Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

So far, Eddie hadn’t opened the package, knowing that if he did so before talking to the police, he’d be a coconspirator in a murder. If they didn’t already think of him that way.

But then there was the key to the condo. How reliable was Eddie’s story that the condo’s real owners were in England? The police would wonder soon how the killer got into the condo unit without a key. Or with a key. How many people knew that Eddie had a master key that fit all the units?

That was something else Eddie needed to think on. Sooner or later the police were going to find out about the master key anyway, so would his best move be to hand the key to them and explain what it was? Eddie knew they’d find the key anyway, so why not play it like a card first?

He slid the package down into the shadows of the marble pedestal where the black leather logbook lay. Unless someone for some reason reached way in there and felt around, the package would be safe. It also took the pressure off Eddie. He could think more clearly and calmly about his position. He could always tell the police he’d known nothing about the package, if they happened to find it. Or, if he decided to come clean, he could tell them about Langley and then pretend that he’d just found the package.

Almost certainly, Langley had left the package.

Eddie wasn’t sure about all the details yet, but he knew what he had to do.

When finally the police were finished talking to him they would cut him loose.

Loose but not free.

61

The corpse of Lola Bend yielded information but no surprises. She lay on the bed, where apparently she had been dragged after being left to bleed out in the bathtub. The tub itself, and the bathroom, were fairly clean, considering. The killer had dissected the victim, mostly drained of blood, on the bed. She had the now familiar puppetlike look, her torso, head, and limbs laid out in their anatomically correct positions.

“It almost looks like there was a medical seminar here,” Nift the ME said. He broke into song, providing his own lyrics: “Oh, this bone’s connected to that bone . . .”

If the bastard broke into a dance, Pearl was going to slug him.

Out of deference to the CSU techs, who should show up any minute, no one had touched anything,

“Got a time of death?” Quinn asked Nift.

Nift rubbed his chin. “About ten thirty, but I can be more precise when we talk later.” He looked down at the victim. “Some of the injuries are ante mortem.” He smacked his lips. “He tortured her, probably for a long time, before letting her die. Maybe hours.”

“So what’s the mess on the sink counter?” Renz asked. Quinn followed him into the kitchen. Pearl and Fedderman stayed in the bedroom with Nift and what was left of Lola Bend. Neither of them trusted Nift to be alone with the dead body. Not that it made any difference. He’d shortly be alone with Lola Bend in the morgue, and doing intimate things to her, if the rumors about Nift and his dead women were by all accounts accurate.

Pearl waited so she’d be among the last to leave the apartment. She could swear that Nift had leaned down and whispered something to the corpse. It sounded like, “We’ll never have Paris . . .”

“Place looks brand new but lived in,” Quinn said.

“It’s fully equipped and furnished, according to the brochure,” Pearl said. “If you’re wealthy enough to afford it, you shouldn’t have to go to the trouble of picking out wallpaper.”

Fedderman said, “The rich they are a funny race.”

Quinn, Renz, and the others were standing in the kitchen, staring at the various Bakelite and metal parts scattered on the countertop.

“Looks like he disassembled a Monsieur Cafe,” Pearl said, “and couldn’t put it back together.”

“Sounds like our man,” Fedderman said.

Quinn said, “I can see why he couldn’t get it back together. It looks like it’s manufactured so no one can. But what is it?”

Pearl picked up some of the parts and sniffed at them.

“It’s a very expensive gourmet coffee brewer,” she said. “It presses the beans.”

“Why?” Quinn asked.

Pearl shrugged. “Flavor.” She knew Quinn’s favorite cup of coffee was hot, with cream, and in near proximity to pastry.

“Presses the beans,” Fedderman said slowly and thoughtfully, mulling it over. “Maybe we should test what’s left of that coffee brewer to see if anything other than coffee was pressed in it.”

62

Eddie the doorman waited until the time was right. He’d made a study of the building’s security cameras and knew how to move among them keeping to the blind spots. He stood just so, for only a few seconds, but with his back to the camera that was slowly sweeping across the lobby where the marble podium with the visitor log sat. He stood at the podium and appeared to be checking the logbook. Then, when seconds counted and the slowly rotating camera was turned away, he removed the small, wrapped package he’d stowed in the shadowed space beneath the writing surface.

With smooth, casual motion, he kept the package between himself and the podium as he slid the little rectangular, wrapped box into a side pocket of his uniform jacket.

Squared away again behind the podium, he pretended to scan the logbook idly, sure that within a few seconds he would again be on camera.

An hour later Robert, one of the building’s two other doormen, came on duty and relieved Eddie.

Robert was in his mid-thirties, classically handsome and as well groomed as a film star. He made his rather plain uniform, exactly like Eddie’s, look like a spit-and-polish general’s outfit, complete with epaulets. Though he’d never served anything anywhere, other than restaurant food for a brief stretch, his bearing was military. It was a shame he’d missed the British Empire.

He gave Eddie an appropriate little half salute. “So whadda we got, some excitement here today?” He didn’t talk like a general.

“Woman dead up on the third floor,” Eddie said.

Robert held the street door open for a guy in a wrinkled suit who sure looked like a cop. “The fox that plays her television too loud?” he asked, when the cop was out of earshot.

“No. This one hadn’t closed the deal yet. Too bad. She was kind of a looker. And the sort who flaunted it.”

“You seem to know a lot about her, considering she hadn’t even moved in here.”

Eddie shrugged. “I see them come, I see them go. She looked good from either direction.”

“So what happened?” Robert asked. “She have a heart attack brought on by sexual arousal?”

“Somebody killed her. What I hear, he played with her for quite a while, then he finally killed her.”

“Holy Christ! They know who shot her?”

“She wasn’t shot. The Gremlin got her.”

Robert didn’t seem surprised. “You, uh, see what was left of her?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to look again.”

“Not much bothers me. I seen some shit in Afghanistan. You mind hanging around a few minutes while I take a look?”

“Treat yourself,” Eddie said again. “Just don’t ask me to join you.”

“Back in a jiff,” the general said, and stormed away toward the elevators.

Eddie waited until Robert returned from upstairs. Robert’s face was ashen, and he looked like he might have to vomit. Eddie thought about asking him when he’d served in Afghanistan, then thought better of it.

Eddie gave a quasi-military salute as he left the building, and wasn’t surprised when Robert saluted back.

Eddie followed company rules and didn’t wear his red jacket with its decorative brass nameplate when he was away from work. They didn’t want him looking like a commoner dressed up for some kind of TV commercial. He carried the neatly folded jacket over his right arm, careful to keep the wrapped package where it couldn’t be seen and wouldn’t fall out.