Free Ladykiller by Lawrence Light, Meredith Anthony Page B

give you any indication that he was going to meet someone?”
“No.We weren’t very close.”
“Was he acting strangely?” Safir asked.
“Reuben was a bit of an odd duck. It’s hard to say.”
“Did he seem to be nervous or afraid?” Wise asked.
“Reuben wasn’t afraid of anything,” she said dryly. “Unless you
count women.”
“Did he—” Safir began.
“If you will excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, “I’d like to be alone
now. Although I admit I wasn’t close to Reuben, we were colleagues
and this is very upsetting. Perhaps we could talk later.”
“No problem,” Safir said. “A Detective Dillon is going to come by
the crisis center later today.You can talk to him.”
“That would be fine,” the woman said.
On the way out, Safir said, “Woof. I wouldn’t kick her out of
bed.”
“That bitch?” Wise said. “I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick.
She’d be nothing but trouble. I know women.”
    Blake called Dave early to ask him to fill in at the morning press conference at One Police Plaza on Reuben Silver’s death. “I’ll be tied up
at the medical examiner’s,” he said.
    Dave looked at the pictures of the dead on the wall. The cat
worked his ankles, eager for breakfast. “Me and Mancuso?”
“Brief him. Answer any questions he throws you,” Blake said.
“And be nice.”
Dillon set out for police headquarters resentfully. Mancuso? Dillon hated the sound of the man’s name. But there was no use stewing
about that.This morning had a spring snap to it: people going to work
in the warm and sugary air, the clouds above the spires riding in puffy
purity, the mirror-like windows of the shiny buildings reflecting the
city’s buzzing life.The weather was improving.The crisis center was a
possible angle. Maybe things were pointing up.
Then he saw Chief of Detectives Richard Mancuso. Mancuso
once had been a handsome man; Dave had seen pictures from his father’s day. Years of politicking and plotting had worn grooves into
Mancuso’s noble Roman face. And into his immortal soul, as well.
Time’s cruel gravity had pulled the edges of his mouth downward in a
permanent frown. Dave could hear Wise’s taunt, safely delivered far
from the chief’s paranoid ears: “Big Dick Mancuso.”
“Tell me what I don’t know, Dillon,” Mancuso said.
Dave meticulously covered every facet of the investigation into
Reuben Silver’s death. “And we think the link is the West Side Crisis
Center,” he concluded. “A lot of legwork needs to be done, though.”
“Blake thinks or you think?” Mancuso asked nastily.
“I think, chief. And Lt. Blake thinks it’s worth examining.”
Mancuso swallowed, perhaps a dram of bile. “And this Silver is a
man.”
“That’s right, chief. He was a man.” Dave hoped he didn’t sound
too sarcastic.
“But the rest of the victims have been women.”
“That’s right. We think Silver may have stumbled onto the killer
by accident. The site is a residential neighborhood, not the typical
deserted places the perp prefers.”
“And how,” Mancuso almost snarled, “can you be sure this isn’t a
copycat killer?”
“As I indicated before,” Dave said, holding the anger by a straining leash, “Silver was shot in the right eye.That information never has
been released. No copycat could know that.”
“Unless he’s a copycat who got lucky.”
“It’s the same type of bullet, shot from the same distance, by a
shooter who is expert at this. Someone who can pull a .45 up real
quick and get one off before the victim can turn her — or in this case,
his— head.”
“Is that your theory?”
“Lt. Blake will back that up, chief,” Dave said.
Chief Mancuso sighed. Dave followed him and his entourage into
the elevator for the trip to the press conference.
“I hate these people — reporters,” Mancuso said as the floors
ticked by. “They’re nothing but whores. Out to sell newspapers.They
undermine citizens’ faith in society. They want to destroy