My phone rang. “Boxer,” I answered, still shuffling through the names in the Saks wedding folder.
“My name’s McBride,” a deep, urgent voice said. “I’m a homicide detective. In Cleveland.”
Chapter 53
“I GOT A HOMICIDE HERE that fits the pattern of what you’ve been dealing with,” McBride explained.
“GSWs,” McBride continued, “both of them. Gunshot wounds right between the eyes.” He described the quick but grotesque deaths of Kathy and James 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 use in Napa?” McBride asked.
“Nine millimeter,” I told him.
“Same.”
I was reeling a little bit. Cleveland?
A voice pounded inside me. What the hell was Red 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 crime-scene photos there, McBride?” I asked.
McBride 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, McBride?”
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 later, McBride confirmed exactly the thing I didn’t want to hear. “There are no wedding bands.”
The bastard was on the move. We had a stakeout going where we thought he might show up, and he was two thousand miles away. He’d 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 McBride with dismay.
The Cleveland cop hesitated. He finally said, “The groom was shot sitting on the 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 facedown. Uh, her face was stuffed between his legs.”
I was silent, forming the image in my mind, hating this cruel, inhuman bastard more every day.
“You know… fellatio style,” McBride finally managed. “There’s a few things my investigators want to ask you.”
“Ask me yourself. I’m gonna be there tomorrow.”
Chapter 54
SIX-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING, Raleigh and I were on our way to Cleveland, of all places. McBride met us at the plane. He wasn’t how I had imagined him. He wasn’t flabby, middle-aged, Irish Catholic. He was was intense, sharp boned, maybe thirty-eight, and black.
“You’re younger than I thought.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back. “And you’re definitely less Irish.”