Free Binding Ties by Max Allan Collins Page B

November 1994. Guy’s name was Todd Henry. He lived in an apartment downtown. No family, no friends. He’d been dead better part of a week before we got the call.”
    â€œWho found him?” Nick asked.
    â€œSmell got so bad one of the neighbors called in a public-nuisance complaint, and we went in. Guy was on the living-room floor, rope still around his neck.”
    Catherine asked, “Was the full M.O. established from the start? Lipstick, semen, noose?”
    â€œYeah,” Brass said. “This perp had either been setting this up, planning it out, for a long time, fantasizing maybe … or he’d been doing it somewhere else. However you look at it, when the killings started in Vegas, the M.O. was full blown and never deviated.”
    Nick said, “Obviously you and Vince checked other jurisdictions.”
    â€œNationwide, but nobody ever matched up. We checked out Canada, too, and finally Europe. Anyway, after Todd Henry, John Jarvis showed up dead a month later. Everything was exactly the same as the previous case.”
    Catherine asked, “Jarvis have any connection to Henry?”
    â€œOther than a basic physical similarity? No.” Brass tapped a forefinger in a palm. “Henry was a transplant, Jarvis a lifelong Vegas resident. Henry did oddjobs, Jarvis was an accountant. Henry lived alone, Jarvis had a family, wife and a son. Lived in a nice house in Boulder City, while Henry hung out in that downtown rathole. The only thing they had in common was appearance. Fiftyish white males, overweight.”
    â€œWhat about the others?”
    â€œGeorge Kim, the third vic, was half-Asian—other than that all five … Henry, Jarvis, Kim, Clyde Gibson and Vincent Drake … were overweight white men around forty-five, fifty. Although each had some things in common with one or two of the others, nothing other than physical appearance could be seen as a common denominator.”
    â€œNothing?”
Nick asked, hardly believing it.
    Brass shrugged elaborately. “Kim worked at the Lucky Seven, Drake worked as a supervisor at the city garage and Gibson was a self-employed furniture maker. Some had kids, some didn’t. Some were married, some weren’t. The only other thing that changed was CASt’s frequency—month between the first two, barely a week between the last two. The guy was definitely picking up speed—really getting into it. Then … he stopped cold.”
    â€œOkay,” Catherine said, trying to regroup mentally. “What about the suspects?”
    Brass blew out air. “There were hundreds at the beginning. Serial confessors, heavyset men calling in saying their neighbors were acting suspiciously, all kinds of dipsticks. When we got through weeding ’em out, we were down to three—loser named DallasHanson, scumbag named Phillip Carlson, and this complete psychopath, Jerome Dayton.”
    Catherine said, “Fill us in.”
    â€œWhen I say Dayton was a psychopath, I don’t mean ‘eccentric,’ I mean clinical. His dad, Thomas Dayton, was a big-time contractor who built a lot of the county buildings and several casinos that went up in the late eighties and early nineties—remember that guy?”
    â€œOh yes,” Catherine said.
    Nick was nodding in recognition, too.
    Brass continued: “And Jerome was my personal favorite candidate for the killings, only he ended up in a private hospital where he’s been since late 1995. I woulda bet a year’s pay he was the killer, but Drake died
after
Dayton went into the hospital.”
    Nodding thoughtfully, Catherine asked, “What about the others?”
    â€œVince liked this loser Dallas Hanson. He was a cowboy from Oklahoma. He and his quote-unquote old lady bought a used-but-abused mobile home on the far northwest side. When she thought Dallas was screwing around on her, she threw his ass out. He ended up taking an apartment in the same