The Night Caller by Lutz John

Author:Lutz, John [Lutz, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2001-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-one

Seattle Detective Sergeant Roy Lyons sat at his desk and stared glumly at the phone. Yesterday a woman had attacked a man with a long electrical device she’d been using to kill slugs in her garden, some kind of thin, heated, and sharply pointed metal rod. In the dank Washington climate, Seattle residents often had to deal with slugs that were a particular threat to plants. Unconventional and imaginative methods were sometimes used, as in this case. The Slug Slayer, as it was called by its manufacturer, looked to Lyons a lot like an electric dipstick heater used to warm and thin a car’s oil in cold weather so the engine would start. Whatever it was, the Slug Slayer did slay slugs, and it could double as a heated sword. The woman’s neighbor, one pesky Adam Adamski (Could that really be his name?), was hospitalized with punctured and singed intestines. The swordswoman was free on bond.

Lyons’s partner, Marty Sanderson, approached the desk with a cup of coffee in one hand, a file folder in the other. He grinned at Lyons and extended the cup toward him. “Want a slug?”

“Shut up,” Lyons said.

“Oh, ah, yeah.”

“You don’t fool me,” Lyons told him.

“Any luck finding witnesses to the stabbing?” Sanderson asked, obviously suppressing another smile but sticking to business.

“Two men are canvassing the neighborhood. They’re supposed to call when they find a witness. They’ve been at it for several hours and the phone hasn’t rung.”

“I’m here to change the subject,” Sanderson said. “Remember that woman about a month ago who’d been worked over in her bathtub with a can opener?”

“I tend not to forget those things.” He also couldn’t forget what the ME had shown him at the morgue, how a plastic saint had been inserted in her vagina, deeply with the aid of a knife cut. After death, thank God. That information was still secret from press and public. Whoever knew it other than the authorities was the killer. The saint was a cheap plastic statuette sold in religious gift shops. It was also used by florists to embellish floral displays and funeral wreaths. The company that manufactured the things sold them by the thousands. St. Augustine was one of their most popular models.

“Georgianna Mason,” Sanderson said anyway, as a reminder. “Remember we found a heel print in the bathroom?”

“Yeah. The killer was barefoot. He’d probably undressed so he wouldn’t get blood or water on his clothes while he was…using the can opener.” Lyons also remembered that the print of a bare heel was obscure enough that it wouldn’t be useful in court even if they were sure they had the killer and that his heel had made it.

Sanderson tossed the file folder he was holding onto Lyons’s desk. “After getting dressed, the killer must have walked back into the bathroom and stood for a moment to admire his work before leaving. Lab guys found another print with their forensic lights, not visible to the naked eye, this one made by a shoe.

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