On Thursday, he packed his equipment into the trunk of his car and wore a loose-fitting tweed sport coat with voluminous pockets. He checked to make sure Lewis was in, then drove to the supermarket, parked his car in the busy lot, and called her from a pay phone.
“Jeannie Lewis,” she said. Her voice was pleasantly cool.
“Yes, Ms. Lewis?” said the maddog, pronouncing it “miz.” His heart was thumping against his ribs. “I ran into you in the clerk of court’s office a month ago. We were talking about houses in the lakes area?”
There was a moment’s hesitation at the other end of the line and the maddog was afraid she had forgotten him. Then she said, “Oh . . . yes, I think I remember. We went down in the elevator together?”
“Yes, that’s me. Listen, to make a long story short, I was cruising the neighborhood down here, looking, and I had car trouble. So I pulled into a gas station and they said it would be a couple hours, they’ve got to put in a water pump. Anyway, I went out to walk around and I found a very interesting house.”
He glanced at the paper in his hand, with the address, and gave it to her. “I wonder if we might set up a time to look at it?”
“Are you still at that Standard station?”
“I’m at a phone booth across the street.”
“I’m not doing anything right now and I’m only five minutes away. I could stop at the other realtor’s, they’re only two minutes from here, pick up the key, and come and get you.”
“Well, I don’t want to inconvenience you . . .”
“No, no problem. I know that house. It’s very well-kept. I’m surprised it hasn’t gone yet.”
“Well . . .”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
It took fifteen. He went into the supermarket, bought an ice-cream bar, sat on a bus bench next to the phone booth, and licked the ice cream. When Lewis arrived, driving a brown station wagon, she recognized him at once. He could see her teeth as she smiled at him through the tinted windshield.
“How are you?” she asked as she popped open the passenger-side door. “You’re the attorney. I remembered as soon as I saw your face.”
“Yes. I really appreciate this. Have I introduced myself? I’m Louis Vullion.” The maddog killer pronounced it “Loo-ee Vul-yoan,” though his parents had called him “Loo-is Vul-yun,” to rhyme with “onion.”
“Glad to meet you.” And she seemed to be.
The drive to the house took three minutes, the woman pointing out the advantages of the neighborhood. The lakes close enough that he could jog down at night. Far enough away that he wouldn’t be bothered by traffic. Schools close enough to enhance the resale value of the house, should he ever wish to sell it. Not so close that kids would be a problem. Enough stability in the housing that neighbors knew each other and strangers in the neighborhood would be noticed.
“The crime rate around here is quite low compared to other neighborhoods in the city,” she said. Just then a jet roared low overhead, going in for a landing at Minneapolis-St. Paul International. She didn’t mention it.
Vullion didn’t mention it either. He listened just enough to nod at the right places. Deeper inside, he was going through his visualization routine. This time, he couldn’t mess it up, as he had with the artist.
Oh, yes, he’d assumed the blame for that one; there was no shirking it. He’d erred and he had been lucky to escape. A one-hundred-thirty-pound woman in good shape could be a formidable opponent. He would not forget that again.
As for Lewis, he couldn’t foul it up. Once he attacked, she had to die, because she’d seen his face, she knew who he was. So he’d practiced, as best he could, in his apartment, hitting a basketball hung from a hook in the bathroom door. Like it was a head.
And now he was ready. He’d tucked a gym sock filled with a large Idaho baking potato into his right jacket pocket. The bulge showed, but not much. It could be anything, an appointment book, a bagel. A Kotex pad, the tape, and a pair of latex surgeon’s gloves were in his left pocket. He would touch nothing that would take a fingerprint until he had the gloves on. He thought about it, rehearsed it in his mind, and said, “Oh, yes?” at the right spots in Lewis’ sales talk.
And as they drove, he felt his awareness expanding; realized, with a tiny touch of distaste, that she probably smoked. There was the slightest odor of nicotine about her.
When they pulled into the driveway, his stomach began to clutch just as it had with the artist and the others. “Nice place from the outside, anyway,” he said.
“Wait’ll you see inside. They’ve done a beautiful treatment of the bathrooms.”
She led the way to the front door, which was screened from the street by evergreens. The key opened the door, and they pushed in. The house was fully furnished, but the front room had the too-orderly feeling of long-prepared-for absence. The air was still and slightly musty.
“You want to wander around a minute?” Lewis looked up at him.
“Sure.” He glanced at the kitchen, strolled through the front room, walked up three stairs to the bedroom level, looked in each room. When he came back down, she was clutching her purse strap in front of her, examining with some interest a crystal lamp on the fireplace mantel.
“How much are they asking?”
“A hundred and five.”
He nodded and glanced toward the basement door at the edge of the kitchen.
“Is that the basement?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
When she turned toward the door, he took the sock out of his pocket. She took another step toward the basement door. Swinging the sock like a mace, he slammed the Idaho baker into the back of her head, just above her left ear.
The blow knocked her off her feet and Vullion dropped on her back and slammed her again. This one was not like the bitch artist. She was an office worker with no strength in her arms. She moaned once, dazed, and he grabbed the hair on the crown of her head and wrenched her head straight back and shoved in the Kotex. He pulled on his gloves, took the tape from his side pocket, and quickly wrapped her head. As she finally began to struggle against him, he rolled her over, crossed her wrists, and taped them. She was beginning to recover, her eyes half-open now, and he dragged her up the stairs into the first bedroom and threw her on the bed. He taped her arms first, to the headboard, then her legs, apart, to the corner posts of the bed.
He was breathing hard but he could feel the erection pounding at his groin, the excitement building in his throat.
He stepped back and looked down at her. The knife, he thought. Hope there’s a good one. He went down to look in the kitchen.
On the bed behind him, Jeannie Lewis moaned.
CHAPTER
4
The Twin Cities’ horse track looks like a Greyhound bus station designed by a pastry chef. The fat cop, no architecture critic, liked it. He sat in the sun with a slice of pepperoni pizza in his lap, a Diet Pepsi in one hand and a portable radio in the other. He took the call on the portable just before the second race.
“Right now?”
“Right now.” Even with the interference, the voice was unmistakable and ragged as a bread knife.
The fat cop looked at the thin one.
“Christ, the fuckin’ chief. On the radio.”
“His procedure is fucked.” The thin cop was eating the last of a hot dog and had dribbled relish down the front of his sport coat. He brushed at it with an undersize napkin.
“He wants Davenport,” said the fat one.
“Something must have happened,” said the thin one. They were outside, on the deck. Lucas was on the blacktopped patio below, two sections over. He lazily sprawled over a wooden bench directly in front of the tote board and thirty feet from the dark soil of the track. A pretty woman in cowboy boots sat at the other end of the bench drinking beer from a plastic cup. The two cops went up the aisle to the top of the grandstand, down the staircase, and pushed through a small crowd at the base of the steps.