“Who is he?”
“Some crazy cabdriver.”
“Why doesn’t somebody arrest him?”
“Because nobody knows where he is.”
“Oh shit,” she said, annoyed. “This would have to happen on the one night we were going to spend together.”
“Don’t be so sentimental. We can sleep just as well alone.”
“Maybe you can, but I can’t.”
Rackman dried his face and returned to the bedroom to get dressed. Francie took his bathrobe off the bedpost and put it on, then lit a cigarette and sat cross-legged on the bed. Rackman took his gray slacks and blue blazer combination out of the closet.
“You have to get all dressed up to go to the morgue?” Francie asked.
“Shut up, will you?” he said, pulling on the pants. “I’m trying to think.”
He saw the hurt on her face and regretted telling her to shut up. Women can drive you crazy. “I didn’t mean that,” he said.
“I’m used to remarks like that from you,” she replied.
They make you mad, then make you feel guilty for getting mad. Rackman took a fresh shirt out of the drawer and put it on.
“I really shouldn’t see you anymore,” she said.
“I don’t know what to tell you Francie.”
“You really don’t give me very much.”
“Maybe I don’t have very much to give.”
“Maybe you don’t.”
Rackman tied his necktie and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a nice clean-cut detective, the kind the Commissioner liked.
“I guess you’ll stay here,” he said to her reflection in the mirror.
“Do you mind?”
“No. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator.” He put on his blue blazer and put a fresh pack of Luckies in the inner pocket. “Well, I’m sorry that I’ve got to go, but I’ve got to go.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “I’ll call you.”
“’Bye Danny,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
She was a black girl in her mid-twenties and she lay very still on the slab in the morgue, her eyes closed. Her windpipe was sliced in two and another big cut was on the side of her neck. She had a nice figure, somewhat on the heavy side, and had bruises on her face.
Rackman looked at her and felt helpless because the Slasher still was on the loose and probably would kill another woman before they caught him. He might even kill a few more. In the Forties, a killer in Buffalo had decapitated twenty-two victims and hadn’t been caught.
Rackman stood between Jenkins and Johnny Olivero. On the other side of the slab was Police Commissioner Hurley, who had a pointed nose and wavy black hair, and First Deputy Harnick, who wore a vested suit that made him look like a banker. The medical examiner had told them that the victim had been cut first from the side, and then from the front. She’d been dragged from the sidewalk down the stairs beside a brownstone to the basement entrance. The Slasher had kicked and punched her, and also urinated on her. She’d been found by a musician returning home from a gig.
So far they knew her name was Barbara Collins and that she lived with another girl in an apartment farther down the block. She worked as a performer in a live sex show establishment near Times Square and had given three performances that night. The Slasher had left his fingerprints on her pocketbook. The fingerprints matched those of Frank Kowalchuk’s on his hack license application.
Commissioner Hurley looked at Jenkins. “I want you to put everybody you’ve got on this case.”
“Yes sir,” replied Jenkins.
“The Chief of Detectives is on his way here now. I’m putting him directly in charge, and hereafter it will be the first priority of this department. This thing is going to be all over the papers tomorrow, and the people of New York will want results. We’ve got to get this guy, and that’s all there is to it.”
“We know who he is,” Jenkins said. “It’s just a matter of time before we track him down.”
“It’d better not be too much time,” Commissioner Hurley said.
“We’ll do our best, sir.”
“You’d better.”
Commissioner Hurley looked at the first deputy, and both of them walked out of the room. Jenkins, Rackman, and Olivero relaxed, shuffling their feet and putting their hands in their pockets.
“This is going to be a big thing in the press tomorrow,” Jenkins said grimly. “The shit will really hit the fan. One murder like this is an isolated incident, two are a problem, but three are a fucking epidemic.”
Rackman nodded. “When you talk to the chief of detectives, maybe you should suggest saturating the Times Square area with plainclothes cops who have Kowalchuk’s picture with them.”
“I already thought of that. Tell me something new.”
“He might be living in one of those hotels around lower Madison Avenue where a lot of cabdrivers stay. We should check them out.”
“I thought of that too. Midtown South will take care of it, and we’ll go through the hotels up our way. We’ll check cafeterias and sleazy bars, even the YMCA. The Chief of Patrol will comb the sidewalks for the fucker. If he stays in New York, we’ll get him.”
Olivero cleared his throat. “We should check every taxi garage in the city because he might change garages.”
“Don’t worry about it. From now until we catch him, cabdrivers won’t be able to move without bumping into cops.”
Rackman left the morgue and got into his car, driving uptown. He puffed a cigarette as he passed the quiet nighttime sidewalks and isolated drunks staggering along. Everything was closed for the night except for a sandwich shop or deli every several blocks. Rackman wondered where Kowalchuk was and what he was doing.
He knew that Kowalchuk was somewhere out there right now, maybe asleep or even walking the streets. He might be that drunk sprawled in the doorway over there. No, that drunk was too skinny. Kowalchuk was a big fat guy.
Rackman remembered Kowalchuk’s face on his hack license application. That face, an average face, was the face of a killer. What kind of man was he? What was driving the sick son of a bitch?
Rackman figured Kowalchuk must hate women a lot, that that must be his principal motivation. Maybe a woman had shit on him, or maybe he was sexually frustrated and that had turned to resentment, hatred, and finally murder. Certainly sexual craziness must have something to do with it, in view of all the porno stuff in his apartment and the fact that his victims were porno girls. The poor bastard couldn’t deal with women and was freaking out.
He sounds a little like me, Rackman thought, and then a chill passed over him as that insight wormed through his brain. He realized that he and Kowalchuk both had difficulties with women, and that Kowalchuk was only a more extreme version of himself. But they were brothers under the skin. If I’d been pushed a little harder, Rackman thought, maybe I would have become a Slasher and the police would be looking for me, who knows?
Rackman chewed his lower lip as he realized that in pursuing the Slasher he also was pursuing the dark side of his own nature. The part that was irrational and wild. The part that could kill if it ever was squeezed hard enough.
“I’ve got to get him,” Rackman whispered through his clenched teeth as he drove toward Midtown North.
PART TWO – THE SLASHER
Chapter One
It was eleven o’clock at night on Times Square. The gaunt-faced hawker on the street corner rustled the small leaflets in his hands. “Beautiful girls—check ‘em out!” he said, thrusting a leaflet toward the gut of the fat man.
The fat man took the leaflet and looked at it as crowds of pedestrians passed him by: