Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 18

She gave a little gasp. "No! I'm going upstairs now. I have nothing more to say to you. Good day."

Indignation. Outrage.

But she still didn't quite meet his eyes.

21.

KARL GOT OFFthe bus at Calhoun Square in a trendy area of Minneapolis known as Uptown even though it was actually south of downtown. The neighborhood was full of nicely redone older homes, lovely yards, and established trees on the boulevard. It was an area of young upwardly mobile families, upwardly mobile gay couples, comfortably well-off retirees.

There weren't a lot of people looking the way Karl was looking, but he planned to remedy that quickly.

He went into the Calhoun Square shopping mall, a collection of boutiques and restaurants tucked into an old brick building that had been converted from blue-collar beginnings. A bored girl at a kiosk on the first floor watched him approach, with a mix of disgust and trepidation. As he neared her, Karl thought she might run, but he held out a twenty-dollar bill and told her he needed a cap.

She eyed the twenty, and her greed got the better of her. She sold him a plain khaki ball cap and offered back no change.

As he went toward the men's room, Karl looked over his shoulder and saw her stick the bill in her purse. The dishonesty of people in general made him shake his head.

He took the cap and went into the men's room to discard the ragman's hair and knit cap.

Because it was early, he had the place to himself, and decided he would take the opportunity to wash his face and head.

Removal of the cap was a painful process. The wool had knitted into the b.l.o.o.d.y head wound he'd gotten when Snake was pounding him into the cell bars. As he peeled the cap away bit by bit, the wound opened in several places and began to bleed again. He stared at himself in the mirror, thinking he looked like something out of a horror movie, a red-eyed demon up from h.e.l.l. His lip was throbbing something fierce. Grotesquely swollen and red, it reminded him in a way of the folds of tender flesh between a woman's legs.

For the briefest of moments, he imagined he could smell the musky scent of a woman who was ready for s.e.x. He enjoyed that moment. Then he pulled his bridge out of his pants pocket, rinsed it off in the sink, and put it back in his mouth. There probably weren't many people in this part of town who went around without teeth.

The ball cap went on with the sungla.s.ses.

He neatly rolled the sleeves of his shirt halfway up his forearms. There wasn't anything he could do about the filthy pants except roll the cuffs up. He took off his shoes and socks, threw the socks in the trash, and put the shoes back on. This would do for the moment.

Pulling the brim of the ball cap down low, he exited the bathroom, the building, and walked away into the neighborhood. Hands in his pockets, he strolled down the sidewalk like a man without a care in the world. Maybe he was just walking home from Starbucks. Maybe he'd been doing yard work, and that was why his pants were dirty.

As he walked, Karl scoped out the houses on this side of the block. Bikes on the front porch meant more than one person in the household. A couple or a family. He looked for the smaller homes--single story, or story and a half. The ones with large flower beds, now dead from the cold, told him perhaps the people, or person, who lived there had a lot of spare time. Older, retired maybe.

A small Cape Cod type of a house caught his eye. Blue with white shutters, and a picket fence around the front yard. A country-crafty wooden welcome sign hung beside the front door: "Grandma Lives Here." Karl turned the corner, then turned again down the alley.

Privacy fences blocked off the view into the backyards of most of the houses. Grandma Lives Here had a fence made of wide vertical cedar planks that had been allowed to weather to a silvery gray.

Karl slipped between that fence and the neighbor's, testing for loose boards as he worked his way to the back of the one-car garage. There were none. There was, however, a window on the side of the house, at the back, which was blocked from view from the street by a big lilac bush.

In the garage, a car started. Karl watched through the lilac bush as a late-model Volvo backed down the driveway. He couldn't make out the driver's face. A woman, he thought, based on her cautious maneuvering as she backed the car out into the street.

Grandma was leaving. Karl wondered if there was a Grandpa still inside. He looked in the side window of the garage and, judging from the absence of power tools, concluded there probably was no man of the house.

The window at the back side of the house had been left open partway to let in the fresh air this lovely fall morning. Winter was coming, and once it hit, no one would open a window for the next five months.

Several large, heavy plant pots with dead plants in them had been parked alongside the garage, between the garage and the privacy fence. Waiting to be cleaned out and put away for the winter. Karl rolled the largest across the narrow s.p.a.ce, tipped it upside down, and used it for a step stool.

A little work with the ragman's steak knife, and Karl was able to peel the screen away enough for him to crawl inside. When he was in, he carefully pulled the screen back down and into place.

He had expected the house to be littered with Grandma stuff--porcelain poodles and old china and fussy furniture with flowered fabric and lace doilies. Instead, the s.p.a.ce looked like something from a decorating magazine, with sage-colored walls and dark, modern furnishings.

In the kitchen Karl found the story of Grandma Lives Here. Her refrigerator was covered with photos of her with other people--friends, family, grandchildren. So many smiling, happy faces.

According to unopened mail on the counter, Grandma's name was Christine Neal.

Christine Neal was in her late fifties, trim and athletic. She ran in marathons. Went on vacations to exotic places. In several photographs, she was as bald as Karl was. A banner at one of her races called for support for a local breast cancer survivors group.

Karl pulled the refrigerator open and helped himself to an orange. It was cold and juicy and refreshing. When he had finished and thrown the peel in the trash, he wiped the handle of the refrigerator with a towel and went in search of a bathroom.

There was only one downstairs, adjacent to what must be Christine Neal's bedroom. White and immaculate, it smelled of lavender.

In the medicine cabinet, he found mint-flavored dental floss, tore a string off for himself, and set to cleaning all the bits out from between his teeth--the orange he had just eaten, the piece of pork chop he had found in the garbage earlier. He took the toothbrush from the holder, helped himself to toothpaste, and brushed his teeth with vigor. He pulled his bridge out of his mouth, brushed it, and re-placed it.

Karl undressed and threw the ragman's filthy clothes down the laundry chute, happy to be rid of them. Carefully, he removed the money taped to his s.c.r.o.t.u.m. Naked, he sat down on the toilet and settled in to have his first bowel movement as a free man. What a pleasant, quiet, private experience.

He picked up a copy ofPeople and leafed through it. He took very little interest in the entertainment world. He rarely looked at television, only knew about movies from the posters at the theaters.

He didn't recognize many stars. The girls all looked young and too skinny, and they dressed like wh.o.r.es. They shouldn't be surprised to be raped and killed, going around like that. The men were unremarkable. Half of them looked like they had dressed at the Goodwill and didn't have sense enough to tuck in their shirts. Most of them needed a haircut and a shave.

So did he, he reminded himself.

The shower was hot and had good water pressure. Karl lathered himself with Olay soap and rinsed off the top layer of grime. Then he lathered himself again, picked Christine Neal's pink razor off the shelf, and began to shave. He started with his head and worked his way down--his face, his chest, his belly. He considered himself lucky not to have a hairy back like a lot of men did, else he would have needed help.

From his belly, he skipped down to his legs, as careful not to nick himself as any woman would be. Then he helped himself to a fresh razor blade and began the very delicate task of shaving his privates. Karl couldn't stand the feeling of hair p.r.i.c.kling out of him. It made him feel unclean.

He stroked his p.e.n.i.s and made himself hard, making the shaving of his s.c.r.o.t.u.m easier.

A woman's scream broke his concentration.

Christine Neal stood in the bathroom doorway, frozen in shock. Her eyes locked with Karl's for the briefest moment; then she bolted.

Karl leapt out of the shower, slipped on the wet tile, but managed not to fall. He sprinted down the hall and tackled Christine Neal from behind as she reached for the phone on the kitchen counter. The handset tumbled to the floor.

She was a strong, athletic woman, and she twisted, and arched her back, and kicked and scratched at him. They struggled on the floor, Christine Neal grunting and trying to scream and choking on her own breath. Her hand swung wildly along the floor and managed to grab the phone again.

Karl lunged to get the thing away from her, rolling partly off her to get it. Christine Neal scrambled desperately to get her feet under her. Before she could take a step, Karl grabbed her by the ankle, and she fell once more. She was sobbing now, hysterical, trying to call out for help.

She twisted onto her side and tried to drag herself out of his reach, tried once more to pull a knee up under herself.

Karl reached out and grabbed her by the hair, but the hair came off in his hand, a wig. He chucked it aside and straddled her waist.

She was on her back now. His hands were around her throat, squeezing. She hit at him with her fists, tried to arch her body up beneath him to get him off. She tried to scream. The scream died under his thumbs.

Karl squeezed harder. Christine Neal was beginning to turn blue from lack of oxygen. Her tongue came out of her mouth, swollen and purple. Her eyes were bulging.

Karl fixed on her eyes, on the emotion in them. Sheer animal terror. He thought it must be horrible to die this way, looking into the face of your killer and finding no compa.s.sion, no sympathy. In his case, he imagined she didn't see anything at all.

This wasn't personal. He had no anger toward this woman, no real desire to kill her. But he couldn't have her calling the police. He was flying below the radar now. No one had any idea where he was. He was free to move about the city as he wanted. And he had plans. He couldn't let Christine Neal have an opportunity to ruin those plans. It simply wasn't practical to let her live.

The swinging of her arms became weaker and weaker, until she was doing nothing but slapping her hands against the floor . . . then just twitching . . . then nothing.

Karl did not take his hands away from her throat, didn't stop choking her. He didn't want Christine Neal reviving and having a second chance to get away or call for help. He kept squeezing until his hands began to cramp.

When he finally did let go, Karl remained sitting on top of her. Her head fell to one side, mouth hanging open, nothing in her eyes but tiny pinpoint hemorrhages. Christine Neal was gone.

Karl sighed. He rested for a moment, stretched his hands and fingers, rubbed at the aching muscles of his forearms. After a while he got up and dragged her body down the hall and into the bedroom. He removed her clothes and threw them down the laundry chute where he had thrown the ragman's clothes, then went back into the bedroom and shoved Christine Neal's body under her bed, careful to adjust the dust ruffle after.

He wiped down the bathroom with alcohol. Cleaned out the drain traps. Found a bottle of Drano and poured it into both the sink and the tub drains. In the kitchen, he wiped down the telephone handset and placed it back in the cradle. He left no signs of the struggle.

He found the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt, put a load of laundry in the washing machine--the ragman's clothes and Christine Neal's clothes--added detergent and half a bottle of bleach, and started the machine.

Back on the first floor, Karl picked up Christine Neal's blond wig and went back into the bedroom, into the walk-in closet, to dress.

From a drawer of panty hose and knee-high socks, Karl chose a pair of opaque brown tights. He put them on, taking great care not to run them, then tucked his money into the crotch and tucked his privates away as best he could. Then he chose a brown knit calf-length skirt and pulled it on.

From a drawer of underwear, he chose a bra. But it was too tight around his rib cage, digging into him. How women put up with the discomfort was beyond him.

Instead, he found a stretchy, tight-fitting T-shirt and fashioned the illusion of small b.r.e.a.s.t.s with two pairs of athletic socks, each pair rolled into a ball. The tightness of the T-shirt held them in place. A boxy brown cotton sweater went over the T-shirt.

Shoes, he expected, might present a problem. But when he started comparing the length of his foot with the length of Christine Neal's shoes, Karl found that wasn't the case. He selected a pair of low-heeled brown boots and pulled them on. They fit as well as any shoes he'd had.

In the bathroom once more, he set about transforming himself. He had once worked as a stagehand in a playhouse in St. Louis and had watched the actors carefully as they applied the layers of color and shading, creating characters on the bland canvas of their own faces.

He applied foundation, concealed the bruises and shadows, created eyes with brown liner and shadow and dark mascara. With a shade called Dolce Vita, he painted his swollen lower lip and gave himself the appearance of having a fuller upper lip, using a colored pencil.

When he had finished, Karl stood back and studied his masterpiece in the mirror. He stretched Christine Neal's blond wig over his bald head.

Just like that, he had become a woman.

Karla.

No one was on the lookout for a blond woman in a brown skirt and sweater.

His finishing touches were a brown and blue print silk scarf, which he tied around his throat to hide his Adam's apple and the red marks on his own throat where Snake's handcuffs had bitten in the night before, and a pair of large-framed brown tortoisesh.e.l.l sungla.s.ses, the kind President Kennedy's wife had always been photographed in.

Karl went back into the bedroom, bent over, lifted the dust ruffle. Christine Neal's sightless eyes stared at him; her mouth was open, her swollen tongue sticking out at him. She looked like a spare mannequin that had been discarded in the back room of a store, forgotten under other unneeded props and racks.

"Thank you, Ms. Neal," Karl said respectfully. "I'm sure you was a real nice lady."

He put the dust ruffle back in place and walked out, stopping at the coat closet in the hall to choose a brown poncho. In the kitchen, he picked up Christine Neal's handbag and car keys before he let himself out the back door.

The car in her garage was the dark blue Volvo. Nice. Leather seats and all. A car that wouldn't stand out in this part of town. She had kept it real clean too. It smelled like lemons.

Karl backed out of the garage and put the garage door down with the remote. With luck no one would come looking to visit Christine Neal over the weekend. But even if someone did, they would simply find her gone. No Christine, no car, no handbag. She was out. Shopping, maybe, or at a movie. If she worked somewhere, she wouldn't be missed until Monday at the earliest. If she didn't work, it could be days before someone noticed she wasn't around.

Days and days of freedom to use Christine's car, to do what he wanted, to go where he pleased.

He turned down the street and headed out on the next leg of his quest: to find the place that would please him most--the home of his champion, Carey Moore.

22.

"NO USABLE PRINTSon the judge's handbag. At least half a dozen people touched the car. So far none of those prints have come back with a rap sheet," Tippen said.

He paced back and forth at the end of the conference table, tall and thin, with a long caricature of a face, all angles and hollows, craggy brow, bristly salt-and-pepper mustache. He had been a detective with the sheriff's department for years before making the move to work Homicide with the city cops.

As a sheriff's detective, Tippen had first teamed with Kovac and Liska on a multiagency task force to solve the Cremator murders--a killer who had targeted primarily prost.i.tutes, tortured and killed them, then set their bodies on fire in a public park. They had worked well as a team and had become drinking buddies after.

"Judge Moore gets more than her fair share of hate mail." Elwood Knutson, another of the Cremator task force. A man roughly the size of a small brown bear, Elwood was their philosopher in a too-small porkpie hat.

"That's hard to believe," Liska said sarcastically.

Kovac said nothing.

"Her clerk has it separated by degrees: crazy, crazier, and certifiable."

"Threats?" Kovac asked.

"Veiled and not so veiled. Anything she gets that looks legitimately scary goes to the sheriff's detectives." Elwood glanced at Tippen and said, "Really, it's a wonder she wasn't killed a long time ago, considering."

"Don't look at me!" Tippen said. "In case you hadn't noticed, I changed teams."

"Then why hasn't the quality of their work improved?" Liska asked.

Tippen fired a chocolate-covered coffee bean at her. He had recently acquired an addiction to them, despite the fact that he was the last guy in the department in need of caffeine to wire himself up.