Free Ladykiller by Lawrence Light, Meredith Anthony Page A

her to the .45.As usual, he began with
a history lecture.The United States at the turn of the century, he had
told her with maddening pomp, needed a more powerful sidearm to
put down an insurrection in the Philippines. Filipino rebels, hopped
up on hemp and fanaticism, and protected by body armor of cane,
laughed at the stopping power of American service revolvers. They
weren’t laughing after the .45 came on line.
    Every weekend, her father would take her to the pistol range in
the suburbs to practice with the .45, which he had brought home
from the Korean War. He taught her how to take it apart, how to clean
and oil it, how to align the front and rear sights, how to grip it with
both hands, how to squeeze the trigger so gently that you weren’t
aware of squeezing it at all.
    “I don’t care how many twisted goons this godforsaken city turns
out,” he told Nita. “When you have a .45, no one can touch you.”
Since the gun was too big to carry under his suit, Lars Bergstrom
kept it in his briefcase. Her father carried that briefcase everywhere,
even on the walks he took every Sunday. “This weapon,” he told her, “is
my best friend.”
Looking back at the bitter, cold man that was her father, Nita
thought to herself, “That I could believe.”
    Dave Dillon dragged into his apartment at an hour when only hungry
cats were up. Dave’s cat was affectionate only to its owner — and displayed that amply tonight. He rubbed Dave’s ankles with a
where-ya-been-when’s-dinner insistence.
    Dave opened a can of tuna and dumped it into the cat’s dish,
adding a sprinkling of crunchies.As he lowered the dish to the kitchen
floor, the cat bobbed up to gobble a mid-air sample. Once the dish
reached the floor, the cat attacked it with the zest of a ravenous lion.
    “When you grow up into the king of the jungle, that’s how you’re
gonna take care of the antelopes, huh?”
Dave tacked a picture of Lydia Daniels onto his wall, next to the
other victims’ photos. He would need a day or two to obtain a picture
of Reuben Silver. Jimmy Conlon thought he was obsessed. “How can
you put gruesome crime-scene pictures on your wall?”
“Maybe obsession is a good thing in a detective,” Dave had told
his friend. “Particularly one under a cloud.”
Staring at the roster of victims, Dave tried to read their bloody,
smashed faces.
Then he permitted himself to gaze on something else. Something
pretty. For a minute. No longer. He kept the picture hidden in his
dresser drawer. It was a glamorous, show-biz shot. Her smile was
wide and electric. Her dark eyes had exotic power. And once, for a
brief time, she had been his.
    Safir and Wise went to Nita Bergstrom’s apartment. A voice asked
who they were and they identified themselves to a locked door. The
woman who finally opened the door was a real looker, even in her
bathrobe.
    “Let me see your badges, please,” she demanded in an uptown
voice before removing the chain. She let them in but did not ask them
to sit down.
“We’re afraid we have some bad news for you, Miss Bergstrom,”
    Safir said, trying to tell how nice her tits were beneath the bulky robe.
“Oh, and what is that?” A cool one, this chick.
“You were working the late shift on the hotline phone at the crisis center with a Reuben Silver last night?”Wise said.
    “Yes. And he left abruptly about a half hour into the shift. Said he
was going for a walk. Most unprofessional. Is he in trouble?”
The woman seemed more concerned that workplace rules had
been broken than in the welfare of a co-worker.
“I’m afraid he’s dead, Miss Bergstrom,” Safir said. “He was shot in
the head a few blocks from the crisis center. We believe by the same
person responsible for the Ladykiller shootings.”
She closed her eyes for a second. “Reuben? Murdered?” The
detectives waited patiently while she absorbed the news. “Why
Reuben?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Miss Bergstrom,” Wise
said. “Did he