell rape.”

“Gonna call the cops?” He tried to smile.

“You know it. You almost hit me.”

“Come.” His voice was cold and authoritative. She looked at him a moment and then slowly climbed from her car and followed him to the pickup.

“I’m not in the mood for a beer in one of your dives.”

“This is something else.”

Lark parked in front of a fire hydrant at police headquarters and firmly took her elbow and led her into the building.

Faby broke from his grip and approached the amused desk sergeant. “This man has me prisoner.”

“So, what else is new?” the sergeant asked.

“I demand a cop.”

Lt. Horn came out of the watch commander’s office and looked at Faby with disinterest. “What’s coming down, Lark?”

“I picked her up for soliciting.”

Horn looked displeased. “Book her,” he said as he returned to his office.

“You want me to start paper going?” the sergeant asked.

“Got to interview her first,” Lark said as he led her to the elevator.

“You know, Lark,” Faby said in a loud voice as the elevator doors began to shut, “you’re going to have one hell of a time explaining this to those guys at our engagement party.”

“Lots of cops fall for perps.”

The elevator rocked to a stop and the doors opened. “My office is third on the left.”

She stalked ahead of him. “I don’t know what I’m doing here or what kind of games you have in mind. Maybe handcuffs in the back room?”

“Funny.” He followed her into the office and motioned to the desk chair. He took out the cassette player and placed the earphone in her ear. She glared at him as he started the recorder and left the room. He walked slowly down to the locker room, where he stared at empty benches for a few minutes. He went to the rest room and after five minutes returned to his office.

She was sitting where he had left her, although her manner had radically changed. She was ramrod-stiff, with wide eyes that slowly swiveled to look at him in horror. “No more. Please.”

He snapped off the recorder. “That was my day,” he said simply.

“It’s real, isn’t it?”

“Very real.”

“How could you listen to such obscenity?”

“That’s what I’m paid for.”

“There isn’t enough money in the world,” she said.

6

Radio station WGBZ was situated inside a shopping mall on the outskirts of Middleburg. Its single broadcasting studio was located on the atrium with glass walls on two sides. The broadcaster on duty not only played records and gave commercials, but from time to time waved at the two or three people outside the window who had stopped to watch his activities.

Bear Tooth Ryan, an announcer who spun heavy metal, was on duty when Lark and Horse approached the station’s front door. Blaring, discordant music from the station was amplified throughout the atrium and Lark winced as they opened the door and stepped into the reception area.

A young receptionist, vacant-eyed from too much music, was looking at Bear Tooth. She turned toward them with a lopsided smile as she waited for their command. “I’m here to see Johnny Gross,” Lark said.

She gestured down the single hall that ran through the building, and went back to staring at Bear Tooth.

They walked by a narrow newsroom with its single chattering wire-service machine, past a door labeled STATION MANAGER, several general offices, and stopped at the far door that had a crudely lettered-sign that read, TALENT—KEEP OUT.

Lark pushed through the door and walked over to a cluttered desk where Maurice Grossman aka Johnny Gross huddled over a large Styrofoam container of coffee and three jelly doughnuts. He looked up with a diffident look and a face spattered with white confectioners’ sugar.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Grossman said as he extended a limp hand. “And you too, Captain.”

Lark glanced sideways at Horse Najankian, who was nattily dressed in a three-piece charcoal pinstripe that fit like a glove. It was in marked contrast to the patrolman’s often-repaired uniform. He wondered if Horse carried his piece. He’d have to check on that when they left the radio station. “Tell me, Grossman, what’s the range of this station?”

Maurice Grossman stuffed the last of the jelly doughnuts into his mouth, and a flicking tongue licked a few specks of jelly from the corners of his mouth. “About twenty miles. We’re a five-thousand-watter,” he mumbled through a full mouth.

“Then it wouldn’t quite extend to Hartford on the north and New Haven in the south?”

“They really aren’t in our market, but on a good day, if the weather was right, you might pick us up in those cities.”

“But not on a regular basis?”

“Daily, no. Do you think the guy who sent that tape is a regular listener?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Well, our market is really Middleburg and the surrounding towns.” Grossman looked up at the large clock on the wall and stiffened. “I got to go in two minutes.”

“I’d like to go over the rest of yesterday’s mail.”

“Uh, yeah. I’ll have to talk to you about that.” He started for the door. “Why don’t you sit in for a while? I can talk when a record’s on.”

They followed him down the hall. A young announcer was in the newsroom area with a sheaf of wire-service copy in front of him as he hunched over a microphone giving the hourly news. Grossman slowed his pace as they passed the booth and shook his head. “Look at that, will you?” He snapped a finger. “He didn’t even rewrite the stuff, took it right off the teletype. We call that rip and read, no background, no style.”

Lark wondered if the young newsman knew who Adlai Stevenson was.

Bear Tooth was standing by the studio’s door and gave Grossman a light punch to the shoulder. “Eat ’em up, Johnny.”

“Fucking A,” Maurice Grossman said.

Lark watched Maurice Grossman take three steps across the glass-enclosed booth and saw Johnny Gross take a seat at the swivel chair in front of the microphone and engineer’s board. He had heard of such instant metamorphosis that sometimes occurred in actors, but had never actually witnessed the transformation. Johnny/Maurice’s complete demeanor changed the instant he sat before the microphone. His eyes glistened and he leaned forward with a vibrancy that transcended the man they had spoken with a few minutes earlier. A group of young girls had gathered before the mall window, and a blonde with long hair, short-shorts, and a brief halter gave Johnny the finger.

Johnny Gross laughed and returned a full arm gesture. The mike was now alive. “Good morning, boys and girls, this is Johnny Gross and the show is Gross Out.” Johnny Gross threw a lever and the sound of a flushing toilet rose up and then down and under until it faded out. “Today is Bolero day, kiddies, and that is the most sexy piece of music ever written. Thirty-two minutes from now you are going to have eight minutes of Ravel’s Bolero, and you all know what Johnny wants you kids to do during that music. Remember, I will be with you in spirit. So, all you housewives grab the delivery boy or your vibrator and get ready to do you-know-what. Now we have a quick spin of the hot new release from the Cryptic Cadence.” Another lever was pushed and Johnny Gross leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. “All right, loot, what can I lay on you?” Gross said to Lark.

Lark glanced at Horse, who shrugged. “I’d like yesterday’s mail.”

“Burned.”

“What?”

“You heard me, or do you have wax in your ears?”

Lark glared. “Listen, punk, I’m not one of your teeny-boppers.”

Johnny Gross’s eyes flickered and Maurice Grossman peeked out for a moment. “Sorry. Maurice was upset and he threw them all in the incinerator. Maurice is a wimp.”

“We now speak in the third person?”

Johnny Gross shrugged and gave another arm gesture at the young girls standing outside the window. “Whatever.”

“Listen, Gross,” Lark said, “you hear anything more from our friend, you contact me. Right?” He tossed a business card at the DJ.

Johnny Gross shrugged again and leaned forward over the mike. “Remember, you raunchy people, it will soon be Bolero time and that’s you-know-what time.”

Lark and Horse left the booth. “Where’d you get that suit, Horse?”

“Wife made it from a picture in Esquire. She’s handy that way.”

“I can see that she is.” He entered the station manager’s office without knocking.

A tanned, athletic man with broad shoulders and a wide smile looked up from a magazine. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Lark and this is officer Najankian. I’d like some information about Maurice Grossman.”

“Grossman?”

“Johnny Gross.”

The room was filled with golfing trophies and Lark imagined that this aging jock sold most of the station’s time on local courses.

“Is Johnny in any trouble? I know he’s dirty, but we’re still within the new guidelines. There’s no reason for the police to get involved.”

“Nothing like that. He provided some information to us on a certain case and we need routine background to complete our file.”

“Oh, sure. Well, Johnny came to us a few weeks ago. He was in Portland before that, Springfield, and I think he worked in Laconia right after he finished the Boston University School of Communications.”

“Why so many stations?”

The manager smiled. “He gets fired, of course. Any DJ with a filthy mouth like his is bound to get the ax sooner or later. People like him don’t know where to draw the line, and so they can’t help stepping over it. It’s par for the course to work your way up from a five-hundred-watter to a five-thousand and then hopefully someday one of the fifty-thousand-watt flag stations. I’ll tell you this, he’s been good for our ratings.”

“Is he married? Does he have any children?”

“Sure. He’s got a sweet wife and two little kids. The guy’s completely different when you’re in his home.”

“So I’ve gathered,” Lark said.

They sat in the cab of Lark’s pickup down the street from the house on Mark Street where the body of the young woman had been discovered. Horse drank a diet-free cola while Lark pulled on the remains of a beer.

“Why are we just sitting here, Lieutenant?”

“Because this goddamn house with its kooky kids is all we’ve got. I want a gut feel for the place. Does that explain anything?”

“Nothing seems to be going on in there.”

“It’s too damn quiet.” Lark crushed the beer can with one hand and dropped it to the floor. “Let’s go.” He slammed from the truck and grabbed a metal attaché case, from the truckbed before he strode toward the house.

“What’s coming down?” Horse asked.

“We’ve been watching that damn place for two hours and nothing’s coming down. That’s what’s wrong. There’s too many people in that joint for it to be so quiet.”

Horse unbuttoned his jacket. Lark gave a satisfied glance at his partner. He was carrying his piece.

When they reached the rotting front porch, Lark put the attaché case down and stood with his back to the wall as he pulled the Cobra from its holster. Horse took up a position on the far side of the door. They glanced at each other and nodded.

“Let’s take it,” Lark whispered. His foot lashed out against the door and it bowed under the onslaught. Horse threw his massive shoulder against the frame until the lock splintered and the door flew backward. They entered the house with drawn weapons and made their way down the hallway.

Lark stopped at the bedroom door. “Now!”

The door wasn’t locked and flew open. Both officers entered the room in a shooting crouch.

Winthrop Rutledge glared at them with bloodshot eyes as he sat up in bed. “What’s going on?” Reba, the nude girl they had last seen in the cellar room, now showed more modesty as she clutched a sheet to naked breasts.

“Where are the others?” Lark barked.

“Gone,” Winthrop said. “We’re the only ones left. What are you doing here?”

“We have a warrant,” Horse said as he efficiently searched the room. “Anyone else in the house?”

“No, just Reba and me.”

“Where did the others go?” Lark asked.

“Home.”

“Why?”

“Their parents read about the murder in the backyard and came and got them.”

“Except for me,” Reba said. “My old lady doesn’t give a shit.”

“That’s nice,” Horse said as he pushed aside clothing on the closet rack to peer into the rear.

“How in the hell can you form a coven if the parents come after them?” Winthrop moaned.

“There is sanity left,” Lark said. “Get some clothes on. I want to check that room in the cellar again.”

“Fuck you.”

Lark’s reaction was instantaneous. In a single motion he stepped to the bed while simultaneously holstering his Cobra. He grabbed Winthrop’s hair, dragged the young man across the foot of the bed, and jerked him to his feet. He slammed him against the wall while his elbow mashed his neck. “Listen, bastard, you open your mouth like that again and you’re going to be minus your gonads. Do you know what they are?”

The “yes, sir” was barely a gasp.

Lark jerked his elbow away and Winthrop fell to his knees. “Don’t try me again.” Lark’s voice dropped to a nearly inaudible whisper, which made it even more menacing. “You’ve got seconds to get dressed. How many seconds is for me to know and you to try to find out.”

As directed by Lark, Horse took a position seventy-five feet from the house. He carried a small walkie-talkie. “Ready here,” he said into the small radio.

“Stand by,” Lark said over a second radio from his location in the small green room in the cellar of the house. He also carried a portable signaling device that emitted a beep that was carefully calibrated on an instrument dial. “Okay, here we go.”

“Right, sir,” Horse answered.

Lark twisted the knob on the signaler to its first position. It emitted a series of four beeps that were barely audible to anyone standing near the machine. Lark pressed the transmitter button on the radio. “Hear it?”

“Negative,” Horse replied.

Lark turned the signal to its second position. The beep was louder and the reading higher. He spoke to Horse again. “That time?”

“No, sir.”

Lark turned the device to its third position. “How about that one?”

“Affirmative. I heard four beeps.”

Lark made a note on his pad. “We’ll take a few more readings from the cellar and then a few from other parts of the house.”

Lark propped his feet on the radiator in his office and stared at the pad with his notations of sound levels. “I think that if anyone screamed in the house, it would have been heard over the whole block.”

“She could have been gagged,” Horse said.

“The ME didn’t think she was.”

The phone rang. “Sergeant Soho here, Lark. We ran a match on those threads found at the murder scene. They match the same dye lot as the jeans the victim was wearing.”

“How positive is that?”

“To the exclusion of all other dye lots.”

“Thanks,” Lark said. “Give it to me in writing when you can.” He hung up. “The threads you found in the woods match the victim’s clothing, and we haven’t any decent sound levels in the house.”

“Which means that she was killed somewhere else, carried from the Interstate, and left in the clearing.”

“We’re back to square one. A body, no suspects, and no identification.”

“You want we should bury the file and leave it open like forever?”

Lark thought a moment. The screams on the tape would haunt him. There would be no burying this file. He shook his head. “We have to find out who she was. That’s our key. It’s my guess that eighty percent of homicide victims know their killer.”

“How about an ID on her dentalwork?”

“It won’t work. Hell, the kid could have come from anywhere in the country. Forensic dental identification only works when you have a finite group to work with. In an airline disaster you have a flight manifest and can circulate dental X rays to all the dentists involved. Then, they can pull out their own work and make a positive ID.”

“And there are a couple of hundred thousand dentists in the country,” Horse added.

“Even if we could circulate to all of them, she only had one filling.”

“Good teeth.”

“The ME said there was decay. Neglect would be a better description.”

“If she needed dentalwork and didn’t get it, that gives us a clue to her parents’ economic pattern.”

“That’s not going to give us a make.” Lark swiveled his chair to look out the window. The glass needed washing and he wondered how long it had been since it was washed.

Horse leafed through the slender case file. “The clothing was routine discount-house stuff, but we might get something on the shoes. I remember noticing that they didn’t seem that old or worn.”

“Can you imagine how many of that make shoe L.L. Bean sells in a year?”

“Not in that size, Lieutenant.”

Lark’s feet plunked to the floor as he turned to face Horse. “What do you mean?”

“Six quad A is damn rare. Hell, I got a kid with double A and we have one hell of a time finding her shoes. Not that we can afford L.L. Bean.”

“As far as I can recall they have only the one retail outlet, and that’s in Freeport, Maine. Most of their stuff is sold through the mail.”

“Which means they’re on computer.” Horse placed the call to Maine. His request was transferred several times until he was put in contact with an executive of the company. He identified himself and outlined their problem. The executive asked for the headquarters’ phone number in order to make a return call to verify their identity.

Lark picked up the phone on the return call. “Lark here.”

“This is Miller of the L.L. Bean Company. Someone called here a few minutes ago and wanted us to run a shoe size through our computer.” The voice was skeptical.

“That’s right,” Lark said. “We have an unidentified body who was wearing a pair of your Gumshoes size six quad A. Her other clothing was cheap stuff, but the shoes appear new and we conjecture that she would have worn them as soon as they arrived. We’d like a record of all your sales of that particular shoe in that size for the past year.”

“We do keep a record of article and size for inventory control, and we do have our customers listed … but it’s a tall order.”

“Can your computer pull out how many of those shoes you sold and to whom?” Lark drummed his fingers on the desk. Horse leaned forward with interest.

A pause on the phone. “I’m not sure.”

Lark gritted his teeth and wanted to swear at the bland voice on the other end of the line. “It’s all we have to go on.”

“I can appreciate your problem, Lieutenant. I’m trying to consider the problem in terms of our systems.” Another pause. “Yes, I think we can do it. I’ll get a printout of names and addresses and mail it to you.”

Lark gave him their address. “Do you have any idea of what we’re talking about in numbers?”

“Lieutenant, I don’t know if we’re talking a dozen or a thousand.”

“It’s important to us,” Lark said, and hung up.

Chief Frank Pemperton stood in the doorway. “Two secretaries have gone home sick.”

“I didn’t realize I had been made personnel manager, Frank.”

“It’s that damn tape! They start transcribing and they go on sick call.”

“Have you listened to it?”

Pemperton turned away. “I’ll read the transcript.”

“You miss the nuances that way,” Lark said bitterly to an empty doorway.

7

The printout of names and addresses arrived in the mail on the following morning. Lark wondered what sort of massive clout the L.L. Bean Company had with the post-office department. It took him two days to get a letter from Middleburg to Hartford.

The list contained 214 names.

Horse shook his head. “What in the hell are we going to do with this mess?”

“The only thing we can do,” Lark replied. “We call every damn name on that list and ask if anyone in the household is missing, and if so, try to see if she fits the description of our victim.”

“You’re talking one hell of a lot of calls.”

“We’ll work the New England names first. That would seem to cut the list down.” He gave half of the names to Horse and pulled the battered upright typewriter on its stand to the side of his desk. “I’ll type out a rough cover story for the calls.”

“I wasn’t going to ask them if they knew their kid had just been knocked off.”

“Your creative effort I don’t need,” Lark said as he rapidly typed out a short paragraph and handed the sheet to Horse. “Keep to this unless you have a bite.” He found his partner an empty desk in the squad room, gathered an armful of phone directories, and made his way back to his office. He took a deep breath and reached for the phone.

The routine didn’t change. “Hello, I’m Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg Police Department. We have a young woman unconscious in a local hospital and she doesn’t seem to have any identification. Is anyone from your household missing?”

If he got an affirmative reply, he would go deeper.

It was routine work of profound drudgery. There was no way to computerize the calls, and no extra help could be called in to aid them in the long boring task of dialing number after number, call after call, that often resulted in a busy signal or no answer at all. He would have to stay on after the shift ended to pick up calls he had missed.

He didn’t have the energy necessary to fight with Horse over overtime. He continued dialing and using the identical lead-in that he had long ago memorized.

He wasn’t sure what number call it was, they had all begun to merge together, but he did know it was one of the last he would make that night. He had gotten as far as “… is anyone missing …” when he detected a marked gasp. He paused and waited for a reply.

“My daughter has been gone a couple of days,” the feminine voice on the phone said. “But she could be with friends,” was the parental cover-up.

Lark described the victim and her clothing, including the L.L. Bean shoes. There was another pause on the line.

“That could be Vicky,” she continued. “Where did you say you were?”

“Middleburg.”

“I’ll try to get a friend to drive me down there tomorrow night.”

“I can come up with some photographs,” Lark said. He suspected that the woman knew this was more serious than an injured daughter. “I can be there first thing in the morning.”

“I got to be at work by ten.”

“I’ll be there by nine. Tell me how to find your place?” As he jotted directions, he began to make plans. He’d take the best-looking morgue pictures and have Horse take a separate car. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive from Middleburg to the small town of Warren near the stateline where Mrs. Stanton lived.

He prayed that this wasn’t a masking clue, one of the things all detectives dreaded because of the time it consumed. A masking clue was a set of similar circumstances that had to be checked and rechecked until finally discounted. But then, the odds of two missing young women both wearing that size boot was an infinitesimal possibility.

Warren, Connecticut, had died two decades earlier, but didn’t have the good sense to recognize the fact. Years ago, the town had spread like a fungus and grown up along the steep hills that enclosed a narrow valley through which a fast-running river ran. The rushing water, a century ago, had provided an attractive source of power for prosperous textile mills, but the quick hands of nonunionized southern labor had ultimately proven seductive. The matching company homes dotting the hills were now privately held, but their owners worked in distant parts.

Lark reached the Stanton home first, but in the truck’s rearview mirror he could see Horse’s Honda Civic toiling up the road behind him. He searched his pockets for nonexistent cigarettes as he waited for his partner to park. He wondered if giving up smoking actually made you live longer, or did it just seem that way?

The Civic parked behind the pickup and Horse’s bulky frame seemed to sprout from the car as he unwound from the tiny vehicle. The mufticlad patrolman leaned in Lark’s window. “Do I get mileage for this trip?”

“Yeah, and with the gas that thing uses, you’ll clear thirty-two cents.” Lark started up the steep walk to the small frame dwelling.

“I don’t see why we had to come in two cars,” Horse grumbled.

“You’ll find out,” Lark said as he mounted the steps of the house, which was identical to a dozen others on the street. He couldn’t find a door bell, so he opened the pocked screen and knocked twice on the door’s inner windowpane. It was instantly opened, as if the house’s occupant had been standing in wait on the far side.

“Can you jump me?” she said.

Lark patted his pockets again for cigarettes as he attempted to phrase an answer to the non sequitur. The woman before him could be on the sunny side of forty, but it was difficult to tell. Her face was deeply lined and her eyes had been tired for years. Once-blond hair was faded and pulled tight over fat, wormlike curlers that were partially covered by a head scarf. She wore a tight white shirt that revealed pointy breasts, and faded blue jeans stretched tautly over a flat stomach and thin legs. Once she had been attractive in a sexual way, now she was aging.

“Can you jump me?” she asked again impatiently.

“I got battery cables in my car,” Horse said from behind Lark.

“Thanks.” She pushed past them and hurried down the walk toward a ten-year-old Chevy parked up the street. Rust streaks scarred the body. She slid into the driver’s seat, jammed a key impatiently into the ignition, and tried to start the engine. The starter motor clicked twice and died. “See! See!” she cried as she slammed the car door and fought with a recalcitrant hood. “Damn thing never starts. That’s the story of my life, you know? Nothing ever works.” The hood flew open and rocked back and forth in the air.

Horse backed the Civic around to the Chevy’s nose and began to attach jumper cables.

“Are you Mrs. Stanton?” Lark asked.

“No, I’m Princess Diana and I want to get this heap started so I can go to the changing of the guard.” She stared into the engine well with contempt as Horse adjusted the cables. “Story of my life. Fucking thing never starts.”

“The battery connections are corroded,” Horse said as he attached a negative cable lead to a positive connection and created a zapping spark. “Damn!” He made the right connection. “Try it now.”

“Goddamn thing!” She slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. She left the car and strode back to the house. “Let it run. If it doesn’t run out of gas first, it might recharge.”

“I’m here about your daughter, Mrs. Stanton.”

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and turned to stare blankly at Lark. “Listen, cop, don’t bullshit me about Vicky being in any hospital. You busted her, right? You got her on some damn foolish thing she did. It’s not the first time, you know.”

“I need a positive identification,” Lark said.

“Yeah, sure,” she said tiredly as she entered the house. “Come on in,” she called back over her shoulder as an afterthought.

The front parlor of the mill house was as small as the living-room area in Lark’s trailer. Mrs. Stanton sat on a plastic-covered maple couch that ran along a complete wall. Her knees were pressed tightly together and she was hunched over as if weary.

Lark handed her the most lifelike head shots from the pictures snapped at the medical examiner’s office. “Is that your daughter?”

She nodded and quickly handed the photograph back. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“We’ll need a positive identification.”

“She wore Bean boots, didn’t she?”

“Very narrow ones.”

“That’s her. I know my own daughter, you know.”

“It’s still necessary that you come with us.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” It was a throwaway line, a question devoid of emotion.

“Yes, she is. Can we call someone for you? A friend, a member of the family, a minister?”

She snorted. “A minister, for Christ’s sake? Last time a bible jock was in this dump was a couple of years ago when the youth board found out we’d once been something or other and sent this guy over to talk to me about my misguided kid. After ten minutes I had him ready for a roll in the hay. Woulda had him too, if Vicky hadn’t come home from school early.” She walked unsteadily to the hall. “You guys want coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Horse said.

“Call me Elvira; everyone does. Don’t worry, boys, I’m not going to pull the grieving-mother bit. Wouldn’t fit, you know. I’m making coffee. You can take it or leave it.” She went in the kitchen.

“Working traffic, I don’t get to make many of these calls,” Horse said. “I guess you could say I’m inexperienced.”

“She isn’t exactly the type of mourner to throw herself wailing into an open grave.”

Elvira Stanton returned and leaned against the door frame, her hips canted to the side in what she must have assumed was a provocative pose. “Takes a few minutes for the water to boil. I only got a hot plate since they cut off my gas last month. Woulda cut me off on the electric if my boyfriend hadn’t jumped the box for me. You.” She pointed a finger at Lark. “You’re first.”

“What?”

“You like girls, don’t you? You like to hump, don’t you?”

Lark broke the woman’s coquettish pose as he pulled her away from the door. His hands curled over her shoulders as he pulled her gently erect. “Your daughter is dead, Mrs. Stanton. She was murdered.”

“Let go of me!” She broke from his grip. “That’s the way I knew it was going to be. It’s over. I don’t have to worry anymore. I don’t have to fight with her no more.”

“Maybe we should get a doctor?” Horse asked.

Elvira Stanton turned to glare at him. “I don’t need nothing but maybe a shot of booze.” She whirled to turn the same withering gaze at Lark.

“You will have to go with Officer Najankian and make a formal identification at the medical examiner’s office.”

“I got to do nothing but die.”

“You could help us find out who killed her. In almost all cases of this sort, the victim knows the killer.”

She laughed. “Vicky had lots of friends, and most of them were mean.” She went back into the kitchen and returned with a mug of coffee and a pint bottle of peach brandy, from which she poured a large dollop into the mug.

“Tell me about her friends?” Lark asked.

She waved the bottle at them. “You guys want a snort?” They shook their heads. “I don’t usually drink in the morning. I mean, I’m not a drunk or nothing.” She laughed in a high falsetto. “I got other vices, but boozing isn’t one of them. Not that I don’t like to party as much as the next one, but it’s got its place, you know.”

“Tell us about Vicky,” Lark pressed.

Elvira Stanton took another swig from the mug. She held the liquid in her mouth a moment before swallowing. “She was a tramp, you know.”

“How do you mean?”

“She’s been sleeping around since she was fourteen.” She stared out the window. “The morning after the first night she never came home, we had a big fight. I mean, we slapped each other and the whole bit, but she just kept telling me to fuck off. What can you do?”

Lark considered his own daughter wearing a man’s shirt, little else, and her live-in boyfriend standing in the doorway dressed only in briefs. He shook his head. “It’s difficult.”

“Damn right it is! Woulda been better if I had a man around the place. Maybe between the two of us we coulda kept her in line.”

“Raising kids is tough,” Horse agreed.

“Yeah. It’s not bad when they’re small. They take up a lot of time and all, but they don’t get smart with you until they’re teenagers.”

Horse nodded. “That’s the tough time.”

“She’d go out and not come back for a couple of days, and when she did come home, she’d have a new sweater or something. I could always tell because everything I bought her was discount-house stuff, you know.”

“Somebody gave her those L.L. Bean shoes?” Lark said quietly.

“I sure in hell didn’t,” Elvira Stanton said. “And she hadn’t worked anyplace for a couple of months.”

“Any idea who paid for them?”

“How should I know? She had lots of friends, all bad.”

“The boots were new,” Lark said. “Someone who’s been coming around recently probably got them for her.”

“There was a creep who came here on a motorcycle that she’d been seeing the last two months.”

“Do you know his name?” Lark asked.

“Kid never came in the house, just revved that damn motorcycle outside until Vicky ran out and climbed on back.”

“Does he come from around here?”

“I think I saw him working at the Sunoco station a couple of times. That’s all I know.”

“What do you suppose Vicky was doing in Middleburg?” Horse asked.

Elvira shrugged. “Who knows? She’d take off for days at a time and end up anywhere. Couple of times I had to drive clear across the state to get her.”

“Do you have any relatives around here?” Horse asked. “Or perhaps Vicky’s father could make the identification?”

A laugh. “I got some cousins over in Phillips, but they pretend they don’t know me. The kid’s father? I haven’t seen him since before she was born. Listen, guys, I can’t take time off from work. I get paid hourly, you know, and I need the money.”

“There are arrangements to be made,” Lark said.

“I don’t want to think about it. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

“It has to be today, Mrs. Stanton.” Lark did not raise his voice, but the finality of his tone was obvious.

“Get off my back!”

“Officer Najankian will drive you.”

Horse stood. “You car’s still running. I’ll shut it off and wait for you in my car.” With a nod toward Lark, he left the small house.

“That’s it, huh?” she said.

“Yes. He will drive you and help you in any way he can.”

“That’s something, I guess. I’ll get my bag.” She left the room and returned a moment later with a worn leather shoulder bag draped over her arm. “All right, let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”

They walked to the front door, where she turned to look up at Lark. “It didn’t hurt her, did it?”

“No,” Lark lied. “Death was instantaneous.”

8

Warren had only one Sunoco station and Lark pulled the pickup into the full-service lane and waited for the attendant. To the side, in an otherwise empty service bay, a Kawasaki motorcycle sat in the center of the concrete floor. A chamois cloth was neatly folded on its seat.

The young man in oily jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt shambled from the small office and looked annoyed. “Yeah?”

“Fill her up and check under the hood,” Lark said. He pulled the hood release.

The attendant set the pump nozzle in the gas tank and slouched over to the front of the truck and raised the hood. “Down a quart,” he said.

“Put in the cheapest,” Lark said. “Do you know a girl named Vicky Stanton?”

“I sell oil and gasoline, mister, nothing else.” He inverted an oilcan over the engine block.

Lark left the truck to get a better view of the attendant. His face was pockmarked from old acne scars. He was of medium build with coal-black hair and dark, emotionless eyes. “Vicky Stanton?” Lark repeated.

The attendant slammed the hood and flipped the oilcan into a waste receptacle. “Cash or credit card?”

Lark handed him a twenty-dollar bill and went into the service bay. The attendant returned to the small office, made change, and went into the bay to give Lark the money.

“You didn’t answer me,” Lark said. “This your bike?”

“Yeah.”

“You should be more careful with it,” Lark said as his foot lashed out and knocked the motorcycle off its stand and crashed it down into the concrete.

“What’s the matter with you?” the attendant screamed. “You crazy or something?” He rushed to lift the cycle and prop it erect.

“You didn’t answer me,” Lark said quietly as he kicked the motorcycle over for the second time.

“Hey!” The attendant looked at his fallen machine in horror. “You faggot bastard!” He picked up a tire iron from the floor. “I’m going to break your head.”

Lark took two steps across the bay’s apron as the attendant stepped forward with the tire iron raised over his head. The iron swung forward toward Lark’s head. Lark stepped into the blow and parried it with an openhanded chop just above the elbow. The tire iron clattered to the floor. Lark continued his forward momentum and used his other hand in another chopping motion to the larynx.

The attendant grasped his neck with both hands as he fell to the floor making heaving, gasping sounds. Lark looked down at him dispassionately and noticed that he wore a male version of the L.L. Bean boots.

“Where’d you get the shoes?” he asked.

The attendant’s breathing began to return to normal, but he remained on the floor, as if afraid that if he stood Lark would knock him down again. “From a mail-order house in Maine. You ask crazy questions. What do you want? The money’s in the till. I won’t give you no trouble.”

“I’m ‘the man’ to you, kid. I’m not here to take the money.” He flipped his badge open. “On your feet.”

The attendant scrambled up and stood with his back pressed against the wall. “I got rights, you know.”

“I’ll bet you have. What’s your name and show me some ID.”

“Lawton. Mike Lawton.” His fingers scratched at his jean’s pocket for a wallet and driver’s license. “I don’t know you. You aren’t from Warren.”

Lark flicked his finger toward the small office, and Mike Lawton stumbled into the small, square room and sat down in a worn captain’s chair in front of an ancient desk covered with greasy receipts and charge slips.

Lark sat on the edge of the desk. “Vicky Stanton?”

“What about her?”

“My, we have a poor attitude, don’t we?”

“What do you want from me, mister? I know her. We went out a couple of times. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything, but let’s start with those shoes you’re wearing; they’re like a pair she had on.”

“I got them for her, that’s what she wanted. She came by the station one day with this mail-order form and said I was to get her a money order at the supermarket.”

A car beeped on the apron outside. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Saturday. I was working here and she came by to borrow a ten.”

Lark calculated that would have been the day before she died. “What time of day did she come by?”

“I don’t know, sometime in the morning, maybe ten or so.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

The impatient customer outside began to honk repeatedly. Mike Lawton squirmed nervously at the desk. “I got to take care of that car.”

“I need more on Vicky.”

“Listen, mister, you can beat on me all you want, but I’m the only one at the station until noon. I got to take care of that customer.”

“Okay, go do it.” Lark followed Mike Lawton outside and watched as the surly young man halfheartedly serviced a Corvette. “I’ll be back at noon.”

Lawton mumbled an acknowledgment.

Warren’s town green might have been picturesque if the town’s fathers had kept their wits about them. Instead, they had allowed local business to take the lure of the dollar, and now the remaining nineteenth-century facades were decaying and the area was sprinkled with fast-food outlets that incongruously dotted the square. Parts of old newspapers blew across the green itself, and the grass covering was scuffed to bare earth in many spots.

Lark located the town’s small police station in the rear of the building that housed the library. He parked the pickup in a no-parking zone directly in front of its double glass doors.

He knew that Warren was on the Resident State Trooper Program, and hoped the state cop would be on duty rather than an ill-trained and part-time constable. He knew that the troopers who policed these small towns were well-trained men who received their assignments through competitive examination and considered it good duty.

When Connecticut curtailed most county government functions and severely reduced the police powers of the sheriffs, many small towns and villages were unable to provide adequate, well-trained police services. The Resident Trooper Program filled the void. State cops, with years of experience and advanced training, were assigned to these towns, and in conjunction with the constables, they provided efficient services.

Lark entered the small office and blinked as his eyes refocused from the bright exterior light to the dim interior.

A bulky state trooper sergeant looked up at him, pushed his chair back, and walked forward with balled fists. “Lark, you son of a bitch!” His right hand shot forward into Lark’s solar plexus.

Lark’s rigid abdominal muscles deflected the blow and he countered with a left to the trooper’s midsection. The sergeant reeled back with a deep exhale of breath. His hands tenderly felt his aching stomach.

“What in the hell are you doing here, Black Jack?” Lark asked with a smile. “I thought they’d exiled all you black Irishmen.”

“Son of a bitch, you’re still hard,” the trooper said. “I’ve been here nearly a year. It keeps me away from the likes of you, and I got tired of prying teenagers out of wrecked cars.”

“Warren must be desperate.”

“Not as bad off as Middleburg is with you still on the force,” the trooper countered with a grin.

“They’re working on it,” Lark said, knowing how true that was. “I need some help, if you’re not too hung over, you broken-down bastard.”

“If you’re up here, that means I got drug problems.”

“I’m not on the street anymore, Black Jack. One of your kids bought it in Middleburg the other day.”

“Oh, Christ.” The other officer’s grin faded. “The body of the girl you found was from Warren?”

“She’s been identified as Vicky Stanton. The mother’s making the final ID right now.”

Black Jack nodded. “I’m not surprised. She was wild as hell, school dropout, work dropout and roundheels.”

“That’s some character reference.”

“She was a disaster waiting for an accident.”

“I just talked to a kid named Lawton who works at a gas station. He was going around with the Stanton girl.”

“The wipeouts attract each other like flies.”

“What do you have on Lawton?”

“If you’re serious about him, I’ll get you a full written report, but off the top of my head, how about shoplifting, auto theft, breaking the peace, and God only knows how many vehicle charges?”

“Ever done time?”

“So far, the only thing serious we had on him was as a juvenile. The next time he steps out of line he goes adult and does time … maybe.”

“You’ll never get his juvenile record unsealed,” Lark said.

“Hell, Lark, I’m as mean as you are when it comes to my town. I’ll damn well make sure that the sentencing judge hears the right rumors about our little boy blue.”

“Tell me about breaking the peace?”

“Make that plural. The kid’s got a temper. Pump a couple beers into him and he goes after people … usually with a bottle or anything else handy. Luckily for his victims, he’s not too big or well-coordinated.”

“Then he’s capable of murder?”

Black Jack tilted back his chair and considered the question before answering. “Murder? The girl? Maybe in a fit of rage, if he let himself get out of hand.”

“She was tortured first,” Lark said.

“Tortured? Christ! How do you mean?”

Lark recounted certain portions of the tape and described the autopsy.

“Hell, you’re not even sure if it’s the same girl. The tape could be a phony.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do know that most victims know their killers.”

“God, Lawton is mean, but I’m not sure he’s that mean. I can figure him for snuffing the Stanton girl in a drunken rage or even for the hell of it, but not doing it like you tell it.”

Lark glanced down at his watch. “I’ll have a better idea after I interview him again. He’s got a relief coming to the station at noon and then I’ll get another crack at him.”

“Where are you picking him up?”

“He’s going to wait for me at the station.”

Black Jack’s mouth gaped open. “You’ve got to be kidding? Do you really think that creep’s going to wait for you? How long have you been off the street?”

“A couple of days.”

“Then you’ve gone soft in the head. If you expect him to be there at noon, you’re crazy. He’ll leave at eleven-thirty.”

“Then I’ll find him,” Lark said noncommittally.

“And tear up half my town doing it.” The trooper heaved himself to his feet and snatched his broad-brimmed hat from a nearby coat rack. “Come on. I know where he’ll go.”

“Got it down pat, huh?”

“Hell, it’s my town.”

They took a state police car and drove past the Warren city limits and out Route 79 to where it narrowed to a winding, double-lane country road. The houses were spaced farther and farther apart until few appeared and they were in rural farmland surrounded by second-growth timber. The dark-complexioned trooper swerved the cruiser into a right-angle turn and jounced up a rutted dirt road, making another turn onto an even more rustic road until it came to an abrupt stop at a barnlike building nestled under the shadows of large trees. The Kawasaki motorcycle was parked near one corner of the building.

Black jack stepped from the car and signaled to Lark. As the trooper walked toward a tack-room door, he brushed his hand lightly against his holstered pistol. Lark unzipped his jacket.

“You might call it a clubhouse,” Black Jack said. “They play all kinds of fun and games out here.”

Lark saw that the barn was isolated and the area surrounding it was filled with stands of trees and heavy underbrush. The sound-depressant qualities of the foliage would be excellent. Anything could go on in this remote building without anyone hearing.

They stepped just inside the door and paused a moment to let their eyes adjust to the building’s interior dimness. Incongruously, an Oriental carpet covered a large expanse of the floor while a pool table stood in the exact center of the expensive carpet. A wooden bar with upholstered stools occupied another corner, a rumpled bed another.

“Where in the hell did they get this stuff?” Lark asked.

“You get one guess. Unfortunately, I can’t match the items with any local burglaries. The stuff probably came from jobs they pulled in other towns.” He yelled out, “Lawton! I know you’re here.”

Both officers stood in the center of the barn as a shaft of light from a dirty window on the far wall fell at their feet. “Craziest bike clubhouse I’ve ever seen,” Lark said.

“We grow ’em unique in Warren,” the trooper said. He yelled out again. “Lawton, dammit!”

“I ought to go outside and finish trashing his bike,” Lark said loud enough for anyone on the premises to overhear.

He saw the motion in the shadowy loft from the corner of his eye, but it took a moment for the action to register itself on his conscious mind. He half-turned to see that Jack was walking toward the bar just as the form from above hurtled down in a long sweeping arc.

A scream filled the barn and reverberated from the walls. Jack, startled, hunched down in a shooting crouch. Lark knew it was nearly too late, the state policeman’s body was directly under the swinging man’s trajectory. Lawton screamed again as his raised saber glistened in a shaft of window light.

Lark hurled his body forward and twisted in midflight into a cross-body block that caught Jack in the small of the back and sprawled both of them across the floor into the side of the bar.

“What the fu—”

Lawton, swinging from a thick rope attached to a beam near the roof of the barn, thudded against the far wall and began his return arc. He clutched the rope with one hand while his feet rested in a loop. His other hand waved the sword.

“The bastard’s crazy,” Lark yelled as the biker swept past them with another screech. His saber narrowly missed their heads as he waved it back and forth.

On the next return swing, Lawton’s feet crashed through the window at the far end of the barn. The saber dropped to the floor with a dull thud. His body twisted in the rope as he fought for a handhold to control his sway.

Jack pulled himself erect and grasped his service revolver in his right hand as he extended it toward the figure at the far end of the barn.

Lark ran forward, grabbed the twisting feet of their attacker, and swung him forcibly against the side of the barn. Lawton’s body crashed against the wall and Lark swung him forward again and again until the young man’s hold broke and he fell.

Immediately, Lark’s knees pressed against the man’s back as he pulled his arms back and handcuffed the wrists. Lawton writhed on the floor. “I’ll kill you bastards. I’ll cut your fucking heads off.”

“Mike’s been in the angel dust again,” Black Jack said without emotion as he reholstered his weapon. “Makes him crazy as a loon.”

Lawton’s body convulsed as he repeatedly drew his legs to his chest and kicked out. His head rocked back and forth while he spewed out a series of incomprehensible words.

Lark grabbed the prisoner’s chin to hold the lolling head still. “Where’d you kill her, punk? In here? You kept her here and then dumped her in Middleburg, right?”

“Off with their heads,” was the reply.

“You won’t get any sense out of him now,” Jack said. “And besides, you have to read him his rights.”

“This prick’s got no rights.” Lark tightened his grip. “What did you tie her with?”

“Heads will roll,” was the nonsensical reply.

Lark let his hands fall away from the handcuffed man. “We won’t get a thing from him until he’s detoxed.” He walked slowly around the pool table as he examined the building at greater length. Lawton still writhed on the floor, straining against the handcuffs. “How’d he get so bad so fast?”

“I think he double-laces his smokes and does them two at a time. Who knows? Low tolerance probably,” Jack said.

“Can we seal this place up and get the lab people out here? I’d be interested to know if there’s any fibers that match what we got from the body.”

“Vicky Stanton probably got laid out here two dozen times. You’re going to find a ton of matching fibers, but I don’t know what it will prove.”

“How long can you hold Tarzan?” Lark asked.

Black Jack walked over to the convulsing figure and looked down. “Assault, resisting arrest, attempted murder of a police officer … Hell, he’s ours for as long as we want.”

“Good. I’d just like to know where to find him until the lab checks things out.”

“Right. I’ll radio for a constable to come out here and take lover boy for his free room and board.”

Lark drove back to Middleburg at a moderate rate of speed. He cradled a can of beer in his right hand while his left casually gripped the pickup’s wheel. It was time to think.

The bulk of the investigation was now out of his jurisdiction. The state lab would check out the barn. Black Jack would prepare and have executed the proper search-and-seizure warrant for any of Vicky’s possessions the clubhouse might yield, and Lawton would remain in custody for an indefinite period of time. Bail would be set high, and it would be weeks before his trial on the attempted-murder charges.

It all added up to a neat spiral of conjecture, and yet the sum seemed less than the parts. Vital pieces were missing. The cycle clubhouse was a logical, isolated spot for the torture murder of Vicky, and yet somehow the dispassionate treatment of the victim by the man on the tape didn’t seem to match the erratic, nearly psychotic behavior of Mike Lawton.

Nor did the man’s voice on the tape match the postadolescent whine of Mike Lawton.

Or was more than one killer involved? Was there a cabal—perhaps an older man who used Lawton to entice victims to the isolated barn?

Lark knew from experience that exhaustive investigative work would answer many of the questions, but in this case, as in so many, there would be missing pieces that would never be fitted in.

He stopped at a phone booth at the outskirts of Middleburg and called Horse at home. A very young voice answered, and after several relays Horse was finally on the phone.

“How did the identification go?” Lark asked.

“Firm. It’s the Stanton girl.”

“We have a suspect. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.” Lark hung up and realized that he was bone-tired. It had been a long and uncomfortable day, and now it was time to go home and sleep.

There was a single light on in the trailer behind the machine shop. He cut his headlights and engine and let the truck drift in the drive and gradually slow to a stop before the trailer. He slipped from the pickup and made an oblique approach to the rear window.

His daughter was asleep on the divan.

He entered quietly and walked across the living-room area and stood looking down at her sleeping form. She was curled up with her denim-clad legs pulled toward her chest, her hands under her chin. She could have been ten years old.

A deep, hungry part of him reached toward her with an invisible gesture. He did love her, and she was all that he had. He stood watching for a few moments before he softly called her name. “Cathy.”

She moaned in her sleep.

He called again. “Cathy.”

Her eyes flicked open and she looked up at him with the gaze of a small child. “Daddy?”

“Yes, honey.” He sat gingerly on the edge of the divan near her feet. She had returned.

She sat up quickly and swung her feet to the floor. She was now wide awake. “Daddy, you have to help me.”

He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t. “What can I do?”

“Craig’s in big trouble.”

It took him a moment to reorient himself and mentally sift through a cluttered mind catalog of names before he realized that Craig was the one who had stood in the bedroom doorway. “Craig?”

“They busted him with an intent to sell. He’s in jail, Daddy. He won’t be able to stand it in there.”

Lark moved quickly into the kitchen area and snaked a beer from the refrigerator. He snapped the top before turning to face her. “We wouldn’t want his sensitive soul disturbed.”

Her eyes clouded and the child within fled. “Will you help?”

“I’m surprised they bothered with a kid selling a couple of ounces of pot.”

“It was a bunch of coke. He found a dealer and planned to do it just once so I wouldn’t have to work at the store.”

“How magnanimous of him. I’m sure the judge will take that into consideration.”

“No irony, please, Daddy. Are you going to help?”

He turned away. “No.”

“I haven’t asked you for anything in a long time, but I am now. You know who to contact. You could get him the right lawyer, maybe even talk to the prosecutor. They’d take your word … they’d do what you asked of them.”

“Probably.”

She pulled at his shoulders, forcing him to turn. “Are you going to do it? Are you going to help us?”

“No.”

Flecks of color spun in her eyes. “You did this, didn’t you? You had him set up. You’ve probably had him watched for days, just waiting for him to make a move.”

“No, I didn’t do that. I evidently didn’t have to.”

“God, I hate you.” She said it quietly, almost without feeling, and then turned and left the trailer.

9

At eight A.M. Lark stopped at the watch commander’s office and waited for Lt. Horn to look up from his examination of a duty roster. The large black officer glared at the numbers before him as if his frightening visage would somehow change the net result. He finally grumped and looked up at Lark.

“I hear you got a bust on the killing, Lark. Nice going.”

“A lot of pieces to put together yet, but it’s looking good. What do you have on a kid called Craig who took a fall for dealing?”

“Craig who?”

Lark realized that he didn’t even know the last name of the man his daughter was living with. “Lives on Garden Street.”

“Uh huh. Craig Wellborn. Couldn’t make bail so we’ve still got him. Is he one of your talkers? You want we should forget about him?”

“No, I was just curious. Do they have a good case on him?”

“The best. Repeated sales to an undercover officer, marked bills, no entrapment. He’ll do time.”

Lark nodded and turned away from the watch office. He joined the crowd gathered around the elevator. It would be so simple. All that he had to do was put out the word that Craig was an informer, one of Lark’s own, and the case would be dropped. So simple, and yet so difficult. He forced the quandary from his mind and boarded the elevator.

He dialed Frank Pemperton’s extension from his office. Frank would be at his desk and had probably been in the office since seven—that was how straight arrows operated.

“Pemperton here.”

“About the girl we found on Mark Street,” Lark announced without preamble. “We got a firm ID from her mother and a bust on her boyfriend. State police lab’s checking out a social club for evidence. It looks like he killed the girl in Warren and trucked her down here.”

“Any evidence in the vehicle?”

“We haven’t found it yet. The perp drives a bike, but the resident trooper in Warren is checking his friends and family for access to a van-type vehicle.”

“Got enough to go for a warrant?”

Maurice Grossman stood diffidently in the doorway. His face was chalk-white and he clenched the frame with his right hand. Lark glanced at him, raised an eyebrow, and then spoke into the phone. “We got her boyfriend on an assault charge and that’ll hold him until we build the rest of the case.” Lark hung up without waiting for the chief’s reply. “What’s up, Grossman?”

“I got another one.”

“Another what?” Lark snapped, although he was afraid he already knew the answer.

Horse brushed past Grossman and leaned over Lark’s desk. “You don’t need me on the case anymore. I’m reporting to traffic as soon as I get in uniform.”

“Sit down,” Lark commanded, and gestured for Grossman to come into the office.

Maurice Grossman slouched across the small room and gingerly reached into his pocket. He placed the small cassette on the center of Lark’s desk. The three men looked at it a moment without speaking.

“How’d it come?” Lark asked.

“Like the first one, in the mail this morning.”

Lark reached into his desk drawer and placed the recorder next to the cassette. “Where’s the wrapping paper?”

“I threw it away.”

“I’ll send a man down to the radio station to get it from your wastebasket.”

“I threw it out the car window. I don’t know where it is.”

“You what? That was evidence.”

“I didn’t know,” he whined.

Horse’s chair creaked as he levered himself to his feet. “I’m going for coffee.”

“Sit down.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“I said sit down, and that’s a direct order.”

Horse reluctantly returned to his seat. “Do you always throw envelopes out your car window?” he asked Grossman mildly.

“Just this once. If you guys don’t need me, I have a show to put together.”

Lark waved and Grossman left the office. The cassette was placed in the recorder. Horse closed the door as Lark depressed the PLAY button and turned away from the small machine to stare out the window.

It began.

“I got another song for you, Johnny. Listen carefully and pick out all the nice little tunes.” It was the same distinctive voice as on the first tape.

She had obviously been screaming before the tape began, as her voice was hoarse and cracked. Although expecting it, the two officers winced at the sound.

“Didn’t you like what I did to you? I can do it again.”

“Please don’t hurt me anymore.” It was a pleading young woman’s voice filled with horror and pain.

Again a scream.

Lark snapped off the recorder. He glanced at his watch. He had jotted down the time the recording had begun and now six minutes had elapsed. He had tuned out. He hadn’t heard a sound after the initial scream. His mind had simply refused to accept the constant repetition of inflicted pain.

Horse held up a hand. “Wait.”

Lark glanced at him in annoyance. “I’m not ready for it again, okay? What’s with you? Getting to like this sort of thing?”

The bulky patrolman looked at him a long moment before answering. “I don’t need that from you, Lieutenant. If you weren’t so damn irritable, you’d a heard something important at the end of that tape.”

“Where’s the body?” Lark said. “Where’s the goddamn body?”

“Play it again. I’m sure I heard something toward the end.”

Lark mashed the REWIND button. “We’ll hear the whole damn thing.” He pulled out a legal pad and snapped a pen from his pocket.

The tape started again. “I got another song for you, Johnny. Listen carefully and pick out all the nice little tunes.”

Lark clenched the pen as the screams started. He noticed that Horse had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

It was toward the end of the tape, as Horse had predicted. They both leaned forward to catch the words and sounds.

“Do me,” the man said. “Do me again and it won’t hurt so much … That’s right … that’s right … bitchin’ whore!”

It was the man’s turn to scream, a howl of pain and surprise. “You slut! I’ll kill you for that. I’ll rip your insides out. God, that hurts.”

The girl’s breathing was labored, and then there were other muted sounds.

“Turn it up,” Horse snapped. “More volume.”

Lark quickly turned the dial to its highest point, but they still had to strain to hear the background noise. There was a pistol shot in the distance, a time elapse of several seconds, and then footsteps and the tape abruptly ended.

“Play the last couple of minutes again. I didn’t quite get it all,” Horse said.

Lark needed no urging. He rewound the tape to where the man first said, “Do me.”

Both officers concentrated on the sounds as they listened to the final sequence of events culminating in the shot.

“Again,” Horse said, and Lark rewound the tape for the third time.

They played it four more times until they were both satisfied that they had heard all that could be heard. “He untied her hands,” Lark said. “She started to work on him and then gave him some of his own treatment.”

“I figure she bit him,” Horse said in a low voice.

“Something like that. Then I hear steps and a door slamming. He ran after her, left the door open, and there’s a shot in the distance.”

“There seems to be some echo, like it was fired outdoors.”

“That’s the way I hear it,” Lark said “She got away from him and he had to go after her.”

“I heard something else in the distance when they were outside,” Horse said. “I think it was the sound of distant airplane engines. I heard it twice, two different planes.”

Lark added that comment to his notes. “I’ll go along with that.”

“What do we do now?”

Lark drew a double line under his notes on the legal pad and read them aloud. “We make ourselves a group of recordings of doors and airplanes.”

“Then we compare their sounds to what we have on the tape.”

“And see what we find.”

They spent the remainder of the day recording door closings. They systematized their experimentation, and after calculating the time from the man’s first cry of pain to the door slam, they hypothetized that an injured but agile person could have moved from six feet to not more than fifteen feet. They restricted their individual recordings of each door to five, ten, twelve, and fifteen feet.

They began with Lark’s office door and included a metal door from the station’s locker room, a heavy fire-exit door, and the massive front door leading into headquarters.

They left the station and recorded the slam of Lark’s pickup and Horse’s Honda, and then drove to the Najankian house. At Horse’s they recorded the garage, front, and bedroom doors. At Lark’s trailer they recorded the slam of the entrance door and the slide of the thin partitions inside. In total they recorded thirty-two doors, each at four different distances for a total of 128 recordings.

“Tomorrow we work on airplanes,” Lark said.

“There were two different planes, and if we can pin them down to make and height, we might have something.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Lark smiled across the faculty office. “How about dinner?”

Faby Winn put down the blue book she had been marking and peered at him over the rim of her reading glasses. “I have a date.”

“I thought you might like a lobster.”

“I have a lot of papers to grade.” She took off her glasses and looked at him levelly. “I really do have a date.”

“Someone new?”

“Not really. He teaches here at Middleburg and we’ve known each other for a while.”

“I gather you didn’t care for my actions the other night.”

“That would be an understatement. What would happen if we were living together and I didn’t want to make love one night? Would you handcuff me to the bedpost?”

“There aren’t any bedposts in a trailer.”

“That’s either funny or sad. I don’t think you know what in the hell I’m talking about. If the tape upset you so much, why didn’t you tell me before we had the fight? Why can’t we discuss these things without violence? What have they done to you, Lark?”

“They gave me a job and neglected to tell me about the fringe benefits.” He left her and walked down the hall. He didn’t want to return to the trailer, and there weren’t many other places to go. He only hoped the bar he chose didn’t contain off-duty cops or guys he had busted.

He couldn’t face that tonight.

They held Styrofoam cups of coffee as they sat in Lark’s truck in the parking lot of the Middleburg airport. It was a small field, and the commercial traffic consisted of two twin-engine planes that flew businessmen to other airports for connector flights. The majority of the craft on the field were single-engine planes used by weekend pilots.

“I think we can rule out most commercial flights,” Lark said. “The sounds on the tape were smaller prop jobs.”

“We’re too close to the runway, Lieutenant. The planes on the tape were already in the air, and I don’t think they were near a takeoff or landing.”

Lark dropped his empty cup into the litter on the floor of the truck. “I want to check the wind to see which way they’re taking off, and then we’ll move you a mile or so in that direction. I’ll log all the flights in and out so that we can match them to the recordings you do.”

“It’s going to be as dull as traffic,” Horse said.

“Look at it this way,” Lark said as he stepped from the truck and flipped the keys to his partner. “You’re out in the country and not inhaling those dirty exhaust fumes.”

“And I have a feeling I’m not going to have lunch either.”

Lark laughed as he started for the small operations office. “It’s going to be good for you.”

It was a long day. The traffic in and out of the small airport was minimal, and by three in the afternoon they had only a dozen recordings. Lark flipped through a flying magazine for the fourth time, dropped it back on the table in the tiny waiting room, and for the umpteenth time paced the room to the large map on the far wall. What were they trying to prove? Connecticut was one of the smallest states in the union, but the killing could have occurred in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, both of which were only a short drive away. They were located directly on the northeast corridor, which meant that there was a great deal of air traffic of all sorts between New York and Boston, which didn’t include intermediate cities such as Hartford or Providence.

At four, Horse parked the pickup in front of the building and, with the recorder slung over his shoulder, came in to get Lark. “We got enough?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” He gave a wave of thanks to the airport manager and followed Horse outside. He switched on the car radio as they drove toward the highway that led back to the center of town.

“Okay, boys and girls, I now bring you my latest Gross Out, the dirtiest old man in town. Hello there, Dirty, what’s new in terms of filth?”

“Well, Johnny, this week’s dirt of the week is peeping.”

“Did you say …”

“I said peeping. A little old voyeurism.”

“Watch it, Dirty. We can’t use those filthy words on the radio.”

“I’m into looking, Johnny. And tonight I’ll be looking into some of the best windows in town.”

“Any of my radio audience, Dirty?”

“All of them, Johnny. Tell them to leave the lights on and the shades up.”

Lark braked the pickup so vehemently that the rear wheels locked and the truck fishtailed across the road. He fought to control the vehicle and turned off onto the shoulder. “Did you hear him?”

The patrolman nodded. “It’s the same voice as on the tape.”

“Tell them to wear their best black lingerie, Johnny,” the dirty old man continued.

A heavy metal rock song was playing on the radio as Lark and Horse entered the shopping mall. They could see Johnny Gross through the plate-glass window sitting at the console, his hands laced behind his head. He was sticking his tongue out at two pubescent girls pressed against the glass at the outside of the station.

There wasn’t anyone else in the broadcasting booth.

“Damn! We missed him,” Lark said as he burst into the reception area. He stormed past the secretary and entered the studio.

Johnny Gross glared. “I’m back on the air in twenty-two seconds, Lark baby.”

“Put another record on the turntable, Maurice.”

“No way, man. Johnny doesn’t play two back to back.”

“Then I’ll do it for you.” Lark reached for a cassette.

“Hey, that’s a commercial.”

“Play it or I break your face.”

“Okay, okay.” Gross turned back to the microphone. “All right, kiddies, and here’s another goldie from that terrific new group, the Zombies.” He threw a lever on the console and turned to face Lark. “You’re going to be walking a beat on the river when my lawyers get through with you.”

“Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“The guy who was playing the dirty old man on your show.”

“What are you talking about?” The glint and energy that possessed Johnny Gross on the air began to fade as the personality of Maurice Grossman gradually emerged. “I’m confused.”

“I heard your show on my car radio, and I know the voice of that guy.”

“The dirty-old-man voice?”

“I’m giving you three seconds to tell me where he is.”

Maurice Grossman reached into a slot in the console and took out a cassette. “He’s right here,” he said as he handed the tape to Lark.

“Okay, funny man, let’s go.”

“No, really, it’s me on the tape. I do some of my bits before airtime, particularly when I’m doing a couple of voices.”

“You were both voices, Johnny Gross and the old man?”

A look of comprehension swept over Grossman as his features sagged. “Good God, you think that voice is the same as on the tape with—with the dead girl.”

“Sure sounded like it,” Horse said as he stepped in the studio.

“I—I’m a natural mimic. I must have unconsciously copied the voice from the tape. I didn’t even realize it.”

Lark pocketed the cassette and walked for the door. “Don’t plan any trips, Maurice,” he said without breaking stride.

They sat on high stools before a workbench in a physics lab at the University of Middleburg. Horse escorted the lab tech who had set the equipment up for them out the door and returned to sit next to Lark. “What now?”

“We play sound games,” Lark replied. “I’m going to run the door slam on the second tape through the first oscilloscope, while you run our recorded doors through the second scope. We’ll compare the light patterns on the scopes until we find two that most nearly match.”

“And then we do the same with the airplanes’ sounds and the dirty-old-man voice.”

“You’ve got it,” Lark said as he began the first run.

It was tedious and agonizing work, requiring nearly perfect synchronization between the machines. On most first runs they were not in perfect sync and had to rerun both tapes until they emitted their signals simultaneously onto the two screens.

“That’s it,” Horse said when they ran one of the later door slams. “We’ll do it again,” Lark said as he consulted their list. “My outside trailer door on three … one, two, three.”

Both men pressed their recorder buttons simultaneously and the screens in front of them jounced with dancing light patterns.

“Almost, but not quite,” Horse said.

“It’s the closest we have so far,” Lark said. “The difference in make, interior furnishings, and force could account for the variance in the two doors.”

“Then he’s using a house trailer for the killings.”

“Or a recreational camper like a Winnebago.”

“Son of a bitch.”

They ran the tapes on the killer’s voice as compared to the Johnny Gross imitation and found the similarities striking, but not conclusive. Next were the airplane sounds.

They discovered that the two planes on the tape were identical aircraft. The dual sound could have been the same plane that might have made a tight turn and flown back over the murder scene, or two similar planes that passed within seconds of each other. The plane engines that matched were those taken from the two-engine planes they had recorded.

In a small office off the lab, Lark found a phone and dialed the Middleburg airport. The phone rang several times until he received a recorded message that announced that the airport was closed. He mumbled a few obscenities to the recording, as he always did when machines answered telephones.

“Good God!” Horse yelled from the lab.

“What is it?” He rushed back to the workbench to find Horse staring at his watch in astonishment.

“I’ve worked overtime!”

“I’ve checked our log for the past four weeks, Lieutenant,” the manager of the airport told Lark over the phone the next morning. “And at no time during that period were both of our twin engines in the air at the same time.”

“If it were only one plane, how long would it take for a turn that would bring it back almost directly over a given spot?”

“At normal cruising speed, for that type of aircraft I would estimate a little over a minute.”

“I see,” Lark replied. The time sequence would not work for one turning plane; it had to be two separate craft. “Is there anyone in the state that uses two-engine planes on a regular basis?”

“There’s an outfit in Hartford called Hartair. They run a commuter service to New. York on a regular basis.”

“You’ve been a big help, thanks.” He hung up and turned to face Horse. “Get the big map. We’re going to Hartford.”

Garry Miles wore a greasy fifty-mission cap and a leather flying jacket. He was an aging pilot who had a faintly adolescent air about him. Lark expected that any moment now he would use extended palms to diagram some long-ago dogfight.

Hartair operated out of Brainard Field, located outside of the Hartford city limits. Since the advent of jet flying and the construction of the new airport in Windsor Locks, the field was primarily used for private flights. Hartair seemed to consist of one sales clerk, Garry Miles, and a fleet of three twin-engine De Havillands. The commuter line was so small that the pilots loaded luggage.

Miles pushed his cap back on his head and smiled. “Sure, Lieutenant, I see the problem.” He glanced over at the short arrival and departure board behind the solitary clerk. “If it’s our planes you’re talking about, it could only happen when the three-fifteen from Hartford passed the two-forty from Kennedy.”

Unbidden, Horse unrolled the large map over the desk in front of Miles. “Have you flown the route yourself?”

“Hell, yes. A thousand times. I could do it blindfolded.”

Lark looked at his notes, which included a detailed time chart of the sequences on the murder tape. “I need to know the exact location of the planes when they were four seconds apart.”

The pilot laughed. “You got to be kidding?”

Lark frowned and the laugh died. “I couldn’t be more serious.”

“Hey, listen. There’s a bunch of factors involved here. What I mean is, a plane flies in a three-dimensional medium and there’s drift, airspeed, and wind currents to be considered. You’re asking for one hell of a lot of calculations.”

“If I were you,” Horse said, “I’d start calculating.”

“Come on, fellows.”

“Don’t you always fly the same route at approximately the same airspeed and altitude?” Lark pressed.

“Well, yes.”

“If two planes heading in opposite directions pass within seconds of each other, wouldn’t that be a fixed point?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s work with the map,” Lark said.

Horse shook his head as he looked at the map on his knees. The two dark lines the chief pilot of Hartair had drawn intersected at a point near the Connecticut River directly over the Nahug State Forest.

“You think she’s there?” Horse asked.

“I know she is.”

“You know, Lieutenant, this is the second, and that means there could be more. We’ve got a real nut on our hands, one who’s going to keep doing this.”

Lark didn’t answer.

10

An early-morning ground fog swirled around tree trunks and shrouded brush in the Nahug State Forest. A line of state troopers and local town police left their squad cars on a rutted logging road and formed a ragged line at the edge of the forest.

Lark suffered from a hangover, and the dull headache that enveloped him gave the area a more surrealistic aura than the fog warranted. He had ignored his exercise schedule the night before, and that only increased his depression. Following close behind him, Horse mumbled something about the department not providing proper footwear for this type of activity.

“Knock it off,” Lark snapped over his shoulder at his partner. He received a grouchy glare in return.

A trooper approached them and gave a casual two-fingered salute to his wide-brimmed hat. “Okay to move out from here, Lieutenant?”

As far as Lark was presently concerned, they could move into the jaws of hell, but he considered it diplomatic to make a taciturn reply. “I guess.”

The trooper looked unhappy. “The captain said you knew where the body was. There’s a couple of thousand acres in here and we’d need an army to search it properly.”

Lark leaned against the hood of the pickup. Darts were thrown against the rear of his eyeballs, and little men were removing pavement from the top of his brain casing. He felt awful. He was getting too old to drink himself insensible two nights in a row. “Well, I’ll tell ya,” he was finally able to mouth. “The girl was brought in here in some sort of large vehicle, either a trailer or camper. Said vehicle pulled off the main roads, and that would mean some sort of clearing or wide trail. Her body is not too far from a spot like that.”

The trooper looked at him with doubt in his eyes, but he had his orders. “All right, we’ll break into teams and go through looking for spots like you describe.”

“Let’s do that.” Lark’s mood was not enhanced when he remembered that he hadn’ restocked the beer cooler in the bed of the pickup. “Come on.” He gestured to Horse. “Let’s look. You drive and I will suffer.”

Horse climbed behind the wheel of the truck and waited patiently for Lark to pass the keys. “You had a snootfull last night, huh?”

“And the night before. And that is a pastime for younger men. Drive.”

The line of squad cars moved slowly up the rutted road through the knee-high fog. At road branches and clearings, one car after another peeled off to begin its individual search.

“We’re not going to find anything in this fog,” Horse said.

“It’ll burn off when the sun’s high and if we’re really lucky, somebody else will find her before we do.”

A twin-engine plane began to cross the forest at an altitude of 2,500 feet. It was a Hartair flight and Lark knew from his examination of the map that it was cutting across the edge of the forest. He unrolled the map, squinted at its features, and pointed to a road near a small lake. “We search up there,” he told Horse.

The fog began to eddy in wispy tendrils as the rising sun broke through the leaf canopy and burned it away. Spots on the ground were now bare, but clefts and hollows were still enshrouded.

Horse found her. He grunted for Lark’s attention and pointed to a spot a dozen feet to their front.

A hand rose through the fog. It stretched from the ground as its fingers curled limply over a fallen sapling.

“I don’t think I like this kind of work,” Horse said.

Lark found a boulder to sit on that was in a direct line with the seemingly detached hand. He knew what lay hidden by the fog. “Notify the others. Tell them to radio for a lab truck, photographer, and the medical examiner.”

“Right.”

From his perch atop the boulder, Lark watched the fog gradually begin to dissipate. Slowly, as if a white shroud were peeled away, the body attached to the hand appeared.

She was as young as the first one and dressed in nearly identical fashion: walking boots, blue jeans, and a blouse. The back of her head was matted around what he assumed was the bullet’s entrance wound. This one differed from the first in that the area around her groin was blood-soaked as if she had hemorrhaged.

Curious troopers began to wander toward the spot as they parked their cars behind Lark’s truck. Lark jerked to his feet and waved at the approaching cops. “Get back! You’ll contaminate the area.”

A state-police captain seemed to materialize out of nowhere, and Lark realized that he had been informed by radio. Outranked, he retreated to his pickup as the captain took charge and organized an area search.

Lark walked over to a group of troopers when they discovered recent tire tracks. Later, when the lab arrived, molds would be poured into the impressions and specific tire identification could be made. Lark squatted to examine the tracks. They were deep in the soft loam and had been made by a heavy vehicle when it pulled off the road into this clearing.

He walked over to the body and looked down at the dead girl. Her face was screwed into a grimace of terror and pain.

“Something’s wrong,” he said aloud.

“I know, I see it,” Horse said by his side. “She’s dressed all wrong.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Without touching the body, he examined it minutely. The blouse was inside out and the boots were on the wrong feet. “He dressed her after he killed her.”

The state’s chief medical examiner came dressed for the occasion. She wore hiking boots and coveralls and carried a small black bag. She smiled at Lark as a trooper directed her to the body. “Have they taken pictures?” she asked.

“All taken care of,” the trooper captain replied.

“Is that the entrance wound at the back of her head?” Lark asked.

“Not quite,” she said without looking up from her examination. “Without a full autopsy it’s only a guess, but the bullet probably only stunned her. It hit at an angle and ricocheted around the cranium.”

“Then what killed her?”

“In due time, Lieutenant.” She turned the body over and undid the top button of the jeans and unzipped the fly. Gingerly she worked the blood-soaked pants down the thighs.

“Good God!” Horse turned away and stumbled into the brush, where he leaned over and retched.

Lark turned his head a moment and then faced the medical examiner. “What in the hell did that?”

“You can call me for a report,” she replied. “But it’s obvious that the victim suffered traumatic shock and excessive loss of blood. To answer your question, I don’t know what did this. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“She’s nearly ripped apart,” a trooper behind them said in shocked tones.

An ashen Horse Najankian rejoined the circle surrounding the body.

The medical examiner signaled to two attendants, who approached with a body bag. “Some sort of instrument was inserted and withdrawn with sufficient force and in such a manner as to rip her internally.” She spoke in the same monotone Lark heard when he witnessed the autopsy. She started back to her car. “I think you have another one, Lieutenant. How many more are there going to be?”

How many have there been? Lark questioned himself.

They didn’t speak during the ride back to Middleburg. Lark clenched the wheel and stared at the road. The day’s color had fled, refracted light was stark white without spectrum. Once in Lark’s office they took their usual places. Horse hunched over on his chair, looking uncomfortable, as if he were waiting for a formal reprimand.

“You know what has to be done,” Lark said more as a statement than a question.

“A profile in the computer.”

“Uh huh.” Lark took his pad from the desk and centered it in front of him. He glared down at the paper and laboriously wrote a label across the top of the page. “Victims.” He looked over to Horse. “Well?”

“I think they would all be women between sixteen and twenty-five.”

“If we go by the two we have.” Lark wrote it down.

“Then there’s the clothing.”

“They each wore walking boots, jeans, and a blouse.”

“And no underwear. He kills them nude and then dresses them.”

Lark continued with his notes. “The bodies are mutilated in different ways.” The final cause of death might vary. He knew of one serial murderer who made a point of killing each victim differently in order to throw off the possibility of any connection.

“I think of locations as being important,” Horse said. “I believe he usually kills them in his van or trailer and then dumps them in the woods.”

“We found the first one practically in downtown Middleburg,” Lark said.

“Yeah, but he carried her off the highway into the woods. I think he must have done it in the dark and didn’t realize how close to a house he really was. Those cult kids were probably having a black mass and had all the lights off.”

Lark made another note. “I’ll include a wooded location. Anything else?”

“They both had long hair.”

“That could be coincidental.”

“Why don’t you feed in two composites and see what the computer comes up with? Include the hair on one and not on another. By the way,” Horse continued, “I think I know what he used on the last girl. I’ve got one in my garage.”

“You never cease to amaze me. Could you find it in yourself to tell me what in hell you’re talking about?”

The large patrolman stared into the hall as if he were seeking some placid vision he needed to establish his mental equilibrium. “I know what he put in her to do that.”

“Some sort of surgical implement, I would think.”

“A frog gig.”

Lark knew instantly that the suggestion made sense. He would call the medical examiner and suggest the possibility. He wrote the words “frog gig” on his pad and underlined them. For a brief moment he was elated that another piece of the puzzle now fit, and then he looked back at the words he had just written and their implication struck him. He had a quick montage of the young girl in the woods and the blood-soaked clothing that the ME gradually peeled from her body.

“Go home, Horse.”

“You’re coming to dinner tonight.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Nory’s expecting you.”

Lark agreed to the inevitable. “I’ll get the composites on the computer and then drive over to your house.”

Lark looked over his notes. There were so few clues, so few consistencies in the two murders that his composite might be a futile effort. He was enveloped in an enervating depression that seemed to preclude physical action and rational thought. Is this what his life had become? This piecing together of grisly mutilations of the innocent, was this the sum total of more than two decades of work and effort?

The ringing phone jolted him and he reluctantly reached for the receiver. “Yeah.”

The medical examiner started in midsentence. “Not your jurisdiction on that body in the woods, but thought you’d like a verification on the cause of death. She died of a massive hemorrhage leading to cardiac collapse. No sign of gag marks and she was the victim of an oral sexual assault.”

“How about a frog gig as the instrument?”

A pause. “Yes, that might have done it. I’ll pursue that line of thought.”

Lark hung up. Years of investigative routine made him reach for the phone again and dial the crime lab. Soho answered. “Lark here. Anything on those tire marks we found in the state forest?”

“Got it. In checking on the tread pattern, size, and type of tire as contrasted to the depth of the impressions, we’ve come up with only one type of vehicle—an RV.”

“What’s that?”

“A recreational vehicle.”

“Like a self-contained camper?”

“You got it, Lieutenant.”

The final call was to the state-police barracks. They had an ID on the victim and Lark wrote her name and address down in his notes. He was grateful that his office would not have to notify the family. He pulled the typewriter over to the desk and with two fingers began to type his composite. The lack of undergarments along with mutilation would be his prime factors. In addition to the ordinary systems, he would put his composite on line to the FBI computer in Quantico, Virginia. The recently created Federal National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime was said to have listings on all unsolved homicides for the past several years. He had never utilized that system before and had no idea of its worth.

Horse Najankian presided over a leg of lamb, while at the far end of the table his wife, Nory, was surrounded by an attacking flotilla of serving dishes. Najankian children of varying sizes and sexes filled the remainder of the long table and surrounded Lark.

“I do hope you like lamb, Lieutenant,” Nory said. “It’s quite a treat for us.”

“Of course I do,” he said as he smiled at her. Lark hated lamb, just as he hated all meat that wasn’t hamburger. He would eat and savor it and request seconds. He owed his partner that much.

The dinner swirled about them. Children recounted the day’s events and Horse laughed a great deal between bites of the huge meal. Lark felt estranged from the table, as if he were floating above them and silently observing their good humor and mutual love. He was an alien part of it.

“You’re going to get busted one day,” Horse told Nory.

Lark snapped back to attentiveness, his fork poised in midair. “How’s that?”

“She’s stealing from the store where she works. That’s what it is when you come right down to it.”

“I prefer to think of it as my personal food-stamp program,” Nory replied.

Lark looked at the leg of lamb. “I don’t understand?”

“My wife has this thing about old people,” Horse said. “She wants to upgrade their diet at the expense of the supermarket.”

“Some of those old people live on small pensions and a little social security,” Nory said. “I know they don’t have enough money to eat right and I can tell about their diet when I check them out. So I charge them less.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” Lark asked.

“Well, not really. But if a chicken is two-ninety-eight I charge them one-ninety-eight as if I made an error. Some of my customers have gone from dog food—and I know they don’t have a dog—to lamb chops.”

Horse shook his head. “One of these days they’ll grab you.”

Lark left the Najankian house and drove back to headquarters, where he parked in a deputy commissioner’s slot. Depression rolled over him as he gripped the wheel and stared ahead at a blank brick wall. He felt the weight of the Python in its holster. Police officers have the highest incidence of divorce, alcoholism, and suicide of any profession except psychiatrists. He thought the comparison ironical, but sobered with the realization that he qualified in a couple of those areas and was working on the third.

In the computer room a printout was stacked neatly in a pile with a piece of scrap paper clipped on top that contained his name. He picked up the first sheet and glanced at it quickly and then returned to the top of the list and began to read each item carefully.

He was horrified at the number of entries, and wondered why the match hadn’t been made months or even a year earlier by another jurisdiction. As he riffled through the sheets, he could see what happened, or more specifically why it hadn’t happened. The murders had occurred in a myriad of jurisdictions over five states, in rural areas serviced by small police departments. The victims had died in a number of different ways, and the newness of the Quantico system had precluded anyone from discovering the similarities earlier. The profile they had fed into the computer included two important facts: the victims were fully dressed, but their underwear was missing. Lark felt that had been the key factor.

There were thirty-two young women in New England whose deaths matched his profile.

They had a serial murderer of gigantic proportions on their hands.

11

Lark parked in front of Horse’s house and honked. The front door opened and his partner ambled down the walk toward the pickup. He wore regulation shoes, uniform pants, and a checkered sports coat. He looked like a half-dressed cop.

“Are you half in uniform or half out? This is a plain-clothes assignment, you know.”

“Lieutenant, I got one going-to-Sunday-meeting suit, and I been wearing that. Riding around with you, the pants take too much of a beating. So I got my uniform pants on.”

“Any officer assigned to plain clothes can get an authorization to buy a civilian suit or sports outfit at a reasonable cost.”

“Tried. The captain turned me down because this is only a temporary assignment for a couple of more days.”

“Uh huh.” The truck pulled away from the curb as Lark handed Horse the computer printouts. “Take a look at these. After I went through them last night, I ran the composite through the computer again to cover the rest of the country. Nothing else turned up that matches our cases. Our guy is working New England.”

Horse’s eyes widened as he flipped through the pages. “There’s a couple of dozen of them.”

“Thirty-two, to be exact.”

“Where are we starting?”

“At Middleburg University. I called the Federal National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes in Quantico and they told me that one of the people who helped set up their program is a psychology teacher here in Middleburg. Let’s see what he has to say.”

Professor Donald Rasmussen didn’t look preppy, tweedy, or professorial in any manner. In fact, he was larger than Horse, wore sneakers, blue jeans, and an open red sport shirt. His full beard and mass of half-corrected blue books were the only indications of his profession. As they entered, he waved them to a couple of chairs by the window. He finished grading a blue book and swiveled his chair to face them. “You have killings,” he bluntly stated.

“I called Quantico and they told me you were down there last summer on a research grant to help them set up their system on serial murders.”

“I was,” Rasmussen said. “And we had damn little to work with. You know, of course, there isn’t any definitive literature on serial murders. Everything we do is breaking new ground.”

“People have been killing people for a long time,” Lark said. “And often in large lots.”

Rasmussen stripped two sticks of gum and plopped them in his mouth. His jaws worked in massive movements, as if signaling his agreement with Lark. “They sure have, but we’re not talking mass murder here, we’re talking serial killings.”

Horse looked bewildered. “It seems to be the same thing. Both are killings of large numbers of people.”

“The motivations are entirely different,” Rasmussen said categorically. “The mental constellations are different and the methods they use are different. If some unhappy kid goes up in a tower and blows a couple of dozen people away, that’s mass murder. A guy loaded down with a personal arsenal walks into a fast-food outlet and guns down a dozen men, women, and children—that’s also a mass murderer. A guy who picks up single victims time after time over weeks, months, and even years, and kills them, that’s a serial killer. The only similarities between the two types are that neither killer knows his victim beforehand and they kill in quantity.” He extended a hand toward Lark. “Let’s see what you have.”

Lark handed him the computer sheets and the files on the two murdered girls they had discovered. Rasmussen began to flip through the material with astonishing rapidity as he speed-read the facts. “Nice composite you fed into the computer. I’m pleased to see that the system works. Any identification of the girl you found in the state forest?”

“I checked with the state police and found that they ID’d her almost immediately,” Lark said. “They already had a very comprehensive missing-person file open on her, complete with photographs.”

“Any similarity between the victims’ backgrounds?” the teacher asked.

“Outside of general age, dress, and a vague physical appearance, they were as different as two young women can be. Victim number one was a burnout who really fucked around; number two was an honor student and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon.”

Rasmussen flipped back through the printout. “Each killed in a different manner and yet all sexually mutilated.” He read further. “God! Frog gigs, surgical instruments, wood-burning sets, power tools … This guy’s a real sickie. He’ll keep this up until you catch him. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Lark replied. “Can you give us any direction? What sort of monster are we looking for?”

“The most difficult kind,” Rasmussen said. “A hidden one.” He gestured at a group of bulging files cluttering a table. “I’ve done a couple of papers for the journals and law-enforcement publications, but we’re only just now scratching the surface of the serial killer.”

“They told me at Quantico that you knew as much as anyone in the country about this kind of killing.”

Rasmussen gave a high brittle laugh that belied his size. “Sure, and once I tell you everything I know you still won’t know anything.” He jolted his chair forward and leaned across the desk. “Here are the statistics: there are more than five thousand unsolved homicides each year in this country. The day when we could look to husband, wife, or lover as the killer is past. This means that from a ninety-percent solution rate ten years ago, we now have twenty-six percent of our homicides unsolved. Why? Because people who don’t know each other are killing each other.”

“Armed robbery is on the increase. That would account for some.”

“Right!” Rasmussen interjected. “Some, but not all. There’s a bunch of guys out there who drive the highways and cross state lines to pick up people and kill them. Because they’ve been doing it in different locations and with different methods, like your guy, we weren’t even aware of their existence until recently.”

“There’s always a pattern,” Lark said. “Bad guys who do banks for a living tend to do them the same way job after job.”

“And there’s a bank-robber mentality,” the psychologist said.

“Sure there is,” Lark agreed. “Guys who do banks don’t do liquor stores. What kind of guy are we looking for, Doc?”

“Okay. This man is a sexual psychopathic sadist, and believe me, that’s a lethal combination. To be more exact, characteristically he does it periodically, he hurts the victim in ways that often mutilate, there is concomitant sexual excitement, occasional revisiting the scene of the crime, and worst of all for you, he usually exhibits fairly normal behavior between the crimes.”

“Have you been able to develop the profile further than that?”

Rasmussen picked through one of his file folders and lifted out a single sheet. “Here’s all that I’m sure of: the man you are looking for is between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-six, and he probably grew up in a marginal home environment. He tends to select victims of murky background, such as prostitutes, or people he thinks come from this background, such as hitchhikers. He is driven by an obsessive hate of women and is forced to mutilate them, often after a torture session of varying length. Between his episodes, he might easily be married, with a normal-appearing heterosexual relationship. He is often a quiet and well-mannered-appearing individual who gives no outward signs of violence. In almost all instances, he himself is a victim of child abuse and from a broken home.”

“And it’s random,” Lark muttered to himself. “How in the hell are we going to catch this bastard unless we catch him in the act?”

“You might try putting his past murder scenes under surveillance,” Rasmussen said. “Often these individuals are endowed with a rich fantasy life. If they can’t immediately find a victim when the urge overtakes them, they often revisit one of the past locations where they killed.”

“There’s a problem with that, Doc,” Lark said.

“What’s that?”

“This guy takes his murder site with him; he kills them in a recreational vehicle.”

On the drive back to police headquarters, Lark stopped at a bookstore and purchased the largest map of New England that he could find. They nailed it across the wall in the small office. He sat at the desk compiling lists from the printout while Horse tacked numbered thumbtacks into the map at each murder location.

“There they are, Lieutenant,” Horse said as he stepped back.

Lark looked at the groupings on the map. They dotted the New England states. The southernmost tack was the body discovered in Middleburg, the case that had begun this investigation. The farthest north were those in mid New Hampshire and Vermont. “What’s that one doing in the middle of Boston?”

Horse peered at the tack. “Number twelve. A death in the Roxbury section of Boston.”

Lark flipped through the printout until he came to the case. “Whip marks,” he read aloud. “The victim was partially unclothed and death was due to suffocation, probably due to an excessively tight gag. I don’t think that one matches our MO. Take out the Boston victim and you see how all the others are in rural areas.”

“Middleburg wasn’t. He practically put the victim in the downtown area.”

“It looks rural, you can’t see the houses from the highway. What have we got?”

“Twenty of the victims were left in state or national forests and were usually found in an area not far from a pond or lake. Each of the recreational areas is only a few miles from a major highway,” Horse said.

“The first victim we found in town, the second in the Nahug State Forest, which is only a few miles from here.”

“Three other victims in our ten-mile radius,” Horse said, “but the rest are strewn all over hell and back throughout New England.”

“Not quite.”

Horse took another look at the map. “Well, they are sort of bunched in areas outside Portland, Maine, and Laconia, New Hampshire, but that’s not much of a pattern.”

“Let’s move on to time sequences,” Lark said. “I’m going to give you a list of those death dates we have that are firm within a day or two.” He began to pick dates from the printout and call them to Horse in a monotone. “It seemed to start in 1983; the first one in April, that’s victim number one. Two and three in May of that year, four and five in June, one in July, another in August, two in September, and one more in October of that year. Two more bodies were found that year, but no accurate estimate on the time of death.”

The time sequence extended over a three-year period with the majority of the bodies discovered in two-week intervals, beginning in April and extending through September.

“You know, Lieutenant,” Horse said when they had finished dating the pins. “We started with thirty-two, took one out, and that left us with thirty-one. This guy began three years ago, and from April through September he’s killing them on the average of two a month.”

“Slightly more than one every two weeks.”

“If that’s the pattern, there should be more bodies. There are victims out there that we haven’t turned up yet.”

“Why does he begin in April and stop in September?”

“He’s got a camper and he uses state and national parks. He probably doesn’t like it outside in wintertime. It fits the fishing season,” Horse said with a laugh.

“What did you say?”

“He likes to fish.” His laugh died. “I was only kidding. You can’t work with this stuff for hours on end and not try to make a joke once in a while.”

“You might have a handle on something. The guy has a rec vehicle, uses parks, and often kills near water. Fishing might fit.”

“Sure, and he spends winters in Florida.”

“If he does, he’s not killing down there.” Lark turned away from the map to stare out the window. “If they had all gone back to college, they wouldn’t have been blown away.”

“What?” Horse was perplexed. “I don’t follow you.”

“It wasn’t important.”

Horse cleared his throat. “I thought maybe we ought to cross-index the methods of murder, hometowns of the victims, and other factors. What do you think?”

“They can’t expect their parents to support them forever.”

“Huh?”

“How many of them were living with men?”

“Do you really think that’s important?”

Lark bent over the desk with his fists clenched in anger. “It’s goddamn well important!”

“Do you feel all right?”

“Nearly three dozen dead and we know how they felt during their last hours. We know what that pervert did to them. I’ve seen people die, sometimes in terrible accidents and in pain, but these girls had their last hours in pain. Think of it a moment. They not only died, they had to look into his face and suffer before they died.”

“You know, Lieutenant, this is really too big for us now. We can turn all our files over to the state. The case is too important for two guys working out of a small office in a rinky-dink town.”

Maurice Grossman hovered in the door. His bulk blocked the light from the hall like a perched albatross obscuring the sun. “What do you want?” Lark asked.

“I got another tape, but there’s a problem with it.”

“Your tapes are always a problem,” Lark said. “What is it?”

“I played the tape, and when I rewound it, I accidentally erased it.”

“That’s interesting,” Lark said mildly. “You erased a tape. You do have a broadcast engineer’s license, don’t you?”

“Sure, it’s required. I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I guess I was nervous.”

“You were nervous and erased it,” Lark repeated. “You bastard!” He lunged across the room and grabbed Grossman’s jacket with both hands. His rocking motion jounced the disc jockey’s head back and forth against the door. “You idiot! You fucking idiot!”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I’ll bet.” Each sway of their bodies banged Grossman’s head.

“You’re hurting me.”

Horse pulled at Lark. “Stop it!” His large fist clubbed down on Lark’s wrist and broke the grip on the radio announcer. He grabbed Lark from behind and lifted him off the floor and carried him across the room. “No more,” he whispered frantically. He pushed him into the desk chair. “Take it easy. You want something, coffee, a beer?”

“I want it all to stop,” Lark said in a barely audible voice.

“I got to go.” Grossman scurried from the room.

Lark stood in the doorway to Frank Pemperton’s office. The chief looked up impatiently. “I told my secretary no visitors. I have a budget to finish.”

“I beat up a civilian.”

“You what?”

“You heard me. I’m putting in my papers.” He unbuckled his holster and put it on the desk. His badge followed. “I’ve had it.”

The chief looked at the pistol and badge and shook his head. “I never thought I’d see this day.”

Lark spun on his heel and went toward the door. “I’ll let them know where to send my checks.”

“Wait a minute, Tommy. What in the hell happened?”

“Ask Horse. He was there.”

He drove without thought and was blocks past the turnoff to the machine company and his trailer when he snapped back to reality and slowed for a U turn. It took a few moments for him to realize that he was in the university area near where his daughter lived. He made a right and drove past the three-family dwelling that contained her apartment. Her VW was not parked on the street or in the drive, and then he remembered that Faby had told him Cathy had taken a job at the 7–11 Store on Grove Street.

Over the last several years, Grove had turned into a testament to America’s lack of culinary sophistication. The streets between the 700 and 1900 blocks were lined with fast-food emporiums and discount stores interspersed with used-car lots. It was typical of a thousand streets in a thousand towns, each identical to the other, regardless of geographical location, and each as devoid of a sense of place as the others.

He turned into the 7–11 parking lot and stopped in its darkest corner. Through the front window he could see her movement behind the circular counter in the center of the store. She seemed slightly harried as she worked with quick, nervous movements.

He smiled for the first time that day. Perhaps college would be more appealing after a few months behind the counter of a convenience store. He wanted to go to her and hold her while pretending she was ten years old again, but that would be impossible.

A dilapidated Chevy with pocked rust holes in the sides pulled to a stop near the store’s entrance. The driver left the engine running when he entered the store.

There was something about the man’s movements that bothered Lark. It wasn’t the clothing: a leather jacket and jeans were uniforms for many; perhaps it was the fact that the right hand clutched something while the left was jammed into a pocket.

In one lithe movement he opened the pickup’s door and unzipped his jacket. He ran across the asphalt to the front entrance while his hand fumbled for the missing Python.

The store was empty of customers except for his daughter, standing wide-eyed behind the counter, and the man in the jacket. Leather Jacket had slipped a ski mask over his head and leveled a pistol at Cathy.

“Drop it,” Lark commanded from the door.

Leather Jacket turned to point the pistol directly at him. “Freeze, mister.”

“I’m ‘the man,’ jerk. Drop the piece and you won’t get hurt.”

“You a cop?”

“He’s a cop,” his daughter said.

“He’s not carrying anything or he’d have it out,” Leather Jacket said. “Come on, girlie. Give me the money.”

Lark advanced around the counter. “You shoot a cop and you won’t make it to jail alive.”

“You take one more step, mister, and I blow you away.”

“Go ahead, punk,” Lark said in a low voice. “I don’t give a damn.” He stepped closer to Leather Jacket. Three more strides and he’d have him.

“You crazy? I’m going to waste you.”

“Then shoot, dammit!” Lark lunged and chopped at the man’s gun hand. The trigger finger tightened and the Saturday-night special exploded, sending a bullet through the floor of the store. Cathy screamed.

Lark’s left hand swept into Leather Jacket’s neck, and as the man gasped and reached for his injured neck, Lark’s knee plowed into his groin.

“Punk!” Lark screamed. He reached between the man’s legs with one hand and under the arm with the other as he lifted Leather Jacket over his head and threw him through the plate-glass front window. “I’ll kill you!”

“Daddy!” Cathy screamed again.

Lark dashed outside. A moaning Leather Jacket, surrounded by a thousand shards of glass, was on his hands and knees.

“Punk!” Lark’s foot lashed forward and caught the man in the midsection and flipped him over on his back. “Son of a bitch!” His foot jammed forward again to connect with the chin and snap the man’s jaw. “Scum!” He kicked again.

“Daddy, stop!” Her hands tugged at his sleeve. “You’re going to kill him. Please, Daddy!”

He stopped kicking and turned to face her. “What?”

“You’ve got to stop now.”

He looked down at the bleeding hulk writhing at his feet. “Yeah, I guess so. Go call nine-one-one.”

She ran back into the store as Lark whipped Leather Jacket’s belt from his pants and bound his arms behind his back. He walked slowly back to the pickup. Let the uniforms have the collar. There was a siren in the distance as he started the truck and drove back to the trailer.

He took the army-issue .45 from a locked cabinet over his bed. He hefted its weight in his hand. It hadn’t been used in years, not since that final time by Margaret. They had returned it to him after the inquest, which was dumb, and even dumber he had kept it.

He activated the slide and let it slam forward with its reassuring clunk. He dry-fired it. This weapon of death worked as well as it ever had. He had shot a woman with it in combat. He could see her again as she rose from the rice paddy with the grenade in her hand and a look of hate on her face. Without thought, he had fired, and the heavy slug had caught her in the center of the chest and flung her backward into the shallow murky water.

It was later that they discovered the baby strapped to her back. The .45 projectile had also pierced the child’s body. His sleep had been fitful for a long time after that.

He walked back through the trailer with the automatic dangling from his hand. In the kitchen he noticed the calendar with the exercise days carefully noted. He tore it from the wall and flipped it into the garbage. There would be no more exercise.

He sat on the divan. The .45 lay on the coffee table in front of him. He checked the clip and rammed it back into the butt before activating the slide to force a shell into the chamber.

His personal affairs were in order. The will had been changed after Margaret’s death to leave everything to Cathy. He reached for the weapon.

The door to the trailer slapped against the wall. “Put that down!”

“Get out of here.”

“Are you going to put her through that? Do you think she’s strong enough to survive another time, another parent going that way?”

“Leave, Faby.”

“You selfish bastard.” She entered the trailer and sat across from him, her knees pressed tightly together. “After what you did at the Seven-Eleven Cathy called Frank Pemperton. She knows there’s something wrong with you.”

“Do I have to throw you out the door?”

“Macho bastard, aren’t you?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“You’ve crossed over the line, Lark.”

“Don’t preach to me, Faby.”

“I’m not going to allow you to destroy your daughter.”

“There’s nothing between us.”

“More than you possibly realize.”

“I’ve known that Frank’s wanted my paper for two years; now he’s got it. That’s one less problem, and I won’t have to jack around bodies in Portland, Springfield, and Laconia.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s thirty-one of them, and Grossman has another tape, even if it is blank.”

“So you’re getting out. Good. The state police can probably do a better job.”

Lark stared off into space. “Portland, Spring-field, and Laconia …” He began to pace the narrow corridor in the trailer. “Portland and Springfield … clumped in state and national parks, and he accidentally erased a tape.…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jesus Christ, Faby! I think we’ve got our first real lead.”

12

Lark cut the headlights partway down the block that contained the Grossman house. He let the truck drift toward the curb and slowed to a stop one house down from the suspect’s ranch home. He removed the ignition key and leaned back in the seat to orient himself.

He wanted a cigarette. He always wanted a cigarette.

The house under surveillance was a modest six-room affair with a Big Wheel toy canted on its side alongside the front walk. A large vehicle, obscured in dark shadows, loomed under the carport. One low lamp burned in the living room and a flickering pattern of light on the front lawn indicated that the television was on.

He knew the neighborhood. It contained a mixture of young couples with starter homes, and skilled blue-collar workers who bought above-the-ground canvas pools on their MasterCards. The street was peopled with many small children.

The Grossman house was so serene that Lark couldn’t help but think of “the banality of evil.” Halfway up the front walk he was able to identify the vehicle under the carport as a camper.

He crossed over to the rear of the camper and tried to peer though its large rear window. A heavy curtain had been drawn and he couldn’t see inside.

The front door bell chimed a three-note melody. Footsteps. A muffled “Who is it?” from behind the locked door.

“Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg police.”

The lock clicked and the chain fell away from its bracket as the overhead light switched on. She stood behind the screen door and looked out apprehensively. “Maurice has spoken of you, Lieutenant.”

“Is he home?”

She hesitated. “No, he isn’t. Won’t you come in?” The screen door opened and Lark stepped inside. “I’m Sylvia Grossman,” she said, and extended a limp hand.

He judged her to be twenty-eight. Her once-attractive face had turned into a caricature of itself through massive overeating. She wore a long housecoat that stretched to the floor, but that didn’t hide the ample proportions of her figure. He could see over her shoulder into the living room, where a huge bowl of California Dip squatted next to a half-eaten bowl of potato chips. She smiled at him in a way that showed she once must have been a coquettish flirt.

“Is Johnny, ah, Maurice somewhere he can be reached?”

“He should be at the station. He often works at night recording some of his comic bits. He’s very talented, you know.”

Lark was tempted to retort that sophomoric humor of that kind … He dropped the thought. “Could I use your phone to call him?”

She looked at him with pinched eyes that were nearly hidden by ballooning cheekbones. “I guess maybe he isn’t there.”

“Perhaps he’s with a friend?”

“We have two lovely children. Sherwood is eight and Heidi is six. Maurice really adores them. You should see how he protects them and plays with them every chance he gets.”

“Mrs. Grossman, I really do have to locate Maurice.”

“Then find him!” She plunked down on the couch in front of the coffee table and swirled two large potato chips in dip and stuffed them in her mouth. “I don’t know where he is.” More chips sank into the dip only to return to the surface in her fingers.

Lark sat across from her and watched the flickering light of the silent television play across her face. “Does my memory serve me correctly? Did Johnny … Maurice work in Portland, Laconia, and Springfield before he came to Middleburg?”

“Yes. A young disc jockey has to start out anywhere he can and move up when he can.”

“I’m sure that’s the case. Do you know the license number of your car?”

“We have a vanity plate and it’s G-R-O-S-S.”

“What make and model?”

“This year’s Ford Escort.”

Lark dialed headquarters from an end-table phone. He spoke in a low voice, but knew she could overhear him as he ordered the dispatcher to put out an APB on Maurice Grossman’s car. The occupant was not to be picked up, but the car’s location phoned to Lark. He saw that Sylvia Grossman was frightened. “Maurice has some important evidence that I need. Could I look through your camper?”

He knew she was puzzled at his request, but she silently led him through the kitchen and out a side door that entered directly under the carport. She turned on an overhead light that illuminated the body of the camper.

The door was unlocked and Lark entered the vehicle. Two heavily upholstered seats were perched in front of the dash, behind them were an eating area and divans that made into beds. He quickly searched through the closets and compartments in the camper. His cursory search didn’t turn up anything that would tie Maurice into the murders, but a detailed lab inspection would be necessary for a fabric and sweepings check.

He left the camper and returned to the living room, where Sylvia Grossman sat before the silent television eating the last of the chips. She didn’t turn.

“Do you want me to turn off the TV?”

“Yes, I guess so. I’m not really watching it. The sound is off and all.”

Lark snapped the set off. She avoided his eyes. “Does Johnny, I mean, Maurice ever hit the kids?”

She looked shocked. “Hit the children? Heavens no. That would be the last thing in the world he would ever do. In fact, he’s too much the other way. Sometimes we have spats over him spoiling them.”

“How do you mean?”

“He overprotects them. He only lets them ride their bikes on the sidewalks when the other kids go in the street. Last summer we went to an amusement park and one of the rides was scaring the kids, so Maurice made the man stop the machine in the middle of the ride so they could get off.”

Lark crossed his legs and tried to appear nonchalant. “How did you two meet?”

“We both were students at Boston University. Maurice was in the school of communications and I was a soc major. We met through a mutual friend.” She kept her gaze focused on the blank television screen. “I wasn’t always fat, you know. I had a real good body when I was young. I think it was having the babies that did it. I could never seem to get enough to eat when I was pregnant.”

“I wouldn’t think you’re that old now,” Lark said. He was constantly amazed at what people would often say to police officers about their innermost feelings. It seemed to be an occupation akin to priests and psychiatrists.

“I’m almost thirty and I’ve had two children,” she said defensively as the reason for her consumption of countless bowls of dip and other munchies.

“And he never hits you or the kids?” Lark pressed.

“Why do you keep asking that?” For the first time her voice bordered on anger. “Maurice just wouldn’t do that. I heard what you said on the phone. Why are you looking for Maurice?”

“As I said, he has some evidence.”

“Another one of those tapes?”

“Yes, another one. So, you met at college?”

“We were married the day after graduation. I was the first woman he ever had, and he was twenty-one and so grateful. It was really funny. Maurice was such a quiet, thoughtful person, and I always dreamed that he would be a broadcast journalist. You know, one of those guys who does the think pieces. When we were married, I got pregnant right away and he took the first job he could get on a small station in New Hampshire, where he wrote copy and did the news. And then one day, they asked him to fill in for a sick DJ and do the patter. That’s the talk that goes along with the records. He was so shy that he hid behind the name of Johnny Blue Note. Later the Johnny Gross business came along, and that’s sort of taken hold of him.”

“Took hold in what way?” Lark said softly so as to not break her reverie.

“Johnny can do or say anything he wants.” She gave a high falsetto laugh. “He does things that Maurice would never think of saying or doing. I don’t think it’s very funny, do you?”

“I’m of a different generation.”

“Would you like something to drink? A Coke or Pepsi? And I have some cake I’ve been saving.”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

After she left, Lark walked around the room. It was neat, spotless, and new. Imitation oil paintings were hung in the usual places, and the furniture was heavy French provincial. It was a Maurice Grossman sort of room.

She returned with a piece of partially consumed chocolate cake in her hand. “I just can’t keep away from sweets,” she said with a wave of the cake. “I know I’m getting as big as a house, but I do love them. Maurice does too, and soon we’ll both be … He’s with another woman, isn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know. Do you think he is?”

“The groupies come down to the station. They listen to Johnny Gross and they think he’s sexy and they want to do him. They wait by the door until he comes out and then they whisper in his ear all the things they will do to him if he goes out with them. You can’t really be mad at a man who’s tempted that way. Any man would go out with those skinny girls the way they throw themselves around and wave their braless boobs at him.”

“Are they very young girls?” Lark asked.

“I don’t think Johnny would go out with anyone not of age, but they seem to come in all sizes. I’ve driven down to the station to pick him up and seen them. I’ve seen how they rush up to him when he comes out the door. Sometimes they call on the phone and say all kinds of dirty things. Johnny just doesn’t have the willpower to stay away from them.”

“Johnny?”

She stuffed the remaining cake into her mouth and spoke in a muffled tone. “I mean Maurice.”

The phone rang and Sylvia Grossman snatched the receiver from its cradle. “Is that you, Maurice?” She listened a moment and then lay the receiver on its side. “It’s for you, Lieutenant.”

“Lark here,” he said as he picked up the phone. “Uh huh. Got it. Thanks.” He hung up and faced her. “I have to go now.”

“You’ve found him?”

“No, have some other business to attend to,” Lark lied.

Lark’s phone call had concerned Maurice, and the dispatcher had informed him that Grossman’s car had been spotted at the Idle Hours Motel on the west side of town. It was a ten-minute drive.

He knew the Idle Hours Motel well. Countless hours of his time had been spent in raiding, surveilling, and busting numerous harlots, drug dealers, and fleeing felons at the Idle Hours. It was infamous to the locals and profitable to its owners because of its 125 percent occupancy rate.

The dispatcher had told him that the Grossman Escort was parked in front of Unit 121. Lark knew that was in the rear of the motel, and he killed the truck’s lights as he entered the parking lot. He let the pickup drift around the far end of the building past Unit 121. The Escort with its telltale, G-R-O-S-S vanity plate was parked in front of the unit, and dim light issued through a crack at the bottom of the drawn venetian blinds.

Jimmy Stix was on duty in the office. He looked up from a girlie magazine in alarm as Lark entered. “Jesus, Lieutenant, what are you doing here? What’s coming down tonight?”

“Who’s in One-twenty-one?”

“Just a guy and his chick. She’s of age, no kidding.”

“How are they registered?”

Jimmy searched through a box of cards a moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.”

“Funny.”

“I got to take what they give me. You want me to ask for a passport or something?”

“Is One-twenty-three vacant?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me the key.”

“You got to sign the registration card for …” Lark glared. “Only kidding, Lieutenant. Here’s the key.”

He left the pickup at the office and walked around the corner of the motel and quietly let himself into Unit 123, which was next door to the room Gross occupied. Once inside, he walked through the darkened room to the bathroom and opened the medicine chest and began to listen.

It had worked a dozen times before and would again. The acoustics through the thin partition were nearly perfect. He may as well have been standing in the bathroom of Gross’s room listening through the cracked door.

As he heard them, he was convinced that he had arrived just in time for the second showing.

“You wanna do it again, Johnny? Are you ready to go again?” There was a clicking, slurring sound between the syllables of each word the woman spoke, which puzzled Lark until he realized she was talking through a maze of chewing gum.

Maurice Grossman must have fled the scene, because it was without question Johnny Gross who answered. “Do it in reverse, baby. Put the costume back on slow and sexy like.”

“You mean like last things first and all?”

“You got it, love pot.”

“You want me to talk dirty again?”

“Gross me out, honey pot. Make me writhe in passion.”

She giggled. “You turn me on when you talk like on the radio, Johnny. You really give me goose pimples all over when you talk radio talk like that.”

“It’s Gross Out time, boys and girls, brought to you by Johnny Gross. And today’s guest, beautiful in her nudity and big tits, is … What’s your name again, honey pot?”

“Bambi.” She giggled.

“Bambi, boys and girls. And we got a rutting stag here ready to shove his antler right into old Bambi.”

“Stop it, Johnny. You’re disgusting.” More giggles.

“Put the costume back on, honey pot. The panties, the short skirt, and then the top. Pick up your pom-poms and go through the cheerleading routine again.”

“Here I go, Johnny.”

Lark heard a series of thumps and bumps from the unit next door. Bambi was going through her routine. “Groupies yet,” he mumbled.

“Oh, Johnny, you’re getting ready again.”

Heavy breathing. “Keep it up, so to speak, baby.”

“It isn’t big, but you can sure do it a lot.”

Johnny Gross’s voice immediately lost its lilt and its pitch sank to menacing tones. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t like remarks about my size.”

“I didn’t mean anything.”

“Time to break it up,” Lark said to himself as he left the unit and walked next door. He brushed his hand across his body for the weapon that wasn’t there. “Oh, shit.”

The girl inside the room screamed.

Lark’s right foot lashed out and slammed into the motel door inches below its handle. The frame around the lock splintered and the door bounced open a few inches. It was still restrained by the security chain. He thudded his foot into the door a second time, snapped the hasp, and knocked the door back against the wall.

Bambi, surrounded by her shredded cheerleading costume, was huddled against the headboard of the queen-size bed. Maurice Grossman, aka Johnny Gross, was straddling her legs as he slapped her face.

Lark’s shoulder hit Johnny’s with the full force of his forward momentum and knocked the disc jockey across the bed and into the narrow space between the frame and the wall. He pulled the girl erect. “Do you have anything to wear?”

“Who are you?”

Lark reached toward his rear pocket for a badge that wasn’t there. “Police. He knows me.” He gestured to the cowering Johnny Gross. “Do you have any other clothes?”

She sniffed. “I sure didn’t come in that thing.” She waved at the torn costume.

“Then out, and make it snappy.”

She began to struggle into a pair of tight jeans and a halter top. “If you’re a cop, I want that freak in jail. I want him arrested for rape.”

Lark gestured to the door. “Out!”

“He forced me.”

“Uh huh. Out.” He pointed a finger at Gross. “Get some clothes on.” He turned back to the girl, who had finished dressing. “I heard it all from next door, honey. Do you want a replay?”

“No.” She tightened her belt and knelt on the bed to lean over Johnny Gross. “And you ain’t so special, Mr. Radio Man. You hit the girls and you got a wingding like a little kid.”

Johnny Gross threw himself across the bed and began to crawl on his hands and knees after her. She gave a loud laugh and ran from the room.

Lark secured the door shut as best he could. “Hurry it up, Johnny.”

“I’ll kill her. That little pig. I’ll cut her to ribbons.”

“Would you now?”

Johnny Gross turned his back to Lark as he pulled on his clothes. “I didn’t mean that literally, Lieutenant.” The voice had changed as Gross fled and Maurice returned.

“Do you like to hurt girls, Johnny? Do you like to see them in pain as they play games for you?”

“She asked for it. She’s been calling me every day for two weeks and hanging around the station for days. She said she’d do anything I wanted. I told her I had this fantasy about a cheerleader in high school and she said she would love to pretend.”

“And you hit her.”

“She didn’t have to talk to me that way.” He finished with a final recalcitrant button and turned to face Lark. His features changed as the slackness in his face hardened and a mischievous glint came into his eyes. “Hey, now. You heard everything we were doing, right? You had this place bugged, right?”

“I was in the unit next door.”

“You cops hear a lot of dirty stuff like this. You can have a guest shot on my show and we’ll talk about it. Wow, man. Talk about a Gross Out, you’ll have them puking in the aisles.”

“I could do that, Johnny,” Lark said casually as the man before him rocked back and forth between the personalities of Johnny Gross and the sedate Maurice Grossman. He was like an actor immersed so long in a specific part that the characterization had begun to seep into his psyche.

“How about toilets? Do you ever hide in rest rooms and peek out little holes at people?”

“From time to time.”

“God, that’s disgusting. Disgusting, but terrific.”

He would have to be led and shepherded through the abyss between the two personalities until the third—the mad one—stood fully revealed. “I guess you have a lot of girls hanging around the station?”

“Sure, all the time. But you have to be careful of them, because they are like young, you know? You can’t screw around with the ones under sixteen and sometimes they get all made up and can really fool you. I make them show ID.”

“That sounds smart. Did the groupies come in Portland and Laconia too?”

“Hell, yes. They’re always there. Well, not so much in Laconia. I wasn’t Johnny Gross there. I called myself Johnny Blue Note. We plattered elevator music. God-awful stuff that sounded like it should be background music for a funeral parlor. Not many cunts there; I mean, elevator music doesn’t attract them. Now that I’m Johnny Gross I really rack them in.”

“And sometimes you tie them up to make it more stimulating.”

“Huh?”

“You hurt them a little, make them grovel a little.”

“What the hell? They’re all just sluts.”

“How many do you figure they’ve been? Thirty, maybe forty or more?”

“I don’t keep count. Are you really coming on my show with all that dirty-cop stuff?”

“Johnny, I’m just about ready to do anything you want.”

13

Lark knew why he had stayed in the department so many years.

It was brief moments like this that made it all worthwhile. Fleeting times that could only be compared to the minutes after a combat firefight when the exaltation of survival surged through you, or the seconds of orgasm at the climax of a long-anticipated love affair. He had him, and that knowledge made him feel a kinship toward the other man in the motel room. They would talk and work together until all the pieces were laid in neat, logical rows, and the mesh of evidence fit neatly into place.

“I can understand how a guy can get his kicks out of such things,” Lark said mildly.

“The woman I got home is a JAP who puts on more weight while putting out less. A guy’s got to get some, right?”

“Sure. Tell me about the girl we found on Mark Street. The one you used the wood-burning kit on.”

His eyes flickered. “What are you talking about?”

Lark gave a low laugh. “I bet you thought we wouldn’t find out about the wood-burning device. We’re a little bit smarter than you give us credit for, Johnny. Tell me about her. Where did you pick her up and what did you do to her?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He retreated across the room until his back was against the wall. “What are you saying?”

“I know you want to tell me about them, Johnny. Start with the girl on Mark Street, or if you prefer, the one we found in the state forest yesterday.”

“You’ve got to be killing—I mean, kidding. This is some kind of joke, right?”

“I’m not laughing.”

The man against the wall began to quiver. It was as if Lark’s words were an exorcism that forced Johnny Gross to flee and brought back Maurice Grossman. The facial features sagged and he held to the edge of a bureau for support. Dots of perspiration began to bead his forehead. “I want to go home.” It was more a plaintive cry than a request.

“We have to talk first.” Lark kept his voice low in a nonjudgmental monotone.

“I want to see my wife.” He sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

“The one who eats too much and puts out too little?”

“I love my wife.”

“Of course you do, and also your kids.”

Maurice looked up at him with a beatific smile. “Yeah, that’s right. I do.”

“But sometimes you get mixed up and you have to do these things.”

“When I’m on the radio it’s different. It’s as if I’m someone else.”

“But it doesn’t always end on the radio, does it? I heard you in here, Johnny. While I was next door listening, I heard Johnny Gross. When I broke in here, I found Johnny beating up a girl. I saw Johnny attack her and really do a number on her.”

“She made Johnny mad,” Grossman said.

“She shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You understand, Lieutenant. I know you do.”

“Of course I do, Johnny. I know how bad you feel sometimes, and how you have to lash out and hurt someone. I understand those things, and I have sympathy for you. You know, it’s possible that we can work all of this out and make things right.”

“Can we do that? I would really like to have things back to the way they were before Sylvia got to eating so much.”

“Not only with your wife, but with the others. The parents of those dead girls need you. Why, I even imagine there are several bodies out in the woods that we haven’t even found yet. Would you say that’s a fair assumption?”

“I don’t know anything about any bodies.”

“The parents and families of those dead girls would feel a great deal better if they knew what had happened to their loved ones. You would do everyone a great service if you told me everything. You do understand that, don’t you, Johnny?”

“Why do you keep calling me Johnny?”

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“My radio name. Johnny Gross is only a character I play.”

“He was here in this room with that girl.”

“Because she expected it. No one is interested in Maurice Grossman. Maurice is a nebbish. Boring.”

“And Johnny gets the girls and always has a comeback.”

“Sure, he’s hep. A real cool guy. That’s the kind of person the cunts like.”

“Those girls make you mad, don’t they?”

“Some of them do. They don’t have the right to make comments about a man’s private parts.”

Lark sat on the bed next to Maurice Grossman and wished his soul away for a cigarette. “It’s when they talk about your penis that you really get mad.”

“It hurts.”

“Maurice’s feelings, but Johnny reacts differently. He lashes out, hits, makes them pay for what they say.”

“He doesn’t take crap from anyone.”

“I don’t blame him. Why should he listen to dumb remarks from some teenage girl who isn’t good enough to wipe his shoes?”

“You see it, Lieutenant. I knew someone would. When I’m Johnny, it’s all different. It’s as if I’m hiding behind someone else. Johnny knows where it’s at and is self-confident.”

“I can hear his assurance come over the radio,” Lark said.

“So does everyone. He can intimidate people. You ought to hear some of the interviews, or the way Johnny cuts people down on the phone. If he doesn’t like your call, he hangs up. He’s not afraid of anyone or anything.”

“If you can turn Johnny on when you sit before a microphone, can you bring him back anytime you want?”

“Well, almost anytime. There’s times when I’m home that he just isn’t there.”

“But you could now, for instance?”

“Of course.”

“I want to hear Johnny. Bring Johnny Gross in here and let me talk to him.”

It started with a sly smile that gradually widened into a full grin and continued changing until the open smile had contorted into a snide grimace. With the facial changes, the vitality behind Maurice Grossman’s eyes increased and the full facial impact was that of another person. Lark was watching Johnny Gross appear.

“You’re a horse’s ass, cop, you know that? You guys wouldn’t last ten minutes in the real world. You need the government tit to suck on and a horse pistol strapped to your belt in place of a prick. You nauseate me, buster.”

“How many girls has it been, Johnny?” Lark’s voice was still in the deep registers of sympathetic understanding. “You can tell me. As a matter of fact, you want to tell me all about it.”

“I don’t keep track, pig. And there’s no laws against fucking girls as long as they aren’t jailbait.”

“I’m not asking about screwing them; I’m talking about killing them.”

The Gross facade crumpled. “What?” There was true fright in the voice. “That’s what you’re getting at. You’re accusing me of murdering those women on the tapes.”

“Sometimes there’s two parts to all of us, Johnny. Call one part the dark and the other the light. The dark part does things that might ordinarily horrify us, but it’s still part of us. Now, I know you did these things, and you know you did them. It’s time to talk and get everything out in the open so that you’ll feel better. And you will; I promise you that once you tell me, you will feel a great burden leave you. It will be miraculous, almost an instant cure.”

“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lark was on unfamiliar ground. He had read some of the literature on multiple personalities, and he had read a popular book or two that recounted cases, but he had never dealt with the phenomenon in his law-enforcement career. He was treading unknown territory and didn’t know what might drive Johnny Gross so far back into Maurice Grossman so that he would never reappear. He did know that he had to get some admission from the man sitting on the bed beside him, some physical revelation that could be used as hard and objective evidence. “We both know you killed those girls, you’ve as much as admitted it. I need details on at least one of the cases.”

“I was talking about doing it to them, not killing them.”

“Maybe it’s all tied together in your perception of what happens to them.”

Johnny/Maurice leapt from the bed and pressed his back against the wall. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Lark knew he was losing him. He had to find out something that he could verify. “You made the tapes and brought them to me. They were never mailed to you. You made up the voice of the man on the tape. We know how well you do voices. You want to be caught, because the last tape was blank. You want to be stopped before you kill more.”

“No!” It was an anguished cry.

“The girl in the Nahug Forest was in your camper and somehow broke loose and ran into the woods. You followed her—”

“No!”

“You mutilated her until she bled to death. I might understand that, Johnny. She hurt you and ran away. She made you angry and you had to kill her. That’s the way it was.”

“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill any of them.”

“Can you prove that, Johnny?”

“I don’t know. When was the last one killed?”

“We know that nearly to the second. The tape had two planes on it, and we know when they passed near to each other. She died at exactly three-twenty-eight.”

“Three-twenty-eight. My show is on the air until three-thirty. I was on the air then. I was broadcasting and the station logs will prove it.”

Maurice huddled at the far end of the pickup’s front seat and probably would have ridden in the truckbed if Lark had permitted it. He shrank away from the police officer as if deathly afraid of contamination.

Lark drove to the shopping mall that contained the radio station. He was in a state of confusion. He had been certain that he had the serial killer and that it was only hours until Maurice/Johnny cracked and gave him enough physical clues to verify the facts. A radio show heard by thousands would, needless to say, be an excellent alibi.

Most of the store lights were dimmed at the mall, but floodlights in the parking lot cast broad swatches of light across the now-empty spaces. As he parked in front of the main entrance, Lark could see the reflected lights from the glassed radio booth. As they approached the door, he saw that the DJ known as Mad Dog was at the console.

Mad Dog waved at them as Maurice fumbled with his key to the front door.

“Where are the logs kept?” Lark asked when the door was opened.

“The ones for the time we’re talking about are still in the book, and Mad Dog has it.”

“Get them,” Lark said sharply. “Now.”

The station was empty except for the lone announcer at the console, although Lark could hear the wire-service machine clank in the newsroom.

“Well, kiddies, lookee who’s here,” Mad Dog said to his audience. “Johnny Gross—up to no good, I’m sure—has dropped in for a visit. Say something to us, Johnny.” He turned the microphone toward Maurice, who was frantically flipping through log pages in a loose-leaf binder on the counter. “Come on, Johnny, gross us out.”

Maurice bent over the mike and emitted a long belch.

Mad Dog laughed. “And thank you, Johnny Gross.”

Maurice scurried from the announcer’s booth clutching the log, which he thrust at Lark. “See. Take a look, Lieutenant. It shows exactly when I was on the air, what songs we played, the commercials I gave, and even the exact times for the news and weather breaks. It’s all there.”

Lark ran a finger down the long columns with their barely legible notes. The Gross Out Show was logged, and in the time sequence after its slot the notes continued for the next segment as logged by Bear Claw.

Mad Dog leaned back in the DJ chair as a network feature fed the station. “Where’s Gross?”

“He went to the can,” Lark said. “What does PR penciled in the log mean?”

“Prerecorded.”

“Explain.”

“It means that Johnny had it all on tape and we just fed it through. We do that sometimes when we want time off.”

Lark tucked the log under his arm. “Then he wasn’t here at all?”

Mad Dog shrugged. “Look, knowing Johnny, he could have been here, there, or anywhere. His mind is out to lunch half the time anyway.” He smiled at his own joke.

Maurice/Johnny came back into the booth. “Are we through now, Lieutenant? I don’t feel so well and I’m late getting home.”

“This crap was prerecorded.”

Maurice turned ashen. “Who told you that?”

Lark jerked his head at the other DJ. “He did, and it’s in the notes.”

“There’s got to be a mistake.”

“No mistake. Where in the hell were you during those hours?”

The return of Johnny Gross was revealed by the smirk on Maurice’s face. “Humping a harlot.”

“You want to translate that?”

“Do you know what humping means, cop?”

“I’ve heard the term.”

“I was jumping a bimbo, and that was the only time I could get together with her, so I did the show in advance.”

“Does this girl have a name and address?”

He shrugged. “They call me anonymously. She told me to call her harlot and do dirty things to her. I obliged.”

“You’d better come up with a real name fast or you’re in deep shit.”

“Fuck off.” Johnny Gross started for the door of the station. “I’m going home.”

Lark took the three steps necessary to catch up with the retreating radio announcer and laid his arm on the man’s shoulder. “We’re going for another ride, Johnny. To my place of business.”

Lt. Horn scowled, as was his way, as Lark guided Johnny Gross, aka Maurice Grossman, through the crowded lobby of police headquarters. Fractured Spanish filled the air as a bevy of Puerto Ricans argued with the desk sergeant over a domestic fight that had turned into a neighborhood brawl.

Horn blocked their forward progress. “Are you booking this man, Lark?”

“No.” Lark jerked his shoulder toward the far hall and a row of small interrogation offices. “We’re going to have a conversation.”

“This man doesn’t look so hot,” the watch commander said.

Lark looked at his prisoner. The DJ’s forehead was beaded in perspiration and his face had turned an unnatural chalky white. The open mouth and rapid chest movements indicated that Grossman was on the verge of hyperventilation.

“He’ll live,” Lark said as he pushed him down the hall. “I can use you in a few minutes,” he said over his shoulder to the large black lieutenant.

He chose the far room. It held a metal table, two bridge chairs, and was four feet by seven feet in dimensions. The glass door was reinforced with steel mesh. A mirror was embedded in the far wall. It was a depressing place.

Grossman sat on the far chair and bent his head between his legs. “I don’t feel well.”

“You’ll feel better after we talk it out. Give me a statement on just the two girls, then you can rest if you like, or I can get you something to eat and we’ll pick up on the others later when you feel better.”

“Am I under arrest or something?”

“Let’s not worry about that, Johnny.”

“I want to go home.”

“In a few minutes. Just as soon as we wrap things up. Come on, Maurice, let’s get it over with so we can both get some sleep. Now, let’s start with the girl whose body we found on Mark Street. Where did you put the gun you killed her with? In the woods someplace, at your house? Wait a minute, I bet it’s hidden in your camper? That’s right, isn’t it, Johnny?”

“I don’t have any gun.”

“The twenty-two you shot her in the head with.”

“I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“Come on, we have it all.” Lark’s voice was still low, soothing, caressing. “You have a camper and we know the girls were killed in a rec vehicle. You lied to me about where you were, and then there’s the others who died near cities where you were working. Now, Johnny, we may not be the smartest men in the world, but we aren’t stupid. Look at how it all adds up, and I haven’t even gotten to the tapes yet. The tapes where you conveniently lost the wrapping paper, the tape with the guy’s voice you created, the tape that you accidentally erased … It really adds up. It’s what the state’s attorney will call an airtight case. Now, the best thing for you to do is to tell me about it. I’ll make sure that the powers-that-be realize how cooperative you are. Go on, now.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

Lt. Horn’s massive bulk appeared in the dim hallway outside of the interrogation room. Lark rose from the chair, one hand still on Maurice’s shoulder. “Think about it for a few minutes. I have to do some paperwork and will be back later.” He left the room to join Horn in the hallway.

“What’s going on?” the watch commander asked.

“I think I have the killer of the girls,” Lark replied. He quickly ticked off the evidence.

Horn gave a low whistle. “Nice collar, Lark.”

“I need some good-guy/bad-guy. Why don’t you go in there and scare the living shit out of him for a few minutes?” Lark laughed. “I have this feeling that Maurice in there is scared to death of black guys, particularly big ones like you.”

“Did you read him his rights?”

“He isn’t booked yet. I need this, Horn. Give me your presence in there for just a couple of minutes.”

“I don’t like it. I’d rather we did everything by the book. This is too important a case to blow by treading on the ACLU toes.”

“I need physical evidence. I have to have something in hand to give the state’s attorney. There’s over thirty of them, Horn, young women tortured and killed, and he’s the bastard.”

Horn looked toward the isolated interrogation room at the far end of the hall with a faraway look in his eyes. “I have a daughter eighteen.”

Lark gave him a gentle shove toward the room. “Do it for her. Just a few minutes, to soften him up for me.”

Lark sat on a high stool in the room behind the interrogation chamber and looked through a one-way mirror into the confined space. Maurice Grossman had his head on his arms and was splayed across the bare tabletop. Their voices, as picked up through the air duct high on the wall, would have a hollow quality, but the words would be clear enough. He steadied the pad on his knee and prepared to take notes.

Horn’s entrance startled Lark, even though he was aware it was coming. The effect upon Maurice Grossman was positively electric. The disc jockey’s arms were instinctively drawn to his face as his body recoiled across the room away from the large man looming in the entrance.

They had played this game countless times in the past. It was particularly effective with middle-class whites who, Lark suspected, had an instinctive fear of large black men, whether they wore a police uniform or not.

Horn was menacing. He had taken off his tie and gun and unbuttoned his shirt to his navel. His massive neck seemed to flow into his pectoral muscles like a tree trunk growing from rocky soil. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal nineteen-inch biceps that bulged as if they had recently been flexed.

Horn took two steps into the room and pointed. “You the sucker been wasting those girls?”

“No, I promise you. It wasn’t me.”

“One of those girls was my woman. You know that?”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

Lark was always amazed at how much potential violence Horn could impart to a prisoner without ever uttering one word of an actual physical threat.

“I am not pleased,” Horn bellowed.

“Please …” The voice was a whimper.

“Have you made your statement yet?” Horn made it sound like a request for a last will and testament.

“Don’t hit me.”

“We don’t lean on people; it leaves marks and the lawyers love that. We have other plans for you.”

The way he said “plans” evoked images of something midway between castration by coat hanger and a gang rape.

“I’ll do whatever you guys want. Get Lieutenant Lark back in here.”

“First give me your belt and shoelaces.”

Maurice immediately bent to unlace his shoes and then whipped off his belt and handed them over. “Why are you taking them?”

“We don’t want you hanging yourself on us, now, do we?”

Lark slipped off the stool and left the room behind the mirror. It was time to talk to Maurice now that Horn had him in a cooperative mood. “Lay off my prisoner, Horn,” Lark said icily as he burst into the interrogation room. He was gratified to see the look of relief in Maurice’s eyes. That was the way it should be at the changing of the guard.

“I was only trying to get to know him better,” Horn said.

“Out,” Lark commanded.

Horn sulked out. “Call me if you need me. Little wimp messing with girls. I’d like to get my hands on him—alone,” they heard him mumble as he went down the hall.

“Cigarette?” Lark asked as he straddled a chair facing his prisoner.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Come to think of it, neither do I anymore.” He gave a tight smile. “Ready to talk it out?”

“I’ll confess to anything you want, Lieutenant. I cheat on my wife, I cheat on my expense account, I cheat on my tax form. I felt up my best friend’s sister once, and when I was a kid, I used to look through a hole in the wall and watch my aunt undress. I’ve done other things too, give me some time to think of them. I can’t confess to something I didn’t do.”

“I wouldn’t want you to, Maurice. Do I have to go over it all again: the camper, the tapes, the prerecorded broadcast, the voice of the man?”

“You told me all that.”

“And we do know that you like kinky sex and sometimes get mad at the little ladies.”

“She made fun of me, the goddamn slut.” The veneer had changed and Johnny Gross had returned. The stare at Lark was now more belligerent. “I want a lawyer.”

Lark gave an involuntary start at the man’s use of the word “slut.” He remembered too vividly the slashed abdomen of the first victim. “Perhaps Johnny Gross does these things and Maurice doesn’t know anything about them.”

“You dumb, stupid cop. What half-assed psychology course did you take? I may be weird, but I’m not nuts. I want a lawyer. I demand to make a phone call.”

Lark left the room and made sure the door latched shut behind him.

Horn was waiting for him at the end of the hall. “What’s up?” the watch commander asked.

“He’s crying for a lawyer.”

“Are you going to book him?”

“Dammit! I don’t have enough yet. I don’t have anything physical that ties him into any of the killings.”

“We can’t keep him locked in there much longer without doing something.”

“I know that,” Lark said in irritation as he strode toward the elevator. “I want him to stew a little longer before I take a final crack at him.”

His holstered Python and his badge were centered neatly on his desk. A memo note that announced that it came from the desk of Frank Pemperton was under the holster: “You’re not a quitter. Finish this one and then we talk, Frank.”

Lark strapped the gun on and shoved the badge into his back pocket. He sat at the desk and assumed his thinking position of feet on the radiator and hands clasped behind his head.

There were many threads that led to Maurice Grossman, and one of them would lead to physical evidence strong enough to hold up in a court of law. Somewhere there were answers.

He snatched up the phone on its first ring. “Lark here.”

“You had better get downstairs pronto,” Horn said. “It has really hit the fan.”

Lark walked down the hall to the far interrogation room where Maurice Grossman was held. The door was open and a cluster of men stood poised in the entry way. Frank Pemperton and Horn dominated the group. Lark pushed his way past the men in the door.

Maurice Grossman, his mouth open, was still in the chair. His head was thrown back as he stared lifelessly at the ceiling.

“What in the hell happened?” Lark asked.

“You and Horn scared the poor bastard to death, that’s what happened,” Pemperton said.

14

Lark was on the phone with the state medical examiner. His hands were clammy. He wanted a drink. Not a beer. A drink of hard liquor, something raw and burning that would dissolve the rock resting in the pit of his stomach.

He had never scared anyone to death before—at least he didn’t think he had. The truth of the matter was, for the past several years his collars had been young men so zonked on various substances that the impending end of the world would have elicited a mild shrug.

She came on the line. “I told you that I’d call as soon as I could.” Her voice was edgy and tinged with impatience.

“It’s sort of important to me, Doc.”

“I can imagine.”

“Most of my prisoners don’t die on me like that.”

“I wouldn’t expect so.”

It was his turn to be impatient. “Dammit! Can you give me anything?”

“I can give you short shrift if you keep hounding me. Let me see if we have a preliminary report. Hold it a second.”

Jesus! He was hyperventilating. That would have to stop. Where the hell was she?

She was back on the line with an audible rustling of papers. “I’ve got it. Your man died of a massive anteroseptal myocardial infarction.”

“What’s that?”

“He had a massive heart attack.”

“At his age?”

“He suffered from familial lipoproteinemia. It affects at an early age and was probably genetic in origin. There was no way to predict it, and he was probably unaware of the condition.”

“Then we didn’t scare him to death?”

“Well, not hardly. If he was under extreme stress, it would have elevated his blood pressure, increased his heart rate, and caused glandular changes that might have hastened the attack. You didn’t kill him; it would have hit in a few weeks anyway.”

“Thanks.” Lark hung up.

“I’ve got your and Horn’s report on the incident,” Frank Pemperton said from the doorway.

“The ME just gave me a prelim. Grossman had a congenital heart condition. All we took was a few weeks or months of his life,” Lark said bitterly.

“You and Horn are a pair that would scare the life out of most citizens.”

“You know, I don’t really need that, Chief.”

“I don’t really need suspects kicking off in my police station, particularly suspects who also happen to be radio personalities.”

“In other words, Lambert is slinking around.”

“Exactly,” Frank Pemperton said tiredly. “You wouldn’t recognize Grossman from the obituaries. Instead of a dirty disc jockey, he has somehow turned into an esteemed broadcast journalist. They’re after ass, Lark.”

“Grossman may have killed more than thirty women.”

“Do you have any evidence of that? Can we even suggest such a possibility?”

“No,” Lark replied. “All that I have are a few circumstantial oddities and a strong hunch. There’s nothing physical that we can use. Without his confession we would never have gotten an indictment.”

“Then what was he doing here?”

“I had a hunch!” Lark felt himself losing control. “Any good cop has to go on his hunches.”

Frank’s voice was not raised, but its tone was unmistakable. “Don’t try to intimidate me any further. I’ve taken enough from you recently, and my patience is at an end. Now, let me read it to you. There’s going to be a stink about that guy dying in our office, make no mistake about that. And you had better damn well give me something to go on. We have to implicate him in these killings or find ourselves another killer. Do you read me?”

“I hear you.”

“You had better do more than hear. Let me lay it out as clearly and concisely as I can: someone’s going to take a fall for what happened, and it isn’t going to be me. You, my boy, with your terrific background as the tough cop, are going to go, if anyone does. Do you understand?”

“How much time do I have?”

“I’ll give you as long as I can hold them off.”

Horse Najankian directed traffic with true flair. It was all in body English. From his position in the center of the intersection at Main and First he dominated the eight lanes of vehicles converging on the grid. A white gloved hand with extended fingers pointed with militarylike precision at the right lane of Main Street. The hand snapped back in a swing. The signal was obvious, and traffic jumped to obey. Like a general commanding hordes of charging calvary he continued his directions.

Lark heeded his partner’s signal and started through the intersection only to stop next to Horse. “We’ve unfinished business,” he said to the traffic cop.

“Leave me alone and move on,” Horse said smartly.

“Get in.”

The cars on First moved through the intersection until commanded to halt by another imperious gesture. “I like traffic.”

“You’re without a pension if you don’t get in the truck now.” Lark leaned across the seat and opened the door on the passenger’s side.

Horse got in. “You give me no choice. Let them sort themselves out.”

“Gridlock on First and Main,” Lark said into the radio.

Horse looked at Lark obliquely as they drove through the streets of Middleburg. “Where are we going?”

“Station WGBZ.”

“Horn told me what happened when he called me at home and put me back on traffic. Have you cleared this with him?”

“I will when we get back.”

“You don’t need me for this, Lieutenant.”

“I need you when I say I do.”

“You know, Lark, you aren’t so tough.”

“I’m mean enough to chew you up and spit you out.”

“That pension threat was a low blow.”

“I had to get your attention.”

Horse sighed. “Okay, what’s going on? Do we still have the guru and the Lawton kid as suspects?”

“Negative. The Lawton kid was in jail during the last murder, and the Magus-guru and his girl left town before it happened. That leaves Grossman, and we have to tie him in so we can close the file.”

“Or find someone else?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I never believed Grossman did the killings. As they say, I think it’s party or parties unknown.”

Lark pursed his lips. “We don’t have anything on any parties unknown. Load your gun and shut up.”

The athletic station manager of WGBZ was putting golf balls into a cup when they were ushered into his office. The Middleburg Times crime reporter, Randy Lambert, still wearing the same rumpled suit, lounged in a comfortable chair holding a drink of bourbon and Coke.

The station manager missed his putt when he saw the two police officers standing in the doorway. “I heard what you did to Johnny. I want you to know that we’re doing an exposé on it. This isn’t going to drop. You and the police department are going to pay for hounding Johnny that way.”

“I’ll probably get a Pulitzer for my exposé in the paper,” Lambert said as he finished his drink and clinked ice.

“I’d like to see Maurice Grossman’s personnel file and any other date you have on him. I also want the station logs for the entire time he was here.”

“Bug off,” the station manager said as he bent his head to putt. “You get nothing without a court order.”

“That can be arranged.”

“The lieutenant hates paperwork,” Horse said. “If he has to go to trouble like that, he might not be too pleasant.”

“Pleasant like he was to the Méndez kid,” Lambert said as he helped himself to more bourbon from a bottle on the credenza.

The station manager looked up from his putt. “Méndez? Who’s that?”

“He fell down the stairs, that can happen during an arrest,” Horse said in defense.

“He fell down the stairs twice,” Lambert added.

Lark sighed. “Well, if I have to get a court order, I’ll do it when I take that DJ in the front window down for booking.”

“What?” The station manager missed a putt by a yard.

“That’s right. I thought you should know that he’s flashing his member to a bunch of teenage girls standing outside.”

“That’s a lie!”

“I’m a witness,” Horse said. “He was completely unzipped and waving it back and forth. I think he was playing a record by the Doors at the time.”

“This is extortion.”

“The lieutenant hates to go through the paperwork of booking minor offenses,” Horse said.

“I like your style,” Lambert said.

“What are you doing down here?” Lark asked the reporter.

“The same thing you are, getting background on Maurice Grossman. It’s going to be one hell of a feature story. Prominent radio personality beaten to death during police interrogration.”

“The medical examiner said he had a congenital heart problem.”

“You guys all stick together.”

“You want me to bust that DJ now or let him finish his program, Lieutenant?”

“Now,” Lark answered. “We can’t have such goings-on.”

“Okay,” the station manager said as he slammed his putter into a golf bag in the corner. “What do you want me to get?”

They worked in the station manager’s office, who, once he had begun to cooperate, cooperated with a vengeance. He kept sending in more material as if he wanted to crush them with the very weight of the files. Little of it pertained to Maurice Grossman.

“We don’t need that,” Horse said as a secretary tried to deliver a year’s supply of tapes. He had just returned from a trip to Lark’s office, and now their meticulous time chart, listing the killings on a map, rested on top of the credenza.

They began to recapitulate Johnny Gross’s movements by using the logs, tapes, interviews, and receipts. As the office sank into shadows, Horse threw the overhead light, moved a mass of tapes from an easy chair, and sank back against the cushions. “When are you going to admit it, Lieutenant?” The guy was at a broadcasting convention when the body found on Mark Street was killed.”

“Admit what?” Lark snapped. “That he outsmarted us? What’s with you, Najankian, taking a break?”

“It doesn’t work out.”

“It does. There’s a hole somewhere. Maurice Grossman, aka Johnny Gross, has been knocking off women for years.”

“You’re looking for a hole that doesn’t exist.”

“Bullshit!”

“The trouble with you, Lieutenant, is that you’re like most street cops: everyone is guilty until proven innocent.” Horse stalked the room, snatching up receipts and notes on telephone calls they had made to other stations where Grossman had worked. He pointed to the map. “He couldn’t have killed the girl on Mark Street.”

“He had no real alibi for the girl in the state forest.”

“Or this killing.” Horse pointed to another pin. “But during his time in Springfield he was doing a telethon when victim twenty-seven was murdered. It doesn’t work.”

“More prerecorded broadcasts or he could have used his wife to sign credit receipts for places he wasn’t at. The man was smart.”

“You’re reaching.”

Lark’s gaze shifted from one pile of documentation to another. “He’s all we have.”

“You want to lay it on a dead man so that we can close files? What happens when there’s another killing with the same MO?”

“Then we’re back to square one.”

“You are. I’m back on traffic.”

Lark dropped the personnel file he had been holding. “I wonder where they keep the booze.”

“It’s on the credenza behind the map. There’s no answers in a bottle.”

“Jesus, Horse, do you have any other inspirational messages to impart?”

“There’s something up there.” He made a sweeping gesture across the map with its mass of minutely inscribed detail. “But we just aren’t seeing it. There’s a pattern that ought to tell us something.”

“Not necessarily. The guy picks his victims at random.”

“They all fall into the same age group and most were hitchhiking,” the uniformed officer replied.

“They and a million other women. He’s a serial killer picking his victims over a five-state area.”

They both stared at the map with its colored pins denoting the locations of murder.

“The info tells us a couple of things,” Horse said. “The victims reach up to mid-Vermont and New Hampshire.”

“And every other rural area through New England.”

“Wait a minute!” Horse waved his hand over the map at the upper regions of New England. “There aren’t any killings in upper Maine or in the White Mountains, and the same for Vermont. The guy has limits. Limits in time or driving distance or something. He’s also got a home where he lives.”

“Unless he lives in the camper.”

“I don’t think so, because of the periodic nature of the killings. They happen in regular intervals, planned intervals. We also know that he’s begun to send tapes of his killings to Grossman at this station. I think he lives within the range of this station.”

“Which narrows it down to a few hundred thousand people,” Lark said.

“Of which half are women, some are too young, and others are too old. We’re looking for a guy between twenty and forty who lives near here and owns a camper.”

“Which is still too broad,” Lark said.

Horse returned to the map. “There has to be something in the pattern, the time and the reason for the sequence.”

“Like the fishing season.”

“As best we can tell from the medical evidence available,” Horse said, “he does it every ten to fourteen days for part of the year.”

Lark’s interest was piqued sufficiently to temporarily overcome his depression. “Do the dates always fall on weekends?”

“Once in a while, they are simply ten days to two weeks apart. It’s as if he gets a couple of days off every two weeks or so and goes traveling for entertainment.”

“Okay, let’s recap what we know about his games: from the tapes and the profile Rasmussen gave us, we know he’s a guy between twenty and forty; from the tire tracks and the door sounds we recorded, we know he’s driving a recreational vehicle.”

“And that he kills them inside the camper,” Horse added.

“After torturing them without a gag, which means that he’s made some unusual modifications to the inside of his camper to stifle sound.”

They began to get caught in the excitement of the analysis. “He sent tapes to Gross, which means he has a permanent home within twenty miles of here,” Horse said.

“He kills in ten- to fourteen-day cycles, probably days he has off from his job shift.”

“Shift?” Horse looked puzzled.

Lark waved a deprecating hand. “I think in terms of shifts because I’m a cop and have worked days and nights all my life.”

“Yeah, but except for those of us on traffic, the department works a twenty-eight-day shift cycle, including days off.”

“That’s because we change shifts every month,” Lark said impatiently. “Most places work a permanent day-and-night shift.”

“My brother-in-law in Scranton works a ten-day rotating shift, and has for years,” Horse said.

“Ten days on and four off?”

“Something like that. He likes it because those four-day chunks of time give him the opportunity for hunting or—”

“Fishing,” Lark interrupted. He stood stock-still in the center of the room. “There can’t be many plants and businesses in a twenty-mile radius that work a rotating shift.”

“And when we find the ones that do, we could compare their dates with our time chart. Jesus, Lieutenant, I bet there’s only a couple, maybe one, in our area that would fit our time chart.”

“And of the men on that shift in that particular factory, how many would own campers?” Lark shook his head. “It’s thin, but it’s all we have.”

Randy Lambert entered the room. He reminded Lark of a cat he once had who looked furtive on the most mundane of missions. “I’ve been downtown, Lark, and I’ve got it all.”

“Good for you, Randy.”

“We’re busy, sir,” Horse said.

Lambert ignored the comment. “You and that big jigaboo scared the fucker to death.”

Lark’s fist instantly lashed out and connected with Lambert’s face. The reporter tumbled backward over a chair and fell in a heap against the far wall. Lark brushed the bruised knuckles on his hand.

“The lieutenant believes in instant retaliation,” Horse said while trying not to smile.

“You’ll pay for this, Lark! I swear to God, I’ll haunt you in my column every damn day until you’re kicked off the force. And that doesn’t include the lawsuit I’m laying on you tomorrow.”

“You do that, Randy,” Lark said, “and you won’t be able to leave your driveway without a traffic ticket. Drink one beer in a bar and you won’t make it home without a DUI charge. Twenty-two percent of the police force in this town is black, and they’re going to hear what you said. One word, one column about this, and your name goes to every black cop in town.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“Then you’re a damn fool,” Horse said. “The lieutenant scares the shit out of me.”

15

“That reporter, Lambert, is in the building sporting one hell of a shiner,” Horse said.

Lark looked over the edge of his Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Make sure Lieutenant Horn asks him how he got it.”

“You want Horn to ask him while he has his shirt on or off?”

“Get going.” Lark stared into the brownish coffee and felt the bitter taste of vending-machine liquid in his throat. They needed to find a factory that utilized a rotating shift that corresponded to their time chart. Factories, like people, left a paper trace. They would begin by making calls to various state agencies: the Department of Labor, Unemployment Compensation, Wage and Hours, and Economic Development. Somewhere would be a record of who worked when, and then it would be a matter of running employee names against MVD records and narrowing their list of possible suspects still further.

Lark was making notes on his legal pad when Horse returned. “I thought Lambert was going to faint when Horn put the question to him. By the way, he says he caught his eye on a door.”

Lark ripped off a page of notes and handed it to Horse. “Find yourself a phone. You know what we’re looking for.”

By noon they had preliminary results and met back in Lark’s office to compare notes over a couple of pastrami sandwiches. The state agencies they contacted couldn’t give them a list of who worked rotating shifts, only those places that worked around the clock. Horse made the master list and spoke the names aloud as he compiled it.

“Here’s what we’ve got,” he said. “In our area, a branch of the aircraft works twenty-four hours, the pressroom of the Middleburg Times, one chicken breeder, the computer force of the Nutmeg Insurance Company, the Macklin Company, Middleburg General Hospital, the Xavier Tool and Die Company, and of course, cops and firemen. That’s not a hell of a lot.”

“We can rule out the cops and firemen as the last labor contract provides for the twenty-eight-day cycle. I know that the aircraft and the newspaper run permanent night shifts.”

“So does the hospital,” Horse said. “Next we call what’s left.”

“Try the personnel departments. Give me half the list,” Lark said as he reached for his phone.

In half a dozen calls they discovered that the chicken breeder, the Xavier Company, and the insurance company all had permanent shifts. The Macklin Company ran a rotating program. Lark dialed the company and asked to speak to the personnel manager. “This is Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg police. I have a confidential request and would appreciate your cooperation. It is our understanding that you have rotating shifts that slide from night to day on a periodic basis?”

“That’s right,” the feminine voice answered. “We prefer to call them teams rather than shifts, and each team works ten days straight followed by four off and then rotates to a different time.”

“Ten days,” Lark repeated. “I see, and who is this?”

“I’m Rose Harris,” she answered. “Can I give you any further information?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, you can. Could you check your schedule and give me the exact dates each of your teams worked during the past two months?”

“Give me a moment to get the information.”

Lark signaled to Horse. “Get on another phone and have them patch you in.”

“Are you still there, Lieutenant? I have the recent schedules.”

“Yes, I’m here, and my associate is also on the line. We’re ready.”

“Beginning two months ago, Team A worked the day shift on the …” She began to recite the complicated schedule as Horse and Lark scribbled rapidly. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked when the information was complete.

“I’m not sure yet. Let us get back to you, and thanks.” He hung up, looked at his notes, and began to compare them with the dates and times on their map.

Horse came back to the small office and stood next to the desk as he compared his notes with the last murder dates. Both men simultaneously put down their pads. “I think we had better get the shift schedule for the last couple of years,” Horse said.

“Do you come up with Team B?”

“It’s got to be someone on that shift.”

“We had better get out to the Macklin Company,” Lark said. “I want to go back three years, and if it still holds up, we’ll need a roster of men on that shift.”

Rose Harris’s office was not much larger than Lark’s. She was in her early thirties, with coal-black hair and light-mahogany skin that seemed to glow. She wore a no-nonsense beige suit with an off-white blouse and smiled radiantly as they entered. She glanced at Lark’s identification and motioned them to chairs.

“I think you had better tell me why you’re interested in the Macklin Company. As personnel manager I can only help you so far, and then I must inform senior management.”

“It’s conjecture,” Lark began, “but here’s where we’re at.” In sketchy fashion he briefed her on their investigation of the serial murders.

“That seems awfully tenuous,” she said after Lark finished.

“We’ll be a lot more definite after we check your schedules for the past three years,” Horse said.

“Of course. Let me get the records.”

After Rose Harris located several folders of past-duty schedules, she took them into a conference room where they spread the material over a broad table.

She sat at the far end of the table watching them as they worked comparing calendars against their time chart. Occasionally her eyes flicked from Horse to Lark as they checked notes with each other. It took over an hour.

“It fits,” Lark said hoarsely.

Horse grunted.

“I can’t believe one of our people is a mass killer,” she said.

“Serial murderer,” Lark corrected. “And we haven’t a definite suspect, only a probability that he may work here.”

“You know it’s a he?”

“We’re certain of it. How many men on Team B?”

“Nearly a hundred and fifty,” she answered.

“Can you get us a list of their names and addresses?”

“Yes, of course.” She started to leave the room. “Naturally I’ll have to notify management.”

Lark put a restraining arm on hers. “No, please don’t. At least not for the present. I want this confidential between the three of us until we have more to go on.”

She picked up a phone and asked a secretary for a roster of the men on Team B and then walked over to the curtained far wall and pressed a button. The curtain slid back to reveal a panoramic view of the factory floor. The conference room was on the second floor of the office complex that occupied the front portion of the building. The factory behind the offices was three stories high and a busy hive of activity.

They stood in line along the window and looked down at the working men and women.

“The people you’re interested in are just finishing today’s shift,” Rose Harris said.

They watched workers leave their positions at machines or places along the packaging lines while replacements took their place. The factory floor was divided into three basic areas of approximately the same size. At the far end of the building were the blowing machines into which chemicals were fed. Plastic bottles were created in these machines and, once made, were sped along conveyors to the inspection and packaging area, where they were taken from the belts and placed in cartons according to size and type. When a wooden pallet was filled with sixteen cartons, a forklift carried it to the storage area, where they were labeled before being taken out to the loading dock.

“Exactly what are they making?” Horse asked.

“Plastic bottles that end up containing anything from patent medicine to cosmetics,” Rose Harris said. “I’ve worked with these people for seven years. They come to me when they want a change of benefits, or to increase their insurance. I guess I’ve hired nearly half of them, and you’re telling me that I know a murderer? That I may have hired a killer?”

“We’re only here on a hunch,” Lark said. “They tell us that this type of psychopath can appear perfectly normal and is often the kind of person that astounds his neighbors when he’s arrested.”

“It’s still hard to believe.”

A nondescript secretary appeared and handed a photocopied list of names and addresses to the personnel manager and just as quickly left the room. Rose handed the list to Lark. “Here are your names.”

Lark turned away from the window facing the factory floor to stare out the far window overlooking the parking lot, where he counted five campers. “It’s going to be interesting,” he said.

The computer at police headquarters talked directly to the computer at the State Department of Motor Vehicles. They had it ask its counterpart to provide a printout on the type of vehicle and marker number for all male members of Team B.

There were nineteen campers on the list.

Lark looked at the final printout in disgust. He riffled through the sheets. “There’s no way this many people are going to let us voluntarily search their vehicles. There’s just no way.”

“Can’t we get a search warrant?”

“Even if I can find a judge who had a completely liquid lunch and can barely stand, how in the hell are we going to show probable cause? Not for nineteen?”

“They must pay pretty good money at Macklin if all these guys can afford to buy such expensive toys.”

Lark looked sharply over at his partner. “What did you just say?”

“They must get a good hourly rate at that factory.”

“You’re giving me an idea.”

The large officer looked at Lark with dawning realization. “No way, Lieutenant. Don’t even think it. Don’t even imagine it. I work traffic, not some damn rotating shift in a bottle factory.” He took two steps toward the door before Lark caught him.

“Let’s lay it before the chief,” Lark said as he led Horse to the elevator.

Frank Pemperton handed the printout back to Lark. “No.”

“The bastard works there, Frank. I know he’s there.”

“Where’d you get this wet dream, Lark? Have you been consulting astrologers or other such nonsense?”

“The shift changes match the murder times, sir,” Horse said.

Pemperton ignored the remark. “In the first place, you can’t get search warrants for this many unrelated examinations. In the second place, I can’t take men off duty to go out to some factory for an indefinite time.”

“If I had a dime for every hour I’ve spent on useless surveillance or trying to make a drug buy—”

“That’s in the line of duty, and you know it,” Pemperton said. “Now’s as good a time as any to make the decision. Since you rule Grossman out of the murders, we’re giving up the cases.”

“What?” Lark’s cry was in incredulous astonishment.

“It’s too big for Middleburg to handle. It crosses several state lines and all the murders but one are outside of our jurisdiction. I’m bringing in the state police.”

Lark leaned angrily over the desk. “You wait a goddamn minute, Frank! Horse and I put this together. We’re the ones who made the connection into a serial murder. We’re the ones who ruled out at least three other suspects.”

“At some cost, since one of them died on you.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“I want your files in order, and that’s an order. Najankian, you had better wait outside. I have to talk to the lieutenant privately.”

Horse glanced at each of the senior officers and then ambled from the room.

“I want this one, Frank. I want this so much I can taste it.”

“Then you want it too much, because you aren’t seeing right. There’s two of you, an alcoholic cop on the skids and an overweight traffic patrolman. The state will put thirty men on the case and that doesn’t include the other states involved. We’re talking two, maybe three hundred guys tracking down every available lead. Think rationally, for God’s sake.”

“You owe me this, Frank.”

“Jesus, Lark, how many times do I have to pay you back? Every year it’s ‘You owe me this one, Frank.’”

“This is the last. From here on out I’ll never ask another favor.”

“I believe that like I believe in the tooth fairy. Why is this so important to you?”

“Because it’s keeping me alive.”

Horse sat stiffly on the sofa in Lark’s trailer. “I don’t really want anything alcoholic, Lieutenant.”

“Nonsense. We have to celebrate the breaking up of our partnership.” Lark searched under the sink for an unopened bottle of vodka. He had decided on martinis. He found a liter of vodka in the far reaches of the cabinet and a small bottle of vermouth. He began to carefully mix a large pitcher of cocktails while talking over his shoulder. “The chief is letting me take a few days in the factory undercover.”

“That’s great. You can handle it alone. I’m reporting back to traffic in the morning.”

Lark carefully stirred a huge shaker of martinis as he carefully fed cracked ice into the mixture. He wanted it extremely smooth. “A man’s got to do what he thinks right.”

“Then you’re not angry?”

“Hell, no! We made a good team, but all things come to an end. That’s part of being a cop. Men get transferred, promoted, retire … or they go back on traffic.”

“Glad you see it my way.”

“Of course I do. You’ve made yourself quite clear.” He poured Horse a water tumbler of martini and raised his own glass in toast. “Here’s to us. A hell of a team while we lasted.”

“Skoal,” Horse said, and tossed back half the glass.

Lark gave them each refills. “You know, old buddy, you’ve got an intuitive sense of deduction. Damned if I can figure it out, but it’s there.”

“Pure common sense, that’s all,” Horse said as he drank his drink.

Lark refilled the patrolman’s glass. “I can understand a family man like yourself not wanting to work overtime.”

“It’s kept me sane during the years on the force.” Horse reached for the pitcher and refilled his own glass.

“It’s too bad that you’re leaving the team right now, when we’re on the verge of cracking this thing. It will be Middleburg’s arrest of the century.”

Horse shrugged and sipped. “I never thought of myself in that light. All I want is to put in secure time. That’s what counts. You know, Lark, you aren’t the son of a bitch they say you are.”

“Thanks, Horse. I appreciate the compliment.” Both men drank. It was Lark’s firm belief that no man could drink five martinis and remain sober. He roughly calculated that Horse had now consumed the equivalent of seven without effect. He couldn’t understand it.

“It’s a shame,” Horse said as he looked morosely into his nearly empty glass. “A fucking shame.”

“What’s that?” He saw tears welling in the large man’s eyes.

“They shouldn’t have done it.”

“Done what?” Lark was truly perplexed.

“The Turks. They rode into the villages with drawn sabers and massacred the Armenians.”

“Turks like that live in Turkey?”

“And they killed women and little babies.” The tears were streaming freely down the patrolman’s face.

“I hadn’t really given it much thought,” Lark said.

Horse looked at him angrily. “You never heard of the Armenian massacres?”

“I thought that was a long time ago.”

“Long ago, but not forgotten. It’s written in the blood of every true Armenian.”

“You were born in Hartford.”

“We never lose our heritage.” He stood and swayed back and forth. “Let them ride in here and I’ll blow them away.” He drew his service revolver and waved it in the air. “I will destroy!”

“Is that loaded?” Lark asked, and for the first time he hoped it wasn’t.

“I’ll kill the fucking Turks,” Horse bellowed.

The gun went off and shattered the light over the kitchen sink.

“That answers my question,” Lark said. He grabbed Horse’s hand and wrestled the revolver from loose fingers. It went off a second time before he had control of it, and a round plowed into the flooring.

“Where are the goddamn Turks?”

“That way,” Lark said, and pointed toward the bedroom at the far end of the trailer.

“I’ll get the bastards! I’ll kill with my bare hands!” Horse lumbered toward the rear of the trailer. He careened from side to side in the narrow hall as he made his way unsteadily to the bedroom.

Lark waited until his partner was in the room before he pulled the door shut and wedged it closed with a chair. He heard shattering glass as fists pounded against the wall and the large man flung himself from one side to the other in the cramped space. The trailer rocked on its supports.

Lark weaved his way back into the living area and stopped in surprise when he saw Faby Winn standing in the doorway. “What in the world is going on?” she asked.

“We’re having a farewell party, and Horse had three or four too many.”

“Kill Turks!” was the cry from the bedroom as the trailer rocked again.

“Did you get him drunk?”

“Of course not. The man just doesn’t have any flolarence.”

“What?”

“No flolarence for alky … booze,” Lark said as he pitched forward onto the floor.

16

“When I first woke up, I was afraid I was going to die, now I’m afraid I’m going to live.” Horse Najankian moaned and laid his head back.

“You were a real cutter last night. I’d say a man like you really knows how to party.” Lark pursed his lips to obliterate a grin.

“Did I—did I do anything unusual?”

Lark concentrated on his driving. “Mmmm.”

“Did you call me in sick like I asked?”

“Oh, sure,” Lark lied. “Tell me about the Turkish massacre again. It sounded very interesting, but I really couldn’t get the whole story while your revolver was going off.”

Horse groaned. “I hope I didn’t shoot anyone. I’ll fix the trailer up, Lieutenant. I know the bedroom’s a mess, but I’ll make it right.”

“Appreciate that,” Lark said as he turned down Macklin Road, which led to the factory.

“I don’t ever drink, because this happened once before, years ago. Did I—did I do anything else?”

“Mrs. Winn isn’t going to press charges, if that’s what you’re worried about. I think I have her talked out of it.”

“Who’s Mrs. Winn?”

“A lady friend of mine who dropped by last night.” Lark chugalugged the remains of a beer. It made him feel slightly better. “You kept yelling about Turkish fiends raping helpless women.”

“Oh, God, I didn’t?”

“You didn’t consummate the act, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Shoot me, Lieutenant. Put me out of my misery.”

Lark pulled into the parking lot and grabbed a vice-president’s parking space in front of the administration building. “We’re here.”

“What in the world will I tell Nory?” Horse opened his eyes.

“I’ve already called her.”

“Wait one damn minute! I want to go home.”

“You better take a beer.”

“I’m going home, and tomorrow you can find me at the intersection of Main and First.”

“I was pretty pissed at you last night and drew up a list of preliminary charges: discharge of a service revolver, destruction of property, attempted rape, and assault on a superior officer. You’ll be on the street in ten minutes.”

“You’ve screwed me to the wall, haven’t you, Lark? You set me up.”

“Something like that, partner.” Lark left the pickup and Horse winced as the door slammed.

“You bastard, you’re worse than they said you were.”

“I could have told you that,” Lark said as he entered the building.

Rose Harris looked worried. “I agreed over the telephone to do what you wanted, but I’m not comfortable with it.”

“It’s only for a few days and we’re not actually going on your payroll.”

“There are other factors. Suppose you should be injured? We might have an insurance liability.”

“We’re police officers on duty. The benevolent city of Middleburg takes care of all our needs.”

“Well, act like you’re new employees. To begin with, we must issue you safety glasses and shoes with steel toes; then I’ll introduce you to your supervisors.”

“I wish I’d drunk that beer,” Horse said as he gingerly touched his forehead.

They picked up the glasses and work shoes at the small nurse’s office off the main factory floor, and then followed Rose Harris, in single file, around the floor of the building in a pathway bracketed by red safety lines that safely skirted all machinery and hoists.

“I hate this. I really hate this,” Lark heard Rose Harris say over the thumping din of machinery.

He grabbed her elbow. “Don’t worry about us. We’re going to blend in and not rock the boat.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s Renfroe Martin.”

“Who’s he?”

“The foreman on this team. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him.”

After circumnavigating three-quarters of the floor, they arrived at a small glass-enclosed office that had room enough for a single desk and chair. The desk was covered with time cards and engineers’ drawings. Renfroe Martin scowled at a job order. Lark’s first personal assessment was that he wore glasses, but then everyone wore the safety glasses. Martin had a chestnut-colored, elongated, bald head. His facial flesh seemed to rise under his cheekbones, giving his features a pinched look. He had a rangy build, with long, tapering fingers, one of which was grotesquely disfigured from some long-ago industrial accident. As they entered the office and he looked up, his scowl turned to a malevolent grin.

“This is Mr. Najankian, who is to be trained on your team. Mr. Lark will work with Harper.”

“Formal today, aren’t you, Rose? You weren’t that way last night, when you gave me some of the best I ever had.”

“Cut it out, Martin,” she said as her cheeks flushed.

“She likes it doggy-style,” Martin said. “Can’t ever get enough. Best black meat I ever had.”

Rose’s fist slammed on the desk. “Listen, you rednecked son of a bitch! Any more of that, and you’ll end up on sexual and racial charges. Do you understand?”

“Who’s going to bring charges, baby sweet? The personnel manager? Can’t you take a joke?”

“You’re not funny.”

His hand reached out and pinched her rear. She slapped him in return.

“Fiery bitch, aren’t you?” His eyes were cold and expressionless.

“I’ve had it with you, Martin.”

“I run the best team in this dump, honey. No one is going to bounce me. Check the production figures and you’ll see why management loves me. We turn out more bottles than either of the other two shifts.”

“Because your people are scared to death of you.”

“It gets results.”

Lark tried to place the voice and listen for any similarity to the one on the tapes, but the factory din and Martin’s bantering tone made any comparison invalid.

“Let’s get out of here, Lark,” she said as they left the office.

“Why don’t you do something about him?”

“I really should, but maybe I’m reluctant because I’m a black woman and management. If the situation were reversed, I’d have his ass.”

Lark laughed. “I bet you would.” He thought it interesting that Renfroe Martin’s name was on the list of those employees who owned campers.

They followed the floor’s perimeter around the building to another small office, where Rose paused with her hand on the knob. “You’ll be working with the factory floor clerk. That will give you mobility to wander around.”

Lark nodded as they went inside, where he was introduced to Herb Harper. Harper was of average height, but his round physique made him appear shorter. He was hips and rear, with a pudgy face bisected by large, wire-rim glasses. He shook hands with a limp hand and damp palms.

“This is Mr. Lark, Herb. We want you to break him in on the factory clerk’s job.”

Harper blanched. “Did I do anything wrong? Isn’t my work satisfactory?”

“This isn’t anything personal,” the personnel officer said quickly as she sensed the pudgy man’s fears. “Mr. Lark won’t be with this team permanently, but we thought you would be the best man to train him.”

A sense of relief was obvious in his voice. “Oh, yes, I’d be glad to train him.”

“If you have any questions, Mr. Lark, don’t hesitate to come see me.” She smiled and then hurried from the office.

“Have you done this work before?” Herb said while simultaneously making rapid entries into a calculator on the desk.

“Not really,” Lark replied. “I put twenty-five into this man’s army, mostly as a supply sergeant, so I’m used to working with figures.”

“That’ll help. We do lots of figure work here on this job.” More calculations, and then rapid entries onto a printed form.

“Need an army field jacket? I got thirty home. They were my good-bye present to myself,” Lark lied.

“Yeah, I’d like one. How much do you want for it?”

“Ten bucks.”

“Bring it in tomorrow.”

Lark wondered where he would be able to get an army field jacket, since his had torn years ago. An army-navy store, he supposed. “Sure.”

“First thing every shift, we take production readings from the blowing machines,” Harper said as he took down a clipboard and inserted another form under the clasp. “Follow me.”

They went out to the perimeter walk and began to make their way down the line of machines. They stopped at each one to jot down readings in the appropriate box on the form.

“In addition to this,” Harper yelled over the din of machines, “we tally time cards on a daily basis and note every shipment loaded on the trucks. You’ll catch on.”

The incessant noise on the work floor was getting to Lark, and the pressure of his hangover headache was increasing. They continued working their way around the floor, stopping every twenty feet at another machine to take a reading.

The noise made it impossible to carry on a true conversation, and Lark noticed that some of the men wore earplugs. The work for each man at his machine was mostly one of observation: they checked temperatures, chemical feed to the innards, pressure on the press, and the movement of completed bottles as they flowed onto the conveyor belts. He supposed there were machine breakdowns that had to be corrected, and that would provide some variety on the job, but it seemed a rare occurrence.

The men on the machines looked bored, the women sorting and packaging the finished product had zombielike expressions, which meant their minds were at some distant place. He knew why he was attracted to policework. For all its contact with society’s underclass, it did provide a varied day filled with potential adventure and kaleidoscoping events that constantly required alertness.

He knew that years working one of these machines would drive him mad. Perhaps it did that to those working here; maybe it had driven one of them far around the bend to the point where he extracted revenge upon young women.

They finished rounds and returned to the small office where Harper showed him the proper way to enter their readings. “You know, Lark,” the factory clerk said, “I’m surprised to see you working here. I woulda thought you’d have a nice fat pension from the army.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Lark said. “You can get by on it, but you can’t buy any big-ticket items. Like my buddy and me want to buy one of those recreational campers and tour the country. You know the kind I mean, where you live behind the driver’s seat? Don’t tell them in the front office, but that’s why we took these jobs.”

“Yeah, those campers are great. I have one and use it every chance I get.”

“Is that a fact?” Lark replied, but he already knew that Harper had a camper. It was on the list from MVD and he had memorized every name on that list. “I’d certainly like to see it. Maybe you can give me some pointers on what to look for when I buy one?”

“I’ll bring it to work one day. Lots of guys here have them. I’ll bet there are half a dozen on the lot right now.”

“Do you think you could arrange it so my buddy and I could go through them? You know, for pointers.”

“I’ll set it up during meal break.”

“That would be great, Herb. I’ll give you that field jacket for nothing.” He wondered if Horse had an old field jacket.

After three days of checking recreational vehicles parked in the lot, the dirty blue Pathfinder with the drawn curtains was the only one they hadn’t checked out. Herb Harper stood by its door and shook his head. “We can’t go in this one.”

“Why not?”

Harper started back toward the loading-dock entrance. “It belongs to Renfroe, and no one, but no one, unless they’re female, gets in there.”

“See you later, Herb,” Lark said, “and thanks for putting it together. Hope you like the field jacket.” It had taken Lark until nearly midnight three nights before to locate Manny Epstein of Manny’s Army and Navy Store and get him to open up the store to sell him a field jacket.

Horse tried to peer through the front windshield. “I can’t see zilch. There’s a partition behind the driver’s seat.”

Lark removed a small pick from his wallet. “I’ll be in there in ten seconds.” He bent toward the door lock.

“You touch that door and I grab ass,” the voice behind him said.

Lark whirled as his hand automatically reached to a missing holster. “No big deal, Martin. We’re in the market for a camper and are checking out those on the lot.”

“Not my fuckmobile you aren’t. Beat it!” The man’s eyes were opaque.

“I said we meant no harm.”

“Seems to me, Lark, that you were meaning to bust in. You know, at this company we don’t take to thieves. What are you after, the hi-fi?”

“You call me a thief again, Martin, and I’ll drive you through the pavement.”

“You don’t scare me.” Martin’s hand held a knife. A button was pressed and a long blade sprang forward.

“Okay, cream puff.” Lark stepped forward bent in a fighting crouch, both arms extended wide and palms slanted.

Horse grabbed Lark’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Lieutenant.”

A foppish smile creased Martin’s face. “Okay, so you were curious. I’ll take your word for it.” He snapped the knife shut and slipped it back into his pocket. “Just stay away from my camper, boy, okay?” He started to walk back to the factory. “Break’s over. Back on the floor,” he yelled without turning.

Lark pulled a list from his pocket and ran a finger down the column. He crossed off names with a stubby pencil. “I have appointments to check out the last of them tonight at the guy’s homes, and Herb’s bringing his in tomorrow.”

“And that will knock them off except for Renfroe Martin’s.” He jerked a hand toward the Pathfinder with the shrouded windows.

Lark was weary. He turned the pickup into the driveway of the Milligan Machine Company and drove around the building to his trailer. Screw the security check. He didn’t feel up to the walk around the building. It was nearly midnight; if someone was going to lift the joint, they had already done it.

They had divided the remaining list of campers in half and had met later at Gino’s Pizza to compare results:

“I know more about recreational vehicles than I really care to know,” Horse had said. “Geez, they talk your head off.”

Lark’s experience had been similar. The factory employees who owned campers had been more than willing to extol the virtues of their trucklike rolling homes. Husbands and wives vied with each other to tell of the lure of outdoor life and the mobility the vhicles gave them. They never seemed to see the contradiction in their motives. The campers were all equipped with full kitchens and myriad appliances, televisions, stereos, and air-conditioners. It was far from the backpacks and pup tents that Lark remembered from his camping days.

Lark had massaged the bridge of his nose and inspected the remains of a pepperoni pizza. “Did you see any odd construction in any one of them that looked out of place?”

Horse had shaken his head. “Nothing. In all the ones I checked out there was nothing remotely resembling any sort of torture room. They were all ordinary campers.”

Lark had looked down at his list. All the names but two had now been checked off. “Herb’s bringing his to work tomorrow.”

“That leaves Renfroe Martin.”

“Yes, doesn’t it?”

“Tomorrow’s the last day before shift rotation, Lieutenant, and that means four days off for our boy. It’s got to be Martin.”

“I hope to God it is.”

There was a car parked by the trailer. He stopped the pickup by Faby’s car. He didn’t want to deal with her tonight. He was tired and all he wanted was a beer and shower.

She stood in the door with the light bracketing her trim body. “That you, Lark?”

“Uh huh. I’m beat, Fabe.”

“I would have words with you.” Unbidden, she went to the refrigerator and took out a can of beer and handed it to him.

Lark threw himself down on the divan after gratefully accepting the beer. “How do people who work in factories afford twenty-thousand-dollar recreational vehicles?”

“Their spouses work, the kids work, everybody works. You’re one to talk about money. Where do you keep all yours?”

“Mostly in money markets, some CDs here and there,” he replied sleepily. “I have some convertible preferred that looks good for growth.”

She sat primly in a straight chair. “Have you been down to headquarters recently?”

“We’re working undercover. I haven’t been to the office in a while.” He gulped beer;

“Look at this.” She threw him a folded copy of the Middleburg Times.

He plucked it from the air. “I’m too tired for the funnies.”

“Page one, right-hand column.”

He forced himself to read the short article. Méndez was dead. The young man who had sued him for brutality had been found curled around an ashcan, dead of an overdose. “I read it,” he said, and dropped the paper to the floor.

“I thought you’d be interested. Isn’t that the kid who was after you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Doesn’t that mean the suit will be dropped?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t want to see you anymore, Lark. That’s why I came over to wait for you.”

“Not now, Fabe. I’ve been looking at campers all night after working all day, and the last couple of nights haven’t been so hot either.”

“You drink too much.”

“Stipulated.” He lay his arm across his eyes.

“You’re tired because you’re depressed.”

“I won’t even argue that.”

“And you’re depressed because of the work you do.”

“And because I don’t seem any closer to some psycho who’s running all over New England killing young women.”

“It’s deeper than that.”

“Uh huh.”

“I want to talk about our relationship,” she said. “I mean, really talk …”

He would have agreed if he hadn’t been sound asleep.

17

He couldn’t see his face in the small bathroom mirror because her note was taped over the surface. He squinted at her spindly handwriting, ripped the note from the mirror, and took two steps into the kitchen, where he eased gingerly onto a high stool.

“I have been fortunate enough to have received a formal education,” the note read, “of twelve years of secondary work, four years as an undergraduate, and over three years of graduate studies. This mental honing allows me to write clearly and succinctly, therefore, go FUCK yourself.”

He had to smile. After all, it did show a certain verve.

In the employees parking lot of the Macklin Company, Herb Harper lounged in the driver’s seat of a Heritage camper. He waved at Lark.

The recreational vehicle’s door stood open as Lark shuffled over. “I have coffee on, Lark. Come on in.”

“That would hit the spot,” Lark said as he stepped inside.

Harper was as effervescent as his quiet manner would allow. “How do you like the layout? Everything’s compact and mostly built in.” He poured two cups of strong coffee and laced Lark’s with a heavy slug of brandy. “Take a swig of this and I’ll give you the tour.”

“I live in a trailer,” Lark said as he sipped coffee and felt the double warmth seep through his stomach. “No tour.”

Harper arched an eyebrow. “You live in a trailer and yet you want to buy a camper? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Suppose not.”

“I have the feeling that you aren’t what you seem to be.”

“Nobody’s what they seem to be, Herb.” He drank more coffee-brandy and slowly looked over the vehicle’s interior. It was immaculate, as he knew it would be, for Harper was that kind of man. In other ways, it was perfectly ordinary-looking. There were no acoustical walls, and no matter how they were bound, there were no compartments large enough to hold murder victims. It was purely and simply, a recreational vehicle. He finished the coffee. “We’re going to be late punching in.”

Harper smiled. “Does it really matter for you?”

Lark returned the smile. “I guess it doesn’t. This is my last day here.”

“I suspected as much. You’re here to check out campers, right?”

“Got to all of them but one.”

“Martin’s sexmobile.”

“I’m going to have a talk with ol’ Renfroe.”

“Where’s Renfroe Martin?” Lark asked Horse as he passed his partner’s machine with a clipboard in his hand.

“He called in sick; the senior lead man is running the shift. No one believes him, they think he’s got some hot bimbo lined up for a trip in his sexmobile.”

“Come on!” Lark began to run around the floor’s perimeter walk.

“We’ve got to punch out,” Horse yelled as he brought up the rear.

“Christ, Horse, the city pays us, these people don’t.”

“What about my machine?”

Lark pushed through the door to the loading dock and jumped off the platform to take off across the parking lot. He slammed into the pickup and unlocked the glove compartment. He took the Colt Python from its resting place, shoved it into the waistband of his trousers, and started the engine.

The truck was rolling with the passenger side door open as Horse puffed after it and swung inside. “You think it’s him?”

“He made us. Harper did, and I’m sure that Martin did too.”

“I don’t know where he lives.”

The truck screeched out of the parking lot and rocked onto the highway. “The MVD list is in my case.”

Horse fumbled through papers and finally called out an address, “Seventeen-ten Willow, that’s in the north part of—”

“I know where it is.” Lark reached under the seat and picked up the flasher light, which he attached to the roof by its suction cup. The pickup accelerated. “We got him,” Lark said. They pulled into the 1700 block of Willow Street and could see a camper in the drive of 1710. The pickup jumped the curb in front of 1710 and Lark swung it broadside at the rear of the camper, effectively blocking it in the carport. “Call for backup,” he said as he jumped from the truck and reached for the Python.

Renfroe Martin, his face beet-red in anger, slammed through the front door of the ranch house and stalked toward Lark. “What in the hell are you doing driving over my lawn?” He stopped stock-still when he saw Lark take a shooter’s crouch and level the Python. “Holy shit!”

“Turn around slowly,” Lark said as he cautiously approached. “Get your hands up high or I’ll blow you the fuck apart.”

“You’re crazy.”

A heavy woman in tight stretch pants and red hair too brilliant to be natural appeared in the doorway with a drink in her hand. “You ready to leave, Froe?”

“Two units are on the way,” Horse said.

“Cover the woman.”

“I’ll try.” Horse walked over to the redhead and gently took the glass from her hand.

Lark realized that his large partner didn’t have his weapon. “Watch her. If she moves, fall on her.”

“Hey, what’s going on here?” the redhead protested.

There were sirens in the distance. In forty-five seconds half a dozen men in uniform swarmed over the yard, searched the suspects, and waited for orders from Lark.

“I knew you were a cop,” Renfroe Martin said as he was pressed against the side of the house and cuffed.

“How’d you know?” Horse asked out of curiosity.

“You kept calling him lieutenant, for Christ’ sake.”

Lark walked over to the woman in the tight pants. “Do you have any ID?”

“Why should I show identification. I live here, for God’s sake? Ask anybody on the street. I’m Flo Martin.”

“I wonder if you would let me see inside your camper?”

“Screw you,” Martin said. A cop shoved him and he staggered to maintain his balance.

“I can have a warrant in half an hour. If you let me see the camper voluntarily, I’ll see that the prosecuting attorney hears about it.”

“What’s going on?” the woman screeched again. “Froe, you been drinking again?” She looked over at Lark. “Do you have him on a DUI charge?”

“Not hardly.”

More cars arrived and the woman looked awed. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t have the whole force out here on any drunk-driving charge.”

“Last offer, Martin. Let me see inside the camper.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Pleasant guy, isn’t he?” Horse said as he walked ominously toward Renfroe Martin, who now had his hands cuffed to a waist chain. Horse began to rub one mass of knuckles with his other hand.

“Don’t you hit him!” the woman screamed as she strained against the officer holding her. “For God’s sake, Froe, let him see the camper.”

Martin watched Horse approach and then croaked that the keys were on a ring in his right-hand pocket.

While Horse obtained the keys, Lark walked to the heavily curtained camper. “Let Mrs. Martin come with me, so everyone knows this is a voluntary admission.” He contemplated the camper’s dusty sides as the redhead scurried to him. “Your husband goes off in this thing alone every couple of weeks?”

“No. Where he goes, I go. I don’t let him out of my sight for ten minutes, except to go to work and back.”

Lark vaguely remembered a case in England years ago where a man and women killed victims on desolate moors and not only tortured them but also recorded their cries. Horse unlocked the camper’s door and they stepped inside.

A heavy curtain that parted in the center separated the driving compartment from the rear of the camper. Lark gingerly parted the folds of heavy velvet and stepped through into the dim interior.

“Jesus Christ!” Horse said behind him.

Having toured a rash of campers of all sizes, models, and makes in recent days, Lark was familiar with the normal configurations of this type. It had been extensively remodeled, and its resemblance to the factory-delivered appearance was not even remote.

Just beyond the driver’s compartment, the galley area had been shortened and now contained only a sink and small refrigerator. A bar had been built and numerous bottles of liquor, of all brands and types in various stages of consumption, were stored in racks that lined the walls. The last portion of the vehicle was filled with a massive bed that stretched from one side to the other. A VCR recorder and television was positioned on the wall over the bed, near where dozens of X-rated tapes were stored on a shelf.

“It’s a moving bordello,” Lark said.

“We call it our humpmobile,” Flo Martin said. “Now are you guys satisfied?”

“Will you tell me exactly what you people do in here?” Lark asked.

She raised a deeply penciled eyebrow. “You must get your kicks this way.”

“Answer the question.”

“We ball in here.”

“Your house is five feet away.”

“It’s not the same,” she said. “Listen, I got a problem with Froe out there. He’s like sex-crazy. So, no matter what shift he works, I’m ready for him before he leaves and I’m ready for him when he comes home. Twice, maybe three times a day, I give it to him. He don’t have no energy left to ball any chicks down at the factory or even somebody he might pick up at the supermarket. No way do I leave him enough energy for anybody else.”

“But you take trips in this thing,” Lark said. “You drive through New England during the days off.”

“Hell, we hardly ever get it out of the drive.”

“I think those people are telling the truth,” Horse said.

“I’m having uniforms check it out with the neighbors, but we know what the answer will be. God damn!” Lark pounded the steering wheel with both fists. The truck swerved toward a bus as he fought for control. The bus’s horn sounded in Doppler effect as it faded to the rear.

“What now, Lieutenant?”

“We turn over everything we have to the state police, you go back on traffic, and I put in my papers.”

They were silent. Lark drove without seeing and tried to peer into a blank future. Most senior, officers his age took a job with private industry in large security departments and were glad to have the added income to augment their pensions. Lark didn’t consider himself emotionally constituted to hold a job that required a good deal of public relations and diplomacy. Other men had hobbies: woodworking was popular, the outdoor types took off for Maine with rod and reel. He would probably report to the nearest bar and proceed to irrevocably damage the remaining portions of his liver.

They turned into the lot at police headquarters, where Lark parked in the chief’s reserved slot.

They worked on the files for two hours. Both men were concerned that they be in the best possible shape. Lark kept putting off the requisite calls to the state police and to Frank Pemperton.

“Hey, you got the printout from MVD on the campers registered to our shift?” Horse asked.

“Somewhere.” Lark searched his clothing and located the crumpled list in his rear pocket. He tossed the wadded paper across the room. “What a hell of a wet dream that was.”

“It was the best possible guess we had, working with what we had,” the large officer responded as he attempted to smooth the paper into a semblance of neatness.

“It wasn’t good enough, it didn’t work. We didn’t make a collar, and that’s all that counts.”

“I guess.” Horse looked down at the list. “It was a lead that we tracked down. It will save the state guys some time.”

“Sure.” Lark wondered if there was still a bottle of bourbon in the bottom desk drawer. Recently he had been loosing his appetite for beer because it didn’t take the edge off fast enough.

Horse bent over the crumpled paper. “I can’t read all this. What kind of camper did Harper have?”

Lark was sure the bottle was in the drawer, and all that he needed was the energy to reach for it. “One of those fancy jobs. A Heritage.” He reached for the bottle, found it, and twisted off the cap and began to search for a glass. He would leave Horse out of this party.

“That’s interesting. MVD has him registered with a Diplomat.”

Lark poured half a tumbler of bourbon into a coffee mug he had located. “Dammit, Horse, I’m not a rookie. I checked the marker plate and it matched with the printout.”

“Marker plates can be changed in ten seconds.”

Lark slowly turned to face his partner. The bourbon was forgotten. “It wasn’t the murder camper,” he said. “It was a perfectly ordinary vehicle. The murder room has to have soundproofing. You heard the tapes. There’s no way you could perform that crap without … I checked out a different camper, didn’t I?”

“Looks that way.”

“He put off bringing it in. He had us made, and he knew damn well what we were looking for.”

“He rented a camper and switched license plates with his own plates.”

“Jesus Christ!” Lark said as he looked at his watch. “It’s been two hours since shift rotation and the bastard has four days off.”

18

Herb Harper lived on an ordinary street of ordinary homes. The development was twenty years old, which meant that the shrubbery and trees were beginning to stretch into maturity and give the area a permanent aura. The only distinguishing features to separate one home from another were the lawn plantings and the presence or lack of carports.

Their objective was midway down the block, where a small sign on the front-lawn spelled out THE HARPERS in reflecting beads of glass. A Vega station wagon was the only vehicle in the drive.

“You want backup?” Horse asked as his finger reached for the transmitter button of the radio.

“We may be too late or we may be wrong.” Lark swerved to the curb and began to walk toward the house. The front door opened before he reached the stoop.

The diminutive woman behind the latched screen had bangs across her forehead that gave her a gaminelike look. She wore a blinding white apron below a peasant blouse. She was not so attractive or pretty as much as she was neat. She gave a small smile. “Can I help you?”

“Are you Mrs. Harper?”

“I’m Rada Harper.”

“Is Herb home?”

“He left a few minutes ago for a few days of fishing.”

“Oh, shit!” Horse whispered behind Lark.

Rada Harper looked uneasy and began to edge away from the door. “What do you men want?”

Lark flipped his identification from his back pocket. “I’m Lieutenant Lark of the Middleburg police. May I talk to you?”

She looked dubious, but the door’s latch fell away. “I don’t know.”

Horse stepped forward. “It’s really all right. We are police and the lieutenant is my boss.”

Still a brief hesitation, and then the front door snapped back and she unlatched the screen. “Please come in. Has there been some trouble in the neighborhood or at the factory?” She faced them with wide eyes and held one small hand to her lips. “Has Herb had an accident?”

“No, it’s just a routine investigation. We’re checking on campers and we understand that Mr. Harper owns one.”

“Yes, he does.”

Horse looked at the blank page of a pad he pulled from his pocket. He didn’t need any reference material; he knew the names and makes by heart. “We understand he owns a Diplomat?”

“I think that’s what it is.” She relaxed at the mundane questions. “Would you men like some coffee?”

“That would be fine,” Horse answered in a soft voice.

Lark was uneasy and he whispered to Horse as Rada Harper went to the kitchen. “He’s gone.”

“Don’t you want firm info this time, Lieutenant?”

“Okay, but hurry it up.”

Rada Harper returned carrying a large glass tray containing a coffee percolator, cups, saucers, and cream and sugar. With a self-satisfied motion she placed it on the coffee table between them and poured. “I keep coffee going all day. I know they say it’s not good to drink too much, but my goodness, we all need a pick-me-up around this time.”

Lark agreed with that and missed his bottle of bourbon. He took the cup she offered and stirred in a dash of cream. “Does Herb often go off like this?”

“Oh, yes. During fishing season he goes on a trip after each shift rotation.”

“Do you ever go with him?” Horse asked.

“Oh, no. When we were first married, I went fishing with him once, but putting those scriggly worms on hooks—ugh. Herb goes by himself.”

“Then you never travel in the camper?” Lark asked.

She sipped coffee and smiled over the rim of her cup. “Once in a great while. Last winter Herb took me on a trip to Florida. We had a grand time. That was his regular vacation.”

The living room was of the doily variety. Carefully crocheted doilies covered every arm and headrest of every available chair and sofa in the immaculate room. The front picture window with its side panel sparkled. A glass cabinet in the corner contained dozens of small ceramic animals that were meticulously arranged. “I bet you have to clean his camper after Herb returns from one of his trips?” Lark asked.

Rada Harper shook her head. “Herb never lets me inside. He says it’s a man’s world in there and he knows how upset I get when I see dust.”

“But you went to Florida in the camper,” Horse pressed.

“Yes, and that’s the only time I’ve been inside. But that’s all right, Herb never goes in my sewing room either.”

“The camper never leaves the yard except when Herb takes it fishing? He never takes it to work?”

“No. It was here all day until he came home and rushed off to his fishing.”

Lark was afraid that his clenched grip would shatter the fragile cup he held in his hand. Their suspicions were confirmed. Harper had switched vehicles and marker plates. The renter had been returned and now he was off in his own camper. “Mrs. Harper, when you were in Herb’s fishing camper during the trip south, did you notice any changes he had made in the vehicle?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I think I should know why you are asking all these questions.”

“It pertains to a minor accident investigation, but if you assure me that Herb hasn’t moved his camper for the last several days, he can be marked off our list.”

“I’m positive that it wasn’t moved until he left just a little while ago.”

“Out of curiosity,” Horse said, “has he done any interior work that altered the insides?”

Her hand fluttered to her chin and brushed across a cheek. “I don’t know what you mean, unless you’re talking about his stereo room.”

“His what room?” Lark sloshed coffee over the rim of his cup. He walked to the window and looked out with his hands laced behind his back. He knew he had startled Rada Harper and would let Horse continue the questioning.

“That’s interesting,” Horse said. “Actually, what is a stereo room?”

“Well, I don’t really know, but that’s what Herb called it. You know how noisy highways are and so are the pull-offs where he sometimes sleeps. He took out most of the rear part and lined the walls with some sort of boards. Then he put in that acoustical tile to deaden sound. That way he can listen to his music and not hear any outside background noise.” She seemed pleased with the explanation.

It also kept inside noise from getting out, Lark thought as he turned and nodded to Horse.

“Mrs. Harper,” Horse said, “can I use your phone?”

“It’s on the wall in the kitchen.”

“You have the plate numbers?” Lark asked.

“I’ll never forget them,” Horse said as he started for the phone to put out the APB.

Rada Harper’s hands were like captured birds as they fluttered in her lap and occasionally darted to her face to brush a cheek and fall back into her waist. “I think there’s something you had better tell me, Lieutenant. This visit isn’t about any accident investigation, is it?”

“No, Mrs. Harper, it isn’t. Officer Najankian is putting out an APB for your husband right now.”

“A what?”

“An all-points bulletin to have every police agency be on the alert for Herb and pick him up when they find him.”

The hands became more agitated. “But why? There’s no more gentle man in the world than Herb.”

“Before I go into that, did he give you any hint as to where he might be going today?”

“Herb never tells me exactly where he’ll be. He says he doesn’t really know where the fishing will be good until he gets there. He tells me generally, like that he’s going into the Berkshires or something like that.”

“Is that what he said today?”

“He said he was going up to Litchfield County. That’s in Connecticut.”

“I know where it is,” Lark snapped as he rushed to the kitchen phone where Horse was still talking to the dispatcher. That county was in the northwest quadrant of the state and contained the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. It was a heavily wooded area filled with lakes, high hills, and a series of ponds and campgrounds. He snatched the phone from Horse’s hand.

“This is Lark. On that APB, notify the Litchfield State Police Barracks that the suspect is possibly heading toward their area in a camper. Tell them that he is dangerous and a high-priority murder suspect.”

“Gotcha. You can be reached at this number?”

“Affirmative,” Lark said as he hung up.

The kitchen, like the remainder of the house, was clean to the point of obsessiveness. The floor had been recently waxed, and Lark could see his reflection in the burnished surface. Samplers, containing such phrases as “We Love Our Home” were on the wall, and bright copper-bottomed pots were hung from evenly spaced hooks. It was a room that a life had been dedicated to maintain.

Rada Harper stood in the doorway. Her small curled fists covered her mouth as she looked at him with frightened eyes. “What has Herb done?”

“He’s a murder suspect, Mrs. Harper,” Lark said in a monotone.

“Oh, my God.” She crumpled to the floor and lay in a neat heap at Lark’s feet.

“You had better phone for a policewoman,” Lark told Horse.

They stretched Rada Harper on the couch, where she unconsciously curled up in a fetal position. While Horse made more phone calls, Lark toured the house.

The front door opened directly into an L-shaped living room with its compact dining area. The kitchen was off the apex of the L while a narrow hall that led toward the side contained the bedroom doors.

The first room was obviously Rada Harper’s sewing room. A small desk was set against one wall, a sewing machine with a myriad of attachments faced the window. Over the desk was a bulletin board with note reminders of household items to purchase and dental appointments to be kept.

The second was a man’s bedroom. Heavy maple furniture predominated, with a set of military brushes exactly centered on the shining dresser. Lark made a cursory check of the bureau drawers and discovered neat balls of socks and the division of underwear and other clothing strictly segregated. The final room was feminine, with a canopied bed that would have been more fitting for a pubescent girl rather than a mature woman.

“Why are you going through my things?” she asked from behind him.

“As I said, Mrs. Harper, Herb is a suspect.”

“That’s impossible and ridiculous. Ask anyone who knows him and they will tell you the same thing.”

“I know Herb from the plant. I worked with him for several days, and frankly, I’m as surprised as you are.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Herb is a perfect husband, a good provider, a thoughtful man.”

“You sleep apart?”

Her brittle facade shattered as wisps of fear that changed to anger crossed her face. “We don’t do those things. We don’t find it necessary.”

“I see,” Lark said noncommittally. “Could I see the cellar?”

“There’s nothing down there but the washer, canned goods, and Herb’s fishing things.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“This way.” She led him down the hall and into the kitchen, where she stopped. “Herb has always worked. He never misses a day, even when he had the flu, he insisted on going to work. He’s generous with my household allowance, and he’s an assistant coach with the little girl’s softball team.”

Lark inwardly groaned. They’d have to check that one out. “Sometimes people aren’t what they appear to be.”

“I couldn’t live with a man for thirteen years and not know what sort of person he is.”

“Some men hide their feelings in places you would never suspect.”

“I don’t believe this is happening. I really don’t.”

“The cellar?”

“Do I have to allow this?”

“No, you don’t. I can get a search warrant signed by a judge.”

She turned without replying and threw a light switch as she opened the cellar door. She stepped aside and let Lark proceed. He went slowly down the narrow wooden stairs. The cellar was as neat as the rest of the ranch. Tools were hung on the wall, it was well swept, and the washer and dryer looked to be in pristine condition. Shelves lined one wall and contained canned goods in addition to mason jars showing the harvest from a bountiful vegetable garden.

“Herb shovels the old lady’s walk next door when it snows,” she said from midway down the stairs.

“He sounds like a good neighbor,” Lark said as he crossed the cellar to a wooden partition that ran the length of the rear. He stopped before a door locked with a padlock and heavy hasp. “What’s in here?”

“Herb ties his own fishing flies during the winter season. He says it’s a mess in there, and if he lets me in, I’ll only want to clean it up and mess up his stuff.”

“It’s important that I see the inside.”

“I told you what’s in there.”

“I’d like to open it.”

“Go ahead! I’m sure Herb will see a lawyer over all of this.”

“I’m sure he will,” Lark said as he searched through the neatly racked tools until he found a short crowbar. He inserted the wedged end behind the hasp and pulled down on the bar with his full weight. With a creak of nails the hasp swung free and fell to the side. He opened the door and stepped into the small room.

Lark involuntarily gasped. The bastard had taken photographs.

He whirled to bar her way, but it was too late. She was already in the room, her back pressed against the wooden partition. She mouthed words, but for moments no sound came forth until finally a low, plaintive “No, no, no.”

The room was as neat and orderly as the remainder of the house. It did contain a short workbench with a tie-flying clasp mounted on its edge with feathers and other accoutrements for its use in small, plastic containers. The room also contained what Harper would have called his mementos.

The rear wall held mounted photographs of eight-by-ten glossies of young women in various stages of naked anguish. Their faces, forever frozen in the silent rictus of a scream, would haunt Lark for the rest of his life.

The other long wall contained row after row of panties thumbtacked in neat files.

A cassette player with adjacent earphones sat on a small stand next to an aging easy chair in the center of the room.

It was here that he would relive his exploits. Here, with his photographs and tapes of death, Harper spent the winter months with vivid memories of his killings.

He had to do it, and they were the most difficult steps he had ever taken, but he crossed the room and began to scan the faces of the dead young women in the photographs.

On the bottom row near the wall he found two faces of victims that he recognized. One was of the corpse found behind the house on Mark Street, the other found in the nearby state forest.

He counted the pictures. There were thirty-seven, several more than they had suspected.

“He bought these things somewhere. There are shops that sell dirty things. There are stores that cater to men who—”

“He didn’t buy them,” Lark said. “He created them.”

Now the sounds from her were low, moaning whimpers. She was a cornered animal consumed with hurt, a child terror-ridden with the realization that the monsters of the mind are all too real. She had looked into the horror of a pit filled with the raw sewage of the sickest of minds.

The corroborating evidence, the physical necessities for a strong case, were here in abundance. That was the thought that flicked through his mind.

He turned away from the horror gallery and reached for Mrs. Harper’s hand. She withdrew from him and fled to a corner of the room as if he were the creator of her nightmare.

“How often did he come down here?”

“Every night during the winter. Every single night for at least an hour. We would joke about his secret time. I know what he did down here. I know what he did as he sat in this chair and looked at those—those things.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

In robotlike movements she followed him through the cellar and up into the kitchen.

“I want you to take a look at the room in the cellar,” Lark told Horse. “Then get the lab unit over here. Make a list of all the items in the room and call it into Frank Pemperton. I want him to personally prepare the search-and-seizure warrant.”

“Right,” Horse said, and eagerly trotted down the cellar steps.

It was less than four minutes later that Lark heard his partner stumble upstairs and rush into the bathroom, where he retched uncontrollably into the bowl. “Check on the APB,” Lark yelled toward the bathroom when Horse’s heavings began to subside.

“Herb teaches Sunday school and they tell me he’s one of their most popular teachers,” Rada Harper said.

Lord deliver me from Sunday-school teachers, Lark thought. He wondered if her comment required a reply and decided that it did not.

“I don’t know why he has those things in the basement,” she continued. “Very early in our marriage we decided that we didn’t need to do those things. He must have had a nervous breakdown. Yes, that’s it. Herb had a nervous breakdown and didn’t know what he was doing when he purchased those dirty items.”

“That could be true,” Lark said. “The breakdown must have occurred some time ago.”

“A man can’t be held responsible for his actions when he’s mentally ill. I know that from the television. You can’t blame Herb for buying those things, when he’s sick.”

Lark had to turn away in order to stop himself from yelling in her face that her husband didn’t buy the items in the cellar. He had, in fact, taken and developed the photographs himself, just as he had so readily posed them. “Do you know anything about Herb’s early background?”

“Of course I do. When we were dating, we had very long talks and he told me everything. That’s one of the reasons why we never became too involved in—doing those things.”

“I’d like to hear.”

“Would it help him?”

“It might.”

She took a deep breath and spoke in a rush of tumbling words. “His mother was a wanton woman. Oh, there’s no doubt about that. She was what you call promiscuous. She had a great many men in her life after her husband left, and she did things with them, if you know what I mean?”

“I can imagine,” Lark replied. He didn’t really want to hear this sad recitation, but knew he must. It seemed as if all of his recent life was filled with things he didn’t want to do or hear.

“She often had men live in, and she made Herb call them uncles. It wasn’t really a house, they lived in motel rooms with tiny kitchens on one of those highways near Hartford. There was no place for Herb to sleep except on a sleeping bag at the foot of the bed. And every night he could hear them do it. He heard them. Night after night he heard his mother moaning and he was afraid she was being hurt.” She began to bustle around the room straightening furniture that hadn’t been moved. “It was when they drank liquor that most of the horrible things happened. She would make Herb take off his little pajamas and stand naked in front of them with his little—his little—his small—”

“Penis,” Lark said.

“With his penis exposed. And they would laugh at him, and his mother would flip it and make funny remarks to the newest uncle. If he cried, she would hit him.”

“Uh huh,” Lark said.

“So, you can see why Herb grew up the way he did and why he hated sex so much. That’s why we hardly did it. We haven’t done it in years, and it doesn’t bother either of us.” She moved a straight chair from one side of the picture window to the other. “And you can see why anything Herb did isn’t really his fault.”

“What happened to his mother?”

“She burned up. It’s fitting, in a way. She must have fallen asleep with a cigarette in some motel and burned up. A man was in the bed with her and they never did find out who he was.”

“How long ago did it happen?”

“A few years, three maybe. Herb didn’t shed a tear. He wouldn’t even go to the funeral. Not that there was much of a service.”

The motel fire was probably a case of arson, Lark thought. He’d let it drop. There was too much to do as it was. “And about the time his mother died is when Herb built the room in the cellar and bought the camper?”

“Yes, I guess it was about then. Maybe his mother’s death made him have the breakdown.”

“Maybe so,” Lark said.

“He didn’t kill those girls, Lieutenant. He couldn’t. He’s too gentle and he hates those sex things.”

“I guess he does,” Lark said.

19

Frank Pemperton, flanked by a female police officer, burst into the house. His smile creased his face as he pumped Lark’s hand. “Son of a gun, you’ve done it! I got word on the APB and the state boys will grab him any minute.”

Lark glanced at his watch. Too much time had elapsed, and with each passing moment the chances were that Herb Harper would be off the main highways and traveling little-used secondary roads—roads that were sparsely patrolled. “I hope so.”

Horse gave the policewoman instructions. “Take Mrs. Harper into the bedroom and see if you can get any more information from her regarding the camper’s description and exactly where her husband might be going. Also, try to pinpoint the exact time he pulled out of here.”

“I’ll try.” She gently steered Rada Harper down the hall.

“Do you have the paper?” Lark asked Pemperton.

“I’ve got it. Let me see the evidence.”

Horse led the way toward the cellar, followed by the chief, a photographer, and three men from the state forensic unit.

Lark paced the living room and finally sat on the edge of the couch and looked at the time again, and then at a road map of the state. “Too much time,” he said aloud.

“We’ll get the bastard,” a state-police corporal standing stiffly in his starched uniform said. “You can’t hide a camper easily, and the state lines are completely blocked. If we don’t grab him today, tomorrow there will be a full barracks search of every road and park in the county. We’ll have him by noon, and that’s a promise.”

“By noon there will be another dead girl,” Lark said as he examined the map again. If Harper went into Litchfield County, which was in the northwestern part of the state, he would have gone up I-91, over to I-84, and somewhere near Waterbury switched onto other roads. The area was pockmarked with parks, private campgrounds, and vacant forest land. Dozens of streams, ponds, and lakes riddled the county. “There isn’t time,” he said.

The policewoman stuck her head around the corner of the hall. “There’s one thing that might help, Lieutenant. The camper has a flat-bottom skiff tied to the roof. The boat’s bottom is a fire-engine red.”

“Thanks. That will help.” He spoke to the trooper. “Give that to your guys.”

“Right.”

Horse came back into the living room. “The chief is down in the cellar just standing there, not moving, just staring at those damn walls. I think he’s in shock.”

“Harper could have another victim by now.”

“I know, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

Lark began to pace. His mind replayed the tapes he had been forced to listen to, while a montage of the grisly items in the basement of this ordinary home flew by with terrifying speed. He wanted to do something. He was a man used to action. The waiting was difficult.

The state trooper sensed his impatience. “No way he can get away, Lieutenant. It’s only a question of when.”

“We don’t have time.” He snapped at Horse. “Come on.”

“Where to?” Horse asked as he climbed into the pickup.

“The Middleburg airport. We’ll have the plane’s radio patched into the state-police band.”

“What plane?”

“The one we’re going to get.”

“I don’t fly.”

“Neither do I. We’ll have a pilot.”

“What I mean is, I don’t go up in airplanes.”

“We’ll see about that.”

The airport’s assistant manager was a benign man with ruffles of white hair skirting the edges of his scalp. He smiled at Lark. “We are not a taxi company, you don’t commandeer airplanes.”

Lark was impatient enough to wonder if it were possible to fly an airplane without formal lessons. He had meant to get a license a number of years ago, but had discovered that it cost too much money. He leaned forward to grab the manager’s shirt front, but Horse’s heavy hand closed over his.

“I have a credit card, Lieutenant. What say we rent and put a voucher in later.”

The Tripacer was a squat aircraft with stubby wings that seemed barely long enough for it to remain airborne. Lark took the right-front seat next to the pilot; and Horse somehow managed to wedge his bulk into the low, narrow rear seat.

The pilot, slowly walking around the exterior of the aircraft, seemed to be fifteen. Rationally, Lark knew this was untrue and took it as a sign of his own age. He didn’t like to age.

The pilot ran his hand along the prop and then drained a small vial of gasoline from the tank and minutely examined its contents. “Come on, already,” Lark yelled. “Get this thing in the air.”

“I’m doing my exterior preflight check.”

“You won’t be able to drive a car more than ten feet without a moving violation if you don’t crank this thing up. Now!”

“I’ve got to check out the aircraft, sir.”

“Now!” Lark ordered, and the young pilot leapt for the cockpit. He began another check of instruments until Lark’s hand closed over his fingers. “Now.”

“How long have you been flying commercially?” Horse asked.

The pilot turned to the rear to face the uncomfortable officer. “You guys are the first since I got my commercial ticket.”

Horse groaned.

“Crank it up,” Lark said.

The small plane shivered and quickly taxied out to the far end of the single concrete runway and did a neat about-face so that it faced into the wind. The RPM gauge began to climb as the young pilot revved the engine. The airplane began to quiver as if anticipating its final dash down the runway and lift-off.

Lark had a map on his knees and was rapidly making circles with a dark Magic Marker. The Tripacer’s brakes were released and it moved down the runway and lifted into the air. It struck a patch of turbulence at the far end of the airport and canted to the side for a moment until the pilot realigned its flight path. He pushed it to maximum RPM for a slow climb.

“Where to?” the pilot said into his microphone.

Lark gave him a compass reading for a NNW trajectory and sat back to study the map some more. He still thought Harper would take to the back roads after Waterbury. The camper would be parked near fishing water, but that could be a narrow trout stream hidden from the air by heavy foliage or one of the larger lakes in the area.

Certain of the lakes in the thousand-square-mile area they would be searching were part of the watershed for the Hartford area. This meant that they were closed to recreational use, and many were fenced in. He made large X’s on the lakes. If Harper were headed toward an isolated recreational area, that meant his victim was already in hand. A young woman was either riding in the seat next to him, or was already imprisoned in the sound chamber in the rear of the camper.

There wasn’t any time.

The photographs and other grisly items Lark had seen in the Harper basement revealed that the sessions with the young women were protracted and were hours long. He would be starting soon.

Lark drew vertical lines connected at the state border and shoved the map at the pilot. “Fly this pattern,” he instructed. “When we spot a camper, go in low. Got it?”

“Sure, but there’s going to be one hell of a lot of those up here at this time of year.”

“This one has a skiff tied on the top deck,” Horse yelled over the engines. “A red-bottomed job.”

“That should help.”

It should have helped, but it didn’t. They flew Lark’s route for two hours, often diving to tree-top level when they spotted a moving camper or one parked in the woods or at a campsite. They didn’t find any with a red boat lashed to the roof.

“We’ve got another fifteen minutes before I have to turn back,” the pilot said. “The range on this baby isn’t like a Seven-four-seven, you know.”

Lark continued sweeping the ground below with his binoculars.

It was a few minutes later when the pilot tapped Lark on the shoulder. “We’re heading back to the airport. I’ve only got a few minutes’ gas left and I don’t like to bring her in with bone-dry tanks.”

“We stay here,” Lark said without stopping his visual sweep. “We have a change of tactics. We skip the regular campgrounds and ignore any campers on the road. We’re only going to check those parked alone in isolated areas.”

“You don’t understand, Lieutenant. We have to return now.” The pilot put the plane into a low bank that turned it onto a southerly heading.

“Get back on my course before I break your arm,” Lark said.

The pilot turned in his seat in order to face Horse. “Will you tell this guy that we’re running out of gas—G-A-S—and that by the time we get home, refuel, and get back in the air, it will be too dark to see anything. We can come back up here first light tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s too late,” Lark said. “Keep flying.”

“Where am I going to land?”

“A golf course, a meadow, a road. It really doesn’t make any difference.”

“The hell you say.” The plane banked again.

“Tell him I mean it, Horse.”

“He means it,” Horse said. “Man, does he mean it.”

It was on their second pass over Loon Lake when Horse, who had relieved Lark with the binoculars, spotted a sliver of red in the water. “I think I see the boat.”

Lark motioned to the pilot to go in low over the water. The plane dived to treetop level and made an east-to-west pass over the lake. A small, bluntended boat was tied to a tree branch protruding from the water near the shore.

“That boat’s green,” the pilot yelled. “I thought you guys were looking for a red one?”

Lark didn’t answer as he reached for the binoculars. The tree surrounding the small lake came down to the water’s edge. No prepared campsites were visible, and the area seemed deserted. The only access to the lake was by a narrow, overgrown logging road that wound for two miles from a minor highway. No camper was in sight.

He trained the glasses on the small boat tied to the tree branch. The interior was green, but he could see a strip of red along the waterline. Its sides and bottom could be red.

“We gotta go,” the pilot said as he gazed in despair at the fuel indicators.

“I want another pass at water level. I think there might be a camper in the trees.”

“This isn’t a float plane, Lieutenant. If I misjudge my distance, we go into the drink.”

“Take it down,” Lark said.

The plane banked steeply and approached Loon Lake from the south. Once over the water, the pilot flew at an altitude only a few feet from the lake’s surface. A covey of ducks quacked in alarm and flapped across the lake out of reach of their prop wash.

“There’s something in the trees up there,” Horse yelled.

“It’s a goddamn camper,” Lark said.

The camper was parked a dozen feet from the lake’s edge under a heavy canopy of trees. A man exited the door at the sound of the approaching plane and shaded his eyes as he looked toward them. He stood in the shadows of the trees and they couldn’t make out his features as the plane climbed in a steep upward angle of attack in order to pull over the treeline.

“Is it him? Could you tell?” Lark yelled.

“I’m not sure,” Horse replied.

“Do it again,” Lark ordered the pilot.

The pilot shook his head. “We’re not going to make many more of these before we go down.”

“Just do it.”

They were halfway across the lake on the final run when they saw the camper pull out of the woods onto the winding logging road. The skiff still floated placidly at its anchorage.

“It’s him,” Lark said. “He knows we’re after him. He’s left his boat and is driving away.”

Horse put his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “Follow him and keep him in sight until we get the state police on the radio.”

“We’re not following anything for more than another two minutes. We are dry.”

Below them, the camper was twisting its way down the logging road. Lark knew that once they pulled away and sought a safe landing spot, the camper would make it to the highway, travel a few miles in either direction, and pull into a deep cove of trees. It might be days until they found it again, and by that time Harper would be gone and his newest dead.

“Land in front of him,” Lark said. “The road’s too narrow for him to turn that thing around and it will be a bitch for him to go far in reverse.”

“I can’t land down there.” The pilot pointed. “Look at that thing. It’s hardly a road at all. It’s a wide trail.”

“Land,” Lark said, simply.

“No way.” The pilot put the plane into a steep bank to change heading. Below them the camper was hidden by tree shadows as it continued its rapid way toward the highway.

Lark pulled the Python from its holster. He laid the barrel against the pilot’s head. “Land on the road.”

“You don’t frighten me. You shoot me and we all go down.”

Lark fired.

The bullet perforated the side window as the gun’s blast rocked the plane. “The next time I shoot your balls off,” Lark said.

The plane banked again and took a heading designed to approach the logging road directly in front of the camper.

The pilot’s jaw clenched as a tiny muscle in his right cheek began to twitch. “We’re not going to make it.” He lowered the flaps once, then again, and the plane seemed to hang in midair over the trees as it followed the meandering dirt trail. “I’m going to try to stall us in.”

The airspeed began to drop and the stall warning device began to beep.

Horse retched in the rear seat.

Lark held the Python across his waist with both hands. He glanced over at the door on his side to make sure he knew how it operated and how he could eject from the plane in the fastest possible time.

They were now below the treeline only feet above the logging road.

The camper hove into view directly in front of them. Herb Harper, in his seat high above the ground, looked at them in horror and slammed on the brakes. The camper slithered sideways into a ditch and stalled out. Harper disappeared from view as he left the driver’s seat.

The plane’s landing gear touched the dirt surface. Ahead, just before the stalled camper, the trees marched to the edge of the road. The pilot fought with the brake pedals, and the plane’s tail jerked back and forth until the right wing broke off at midpoint as it slammed into a towering fir tree. The plane did a half-circle and nosed over, its tail surface pointed nearly straight up.

Lark unlatched his seat belt and fought to open the side door. He heard Horse cursing in a foreign language that he could only assume was Armenian. The pilot was unconscious and slumped over the flight panel.

The two police officers began running up the logging road toward the camper fifty yards away.

The first burst was high and to the right, but the gunner quickly corrected and brought the barrage down to waist level.

Lark threw himself to the ground and rolled into the drainage ditch by the side of the trail.

Horse gave a cry as his service revolver dropped from his fingers. He tumbled into the road.

The bastard had an automatic weapon. A damn machine gun? Lark thought.

Another burst of rounds kicked up dirt at the top of the ditch where Lark lay.

Lark knew he was a dead man. There was no way a man armed with a handgun could do combat with an automatic rifle and hope to survive. If he stood and charged the twenty remaining yards to the camper, he wouldn’t make ten feet before the automatic fire tore him apart. If he stayed where he was, it was only a matter of time until Harper cautiously approached the ditch with the rifle on full automatic ready to cut him down.

He tried to identify the weapon. It wasn’t an Uzi, and it didn’t have the distinctive sound of the M-16, and yet it was familiar.

Another burst. This time high and to the right. The rounds ripped through the foliage and showered him with leaves.

He had heard the shot pattern before when he was in the service. It was an army-issue M-1 carbine. Harper had filed down the sear so that when the trigger was pulled, the whole magazine went off in rapid-fire sequence. This meant that he couldn’t fire single shots, nor aim with any accuracy. There must be an advantage to that, but for the moment he couldn’t think of what it was.

Lark reached over the edge of the ditch and without raising his head fired two carefully spaced shots in the general direction of the camper.

His fire was returned with another magazine burst from the carbine.

He immediately drew himself up on his hands and knees and sprang from the ditch. He ran for the deep cover of the trees lining the road.

He knew that Harper would have to eject the now-empty magazine and insert another, aim, and fire again. It would give him a few seconds to reach cover.

The carbine fired and Lark dived for the protection of a large tree stump. The final rounds from the last burst tore into the top of the stump and showered him with wood splinters.

From his protected position behind the stump he could see the road, the crashed Tripacer, and Horse faceup on the dirt track. One arm moved. The large officer was still alive. There would be no way to reach him to give first aid until he took out Harper.

Lark watched in horror as the young pilot climbed from the crashed plane and wandered dazedly onto the logging trail. He seemed disoriented and held one hand over a bleeding scalp wound. He saw the fallen officer, struggled to find his balance, and rushed over toward the stricken Horse.

“Get down!” Lark screamed. “For God’s sake get—” His warning was cut short by the burst of rapid fire from somewhere near the camper.

The pilot threw up his hands, almost in supplication, as two rounds ripped into his chest and toppled him backward.

Lark catalogued options and advantages: in his favor was the factor that Harper’s rounds were all fired in rapid sequence without control, which meant he had to reload after each burst. To his detriment was the realization that he couldn’t fire any more poorly placed shots at the camper, for his bullets could easily pierce the thin metallic skin of the vehicle and kill Harper’s latest victim, who, he was convinced, was held inside. To his advantage, he had the inchoate feeling that Harper would stay close to the camper in the hope that Lark would reveal himself.

The day was beginning to darken. The whole matter would be complicated at last light.

He examined the terrain to his side. Second-growth timber was interspersed around large glacial boulders and a profusion of heavy underbrush. In the distance, the small lake shimmered under the rays of a low sun. In minutes the sun would fall behind the brim of the hills and last light would follow in minutes.

It was during this time span that he would have to make his final moves.

Prone, Lark slithered to the far side of the stump and fired two carefully spaced shots far to the right of the camper. He knew that he would be wide of the mark, but the intent was to cause return fire. He pulled back behind the stump as the carbine burst walked across the base.

Lark jumped to his feet and ran deeper into the woods on a tangent to the right that would put him in a line moving away from the camper. When he reached a large boulder ten yards from the stump, he threw himself to the ground again.

Harper didn’t fire.

Lark began his encircling movement. As the sun fell behind the distant hills and long shadows filled the space between trees, he worked his way away from the camper. When his distance was such that he felt safe from Harper’s view, he began a long loop to the left. Crouched low, he ran in a loping stride toward the lake. Once, he tripped over a foot-high boulder and fell completely forward, his whole body jarred from the impact of the fall.

His breath began to come in gasps, his thigh muscles ached, and the fingers grasping the Python felt cramped.

He reached the edge of the lake. He was now behind the camper. He exited from the woods on the far side of the logging road and began to make his way carefully up the side of the road toward the hulk of the camper, which he could barely see in the distance.

An engine whined, stalled, and then whined again until it coughed and caught.

Harper was going to try to drive the camper from the ditch, around the crashed plane, and make for the highway.

Rubber slithered on dirt as the large camper’s rear wheels spun in the soft loam.

Lark was now even with the vehicle, and in the gloom of last light he could see Harper’s white face behind the steering wheel as he rocked the machine back and forth in an attempt to dislodge the wheels. The carbine was slung over his shoulder and he evidently felt that Lark was running through the woods toward the highway to obtain help.

Lark left the edge of the woods and took the few steps across the road. Harper, still intent on rocking the camper from the ditch, was bent over the wheel in frantic concentration.

Lark reached through the open window on the driver’s side and placed the barrel of the pistol against Harper’s forehead. “Out and on the ground.”

Harper jerked back in the seat and fumbled for the carbine.

“I wouldn’t,” Lark said. “Out!”

The rifle clattered to the floor and Harper slowly left the camper. “Don’t shoot.” His voice was a whine, different from the one Lark was used to in the small factory clerk’s office.

“Is she still alive?”

“I—I had just started. She’s alive.”

“Facedown in the dirt.” As Harper obeyed, Lark quickly frisked him and then reached back for his handcuffs. They were gone. Somehow in the rush of events they had been torn loose. “On your feet.” Lark stepped back a few steps as Harper rose and pressed back against the grill of the RV.

“Please—please don’t hurt me.”

It was the voice from the tapes. An older man’s voice, dissimilar to the timbre of Harper’s usual voice. Perhaps it was the inflection of someone this man had known or heard long ago. Perhaps a lover of his mother’s whom he had overhead as he slept fitfully at the foot of their bed.

The pilot was dead. Horse was wounded, perhaps fatally, and three dozen young women were dead.

The jury could convict Harper of a capital felony and then a second hearing would have to be held to determine if the death penalty were warranted. Jurors would have to weigh factors that might mitigate the death penalty, or aggravating factors concerning the crimes such as commission in an especially cruel, heinous, and depraved manner. Only then could the death penalty be imposed. There would be two lines of psychiatrists testifying, and Harper’s childhood would be featured.

Lark knew that the last person to die in the state’s electric chair was Joseph Taborsky in 1960.

The gods of vengeance prevailed.

Lark fired once.

20

Frank Pemperton sat a fresh bottle of bourbon on his office desk, examined two water tumblers for cleanliness, and then poured stiff drinks. He raised his glass in toast. “You did it, Tommy. Congratulations.”

Lark scowled into his drink. “We made too many errors. I should have checked the make of Harper’s camper against the master list the first time I saw it. We could have had him then. I should have seen to it that the pilot was protected before I went after the son of a bitch.”

Pemperton sipped the bourbon and then examined its color carefully a moment. “So, you’re not God. If nobody ever made tactical errors, I could run this force with half the men.”

“How’s the girl?”

“Not a scratch on her. The pervert hadn’t begun his games with her, and you probably arrived just in time. She’s giving her statement to Horn right now.”

“I’ll stop in to see her on my way out.” Lark put his glass aside, surprised that he didn’t want any. In fact, he didn’t want a drink at all. He looked up to see his superior officer looking at him quizzically. “You said I’d kill someone one day, Frank.”

Pemperton waved his hand in a gesture to dismiss the conversation. “The man was armed and dangerous. During his attempted arrest he shot one officer and killed a bystander.”

“I didn’t have to kill him. What I’m trying to say is—”

Frank Pemperton stood so abruptly that his swivel chair careened backward against the wall. He stepped around the desk and started for the door. “I don’t want to hear about it. The report will say that you fired in the course of duty and that the use of deadly force was well-justified.”

“You aren’t listening, Chief.”

Pemperton spun to face Lark. “And I don’t intend to. The file is closed. Harper died resisting arrest. You hear?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a bunch of reporters downstairs. The New York Times even sent a stringer. Do you want me to handle it?”

“Thanks.”

Pemperton reached for the door handle. “Is Najankian all right?”

“The bullet traveled up his arm and exited at the rear of his shoulder. He’ll be in a cast for a while, but he’s okay.”

“Glad to hear it,” the chief said as he quickly left the office. “Take a few days off yourself,” he called back from the hallway.

Horse had been furious in the emergency room when they got him to the hospital. He had shaken his good fist at Lark. “You fink! This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been on traffic. The worst I ever got there was a busted ankle from an old lady in an out-of-control Ford.”

Lark had smiled. “You get a paid vacation.”

“No more, Lieutenant. No more of this. When I get back to duty, the only action I want to see is on the corner of Main and First.”

“This is going to hurt,” the orthopedic surgeon had said.

Lark had winced at Horse’s groan.

Lark stood with a sigh. Screw the remaining paperwork. He’d do it tomorrow. He wanted to leave this place and go somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. He’d stop in to see Horn take the girl’s statement. That might give him some excuse for what had transpired.

The girl in the interrogation room sitting across the narrow table from the black police lieutenant was petulant. She kept pushing back a stringy mass of hazel hair that fell over her forehead. She looked deliberately away from the questioning officer.

The stenographer at the steno machine yawned.

Lark stood on the far side of the one-way mirror and looked into the room. The girl shook her head in response to Horn’s latest question.

“What’s the big deal?” she said in a voice skirting the periphery of sarcasm. “The jerk was going to pay me a hunert for a little kinky screwing. You guys didn’t have to come in like the marines.”

“You don’t know how kinky it was going to be,” Horn said in a low voice.

“So, he tied me up. I had that done before. I can handle myself and I coulda used the hunert. You pigs shoulda stayed off my case.”

Lark turned away from the mirror. This was not his moment for gratitude. He left the viewing room and stuck his head inside the door of the interrogation room. “Hey, Horn, take the kid out to Harper’s house and show her his trophy room.” He slammed the door without waiting for an answer and strode from the building.

He had parked the pickup in the police commissioner’s slot and they had towed him. It was decidedly not his day.

There was a dusty VW at the curb with two women in it. He knew who they were.

His daughter, Cathy, stepped out of the small car and held the door open for him. Faby was at the wheel.

“We thought we’d all go for a steak,” his daughter said.

“That would be nice,” Lark said as he got into the car. “I’ll have mine ground up.”

About the Author

Richard Forrest (1932–2005) was an American mystery author. Born in New Jersey, he served in the US Army, wrote plays, and sold insurance before he began writing mystery fiction. His debut, Who Killed Mr. Garland’s Mistress (1974), was an Edgar Award finalist. He remains best known for his ten novels starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth, a husband-and-wife sleuthing team introduced in A Child’s Garden of Death (1975).

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1986 by Richard Forrest

Cover design by Andy Ross

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3796-9

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

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13

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19

20

About the Author

Copyright Page