The Misery Hilton was actually a large, five-story, bunker-like apartment building on Birge Street. Butternut-colored by day, in the freezing dark it looked more like a cubic black hole, blotting out the stars with its mass. The only sign that it wasn’t as inert as the ground beneath it was a perpetual foul odor of human decay. Whenever calls for the police came from here, the men responding made sure they wore boots-preferably washable ones.
There was an ambulance parked outside when I got there, along with a group of unemployed-looking plainclothes state police. I knew before entering that Ski Mask had somehow found his man.
Kunkle was waiting for me on the third-floor landing. He was leaning against the wall, so turned in on himself he barely noticed I was there. I stepped past him into the room beyond.
The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling made the whole scene look like an Edward Hopper nightmare. There were no soft angles, no single place where the eye could rest without offense. The walls were stained, peeling, cracked, and punctured. The toilet in the adjoining cubicle had overflowed so many times that concentric stains spread across the floor like geologic footprints. The single window had long since ceased to hold glass and was badly boarded up with splintered plywood. There was a three-legged armchair oozing stuffing in one corner, a scarred and mangled chest of drawers next to it, and a bare mattress on the floor along the opposite wall. On the mattress-tied down like a specimen on a lab table-lay Lew Hill. His dry eyes were wide open and his teeth bared against a pain long gone.
There wasn’t much blood, just a few small holes where Ski Mask’s thin stiletto had done its work. I went back outside to the landing. Kunkle hadn’t moved.
“Any theories?”
“I fucked up.”
“How do you figure that?”
He looked at me incredulously.
“No, I mean it. So far, one way or the other, he’s whacked Phillips and now Hill-and he sure as hell helped Haffner along. He’s run circles around us from the start, and the only times any of us have even set eyes on the guy was when I was gassed and when you and I were cuffed together. You might as well take the blame for all of it. It would sure as hell make the rest of us feel better, knowing it was all your fault.”
“Fuck off.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You’re a member of the club. Go home to bed; I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
He didn’t move. I went back downstairs and found the head of ththeight=e state police detail. Stan Katz was standing slightly behind him. “So how did he get in?”
“The question should be: ‘How did he get out?’ He was in all along, as near as we can figure. Of course, we were brought in late. It wasn’t our setup.”
“Are you complaining?” He looked at me quietly for a moment. “Are you?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Kunkle laid it out okay. We were watching for comers, not goers. From what I can figure, your guy went straight from this morning’s killing to Hill’s apartment and camped out all day there. I still don’t know how he got out, but this place has a lot of traffic.”
I asked him to send me a copy of his report the next day and returned to my car. I started the engine and kicked on the heater, but I didn’t drive off. Instead I sat there, much like Kunkle leaning against his wall, and gave in to a feeling of total hopelessness.
Katz opened the passenger door and slid in. “Some mess, huh?” His voice was pleasantly muted and unaggressive. I looked over at him. He was just staring out the window at the “Hilton.” His face changed from white to red and back again in the flashing lights from the ambulance and patrol cars.
“Did you go up?”
He nodded. “What the hell is going on? What does Lew Hill have to do with Ski Mask or Kimberly Harris or Murphy’s death?” The question was almost philosophical in tone.
I shook my head. “Don’t know, Stan. Sometimes I think we’ve almost got it, other times I’m afraid we’ll miss the boat entirely on this one. It’s a bitch. And,” I added, “none of that’s a quote.”
“That’s okay.”
He was silent a while more, and then he opened the door and swung his legs out. “I hope you get him. Good night.”
I did too, but I wasn’t sure how realistic that was. All our progress had been toward finding Pam Stark’s killer, and in that area I felt pretty good. Things were falling into place; there was a momentum building that usually boded well. We might well succeed, maybe even soon, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. In the end, I was convinced Ski Mask would do what he had set out to do-whatever that was-just as he had from the start. Maybe Bill Davis would end up free as a result, but I couldn’t stop thinking that if Ski Mask had a hand in it, that process would be perverted and corrupted, a variation on the one that had jailed him in the first place.
24
Tony Brandt came out of his office with a large smile and met me as I entered from the side door off the parking lot. “Danvers called. The DEA report is on its way, but he gave me the top three contenders on the phone.” He handed me a sheet of note pad paper. “We also found out how Ski Mask got out. He had a rope strung between Hill’s building and the garage next door. Hand over hand and out he went, probably right over our heads.”
“Christ.” I looked at the names. “Are these doctors or patients?” v›
“The first names are doctors, the names after them are patients. By the way, Katz’s article on last night was a monument to restraint. Maybe you’re breaking through.”
I waved the list. “You want to wait for the full DEA report before deciding what to do about this?”
Brandt allowed an uncharacteristic grin. “Hell, no. In fact, I’d like to interview one of these guys myself.” He reached into his pocket. “Three duces tecums.”
A duces tecum is a writ or subpoena ordering the person served to hand over specified materials. Unless every i is dotted and every t crossed, they are the legal equivalent of skating on thin ice, especially if you’re trying to breach the physician/patient privilege.
Brandt read my thoughts. “They’re as tight as they can be. The patients are identified by name, as are the exact medical records we’re after. Even the dates are in there. If it’s specificity they’re after, I couldn’t get any better.”
He kept one subpoena for himself and handed the other two to me. I laughed and shook my head. “Busy as a beaver aren’t you? Can I bring Kunkle in for the third one?”
“You two courting or something? I didn’t think he was your type.”
“He’s not. Any objections?”
Brandt tilted his head slightly. “He wouldn’t be my first choice as an interviewer.” He paused for a moment and finally made an odd movement with his upper lip. “All right. I don’t suppose he’ll start slapping doctors around.”
There was an awkward pause. “Are you getting close to letting him go?” I asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Does last night have anything to do with that?”
“It didn’t help his career any.”
“Would you have thought to check out Hill’s room before he got there?”
He looked at me warily. “That’s not really the issue, is it?”
“None of us are overly trained-not for this stuff.”
Brandt took a deep breath and passed his hand across his mouth. “What’s on your mind, Joe?”
“I just want to know if you’re going to let him see this case through to the end.”
He smiled, just barely. “I can’t afford the loss of manpower just now.”
“Thanks. Did you arrange with the sheriff to set up tails for us?”
“They’re waiting in the parking lot. I’ll tell them who to follow.”
“Thanks. See you later.” I crossed the hallway to Support Services. Kunkle was laboring over his typewriter. I knocked on the open door. “Report?”