Don't Look Now by Richard Montanari Read Free Book Online Page B

much better looking. He paid for Andie’s drink and said something that made her laugh.
    Somehow, for Matt Heller, that wasn’t part of the fantasy.

6
    PARIS STARED AT the bottle. Manfred stared at him. He had walked the dog twice, smoked a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights, eaten an entire package of turkey hot-dogs without benefit or comfort of mustard and drunk a six-pack of Diet Pepsi. Everything but clean the tiny apartment. What was left? He looked at his watch. Eleven-o-five.
    Let’s see, there was news, more food, another cigarette, another walk.
Fuck it
.
    He grabbed the pint of Windsor, as he had a dozen times already, then put it back. He patted the sofa twice and Manfred leapt to his side. ‘Are we going for another walk, Manny?’ The word put a motor in the terrier’s abbreviated tail. ‘You’re gonna be the best-conditioned mutt in Cleveland.’
    Paris clicked the remote, turning on Channel 5. Hank Theodore, the never-aging cyborg who anchored the six and eleven o’clock news, was chatting with a citizen in Collinwood who was carrying a picket sign. Paris shook his head. All he ever heard was people bitching all week about the drug problems in their neighborhood and how nobody gives a shit, but come Saturday night when some dealer with a 9-mm pistol in his hand gets capped on somebody’s front lawn, you can bet they’ll be on the streets Sunday carrying signs about how the cops are killing their children. Paris reached for the remote.
    Before he could change the channel the words cut across the screen in eye-popping red, superimposed over the silhouette of a man brandishing a butcher knife. Then came a huge black question mark. ‘Serial Killer?’ Paris’s heart sank. He turned up the volume.
    ‘
… have a serial killer on our hands? Well, our very own Triple F-Fact Finder Five has been sniffing out the details. TV Five’s Paul Coaklin has more. Paul?
’
    The camera cut to a medium shot of the Red Valley Inn. The reporter stood in front of room 127 and began to speak as the camera zoomed slowly in.
    ‘
Hank, she was twenty-three years old, single, active in the community, a woman who, according to friends, didn’t date much, due to her extraordinarily high standards. A graduate of Cleveland State University, a career woman just trying to make it in the big city
.
    ‘
So how did Karen Schallert end up here, in a cheap motel, savagely murdered by someone who, in all likelihood, was someone she trusted. Someone to whom she had reached out in love or friendship. Someone who
—’
    Paris shut it off. He couldn’t handle the soap opera bullshit. Next they’d have his boss, Captain Elliott, commenting on how it was too early to tell if there was a connection between the three murders and yes, it was safe for women to go out of their houses and yes, the investigation was continuing and yak, yak, yak.
    When Paris stood up, Manfred dove off the couch and all but slid to the door on the wood flooring. ‘All walked out, Manny,’ Paris said. ‘Going to hit the showers.’
    Manfred, banking on the outside chance of an after-shower jog, staked his place by the door.
    * * *
    Taking a shower at the Candace Apartments, a twenty-suite Gothic nightmare at the corner of East Eighty-fifth and Carnegie, was a science. Early in the cleansing experience, when the water was hottest, it was also rusty as hell. As the water got clearer it also got cooler, so there was this window of opportunity no more than two or three minutes long when the water was warm enough and clear enough to take a shower.
    When Paris stepped in, the water was still pretty hot. He soaped himself quickly, feeling better by the second. Better about not stopping at the Caprice after his tour. Better about not touching the Windsor. Better about Missy.
    He knew that there was a good chance that Elliott would call him in the morning and give him the job of organizing the task-force to catch this psycho. His solve rate was one of the highest in