Don't Look Now Read Free

skin,’ Ocasio said. He held the translucent, pinkish strip high into the air, suspended from his large forceps. He turned it around and around. The flap of skin – which measured two inches across and four or five inches in length – slapped together wetly as Ocasio taunted Paris, whipping the pelt from side to side. ‘On the other hand, it could be beef jerky.’
    Morrison and Dolch, the two hyenas from the Special Investigation Unit, let out a snort and a barrage of adolescent cackling. They always thought whatever Ocasio said was hysterical as hell, especially if it caused Jack Paris to grab his ever-rumbling stomach.
    ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Reuben?’ Paris said. ‘How many times are we going to do this?’
    ‘I don’t know, Jacquito. Maybe as long as you keep throwing up at scenes. You’re too easy
, padrone
.’
    ‘Jesus, man,’ Paris said, breathing deeply. ‘It’s amazing we have any kind of solve rate at all.’
    Reuben Ocasio smiled and, for Paris, it ruined what little there was to like about his face in the first place. Yellow teeth, bits of tobacco on grayish-brown gums. Paris shook his head and walked out of the oppressive motel room, the late-winter chill helping to calm the mixture of pickles, ketchup and Maalox churning at the base of his throat.
    Ocasio had joined the coroner’s office four years earlier, and from day one he had played with Paris’s better nature, especially during the days, weeks and months following Paris’s full-contact divorce. The two men had nearly come to blows one night at the Black Mountain Tavern, a cop bar on Payne, over something stupid like a crack Reuben had made about Paris’s ex-wife and a small-time doper named Grady Pike. Then, two weeks later, Reuben Ocasio put in twenty hours of overtime to close one of Jack’s cases. Paris found it difficult to hate the man completely.
    But the sick shit – the leaving of spleens in lockers, the intestine-on-a-roll sandwiches wrapped up in Subway sandwich paper – made Paris want to shoot the asshole.
    Hadn’t he known the moment he walked into the room? Hadn’t he known as soon as he rounded the corner and saw her face? That agonized mime face: perfect, beautiful, silent. Paris had seen Emily Reinhardt up close. It was his case and, in almost six months, he hadn’t turned up a single lead. He knew that whoever did that was an artist, a journeyman in the techniques of sexual torture, and wouldn’t strike just once. Paris knew that one day he was going to walk into another crime scene and see that death mask staring up at him again from an ever-widening pool of red.
    And then there was Maryann Milius. Greg Ebersole’s case.
    Three women now. Bodies torn, faces made up like cat-walk models. Eyeshadow, blush, mascara, powder, lipstick.
    Conclusion, Inspector Paris?
    Cleveland had a serial on its hands.
    And who was going to put it together? Tommy Raposo? Too busy with his tailor and his stockbroker and his harem. Greg Ebersole? Maybe. Except Greg had been shutting down the Caprice quite a bit himself these days and he was getting sloppy.
    Paris lit his last cigarette.
    Reuben already knew. Or he would soon. Then, of course, the
Plain Dealer
would have it. Then Channel 5 and their Crime Watch or Cop Watch or whatever the hell it was.
    But in the end, and probably within the next forty-eight hours, the task of setting a trap for this psycho was going to fall to one man: Jack Paris.
    The woman’s face, like the others, was free of blood: white and wooden against the navy-blue carpeting. Her lipstick was fresh, deep red, glistening in response to the flashbulbs exploding around the room. All she wore was the remains of a black-lace camisole which had been cut clean away at the shoulder blades, and a pair of high heels, now flecked with red. The patch of skin had come from the woman’s right calf. It bore a tattoo.
    A pair of roses.
    The comforter lay on the floor to the right of the bed, unstained