Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

He couldn’t leave the farm, and nothing would compel Jasmine to stay in a house haunted by her mother. A family had been destroyed by death. Luther knew what quiet horror would haunt his final days, and perhaps his eternity,

He hesitated, seemed about to say something more to Jordan, then lowered his head and turned away.

“See you come sunrise,” he said.

Jordan didn’t answer. Luther didn’t look back.

The eleven o’clock American Eagle sounded its lonely trailing wail. Jordan thought it was like a wolf howl, carried on the wind.

He and Jasmine each carried a duffel bag just large enough for a change of clothes and some personal items. Jasmine had stood frozen in her bedroom before leaving, knowing it was the last time she’d see so many things, keepsakes, pictures, her mussed and longtime bed with its sheet dragging the floor.

Jordan had warned her: there was no way to move on without leaving the past behind.

Wasn’t that the truth?

The Eagle wailed again. Jordan knew it would be audible back at the farmhouse, but not loud enough to wake anyone. Especially if they were used to it, as was Luther Farr.

The mournful sound of the train whistle signaled that it would soon be part of the past, and the past would be fixed in time and place.

Carrying their bags slung over their shoulders, Jordan and Jasmine jogged so their course would cross that of the train tracks. But they wouldn’t cross the rails. They would stop at them, then wait.

Seconds became minutes, then the Eagle came at them at an angle out of the east. It started small and then grew slowly, coming at them faster and faster. They watched in the moonlight as boxcar after boxcar, most of them empty and with opened doors on each side, clanged and clattered past.

As they’d agreed, approaching the train from the side at a forty-five-degree angle, Jordan hung back so he could run alongside. Then he quickly mounted a small side ladder near the front of a boxcar’s open door. In the same smooth motion, he tossed his duffel bag in, then pulled himself up and around and into the boxcar.

He swiveled so he was on his hands and knees, looking ahead for Jasmine. For a moment a voice in his mind told him she wasn’t coming with him. What was a promise from a girl so young? To a boy not much older?

He edged closer where he was kneeling at the open boxcar door, and there she was.

Jordan watched fascinated as she followed his instructions perfectly. First she hung on to the ladder of the moving car and with her free hand tossed her duffel bag up through the gaping side door. Then she gripped the small steel ladder built into the side of the car. Made her way along the side of the bouncing, clanging car, to the open door. As Jordan had taught her, she grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands and swung out and then inside the boxcar,

But only halfway.

Her heart took flight like a startled bird, then Jordan’s strong hand closed around her wrist. He pulled, pulled, her shins sliding and banging painfully against the floor’s edge.

Then she was in!

They lay together on the boxcar’s rough plank floor, the train jouncing and squealing and very gradually building up speed. Fresh air streamed in through the open doors, along with the smell of the worked earth.

The train held its speed and the ride became smoother, the boxcar swaying in a gentle, rocking rhythm. The steel wheels began a steady ticking sound. The night breeze—or was it the moonlight?—played over them. Jordan and Jasmine were out in the endless fields and prairies, their dreams intact.

A man’s voice from the dark shadows at the far end of the boxcar said, “I was glad to see you both made it.”

41

New York, the present

Renz, seated behind his airport-size desk in his office, handed a photograph to Quinn. He had leaned so far over the desk, so he could reach Quinn’s outstretched hand, that Renz’s purple tie dragged and got defaced by what looked like eraser crumbs. Or were they pastry crumbs?

Whatever they were, Renz saw Quinn staring at them and deftly brushed them off and onto the floor behind the desk.

Quinn concentrated on the photo. It was in black and white, and grainy.

“It’s a still from a security camera,” Renz said. “From four nights ago, ten thirty-five p.m. Outside the Devlin Building over on Twelfth Street. The guys who run the coffee shop inside have been bitching about drug deals going down in the passageway. That’s also where a big Dumpster sits, gets emptied every two weeks.”

“So what makes them think this isn’t a drug deal? Or some scroungers looking for a late meal?”

“Look closer at it.”

Quinn moved slightly sideways so a better light would show on the photo.

“That was the best the tech guys could do,” Renz said.

Quinn was looking at a slight figure, maybe a woman, turning and running away from what looked like a Dumpster. She was clutching something white in her (or his) hand, and looking back, as if to make sure no one was following. The camera angle was from approximately ten feet above the subject and at a sharp angle, so her face was barely visible. She was wearing a baseball cap, either blue or black, with the bill pulled down low so her features would be obscured. It did appear that the subject was glancing back.

Renz handed Quinn a magnifying glass. Quinn held the photo at the same angle to the sun and observed through the curved lens.

“That white object the character has in his or her hand looks like a foam takeout box from a restaurant,” Quill said.

“Yeah, but look at the ear.”

Quinn did. The subject’s right ear seemed to protrude at a sharp angle from his head, and might very well be pointed. If it wasn’t simply a shadow. Or an errant lock of hair.

Quinn said, “I don’t know, Harley. Times are tough. This looks like somebody snapped a photo of a Dumpster-diver scouting around for dinner.”

“Or it could be our Gremlin on the run. Taking meals whenever and however possible.”

“With another killer with him? A copycat? Who’d want to be mixed up with a guy who slices and dices people?”

“Somebody who doesn’t know what he’s bumming around with. The worst of these sickos can seem the nicest and least dangerous. That’s their cover, how they camouflage themselves.”

“The public seen this photo?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. The morning news,” Renz said. “Thanks to Minnie Miner ASAP.”

“That would figure. Minnie can’t stay away from murder cases. They make such compelling news.”

“Well, you can’t blame her for turning death into entertainment. That’s her job. At least we know where she stands.”

With a foot on your balls, Quinn thought, but didn’t say.

The Gremlin put down his coffee cup in disgust. He was on the balcony of his apartment, where he often took breakfast. He didn’t feel his best this morning, so it was coffee and orange juice only. No cream, no fat. He had to stay in shape. Small but mighty, he thought.

He laid the paper out flat and studied the photograph close up. Then he leaned back, satisfied. There was no way anyone could make a positive identification based on the grainy security camera still.

So what was going on? Or was it really only some good citizen who wanted his name in the papers and talked himself into thinking that the small person in the photograph was the Gremlin? And that the Gremlin was Jordan.

The more the Gremlin thought about it, the less likely anything representing a threat, or a plan, had been in evidence. He had simply parked half a block down from the restaurant and then carried his three large black bags from his car’s trunk to the passageway. Quickly he’d lifted the lid of the Dumpster and tossed inside the black plastic bags, listening to them land softly on trash that had built up for the past two weeks and now had a familiar, sickening stench when the lid was raised. That was good, because when the Dumpster was lifted and emptied in the truck, what was on top would be on the bottom, and least likely to be found.