Part 17 (1/2)
”Look at that,” he told the others.
”Jeez!” Mr. Pietro said incredulously. ”What's he doing with all those . . . things in here? Listen, I run a clean place . . .”
”Yeah,” Karris said, and peered into one of the tanks. ”Ugly little suckers, aren't they?”
Palatazin stepped away from the table and gazed at the pictures on the wall, then back at Pietro, who looked thoroughly revolted. ”Where does Benefield work, Mr. Pietro?”
”Out in West L.A. He works for one of those bug-spray companies. An exterminator.”
”Do you know the name of the company?”
”Nope. Sorry.” He glanced at the roaches again and s.h.i.+vered. ”Jeez, do you think Benefield's bringin' his work home with him or somethin'?”
”I doubt it.” Palatazin looked over to where Karris was going through a chest of drawers. ”Take it easy with that, Karris, we don't want to tear the man's furniture apart. Mr. Pietro, what time is Benefield usually at home?”
”All hours, in and out.” Pietro shrugged. ”Some nights he comes in, stays a little while, and then leaves again. I've gotten to where I can recognize all the tenants' footsteps now, you see. My ears are real good. Anyway, he don't keep no regular hours.”
”What sort of person is he? Do you talk with him very much?”
”No, he keeps to himself. Seems okay, though.” Pietro grinned, showing a gold tooth. ”He pays his rent on time, which is more than you can say for a lot of them. No, Benefield don't talk too much. Oh, one time when I couldn't sleep and was listenin' to my radio, Benefield knocks on the door-I guess it was about two in the morning, couple of weeks ago-and he seemed to want to talk, so I let him in. He was real excited about somethin', said ... I don't know, it was crazy . .
. that he'd been out looking for his old lady, and he thought he'd seen her. Two o'clock in the mornin',” Pietro abruptly shrugged and turned to watch Zeitvogel rummaging under the bed.
”Old lady? Do you mean his girlfriend?”
”No. His mom. His old lady.”
Zeitvogel said, ”Here's something,” and pulled out a box of magazines from under the bed. It was an odd mixture of comic books, muscle magazines, and p.o.r.no.
Zeitvogel held up a couple of publications devoted to bondage, and Palatazin frowned with distaste. Lying on the bed were a pair of black handgrips used for strengthening hand and wrist muscles. Palatazin picked up one of them and tried to squeeze it, finding the resistance quite powerful. He made the connection between them and the crus.h.i.+ng hands that had killed four young women and laid the grip back down where it had been. He checked the bathroom, finding a tub with a couple of inches of standing water in it. In the medicine cabinet there were bottles of Bufferin, Excedrin, Tylenol. It seemed that Benefield was plagued with headaches.
”Captain,” Zeitvogel said, offering him a yellowing Kodak snapshot as he came out of the bathroom. The picture showed a blond, slightly rotund woman sitting with her arm around a young boy on a sofa. The boy wore thick gla.s.ses and had a crew cut, and he was smiling vacantly into the camera; the woman's legs were crossed, one fleshy thigh over the other, a crooked grin on her face. Palatazin studied the photograph for a moment, catching what he thought was a strange gla.s.sy look in the woman's eyes, as if she'd been drinking too much.
”Have you ever seen Benefield's mother, Mr. Pietro?” he asked.
”Nope. Never.”
Farris was probing around the stove and sink. He bent down, opened a cupboard, and brought out a bottle half-filled brownish liquid. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it, and in the next instant dark motes were spinning in front of his eyes. He jerked his head away and said, ”s.h.i.+t! What's this stuff?” He quickly capped it and coughed violently a couple of times, having the sensation of oil clinging to his lungs. His nostrils seemed to be on fire. Palatazin took the bottle from him and sniffed around the cap. ”Mr. Pietro, do you know what this is?”
”Looks like old p.i.s.s to me.”
Farris caught his breath and looked under the sink again, bringing out a fewi'”
dry rags. ”Don't know what that is, captain, but it's wicked. The smell of it down here'll knock you out.”
”Zeitvogel,” Palatazin said quietly, ”go down to your car and call in on our friend, will you? Let's see if he's got a rap sheet.” Zeitvogel was back in fifteen minutes. ”Bingo, captain,” he said. ”Benefield's got a long record of a.s.saults, a couple of molestation charges, a Peeping Tom, and an attempted rape. He spent eight years in and out of mental wards and did a stretch at Rathmore Hospital.”
Palatazin nodded, staring at the cages full of scrabbling roaches. He put the bottle back where it had been and closed the cupboard. He wanted to shout, ”YES, WE'VE GOT HIM!” but he knew that wasn't the case. There was a long way to go yet in proving that Benefield had anything to do with the four murders. ”We'll wait for him to come home,” Palatazin said, trying to keep his voice steady. ”Mr. Pietro, we're going to be outside in our cars. I think the best thing for you to do is simply stay in your room. All right? If you hear Benefield come in, don't leave your room to be friendly.”
”You going to arrest him? What's he done?”
”We just want to ask him a few questions. Thank you for showing us his room, Mr. Pietro. We'll take care of the rest.”
And now Palatazin sat in his car, waiting. Several times he thought he saw a Volkswagen approaching down Coronado, but it never was. The bitter, almondy odor of that liquid in the bottle stayed with him. In a rag, pressed up tightly against the nostrils, that stuff would probably act like a kind of chloroform; it was evidently some substance or mix of solutions that Benefield used at work.
If he was the Roach-and those roaches in the tanks indicated more than anything that he was-he had found a darker kind of work. But if he was the Roach, why had he changed his M.O.? He hoped that if Benefield was given enough rope, he might hang himself with it, or at least trip himself up. The minutes crept into hours. Soon there were no more cars moving along Coronado, and the only movement at all was the quick flicker of a match as Farris lit another cigarette. I can wait, Palatazin said mentally. You'll have to come home sometimes. And when you do, Mr. Benefield, I'll be right here . .
TWO.
Wes Richer woke up in the darkness, his head buzzing with Chablis and his stomach full of Scandia's Danish sole. At once he knew that Solange wasn't lying beside him, and when he looked up, he could see her figure outlined in moonlight, naked and chocolate brown, holding a curtain aside as she looked out of the window onto Charing Cross Road.
He watched her sleepily, the events of the night happily jumbling together in his head-the calls and congratulations from the ABC bra.s.s over ”Sheer Luck”; a call from his father in Winter Hill, North Dakota, telling him how proud his mother would have been if only she were alive; Jimmy Kline calling to tell him that Arista was biting on the record contract hook and that the ”Tonight” show people were inquiring to see if Wes might guest-host after the first of November; a congratulatory call from Cher, whom Wes had met at a party for Gene Simmons; and then the dinner that evening with Jimmy, Mel Brooks, and Brooks's screenwriter, Al Kaplan. The part was being rewritten for him with a couple of added scenes to spotlight some of that ”goyem klutz,” as Brooks called it, that he showed in ”Sheer Luck.” At the end of the evening, Brooks had squeezed his cheek and said, ”I love that face!” Which meant for Wes, as far as Quattlebaum's was concerned, money in the bank.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and said huskily, ”Solange? What is it?” She didn't move from the window. Her head was c.o.c.ked to one side, a black statue, listening. Wes let his gaze roam appreciatively down her back, along the smooth curving spine, to the firm roundness of the b.u.t.tocks and the swelling of her upper thighs. He'd been between those thighs less than an hour before; the sheets were still bunched at the bottom of the bed, the room filled with the peppery scent of desire. He could feel himself responding again, and he sat up, supporting his head on one arm. ”Solange?” he said.
”Come back to bed.”
When she turned toward him, he saw her eyes-they were hollow pits in her fine skull. ”I heard a scream, Wes,” she whispered. ”From across the street.”
”A scream? You were probably dreaming.”
”No,” she said, her voice like velvet and steel. ”I wasn't dreaming. I heard a scream. Who lives across the street?”
Wes struggled up out of bed and stood beside her, peering out into the night and feeling pretty stupid about going along with her even this far. ”Uh ... I think d.i.c.k Clark lives over there ... no, wait a minute. It's d.i.c.k Marx. He produced the Sea Wolf remake with Richard Gere last year. I think.” He couldn't really see the house, just the tops of trees and a chimney perched over a high brick wall. ”I don't hear anything,” he said after another moment.
”I think we should call the police.”
”The police? Why? Listen, d.i.c.k Marx has a reputation for ... you know ... little S&M thrills? Maybe he just got carried away with the latest girlfriend. Calling ”I the cops would be a faux pas, right?”
”I don't agree. What I heard was not a scream of pleasure. Will you call the police or shall I?”
”Okay, okay. Christ, when you get something on your mind, you hang on to it until h.e.l.l freezes, don't you?” He stepped over to the phone beside the bed and dialed 911. When the operator answered, he said simply, ”Somebody screamed in Bel Air” then he gave the address, and hung up. ”There,” he said to Solange. ”Did I do my duty?”
”Come here, Wes,” Solange said. ”Hurry!” He did. She gripped his arm. ”I saw someone crawl over the wall. Look! Did you see that?”
”I don't see a thing.”
”Someone's in our yard, Wes!” she said, her voice rising and she gripped his arm tighter. ”Call back. Tell the police to hurry!”
”Oh, s.h.i.+t! I'm not calling them again!” He leaned closer to the gla.s.s and tried to make out a figure moving, but it was pitch black; the arms of trees waved in the wind. ”There's n.o.body outside. Come on back to bed . . .” He was about to turn away from the window when he heard it. At first he thought it was the high wailing of wind, but then the sound became higher and stronger, the wail of a human voice-a little girl's voice-that ended in a cascade of silvery laughter like water bubbling in a fountain. ”I seeeeeeee youuuuuuuu,”