You pop the trunk. Exchange your coat for the black hooded raincoat. Climb into it. Again, it’s a new one, the previous one discarded in a dumpster in Dubuque. You take out the fresh pair of kitchen gloves and snug them on. You’re getting used to the feel. The butcher knife you had not needed with Astrid is here for you now.
You shut the trunk and head down the concrete stairs. The world is not just cold but empty and almost silent, just some distant bar noise. You are at Main now. You tuck into the trees of the park-like area adjacent and wait as a couple of cars glide by. Through the trees you have a view on Vinny Vanucchi’s. You hear a door open and a good-night exchange between Jasmine to Tony, clear yet distant in the chill.
You rush across the street.
Along the side wall of Honest John’s Trading Post a wrought-iron stairway with wooden steps rises to the door to the apartment where Jasmine and two other girls live. You know that already. You do your homework.
You rush up the steps, your running shoes making a little noise but not loud, not echoing. At the landing where her apartment door awaits, you tuck yourself into the recession. You wait. Not long.
Because she comes up just as quickly as you had but with no worry about being heard. Her feet are gunshots — she’s in shoes not sneakers — and you count her steps, because you know how many there are. Homework.
And when she reaches the landing, you raise the knife and jump out and bring the blade down.
But without her in front of you, to judge, you only slash the sleeve of her red thermal jacket. There’s enough street light conspiring with a nearly full moon to show you her face as her eyes go so wide they might have fallen from her face, dark brown centers and stark white in an almost as white face, her mouth open in a silent scream.
She reacts quickly and well, you have to hand her that, turning and running down those stairs and by the time she reaches the sidewalk she is screaming. It resonates through the canyon of the facing buildings. You are close behind her but not close enough to strike, though as she runs across the street, she pauses, whether to duck any car that might be coming or to flag one down, only there isn’t any car, and when she starts running again, she stumbles a little.
Then you are right behind her and you bring the knife down once, hard, and it plunges deep, and when you withdraw it, red spurts from the red jacket, as if the jacket itself were bleeding. She goes down, half in the street, half on the sidewalk, and she isn’t dead yet, her motions like a swimmer trying not to drown, her back to you and you are in a way glad, because you loved this girl, and part of you still does as you plunge the blade in another five times, and she stops swimming.
Twenty-Two
The sprawling ultramodern Midwest Medical Center on the outskirts of Galena on Highway 20 West had, a dozen years ago, replaced the much smaller Galena-Stauss Hospital.
For a police chief like Krista, the Medical Center was unquestionably a real boon to the community. But she also found it a little over-the-top, from the lobby’s high vaulted ceiling and indirect lighting to the self-noodling mahogany baby grand and sweeping ceramic-tiled staircase leading to a “family meditation” room. The modern design and mission-style trappings of the overthought facility might have been comforting to her if her mother hadn’t died here.
Not that Mom hadn’t received the best care — Krista herself had recommended the Medical Center to her father and mother over the Dubuque options, in part to be closer to her mom but also because it was so highly regarded.
But she was worried about Pop. Booker Jackson had called and said “no worries, everything’s fine”—her father had been assaulted by two “Chicago goons” (now in custody and jailed) and taken to the ER at the Medical Center. Her first reaction, past the initial alarm, was relief — she knew he’d receive top treatment there.
When she was on her way to the hospital, however, Booker called again to say her father had been treated and admitted to a room for an overnight stay and observation. Which on the face of it was fine. The patient “suites,” as they were called, were the most attractive, spacious hospital rooms Krista had ever seen.
Her mother had died in one.
Krista worried about the psychological impact that might have on Pop. She told herself she was being silly, but then she thought about him sitting in his comfy recliner in the ranch-style on Marion Street with a gun barrel in his mouth.
As she slipped into his room, closing the door behind her, Pop appeared to be sleeping. She was relieved to see he was not on an IV. The “suite” was exactly like the one Mom had been in — all shades of yellow and green with hardwood flooring, a wood-paneled wall behind the sizable hospital bed with its country-style quilt; above the bed a framed Galena landscape, a hot air balloon floating over the town. A lime-colored recliner sat in a corner, a green-and-yellow couch stretched beneath a big window, blinds shut.
She pulled up a hardwood visitor’s chair as quietly as she could and sat beside the bed, her father on his back but his face angled toward her, eyes closed.
“It’s quiet out there,” he said. “Too quiet.”
She laughed softly. “You’re such a cornball.”
He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “You should see the other guys.”
“You don’t look so bad.” She was on her feet now, at his bedside.
“You haven’t seen my ribs.”
She leaned in. “How bad, Pop?”
“Broke one and I was lucky at that. Both those SOBs were kicking me in the sides.”
“I’m so sorry...”
“Don’t apologize for them. Anyway — maybe I deserved getting kicked.”
“Why is that?”
“Going around Chicago, poking into politics and dirty dealings.”
She gestured behind her, toward Galena. “Booker has both of them locked up. He says he’s going to look into this himself.”
“Tell him I have a Chicago police contact for him.”
“Will do. Your friend Barney?”
“My friend Barney.”
“So does this mean you’re on to something?”
His eyebrows went up; even so, his eyes looked barely awake. “You mean, are one or any combination of Alex Cannon, Daniel Rule, and Sonny Salerno involved in these killings? Unlikely. I just got warned not to poke into their business. I doubt your classmate Alex knows anything about it.”
“Might be able to embarrass all of them, though. And those two strong-arms will do some time. Assault charges. Beating up on a Galena cop who came asking questions.”
“Beating up on me? Sounds kind of schoolyard.”
“Well, ‘schoolyard’ is closer to our case. Something ten or more years ago, involving my classmates, sparked these murders, don’t you think?”
“No argument.”
“Even with you getting leaned on, hard, the idea of a professional killer being responsible for the Sue Logan and Astrid Lund homicides, playing psycho as a sort of cover-up?... It’s just too far-fetched.”
“Smart daughter I got.”
“They’re keeping you overnight?”
“Yeah. They took some X-rays. Gonna keep an eye on me. Should be out of here in the morning.”
“Good.”
“Something we haven’t talked about.”
“Oh?”
“Crank this thing up.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Not all the way, just enough.”
She did as she was told. He winced and smiled at her at the same time.
Then he said, “In Chicago, I looked over the complete case file that cop Hastings in Clearwater sent. About the Logan homicide. I’ve been mulling it ever since.”