"You can have her for two bucks," Herb said. "That includes my cut."
Bill grinned wickedly, and I watched in amazement as the sixty-eight-year-old rolled his hips. They made a cracking sound.
"Unfortunately," I cut in before he pounced, "the taxpayers require my time first."
"You're a tease, Jack, getting an old man all hot and bothered and then turning him away."
He pinched my cheek and walked out.
I turned to Herb. "Thanks for informing Bill of my recent availability."
"Payback for siccing the Feds on me. You want the last burger?"
I shook my head and popped the tape in the VCR. As expected, the quality was poor. It was black and white, grainy from having been reused several hundred times, and speeded up so one six-hour tape could accommodate an entire day.
There was a time code in the lower left-hand corner, in military time, and I rewound to 1800 hours and let it play.
Lo and behold, at 18:42 a young man entered the store, made a beeline for the magazine rack, and then fell over and started shaking like a leaf. The two other patrons who were in the store, along with the clerk, went over to take a closer look.
The seizure lasted almost two minutes, or about twenty seconds on the speeded-up copy we had, and then the kid got up and left the store, keeping his head down, avoiding the overhead camera with obvious experience.
"If that was a real seizure, I'm trying out for the ballet," Benedict said.
I pushed the image of Herb in tights out of my mind and rewound the tape, letting it run in slow motion so it was closer to real time. As evidence, the tape was practically inadmissible. The picture quality was that bad. I took it out and plunked in the tape from the 7-Eleven earlier today, hoping for a better quality.
Sometimes wishes come true.
This time the tape was in color, crystal clear. Rather than the annoying pan back and forth of the previous tape, this tape used four different cameras to record four different parts of the store, which broke the screen up into quarters.
"This is more like it," Herb said.
I rewound to the part where the kid walked in, and he gave us a perfect full frontal face shot. Then he went from one screen to the next, and we watched as he popped something into his mouth and went into the familiar convulsions.
"Looks like he's spitting something up."
"Alka-Seltzer. It's an old trick, makes you look like you're foaming at the mouth."
"Let's get some uniforms up here to look at this."
Benedict got on the horn and rounded up half a dozen or so officers on duty. They piled into my office and watched the tape. No one recognized the kid.
"This has got to be an MO he's used before," I told them. "Probably shoplifting, maybe causing a distraction while his partner made off with some goods. Ask around, see if anyone's heard of a petty thief who fakes seizures."
After they'd left, the desk sergeant called and informed me that we now had a composite sketch of our suspect, drawn from descriptions given by Steve the pharmacist and Floyd the leg-breaker broker. Herb went down to get it, because the vending machines were en route. I put in the video of the first crime scene and scanned it for gawkers with cameras. Nothing.
Benedict came back a few minutes later, sans foodstuffs but with telltale chocolate smears in his mustache. He handed me the sketch, which was vague enough to look a little like every average middle-aged white man in the world. The eyes were closer together than most, and the head was more triangular, giving the perp a ratlike appearance. But under low lighting conditions, after a couple of drinks, the picture might have been of Don, or Phin, or half my squad. We could rule out Herb because the face was lean.
The phone rang, and Benedict graciously picked it up for me.
"It's Bains." He hung up the receiver only seconds after putting it to his ear. "He requests the company of your presence in his office as soon as you have a moment."
I got up and stretched, wincing as all of my aches and pains came to life. Perhaps the captain wanted to discuss the fight last night, or our progress on the case, or my brush-off of the Feds, or my unauthorized overtime, or to tell me he liked my outfit.
I was right on four of the five.
"Jack, have a seat."
I sat across his desk and faced the man. Captain Steven Bains was short, stout, about ten years my senior, and had a hair weave that looked unrealistic because it had no gray in it, whereas his mustache did. He finished peering at the paper in front of him and removed his reading glasses to look at me.
"You weren't carrying last night."
"I know. Maybe it was a good thing, because if I had my piece I might have killed one or more of them."
"Wear it from now on. It looks like this guy is gunning for you."
I nodded.
"Tell me about the second victim."
I ran it down for him, and he asked questions when appropriate.
"The pressure is mounting," he said when I finished. "The police superintendent and the mayor's office want to turn the case over to the Feds."
I made a face. "We're not lacking for manpower or resources. The only thing we're lacking is leads, because this guy doesn't give us any to follow."
"That's why I refused. But after the media kicks into gear today, it won't be long before my authority is usurped. If you want to keep this one, Jack, you'll have to dig up something more to go on."
"We're doing a restruct of the second vic. Maybe we'll get an ID."
"Hedge that bet."
I knew what he meant. In 99.9 percent of murder cases, the killer knows the victim, and links can be found. But the Gingerbread Man could be picking up random women. If that were the case, even positive IDs might not help us catch him.
"Any idea what he meant in the note, about leaving you another hidden present?"
"No. Another victim, maybe? But he doesn't hide them, he likes to put them in public places. Maybe..."
I rolled it around in my noggin. I left you another present, but it's deeply hidden. He's implying that the present was there, with the body, hidden deep. Deep in the body?
"What if he hid something inside the bodies?"
"Wouldn't the autopsy have picked it up?"
"Maybe not something deeply hidden."
Bains picked up the phone and got the assistant Medical Examiner, Phil Blasky. He asked him to recheck the first Jane Doe, looking for anything that might have been placed inside the body.
"He's on it." Bains hung up and scratched his mustache. "Special Agents Coursey and Dailey spoke with me yesterday."
I waited.
"They told me they don't believe you're giving them your full cooperation."
I chose my words carefully. "The FBI would profile Hitler as Jewish."
Bains smiled briefly, an unusual move for him.
"No one likes an asshole, Jack, until you have to move your bowels."
"I'll do my best."
"And the letters, I want them analyzed."
"They're at the lab now."
"I meant by a handwriting expert."
"We're already sure that the letters match."
"That's only part of it. The mayor's office is sending an expert to look over the letters to get a profile of our suspect."
I made a face. "Another profile? Are we going to consult a psychic next?"
"I'm sure you'll give him your full cooperation, Lieutenant." Bains said it with the full weight of his authority. Then he dismissed me, and I stood up to leave.
"Jack?"
"Cap?"
"Watch out for the overtime too. You're no help to the case when you're too exhausted to see straight."
I left, irritated. Being on the force for over twenty years, I'd had my share of big cases, and the corresponding media and political pressure. But being forced to work with the FBI, and now some snake oil handwriting expert, made my work all the more difficult.
"Look at it this way," Benedict said when I filled him in. "You get paid whether you catch the guy or not."
"Your attitude leaves something to be desired, Detective."