Without remorse - Tom Clancy [168]
'Craftsmanship.' Lieutenant Ryan nodded. He closed his eyes, first mentally viewing the different crime scenes, then correlating the data. Rob, not rob, change МО. But the last one did have a witness. Go home, ma'am. Why was he polite? Ryan shook his head. 'Real life isn't Agatha Christie, Tom.'
'Our young lad, today, Em. Tell me about the method our friend used to dispatch him.'
'Knife there ... I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. Strong son of a bitch. I did see one ... back in '58 or '59.' Ryan paused, collecting his thoughts. 'A plumber, I think, big, tough guy, found his wife in bed with somebody. He let the man leave, then he took a chisel, held her head up -'
'You have to be really pissed off to do it the hard way. Anger, right? Why do it that way?' Douglas asked. 'You can cut a throat a lot easier, and the victim is just as dead.'
'A lot messier, too. Noisy ...' Ryan's voice trailed off as he thought it through. It was not appreciated that people with their throats cut made a great deal of noise. If you opened the windpipe there could be the most awful gurgling sound, and if not, people screamed their way to death. Then there was the blood, so much of it, flying like water from a cut hose, getting on your hands and clothes.
On the other hand, if you wanted to kill someone in a hurry, like turning off a light switch, and if you were strong and had him crippled already, the base of the skull, where the spinal cord joined the brain, was just the perfect spot: quick, quiet, and relatively clean.
'The two pushers were a couple blocks away, time of death almost identical. Our friend does them, walks over this way, turns a corner, and sees Mrs Charles being hassled.'
Lieutenant Ryan shook his head. 'Why not just keep going? Cross the street, that's the smart move. Why get involved? A killer with morals?' Ryan asked. That was where the theory broke down. 'And if the same guy is wasting pushers, what's the motive? Except for the two last night, it looks like robbery. Maybe with those two something spooked him off before he could collect the money and the drugs. A car going down the street, some noise? If we're dealing with a robber, then it doesn't connect with Mrs Charles and her friend. Tom, it's just speculation.'
'Four separate incidents, no physical evidence, a guy wearing gloves - a street wino wearing gloves!'
'Not enough, Tom.'
'I'm going to have Western District start shaking them down anyway.'
Ryan nodded. That was fair enough.
It was midnight when he left his apartment. The area was so agreeably quiet on a weekday night. The old apartment complex was peopled with residents who minded their own business. Kelly had not so much as shaken a hand since the manager's. A few friendly nods, that was all. There were no children in the complex, just middle-aged people, almost all married couples sprinkled with a few widowed singles. Mainly white-collar workers, a surprising number of whom rode the bus to work downtown, watched TV at night, heading to bed around ten or eleven. Kelly moved out quietly, driving the VW down Loch Raven Boulevard, past churches and other apartment complexes, past the city's sports stadium as the neighborhoods evolved downward from middle- to working-class, and from working-class to subsistence, passing darkened office buildings downtown in his continuing routine. But tonight there was a difference.
Tonight would be his first major payoff. That meant risk, but it always did, Kelly told himself, flexing his hands on the plastic steering wheel. He didn't like the surgical gloves. The rubber held heat in, and though the sweat didn't affect his grip, the discomfort was annoying. The alternative was not acceptable, however, and he remembered not liking a lot of the things he'd done in Vietnam, like the leeches, a thought that generated a few chills. They were even worse than rats. At least rats didn't suck your blood.
Kelly took his time, driving around his objective almost randomly