Inspector Moo's POV
I was in early Monday morning, feeling a little nervous about my first contact with Gebriel after our dancing-and-dining experience, wondering where all this was going to go, when one of the task force inspector, Paul chain, rushed up to me. "Moo, there's a woman in interrogation room four I think you should check out,"
Ever since a physical description of the assailant had hit the airwaves. People had been calling in with fake sighting and dead-end leads. One of Chin's jobs was to follow them up, no matter how unlikely.
"This one a psysic or a police bluff?" I asked with a skeptical smile.
"I think this one's genuine article," said chin, she was at the first wedding,"
I almost leaped out of my chair after him. After the front of the squad room, I spotted Gebriel coming in. Christ.
For a moment, a tingle of pleasure rushed through me. He'd left about eleven, after we ended up polishing off both bottles of wine. We ate, chewed over our separate stints on the force, and the ups and downs of being married or single.
It had been a sweet evening, took the heat off from the case, it even got my mind off Negli's.
What scared me a little was the tremor inside that it could be something more. I had caught myself staring at him Friday night, while he helped out with the dishes, thinking, if times were different. . . .
Gebriel ran into me, carrying coffee, and paper, "Hey nice," he smiled. "Nice vest."
"Chin's got a live one in four," I said, grabbing his arm. "Claims to have a physical sighting. You want to come along?"
In my haste, I was already by him, not even giving him a scene of recognition. He put down his paper on our civilian clerk's desk and caught up on the stairs.
In cramped interrogation room sat a nicely dressed, attractive woman of about fifty, Chin introduced her to me s Laurie Birnbuan. She seemed tight, nervous.
Chin sat down next to her. " Ms. Bornbaum, why don't you tell inspector Moo what you just told me,"
She was frightened. "It was the beard that me remember. I didn't even think of it until now. It was horrible,"
"You were at the Harry's wedding?" I asked her.
"Yes, as guest of the bride's family," she replied.
"My husband works with chancellor Weil at the university," she took a nervous sip from a cup of coffee. "It was just a brief thing. But he gave me the chills."
Chin pushed down the record button of a portable recorder.
"Please, go ahead I told her soothingly. Once again, I felt close to him- the bastard with the red beard.
"I stood next to him. He had this graying red beard, like a goatee. The kind they wear in Los Angeles. He looked older, maybe forty-five, fifty, but there was something about him. I'm not saying this right, am I?"
"You spoke to him?" I asked, trying to communicate that even though she didn't do this every day, I did. Even the male detective admitted that I was the bast at Q and A on the floor. They joked. They joked that it was a good thing."
"I had just come in from the dance floor," she said, " I looked up, and there he was. I said something like, 'Nice affair. . .bride or groom?" For a moment, I thought he looked kind of appealing. Then he just sort of glared at me. I took him for one of those arrogant investments bankers types from the Harrys side,"
What did he say to you?" I said.
She massage her brow, straining to recall. "He said, in the weirdest way, that they were lucky."
"Who was lucky?"
"Lizzy and Nathaniel. I may have said, aren't they lucky?" Meaning the two of them. They were so stunning. And he replied, 'Oh, they are lucky.'"
She looked up with a confused expression on her face. " He called them something else. . . Chosen."
"Chosen?"
"Yes he said, 'Oh, they are lucky. . . You could even say they were chosen.
"You said he had a goatee?"
"That's what so strange. The beard made him seem older, but the rest of him was young."
"The rest of him? What do you mean?"
"His face. His voice. I know this must sound strange, but it was only for a moment,, as I came off the dance floor."
We got as much as we could from her. Height, hair color. What he was wearing. Everything confirmed the sparse details that we already had. The killer was a man with a short reddish beard. He had been wearing a tux— the jacket he left behind in the Mandarin suite.
A fire was building inside me. I felt sure that Laurie Birnbuam was credible, the beard. The tux. We were piecing together his appearance. " is there anything more, anything at all that stands out to you? Some physical characteristics? A mannerism?"
She shook her head. "It happens so quickly it was only when I saw the drawing of him in the chronicle. . ."
I looked at Chin, conveying that it was time to call down an artist to firm up the details. I thanked her, made my way back to my desk. We will get a sketch from her to use along with the one from Maryanne Perkins at the Saks.
The murder investigation had entered a new phase. It was very hot. We had a stakeout operational outside the Bridal Boutique At the Saks. One by one, we were contacting the names of the store's list, anyone who had ordered a wedding dress on the past several months.
My heart was pounding. The face I had imagined, my dream of the red-bearded man, was starting to fill in. I felt we had him contained.
My phone rang. "Moo," I answer, still shuffling through the names in the Saks wedding folder.
"My name's Jude," a deep, urgent voice said. "I'm a nomicide Detective. In Cleveland," I got a homicide here that fits the pattern of what you have been dealing with," Jude explained.
"GSWs," Jude continues, both of them. Gunshot wounds right between the eyes and private parts, he describes the quick but grostesque death of Hannah and Darlington Voskuhl, killed at their wedding at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. This time the killer hadn't even waited for the wedding to end.
What kind of weapon your guy used in Napa?"
Jude ashes.
Nine millimeter," I told him.
"Same."
I was reeling a little bit. Cleveland?
A voice ponded inside me. What the hell was Ted Beard doing in Ohio? We had just made the breakthrough, found out where he was casing his victims. Did he know that? If so, how?
Cleveland was either a copycat killing, which was entirely possible, or this case had just broken wide open and could lead anywhere.
"You have a crime-scene photos there, Jude?" I asked.
Jude grunted, "Yeah Got them right in front of me. Nasty. Sexually explicit."
"Can you get me a close-up of their hands?"
"Okay, but why the hands?"
"What were they wearing, Jude?"
I heard him shuffling through photos. " you mean rings?"
"Good guess, Detective. Yeah."
I was praying that it wasn't our guy. Cleveland. . . It would shatter everything that made me feel we were close to him. Was Red Beard taking his killing act across the country?
A minute late Jude confirmed exactly the thing I didn't want to hear. " there was no wedding bands, the bastard was on the move. We had a stakeout going where he might show up, and he was two thousand miles away. He had just murdered a couple at their reception in Ohio. Shit, shit, shit.
"You said the bodies were found in a sexually explicit position?" I asked Jude with dismay.
The Cleveland cop hesitated. The groom was sitting on the pieces John. We found him there sitting up, legs open. The bride was shot in the stall, too, as she was coming in. There was enough of her brains on the inside of the door to confirm it. But when we found her. She was face down, her face was stuffed between his legs."
I was silent, forming the image in my mind, hating this cruel, inhuman bastard more everyday.
"You know. . .fellatio style," Jude finally managed, "there's few things my investigation want to ask you."
"Ask me yourself. I'm gonna be there tomorrow.