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.”“And I’m thinking about my job.Which I might not have if this case goes sour.This city’s justice system’s gonna go bonkers when it finds out all twelve of the jurors might be targets.Nobody’ll wanna do jury duty.”“Nobody wants to now,” Beam said.“Nobody ever did.”Da Vinci stared across the desk as if Beam were responsible for everything that had happened.“Have you, for Chrissakes, got any good news?”“Lab got six human hairs from the back of Tina Flitt’s car,” Beam said.“We’re waiting now for possible DNA matches.”“That’d be too simple,” da Vinci said, but not without hope in his voice.“Handles on the garrote he made were probably sections of a wooden broom handle.They’re manufactured in China and sold by the tens of thousands.After looping the wire around Tina’s neck, he used the handles to gain leverage so he could twist harder.”“I know the method,” da Vinci said, raising his hand in a motion for Beam not to explain further.“Looks like he got the handles from a broomstick using a fine-toothed saw.”“Also sold by the tens of thousands.Any fingerprints?”“No.He wore gloves again.”“You’re really sure it was our guy?”“I’m trying to make sure,” Beam said, “but we can’t rule out copycat.We can rule out the husband.Portelle did board the plane, and security cameras did record him and his wife inside the terminal at the passenger checkpoint.And according to the time stamp on this tape, the plane was taxiing for takeoff at the time of the murder.”“Is he back in town?”“Flew back from Chicago a few hours ago.Nell and Looper are interviewing him.I talked to Nell.She says he’s an emotional mess.”The desk phone rang.Da Vinci picked it up, then said, “Put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and dropped it below chin level.“It’s the commissioner.Anything more?”“No You want me to leave the security tape?”Da Vinci shook his head no.“Put it in the murder file.”As Beam was removing the tape from the machine and leaving the office, he heard da Vinci behind him: “Yes, sir.How are you, sir?”Practicing the politics of the case.The Justice Killer had ordered lunch at Admiral Nelson’s, a new restaurant in lower Manhattan with an improbable sailing ship theme, and was seated in a booth resembling a cutaway lifeboat, waiting for his food to arrive.He sipped his gin martini and wondered what the police laboratory would make of the wire he’d used to kill Tina Flitt.He’d seen it protruding from an old lamp shade at an outdoor flea market in SoHo, glinting in the sun.The wire had been part of a beading design at the base of the shade, running its entire circumference.Why the glint of sunlight at the base of the drab yellowed shade had given him the idea, he wasn’t sure.But he realized he’d been considering a different way to kill Tina, a way more…personal than a bullet from ten feet away, or simply fired into her head or the base of her spine from the backseat of her car.After the moment of ice, when she was paralyzed by what was about to happen, he wanted her literally to die at his hands.He wanted to feel her death like a message in the wire.That was it; he wanted to experience the vibrations of her death, and of his vengeance.He sipped his drink.More than vengeance.So he’d bought the old brass and ceramic lamp for twelve dollars, and a block away deposited it in with some trash at the curb, and kept only the shade.It had been easy, that evening, to cut away part of the shade’s fabric and beading and remove the wire.The garrote he’d fashioned had worked more efficiently than he’d anticipated.Too efficiently, perhaps.Tina Flitt had died within seconds, and the wire had been so deeply imbedded in her neck that he hadn’t even attempted to remove it.Still, he’d felt her die, heard her die, even heard the rush of her blood as it spilled from her.It was like nothing so much as sex.He pushed away the thought.Yes, he was enjoying his mission now, but that made it no less a mission.He’d joined the fraternity of serial killers that murdered women for sexual thrall.But it was a fraternity he’d long misunderstood, and one whose members were distinguishable from each other.He had reasons beyond the thrill of the hunt and the primal satisfaction of the kill.He was meting out justice to a system that had failed and was failing and must be changed.And of course he didn’t always kill women.Jurors were his target, not women, though every jury included women.He didn’t fall into the classic serial killer pattern he’d read and heard so much about.He wasn’t like the rest of them.Not at all.He had his reasons to kill, and they were good ones.His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of his food, brought by an attractive young woman wearing some kind of nautical outfit.Her blond hair was chopped short and she wore one gold hoop earring, pirate style.Her top was horizontally striped red and white and had a square, low-cut neckline.As she smiled and bent low to place his dishes on the table, the Justice Killer was aware of a nearby booth full of businessmen observing her generous breasts.He couldn’t stop looking at her neck.25Melanie couldn’t look away.Cold Cat smiled.Or almost smiled.She couldn’t really be sure.He had this way of slightly curling his upper lip so he might be smiling.But whatever message his lips were sending, the look in his eye was for her.It took real force of will for her finally to avert her gaze.Every day in court, since the outburst from the defendant’s mother, Cold Cat and Melanie had made some sort of contact she was sure no one else in the crowded courtroom noticed.And often she’d seen him exchange looks with his mother, who was always present.But they weren’t the same kind of looks.The defense was presenting its case, and slick Bob Murray was standing directly in front of the table where Cold Cat sat, so both men were in the witness’s line of sight.The witness was a man named Merv Clark, whose appearance in court was over the strenuous objection of the prosecution.“Would you tell us where you were at approximately two fifteen on the afternoon of February the sixteenth?” Murray asked politely, as Clark was his witness.“No approximate about it,” Clark said.He was a well-groomed man in his thirties, with puggish features and slicked-back curly blond hair cut short on the sides and neatly parted in the middle.He’d said he was a cook but was presently between jobs.“I was out walking and happened to be passing the Velmont building on East Fifty-second Street.High-class apartments there, uniformed doorman, the whole bit.I know the time for sure because I’d told my wife I’d be back within an hour, and she’s a stickler about that kind of thing.I didn’t wanna be late, so I checked my watch a lot.I was checking it when I looked up and saw him.”“Who was it you saw?” Murray asked.“That man.The defendant.” Clark pointed.“Seen him coming out of the building.”“Let the record show that the Velmont Building is where Mr.Knee High lives.”Melanie sat forward in her chair so she had an unobstructed view of Clark.She was aware of some of the other jurors also leaning forward.Already the testimony of the funny little man Knee High made it unlikely that Cold Cat had the opportunity to murder Edie Piaf.If Merv Clark was telling the truth about seeing Cold Cat on the East Side at quarter past two, he corroborated Knee High’s testimony [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]