Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 55

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Instead of running, the boy sighed and said, “All I’ve got on me is ten dollars.” He pulled his brown leather wallet out of a hip pocket and flipped it open, showing Jordan that it was empty except for a single ten-dollar bill. Jordan held out a hand and was given the bill. It seemed so easy, he thought he should do more of this. “Give me the entire wallet,” he said. “I’ll give it back. I just want to make sure there are no secret pockets.”

Decision time. The kid looked as if he might bolt, but instead complied.

Thumbing through the wallet, Jordan found no more money.

He discovered nothing more of value. The usual junk. A driver’s license revealed that the kid was Samuel Pace, and he was nineteen years old. The clothes . . . the cheap wallet . . . Sam didn’t figure to be the scion of a wealthy family.

On the other hand, the trendy clothes suggested the family probably wasn’t poor.

A plastic charge card didn’t interest Jordan; he knew that once reported stolen it would be a trap. There was another card in the wallet. Two cards, actually, in a little envelope that had the name of a hotel and a room number on it. Inside the envelope were two key cards for the nearby Adam Park hotel, room 333. There was a photo in the wallet, too, pressed in plastic—an attractive young blond girl seated in a wooden swing and smiling. “This your girlfriend?” Jordan asked. Pocketing one of the hotel key cards. Probably the kid would think he misplaced it, or that he was given only one key card when he checked in.

“She is my girlfriend.”

“She here with you?”

“No. Yes. Coming in tomorrow.”

An obvious lie.

“I bet her name is Cherry,” Jordan said.

Samuel Pace looked slightly confused, not knowing if Jordan had just insulted his girlfriend. “Her name is Eleanor,” he said.

A tugboat chugged upriver, its air horn blasting a low, mournful note. Samuel Pace glanced at it with brief hope in his eyes. No one was on the boat’s deck. No one to look back at him.

Jordan said, “What size shoe do you wear?

Samuel blinked at him. “’Bout an eleven.”

Jordan shook his head in disappointment. The boots were too large for his feet, even if he stuffed something in the toes.

“I ain’t got any money in my boots,” Samuel said, getting the wrong idea.

Jordan smiled. “I’m gonna believe you.” He knew that he could, or Samuel wouldn’t have brought up the subject.

He handed the wallet back to the boy, keeping only the ten-dollar bill and the photograph, which he slid into his shirt pocket. He didn’t count the hotel key card as loot; plucking it out of its tiny envelope when the kid’s head was turned had been almost automatic. It was one of Jordan’s cardinal rules, not passing up a chance to use somebody else’s charge or key card.

“I know where you live,” Jordan said. “And I can find out about Eleanor. Neither of you know where I live.”

He took a careful up-and-down look at Samuel. He was skinny, but also tall. Probably close to six feet. Nothing he was wearing would fit Jordan. Everything would drape on him, making him look even smaller than he was. Lost in his clothes, as his mother used to tell him. His late mother. His father hadn’t minded his diminutive stature. It made Jordan easier to control.

“You seem not to believe I think of that ten dollars as a loan,” Jordan said.

Samuel stared at him, still afraid, but curious.

“You be here this time tomorrow and I’ll pay you back, with interest,” Jordan lied. “You believe me?”

“If you want me to.”

Jordan smiled. “I’m not sure I know exactly what that means, but yeah, I want you to. I told you it was a loan. I don’t lie.”

Samuel was in no position to contradict Jordan. He simply stood with a stupid half grin on his face.

Jordan stuck out his right hand. “I’ll bring the photograph, too. The one of Eleanor.”

Samuel thanked him because he couldn’t think to say or do anything else.

“See you tomorrow,” Jordan said. He shook Samuel’s sweaty, trembling hand with its slender fingers.

As an afterthought he added, “I know a famous glamour photographer who’d love to shoot Eleanor. Maybe I’ll bring her, too. He might wanna shoot both of you.”

Thinking, always leave them confused.

Jordan had noted on the Missouri driver’s license that Samuel’s address was here in the city, though he was staying at a hotel. He was most likely here for an assignation with Eleanor. One that he didn’t want anyone else to know about.

Or tell anyone else about.

Samuel was smart to be so suspicious, Jordan thought.

He walked off in the direction of Jasmine.

Later that day

Lying in the cool air-conditioning with his eyes closed, Jordan thought about his master plan. The plan that would play out as tragedy so vast it would be pondered and admired for generations.

The witnessing of what the famous architect and engineer Ethan Ellis had done to a ten-year-old boy ensured Ellis’s cooperation and his silence. He had understood immediately what Jordan wanted.

And why, like Jordan, he had long ago made his choice of evils, and it had enveloped him like a shroud.

PART FOUR

A righteous man regardeth the life of

    his beast;

but the tender mercies of the wicked

    are cruel.

—PROVERBS 12:10

67

New York, the present

Minnie Miner was not so much amenable as eager to be part of the plan. Quinn decided Helen the profiler would be best for the opening gambit, the softening up. Helen was skilled at turning unease into fear, fear into horror, horror into mindless panic.

“My vote for someone to explain these gruesome murders goes to a woman who knows all about the people who might perpetrate them,” Minnie said with all sincerity to camera 2’s red light. “I give you police profiler, psychologist, and author Helen Iman.”

Helen, all six feet plus of her, strolled out onto the set. Despite Helen’s towering height advantage, Minnie matched her presence with pure energy. Fireball meets lackadaisical.

Applause was enthusiastic. Minnie made a welcoming motion with her right arm, and Helen sat down in one of the wing chairs angled at forty-five degrees so they both faced the low coffee table. She was wearing a red dress with a low neckline, and a high hemline that showed off her almost impossibly long legs.

Minnie sat in the other chair, on the very edge of the seat cushion, and smiled while the audience applauded. She waited, waited . . .

When the applause began to flag, she heaped more praise on Helen: “This woman has a sixth sense when it comes to getting inside the heads of the bad guys.” Minnie laughed. “And she knows a lot more than anyone else I know about weaponry, villains, law enforcement, and serial killers.” She turned her attention away from the audience and faced Helen. “And one interesting thing I’ve heard you say in the past, Helen, is that such killers are like ticking time bombs. At a certain point they very much want to get caught and stopped. That happens when their murders make it begin to seem like they’re the ones dying a little at a time with each death they cause, each life they stop. Killing does that to the murderer, male or female.”

Helen looked beyond Minnie and spoke to the studio audience.

“Have you ever eaten something you thought was delicious, knowing it wasn’t good for you?”

She pretended to count members of the audience, observing the various heads nodding yes, yes, they knew the satisfaction of stuffing food into their mouths to the point of gluttony. And Helen knew it. They had that in common, being human beings. But Minnie wasn’t any kind of criminal. So how could she know the cost of disregarding the lengthening shadows? The ticking bomb? Her background surely precluded that.

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