The Toshiba notebook computer sat on the small oak desk that had been in his bedroom as a child, in this same one-story redbrick house in Grove Park. The quiet neighborhood on the west side of the city was the perfect place for his experiments. The houses had a little space between them, most of the residents were too old to be nosy, and he could be on the interstate or heading east in a matter of minutes.
One-third of the house had been constructed as a “mother-in-law” suite with a large bedroom, sitting room, and its own bathroom. A small, covered courtyard separated the two sections of the house. His grandmother had lived in that side of the house until he was seven, about the time of the accident. That part of the house had level floors, even with the kitchen both sides shared. His father had never bothered to change the odd, multilevel floor of this part of the house, and now Dremmel was glad he didn’t. Those little five-inch steps made it almost impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to get around. Thank God.
In the last few years the oak desk sat in his “darkroom,” which he had quickly converted to a normal room since his last girlfriend had moved out. The small mattress was back in the garage on the top shelf of a storage rack. The eyebolts from the reinforced wall sat on his workbench. Matching end tables perfectly covered the holes where the sturdy eyebolts screwed into the wall and held his girlfriends securely. The photographic equipment and developing chemicals were out of the closet and set up again so if someone were to wander in the room they wouldn’t think it was anything other than an amateur photography studio. That explained the bricked-up windows.
Now he quietly made notes about Stacey Hines, who was twenty-one, five foot two inches tall, had electricity in her name, but not cable TV, and had not yet been listed as an employee of the Fountain of Youth sports bar/restaurant where he had chatted with her earlier in the evening.
The intercom wired to the other section of the house buzzed and he heard his mother. Sound echoed over the terrazzo floors and bare walls like a cave. He could tell by the crackle of the intercom and the volume that she had the intercom right next to her mouth.
“William? Are you home? William.”
He waited, hoping she might drop back into sleep.
“William, I’m hungry.” Her voice was cultured, calm, with a hint of a southern accent she usually put on, especially if she was around people, which he had discouraged for some time now.
He sighed, hit the intercom, and said, “Give me a few minutes, Mom.” He scooted out of the wooden chair and padded toward the kitchen, knowing exactly what would shut her up-a can of Campbell’s chicken gumbo. He let the soup plop into a large green bowl, sprinkled in a little garlic powder, then mashed 50 milligrams of Molindone and stirred it into the soup. He had found that the tranquilizer/antipsychotic had several beneficial effects, but mainly it calmed her down enough that he could deal with her and keep her clean. He added an Ambien to the soup for good measure. It should give his mom enough time to eat before she dozed off until the morning when he left for work. He popped the bowl into the microwave as Mr. Whiskers IV bumped his leg.
He squatted down, his heavily muscled legs straining his jeans, and stroked the black cat. So far he had tested a few pharmaceutical theories on Mr. Whiskers IV, nothing like the ones the original Mr. Whiskers and the two that followed had endured. In the ten years he’d worked at the pharmacy, Dremmel had learned more about drug interaction and sedation than any standard textbook or drug study could ever teach him. He was smarter than any pharmacist. Legitimate drug companies weren’t prepared to do the things he’d done to test the effects of sedatives and narcotics. He had kept Mr. Whiskers II asleep but alive for more than three weeks. That was a good drug trial.
Now his goal was to replicate that kind of effect on something a little larger. His test subjects were all between 100 and 120 pounds, within five years of the same age, and around five feet tall. He had decided on shorter women, because he didn’t know if taller subjects with less fat would metabolize the drugs the same way. He preferred them to be attractive, but that had no scientific bearing.
From the intercom he heard, “William, is my dinner ready?”
He mashed another Ambien, pulled the soup from the microwave ten seconds early, scooped the powder into the bowl, and mixed it as he hurried through the short gap between the sections of the house into the room on the far side of the courtyard. He padded past the sitting room, then down the hallway, and paused at his mother’s open door.
He eased in the room and forced a smile. His mother lay on top of the bedspread, her wheelchair next to the bed. She was in a bright yellow dress that covered most of her thin, discolored legs. From the waist up she was still an attractive, fifty-five-year-old woman with no gray in her brown hair. Looking at her sitting at a dinner table no one would be able to tell what she had been through or what she had put her son through. She was still trim, and her face showed few wrinkles or other signs of age. But her expression was a different story. She looked confused and detached from her surroundings.
The car accident that had killed his father and crippled his mother was a turning point in young William Dremmel’s life. It had certainly changed his relationship with his mother.
She reached out silently with her long fingers for the bowl of soup. Almost the identical meal she had every night.
Dremmel turned to leave, but she said, “Sit down a minute. I haven’t seen you today.”
He plopped into the padded folding chair next to her messy queen-size bed, where half-finished crossword puzzles littered the comforter.
“Are you alone tonight?”
He nodded.
“No date?”
“Lee Ann and I broke up.”
His mother frowned. “I wanted to meet her too.”
“You would’ve liked her.”
“What was she like?”
He couldn’t contain his smile when he answered. “She was real quiet.”
Six
It was early, too damn early for a meeting, but this was what he wanted. At least he thought this was what he wanted. Shit.
Detective John Stallings sat in front of the lieutenant’s desk with his mouth shut and his eyes on the senior officer in the room. He didn’t like the idea of Tony Mazzetti and a young female homicide detective sitting out of his line of sight, but that’s how it shook out when he walked into Lieutenant Hester’s plush office with a view of a new condo going up across the street. One of the detective sergeants sat next to him. The regular homicide sergeant, a stand-up guy named McAfee, had just retired, and this was a nervous temporary admin sergeant from computer crime. Rita Hester stepped from behind her wide oak desk and sat on it directly in front of Stallings, folded her considerable arms, and leveled a gaze at him.
“This is what you wanted, Stall. You’re on the case. In fact, we’re setting up a task force to find this killer.”
“A task force for a single homicide? Why the fire-power?”
The lieutenant’s eyes flicked over to the sergeant, then back to Stallings. “It may not be so simple.” Her voice steady and calm.
“How so?”
“This is the second victim in a suitcase in thirty-five days.”
“What? I never even heard about the other one.”
The fact that no one in the room said anything told Stallings that someone had fucked up. From behind him, Mazzetti chimed in. “We thought the first one was an overdose. No big deal. You know how it is.”
Stallings didn’t bother turning to face him. “You claimed a body inside a suitcase was an accidental overdose? No, Tony, I don’t have any idea how something like that is. I know that helps the clearance rate, but it sure fucks up everything else.”
The pudgy computer crime sergeant turned and said, “Stall, she was naked with no ID. We honestly thought she had overdosed in a drug house and someone decided to dispose of her in the bag. There was no sign of trauma, and she had Oxycontin in her system. A lot of it.”