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"A Visit From Uncle Giallo"
"A Visit From Uncle Giallo"
10/2-10/4/1978
I.
She had never been to the observation deck of the Empire State Building before, despite having lived in Manhattan for four years. Late on a warm afternoon at the beginning of October, Katherine Wheatley was enjoying both the view and the fact that her insisting on coming here seemed to annoy Jeremy Bane. While peering over the fencing down at the tops of other buildings, Katherine kept stealing glances at Bane. The young man who was called Dire Wolf was only only a year older than her at most, barely twenty-one yet, but he was always so damn serious that she felt compelled to tease him for his own good.
Even more than that, Katherine had to admit, her pestering him was a way to deal with the way she found him very attractive but he seemed to be absolutely neutral toward her. The telepath knew objectively she was pretty, with bright blue eyes and long stright black hair, as well as an ingratiating smile. Naturally slim at five feet four, she was wearing olive jeans and a white long-sleeved pullover, both rather snug. Her nylon windbreaker hung over one arm. As she meet Bane's gaze with a grin, she saw nothing in his face but the usual sober brooding stare he always displayed. This annoyed her beyond reason.
Her telepathy failed her with him, as well. Under the guidance of Kenneth Dred, she had been refining and expanding her natural gift. But she could not get even a glimpse of what was going on in Bane's mind. He was so tightly repressed and defensive that her probes could only pick up on his surface thoughts. Her reaction was to take this as a challenge. Fishing in her pockets for another quarter, Katherine stepped up on the little platform that held one of the mounted binoculars and dropped the coin in. With a click and a whir, the machine came to life and she was peering through the lenses at the people rushing back and forth on the sidewalks. She had already studied Ellis Island and the Chrysler Building.
"We need to get moving soon," Bane said quietly, coming up next to her.
"Just a few more minutes," she sang back pleasantly. As the Dire Wolf moved away, Katherine swung the machine up and past rows of office windows in the building across the street. She stopped as she saw the murder take place.
In a corner window, a woman with long blonde hair was struggling to get away from a bulky figure in a black trenchcoat. One gloved hand swung up and then back and forth, and light flashed on the blade of an old-fashioned straight razor. Bright arterial blood sprayed in a red jet. Without intending it, Katherine reached out with her mind to contact the killer, perhaps to try to stop him or perhaps just to identify who he was. To her shock, her tentative probe was thrust brutally away. Under a wide-brimmed hat, a blank white-masked face glared across the street at her and she felt a powerful mental force slam into her head like a punch.
Katherine yelped and fell backwards to the deck. No one else was on that side of the building at the moment to see. Even as she hit, Jeremy Bane was at her side, crouching down over her.
"What was that? Are you okay?" he demanded. Bane's most noticeable feature was the pale eyes, icy grey under heavy black brows. Those eyes met hers with obvious concern but she was too shaken to notice.
"Oh dear God," she said, getting up as he took her arm. "Jeremy! I just saw a woman being killed. In that building across the street. And the killer is a telepath, too. He looked right at me. He knows I saw the whole thing."
The young Dire Wolf glared across 34th Street as if daring anyone to show themselves. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he asked, "Which window, Katherine? Point it out to me."
Stepping up behind him, she tried to spot exactly which window it had been. She wasn't certain, since it was a sixty-story building and every floor seemed exactly the same. Katherine tried to think. When she had fallen, she had knocked the telescope upward, so it was no longer pointing where it had been.
"I can't be sure," she admitted finally.
"Get up on the platform," Bane said. "Okay. Now look through the lenses the way you had been. That must be about the right height. Can you be more specific now?"
Katherine started counting down from her line of sight to the street. "Oh, this is bloody hard," she said under her breath. "We're on the 86th floor after all. The sixtieth floor I should think, but maybe one above or below."
Turning to her, Bane made a noticeable effort to soften his usual tone. "How do you feel, Kath? Are you hurt somehow?"
"No, no, just shaken up a bit." She managed a reassuring smile. "I was just so... surprised. Seeing a murder like that, with no idea it was going to happen. Jeremy, we MUST phone your police."
"We will. What's this about the killer being telepathic like you?"
Going over to the wire fence that kept people from jumping off, the British girl stared at the building across the street. "Gone now. I can't sense his presence. Somehow he picked up that I was watching and he shoved my mind back, the way you'd shove a cat off your lap. He's as strong mentally as I am. Stronger."
Bane made a rare comforting gesture, placing his open hand high on her back and pressing. "All right. I bet that's what drew you to look over there. You picked up on his telepathy. Let's head down to the lobby and find a phone booth. First, I want to tell Mr Dred what happened, then we're going to visit the NYPD once again."
As he turned to start heading for the elevator door, Katherine stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. "I just thought of something. All I saw was a white mask and a black hat. I can't identify him but maybe he read my thoughts enough that he'll be able to identify me. I'm a witness. He may come for me!"
Jabbing a thumb at his own chest, Bane said coldly, "He'll have to get through me first."
II.
The squad room was old, with floor boards that creaked and high narrow windows that only looked out at the blank wall of a warehouse. A ceiling fan managed a few turns each minute but had little effect on the cigarette smoke. Five chipped and stained desks were arranged around the room, each with an extra chair beside it for suspects or civilians. In one corner, an older detective in his shirtsleeves pecked away doggedly at a manual typewriter, while next to him a young black man in a neat tailored suit read a report to him out loud.
Bane had been in other police stations a few times, under varying circumstances. He stood in front of the door to the office of Chief of Detectives Bernard Mueller, glaring at the frosted glass panel impatiently. Beside him, Katherine glanced curiously around the room and met the stares from the detectives with a polite smile. Minutes crept by.
A detective came over who looked Southern Chinese, stout around the middle and with eyeglasses far down his snub nose. "Want some coffee, miss? Either of you?"
Before Katherine could answer, the older detective over at the typewriter called out, "You'll be sorry. That coffee is more bitter than my wife."
The door opened and Mueller emerged with a cigar burning between his fingers. He was hitting sixty, with grizzled hair but a mustache that had stayed black. "Reports are coming back. No body on floors fifty-eight to sixty-one, no blood anywhere. No one reports seeing a guy in a black trenchcoat with a white mask and black fedora. Looks like a false alarm, miss."
"Really." She folded her arms stubbornly. "I don't believe I imagined all that, sir."
"Could be a TV in one office, facing the window," Chief Mueller said dismissively. "Stranger things have happened."
Katherine turned to Bane for support, but he seemed deeply distracted as if trying to remember something.
Standing up from behind the desk nearest the office door, a short stocky man with hairy forearms revealed by rolled-up sleeves announced, "Uncle Giallo."
There was a wave of comments from around the room. "No!" "Come on!" "Damn it, Maurizio, you and your cold cases," they all shouted.
Chief Mueller shook his head firmly. "The Uncle Giallo murders were eighteen years ago. Forget it, he's in the ground somewhere."
"That's what I was trying to remember," Bane said with a finger snap. "Of course. It was before my time but I've read about it."
The detective who had stood up came over. He had the curly black hair, hooked Roman nose and swarthy skin that made the name Maurizio appropriate. "Bernie, it has to be him. The hat, the mask, the trenchcoat. And killing a young woman with a razor. Of course it's Uncle Giallo."
Chief Mueller looked over at the two civilians. "This is Detective Maurizio Rossi. He was still riding around in a prowl car when there were five brutal slashings in the metropolitan area. The murderer was never caught. One victim lived long enough to provide a description--"
"Which matches what this young lady saw tonight!" yelled Rossi. "It has to be Uncle Giallo."
"The killings were in 1961, Maurizio."
"So freakin' what. Bernie, if the killer was thirty then, he'd be hitting fifty today. Still young enough to do some razor work. I say we re-open the Uncle Giallo file right now," he demanded.
Mueller noticed his cigar had gone out and he flicked it into a wastepaper basket. "No body, no blood, no missing persons report. There's no evidence that a crime was even committed." He turned to Katherine. "No disrepect, miss. When you're a cop, you soon realize that people misread what they see all the time."
"I understand," she said. Since entering police headquarters, Katherine had deliberately withdrawn her telepathic awareness into herself. It could be distracting when she first met people. Now she lightly skimmed over the mind of Chief Mueller and saw nothing to rouse suspicion. He was dedicated, conscientous, a little emotionally depressed and anxious to finish his paperwork and go home to his wife. She turned her attention to Rossi and was interested at the intensity of his involvement with the discussion.
Without knowing she was going to speak, Katherine asked Rossi, "Do you have some personal stake in the Uncle Giallo case?"
The Italian detective stepped back a pace at that. "Yeah, yeah I do. You could say that."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be personal. Well then, I believe we will be shoving off then."
"Sorry, miss." Chief Mueller pointed a finger at Bane. "You, though. I've heard about you. The Dire Wolf, so-called. You've been working for Kenneth Dred, I understand, and he certainly has been a great help to the force over the years. But you haven't established yourself."
"And?" Just the single word without inflection.
"Watch your step, son. Be careful. Vigilantes break the law, they are as big a problem as the criminals. Read me?"
Bane nodded in silence and took Katherine's arm to escort her from the squad room. As they left, Maurizio Rossi called after them, "If you think of any more details, ask for me."
III.
They returned to the nine story stone building on East 38th Street just after nine that night. In the front hall where they entered, the door to the reception room was open to their left and Kenneth Dred saw them. "Ah! There you two are. Come in here, please."
Sitting behind his desk under a huge hand-painted map of the world, Dred placed a slip of paper to mark where he had been and placed a decrepit old book, HUMAN BEASTS OF PRAGUE, to one side. Nearing eighty, he was a slight, bent figure with thin brown hair far back on a large head. Dred's gnomish face lit with happiness as he watched his two proteges enter and pull up chairs in front of his desk. He had been afraid for some time that he would not find successors he could trust.
"I don't know if you children have eaten?" he began. "There is nearly a whole chicken left in the kitchen, with the usual side dishes."
"Sounds great, sir, but first we have a report. Something strange." Bane turned his head to the girl seated next to him. "Katherine, it's really your story."
"I was just about to point that out," she said with a trace of sharpness. "Mr Dred, here's what happened. At five-thirty today, Jeremy and I were on the outside observation deck of your Empire State Building..."
when she finished with Mueller's final sentence, the young telepath leaned back and folded her hands in her laps. "And so here we are, sir."
Kenneth Dred had listened without comment. "Dear me. Yes, I remember the 'Uncle Giallo' killings quite well. There is one detail you may need to know. The final victim was a young woman named Anna Marie Rossi, the younger sister of Maurizio Rossi."
"That's what I was picking up from him, then. The poor fellow. No wonder he is so determined to open up the case again." Katherine's voice was low. "What were the crimes about? What was the motive?"
"Ah, that was only discovered later," Dred told them. "It developed that the women involved did not know each other directly. No common link was ever found and yet..." He hesitated and shifted his weight uncomfortably, "I remain convinced there was something connecting them. Something they knew that the killer wanted to keep secret, that was my theory."
Katherine interrupted, "Isn't 'giallo' the Italian word for yellow? What's the significance of that?"
"Oh, yes. There were a popular series of crime thrillers with yellow covers in Italy, so they were known as 'giallo' and the genre became known by that word. I myself have read a few Edgar Wallace crime mysteries in that field and found them entertaining. The unknown killer had some traits found in the giallo books and he was given that nickname." Dred shrugged, then continued, "That's all there is to that. I am concerned that the current murderer shares your telepathic nature."
"Naturally, it worries me as well," she said. "The mind I touched was just beastly."
Dred leaned over to the side of his desk and tugged his telephone over in front of him. "I may be able to get some useful information. Meanwhile, I would feel more at ease if you two warmed up dinner and served yourselves. Mrs Winscomb spent some time preparing it and I do like to get my money's worth."
Standing up, Jeremy Bane gave one of his rare smiles. "I'm more than ready to carry out that order, sir. Coming, Katherine?"
She got to her feet as well, suddenly aware that she was in fact ravenous. With his enhanced metabolism, Bane was always starving but she realized she herself had not eaten since breakfast. "What about you, sir?"
"Eh? Oh, I've already eaten all I want, thank you. Afraid I'm at the age where I don't need much food. You two go to it, I want to make a few phone calls."
As Bane and Katherine moved around the kitchen at the rear of the main hall, bringing out plates and cutlery, moving a large fried chicken to the round table with its accompanying containers of sweet potatoes and mixed vegetables, they were lost in the mundane tasks for the moment. Neither had any idea that, at the same moment, a beautiful model who was known as Fiorella was lying on her bathroom floor with the last of her life blood trickling out from her gashed throat.
IV.
At six the next morning, the doorbell rang. In the reception room, Jeremy Bane leaped off the couch to his feet and was moving toward the front door as if he had been awake and waiting. He sometimes slept down there instead of in his own room on the third floor. He could not give a reason why he did this, other than instinct. Even his boots were still on. As he whipped out into the front hall, he was tugging on the sport jacket over the long-sleeved turtleneck, all black as always.
By the inner door, the Dire Wolf took a second to check the little monitor screen usually hidden behind a sliding wood panel. It had been his idea to install a closed-circuit camera over the front door, and he had insisted over Dred's reluctance. Watching the image, he frowned as he recognized the man out on the steps. As the doorbell rang again, Bane opened the inner door and stepped out into a vestibule just large enough for a bench and a shelf with a ceramic lamp and a few magazines. On the wall to his right hung a large aerial photograph of Manhattan.
Bane swung open the outer door and said, "Morning, Detective Rossi. A little early, isn't it?"
Neatly dressed and clean-shaven, unruly hair slicked down, the man looked more presentable than he had the evening before. "I report for my shift at seven. But before I punch in, I wanted to give you folks some news."
"Come in," Bane said rather grudgingly. As the detective brushed past him, the young Dire Wolf swept 38th Street with suspicious grey eyes that missed very little. He saw no one out there in a doorway or sitting in a parked car. Bane followed Rossi into the front hall.
"I've read a file on you, Bane," the detective said. "Even before you started working for Dred, you apparently always got mixed up in creepy business. The guys in the badlands called you Dire Wolf when you were only fifteen." He glanced at the hallway, lined with bookcases and ending in a wide staircase leading upward. Unmarked doors on both sides of the hall were all closed.
"Where are you going with this?" Bane asked bluntly.
"Ah, my parents came from a small village in the old country. I grew up with stories about La Strega... witches and curses and the creatures of the night." Rossi met Bane's stare with a completely serious expression. "I don't shrug that stuff off. What you have done to destroy those monsters is good work, son."
"Thanks. That's not what brings you here, is it?"
"No. I checked overnight reports from the Benjamin Kline Building, where your friend thought she saw something. Still no signs of violence, but there is one thing odd. There's a magazine office on that floor, something called CHATOYANCE, fashion rag for rich dames. The receptionist was questioned back and forth, up and down, and she finally remembered that she saw one employee come in at ten, she talked with the woman at four... but when they closed up the offices at six, it occurred to her that she had never seen the woman leave."
"That IS interesting," Bane said. "What did this employee look like?"
"Long blonde hair. As you were already thinking. Her name was Helene Coleman, age thirty-one. Her roommate down on 14th Street says Helene never came home yesterday." Detective Rossi saw the sudden predatory glint in those grey eyes and he smiled slightly. "So now an investigation is underway. I aim to be assigned to it."
"I hope you are, detective. When Mr Dred wakes up, I'll tell him all this. And I will be looking into it, as well." Bane had not exactly loosened up but he no longer watched Rossi as if ready for a duel any second. "We should keep in touch."
"Gotcha," Rossi said as he turned back toward the door. "Oh, listen. The way the department works with your boss is all unofficial. Off the record. If you or I are ever asked, I wasn't here this morning and you never heard anything from me."
"I understand," the Dire Wolf answered, watching the detective go down the steps to the sidewalk before closing the outer door. To himself, he added, "I wouldn't have it any other way." He turned around and strode over to the elevator door just as it opened and Kenneth Dred emerged.
The elderly man was wrapped in a thick maroon bathrobe over blue pajamas, with slippers on his gnarled feet. It was unusual for him to come downstairs not fully dressed and Bane must have shown surprise because Dred began, "There is a buzzer by my bed that sounds when the front door opens. Ah me, it took me so long to get my robe on and hobble to the elevator that I arrived just in time to see that policeman leave. Detective Rossi, was it?"
"Yes, sir." Bane accompanied Dred across the hall to the reception room and watched him gingerly lower himself behind the desk. The Dire Wolf repeated the conversation he had just had with Rossi word for word, even mentioning gestures and facial expressions.
"You have gotten to be excellent at reporting," Dred told him. "Good work indeed. Of course you remember the telepath you met back in January, up in Maybrook?"
"What, the blonde? Sure."
"I have been unable to contact her. This is not alarming in itself, Cindy Brunner has been known to move frequently. She sometimes stays with friends for extended periods. It's too bad. I hoped to see if she would help out in this case. Having her alongside Katherine would double the telepathic force available." Dred started to work his way to a standing position again. "It is much too early. I intend to get another hour or two of sleep before starting for the day. When Katherine comes downstairs, fill her in, will you?"
With a deadpan expression that hid his concern, Bane escorted the old man back across the hall to the elevator. He wished Dred would use a cane. At the sound of the machinery hauling the cage back up to the fourth floor, the Dire Wolf stood lost in thought for a few seconds. He himself seldom slept more than four hours a night. Trotting up the stairs to his room on the third floor, he took a hot shower and shaved, then changed into a fresh outfit identical to the black slacks and turtleneck he always wore.
During the shower, the Dire Wolf had unstrapped soft leather sheaths from his forearms. They held the silver-bladed daggers which Dred had given him on their first meeting. In just over a year, Bane had found the silver blades effective against any creatures of the night he had met. He spent much of his free time practicing the throwing of those knives from different angles and positions, and it seemed so natural to him that he felt he had been using them all his life.
Dressed again, brushing his damp hair with his fingers, he thought he had time to get in some throwing practice. It was just after seven, Katherine usually woke up at eight and came down for breakfast by eight-thirty at the latest. The Dire Wolf had stepped out by the staircase just as the phone in the reception room began to ring. He flashed back into his room, thumbed a button on the phone on his nightstand and took the call. "Hello. Yeah, this is Kenneth Dred's residence. Who's calling? Oh? Tell me everything..."
A few minutes later, Bane lowered the handset to its receiver with a click. Now there was a lot to think about. He figured the ringing would have woken everyone again, so he went down to the first floor and to the kitchen. Taking two pieces of thick rye bread, he smeared some butter on them,sliced a few chunks off what was left of the chicken from the night before and devoured the sandwich nearly in one bite. A tumbler of cold apple juice followed.
As he finished, a slim figured appeared in the doorway. Katherine Wheatley had tied her hair back into a thick ponytail and was wearing jeans and a plain white polo shirt. "I dare say, I need to retire earlier. What was that phone call about, Jeremy?" She went over and started brewing coffee.
"Things are hopping," he said. "Detective Rossi was already here this morning, and now he just called again. One missing woman, one dead one. Both worked at an office in that building you were looking at yesterday. Helene Coleman is missing. And someone just found a model named Fiorella lying in her bathroom with her throat slit from ear to ear. It happened around ten o'clock last night."
Watching the coffee start to drip, Katherine rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. "This is a bit dodgy isn't it? Give me half a moment to take it in. What do you think, Jeremy?"
As the Dire Wolf started to speak, Kenneth Dred came into the kitchen. He was wearing one of his old-fashioned suits, complete with vest and thin black tie. The old man greeted them with a rather grumpy tone and lowered himself to the round table in the corner. "Is that coffee you're making, dear? What a fine idea."
Katherine and Dred each started on a cup of coffee as they came fully awake. Bane explained about Detective Rossi's visit and about his phone call just a few minutes earlier. "He seems eager to get us in on the case, sir."
Sipping at his cup, the elderly scholar took a second. "My feeling is that he doesn't think the police department will really get anywhere. He wants to have us investigating on our own as a back-up, to increase the chances of solving this 'Uncle Giallo' business. May I have a second cup, son?"
"Oh, sure." Bane poured more coffee for both Dred and Katherine, then got down two frying pans from where they hung on the wall. As the other sat and came to life, he broke a half dozen eggs into one pan and some bacon into the other. Katherine shook her head, got up and began to help. She started slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster, got out the strawberry jam and the butter dish and set them up with plates for everyone.
"You two are a great boon on a morning like this," Kenneth Dred said. "Jeremy, I image you intend to visit that office where the victims worked?"
"Yes, sir. There may not be anyone there, of course. That depends on whether they have heard about Fiorella and how they felt about her." He started spreading the bacon out on paper towels to absorb some of the grease. "I figure that with Katherine here and her telepathy, we can get some information the cops won't have."
As they ate, all three were silent for a few moments. Finally, with every scrap gone, Bane jumped up again and began clearing away the dishes.
"You might leave them, Jeremy," Kenneth Dred said. "Mrs Winscomb and her daughter will be coming today to clean. They won't be back until Monday. I asked them to stock the refrigerator as well. You and Katherine will have your hands full with Uncle Giallo."
Wiping her lips on a paper napkin, the young telepath raised her eyes to follow Bane's movements. "I don't think it was mere coincidence that I was on that observation deck yesterday," she announced. "I think the nearness of another telepath drew me. The murder caught me off-guard but I was already waiting for something to happen."
The Dire Wolf paused in the doorway. "We can get started when you're ready. I'm going down to check on the Buick." With that, he was striding down the hall to disappear into a walk-in closet. Katherine got to her feet and accompanied Kenneth Dred to the reception room. As her mentor seated himself behind his desk, she said, "You seem worried about this case, if I may say so."
"Yes. Something about Detective Rossi's eagerness to draw us in rings false. Perhaps I am being too suspicious but in a murder investigation, no one is exempt from being a suspect." Dred adjusted the phone in front of him and got a notepad and pen from the center drawer of the desk. "I expect to make many calls today. Perhaps Bleak has heard something about this? Several of my contacts are in town now."
"Well, sir, if you don't mind, I need to make myself presentable," Katherine said. "I'll be right back."
As the girl took off for her room on the third floor, Kenneth Dred sat in thought. The arthritis in his hands ached but he could still write legibly. On the pad in front of him, he began with the date and the day of the week, then added 'A Visit From Uncle Giallo?' and underlined it.
V.
The sign of the door read CHATOYANCE MAGAZINE in a distinctive swirling logo, red letters against a Navy blue background. Bane opened the door without knocking or anything, with Katherine right behind him. She had changed into a simple pair of dark slacks, white rollneck blouse with a silver chain necklace and a lightweight blazer. For once, she had applied some make-up, just the barest trace of blush and mascara and lipstick, but more than she normally wore.
The offices were rather small and cluttered, which surprised them. Out front was an area with plain tables and chairs, piles of paper scraps and loose photos and tools such as razor styluses and rubber cement. A brilliant light on an adjustable arm was clamped to one table. In the corner were two green metal filing cabinets and shelf piled high with magazines. No one was in sight here. In the far wall was a plain wooden door marked PRIVATE and Bane strode over and rapped sharply on it with his knuckles.
Immediately, the door swung outward and an angry woman about fifty years old stuck her head out. "Oh, so you decided to show- Oh. Sorry. I thought you were my assistant Helene."
"No," the Dire Wolf said. "We're looking into recent events here."
"More police? Honestly, I've spent more time recently with the NYPD than with my husband. You aren't cops, though, you're both too young." The woman was slightly overweight, which she tried to camoflauge with a lacy shawl around her shoulders and with a burst of frizzy brown hair as a visual distraction. She had cat's-eye glasses with a chain fastened to their earpiece. "You look like college kids."
Katherine reached out subtly, slightly, with her mind, sending a friendly tone that was the equivalent of humming reassuringly. It seemed to work as the woman visibly lowered her shoulders and relaxed.
"You're Samantha Hopkins, then? Editor of CHATOYANCE?" asked Bane.
"In a way," the woman sighed, adjusting her glasses and getting a better look at her visitors. "We are just the American edition of a French magazine. I translate most of the articles and sometimes bat out a filler piece if we run short. A few times each issue, we need a new photo to take up a page and my assistant does that." Hopkins glanced over at the empty workspace. "Not that I can blame Selma for not coming in today. After what happened."
"That's what we need to ask about, I fear," Katherine said in a gentle tone. "This poor woman, Fiorella. She didn't work for your full-time?"
"Eh? No, no, she was called in once a month or so to pose. We would have half a page empty because the French edition might have an ad there that we don't carry. Not so long ago, I would have posed myself. I might have had quite a modeling career of my own but the market is just for skin and bones with lots of bleached teeth...." Samantha Hopkins seemed to be studying Bane with a touch of prurient interest. "Those are amazing eyes you have. I don't think I've ever seen quite that shade before. How do you look in photographs?"
The Dire Wolf seemed not to hear that. "I'm sure the police have already asked you about any enemies Fiorella might have had, jealous boyfriends, if she was in over her head with debt. That sort of thing."
"Fiorella? She was hard-headed as a judge. That woman knew where every penny went and her dates were under her thumb." Hopkins smiled the automatic insincere smile that never reached her eyes. "I've thought it over, believe me, and I figure it must have been some madman. I just can't imagine Fiorella being off her guard with anyone she knew."
"Hmm. Interesting. Have you heard anything about Helene Coleman?"
"What? Wait a second, Helene's name has not been in the papers or on TV. How do you know about all this, I think I should ask."
Bane was not intimidated in the least, "We work unofficially with the police on unusual cases. You might call us civilian consultants."
Before Hopkins could say anything more, Katherine took Bane's sleeve. "I believe we have taken up too much of this woman's time as it is. Our condolences for your loss, Miss Hopkins, and I hope Miss Coleman turns up safely."
"Yes. I see. Thank you." The editor gave Bane a final lingering stare. "I wasn't friends with Fiorella, you understand, but even so... her death under these circumstances is quite a shock. As for Helene, she hasn't answered her phone this morning but that's not unusual for her. She is a bit of a wild child."
"We'll do our best," Katherine promised. Out in the hall, she pulled Bane by one arm to the flanked elevators. "Well, I never," she said after pressing the button. "That woman quite fancied you, you know."
"Nothing fancy about me," he said in slight confusion.
"No, I mean she was interested in you! I expected her to ask you out to dinner next. Didn't you see that?"
Bane shrugged and stepped into the elevator as the cage opened. "I didn't notice. I'm thinking about the case."
"Honestly, you're blind in some ways," Katherine told him. "I was in her mind while she was flirting with you. That woman is just not right. Her head is so crammed with resentment and jealousy and frustration that it was most unpleasant being in there. I couldn't concentrate. She thinks she could have been a supermodel except she put on a few pounds. Now she despises the pretty thin women she has to write about...."
"Nothing about Uncle Giallo?" asked Bane. "No images of a white mask or a straight razor?"
"No, nothing of that sort. Sorry. If we need to question her again, I should step back and let her hang all over you. Maybe you could get answers from her."
Bane did not respond the way she had hoped. Instead, as the elevator doors opened into the lobby, he said, "Did you notice the photo of her on the wall by the worktable? It must have been ten years ago, but she WAS thin and beautiful back then."
"I didn't see that," Katherine said. "Where to next, Mr Dire Wolf?"
Outside, a brisk wind made it much cooler than it had been the past few days. Bane led her to where Kenneth Dred's massive Buick Regal was parked and held the door for her. Katherine felt a brief flicker of triumph that she had taught him at least that tiny bit of courtesy. As he got behind the wheel, the Dire Wolf said, "I think we should check the area where the second victim was found. Sound good to you?"
"It makes sense," she replied. Watching traffic as they headed south, she thought for a second. "Jeremy, I don't understand what happened to the body? If Uncle Giallo killed that woman Helene Coleman in that office yesterday, what did he do with the body? The police searched that entire floor, I'm certain they would have found it if it were simply concealed in a cabinet or something."
"Maybe it's the mind control at work. Another telepath I met could make people look the other way just long enough to sneak by. Giallo could carry the body out unseen that way. You've done the distraction a few times."
"Yesss," she said doubtfully. "If the killer waited for convenient moments when there would be only one possible observer, he could have distracted him with telepathy. I can do it, it's easy enough."
They did not make much progress with the investigation about Fiorella. Her apartment on the twenty-eighth floor of a posh building overlooking Central Park West was still sealed off with the yellow tape. A pair of sullen uniformed officers were posted in the hall, too tough-minded for Katherine to distract both at once with telepathy. Approaching them, mentioning he was working for Kenneth Dred, Bane still got brushed off completely.
As they made their way back to the lobby, Bane was fuming. "This is why I need a Private Investigator license," he said. "If I had some leverage to start with... Mr Dred knows a man named Michael Hawk who said he would give me some training and help me get my license. But he hasn't shown up yet."
"It would simplify things," Katherine said. She took his arm as they walked and he didn't resist. "I got no results either. Those policemen were hopeless, one was thinking about sports and the other about some strumpets he had met."
In the lobby, Bane phoned Kenneth Dred. After five minutes of conversation, he handed the phone over to Katherine so she could be filled in as well. Dred had been contacting his many sources and had turned up a few interesting facts that might be relevant. "Uncle Giallo" had first been reported in Rome back in 1959, for example, and was thought to have drowned after jumping off a bridge into the Tiber. So any further appearances might well have been imitation Uncle Giallos. For a time, children used to threaten each other with "You deserve a visit from Uncle Giallo." There was also information about Maurizio Rossi's family and the missing Coleman woman. For one thing, Detective Rossi had been visiting his parents in Rome at the time of the Uncle Giallo killings.
Back at the car, they both grumbled about their lack of progress. Bane swung around on Fifth Avenue and headed for the police precinct where they had been the day before. The sergeant at the front desk waved them through disinterestedly, hardly looking up from his copy of the DAILY NEWS. They trudged up a flight of stairs and found the squad room seemingly unchanged from the night before. Not only were the detectives in the same spots, they apparently had the same suits on as before. The only difference was a pungent and not entirely pleasant aroma from where the Chinese detective had some fish heads and vegetables sizzling on a hot plate.
"Hey, kids," he said amiably. "How about some coffee?"
"Don't do it!" yelled out the old man in the corner, again pecking away at the typerwriter. "That coffee dissolved the plastic spoon I stirred it with."
"Oh, thank you, no," Katherine said in the cheeriest voice she could manage. "Is Detective Rossi here today?"
The Chinese man jerked a thumb toward the door of Chief Duggan's office. "He's in there now trying to change Bernie's mind. Which is like trying to tell the leaves on the trees when to change color. Bernie Mueller is a stubborn boss." He poked uneasily at the steaming fish heads. "Think these are done?"
"How can you tell?" grumbled the old man, lighting up a Camel with a friction match that he lit with his thumbnail. "Make charcoal outta them, it'd be an improvement."
Coming over from his desk was a young black man in a rather snappy tan suit with a dark brown shirt and black tie. He had longish hair, not quite at Afro length, and a neat mustache. "Come with me over here," he said quietly. "I'm Lon Grazier, let me fill you kids in on a few things." He got Katherine and Bane huddled quite close and kept a wary eye on the office door.
"Detective Rossi is a good man. Good cop. But he does have this obsession with Uncle Giallo. Every time a woman is murdered with an edged weapon, Rossi swears up and down it's Uncle Giallo back in action and we have to talk him down." Grazier looked down at the floor and sighed. "It's too bad. This current case, where the young lady here reports seeing someone actually dressed like Uncle Giallo, has really set Maurizio off."
"We learned about his sister," Bane said. "The autopsy revealed her condition when she was killed in 1961."
Frazier's mouth fell open and he made a squeaking noise. "How did you... I mean, say what? I can't confirm any ancient rumors you may have uncovered? It wouldn't be any of your business in any case!"
The Dire Wolf was not diplomatic at best. "Next I want to find if Anna Maria had any boyfriends who disappeared at the same time. If some one was that offended by her pregnancy, what would he have done to the father? Obviously, a shotgun wedding wasn't going to happen."
"Stop. Just stop. I need to remind you that you are just a citizen making inquiries into matters you are not cleared to know about!" Frazier's voice had an edge to it now. "In fact, I think the Chief needs to talk you about keeping your nose out of police business."
Meeting that angry stare directly, Bane was unmoved. "Helene Coleman did not show up for work today. She did not answer her phone. She matches the description of the woman that Katherine saw being murdered. Any progress there?"
About to have a stroke, Detective Frazier rubbed the lower portion of his face and visibly got hold of himself. "This.. this is over the line. I think the two of you should leave now and not return unless brought here by an officer. Which I admit is a likely prospect."
The conversation was broken off as the officer door swung open and then closed sharply, not quite slamming. Maurizio Rossi stomped out, holding a clipboard packed with sheets of reports in one hand. When he saw Bane and Katherine in the squad room, the surly expression on his face lightened.
"Hey, you two again. Still interested in the Uncle Giallo case?" he called out.
"Indeed yes," Katherine answered.
"Well, you won't find me on it. I'm assigned to keeping tabs on the peep shows along Eighth Avenue. Helluva note! Any other time, I'd have kinda enjoyed the assignment, know what I mean?" He leered at them in a way Katherine found unsavory but she gave him leeway because he was covering his true feelings about the task.
"Too bad," Bane said. "I know you wanted to get going on the Uncle Giallo business."
"Yeah. Well, Bernie won't be deciding who goes on that until later today. He says we have enough ongoing as it is, so he has to do some juggling of the roster." Rossi thumbed through the papers on the clipboard he was holding. "I guess some naked boobies are more urgent than a murder or two."
The Dire Wolf started toward the door, glancing at Katherine to see if she was coming with him. "We'll keep in touch," he said. Out in the hall, next to a water cooler that dispensed conical paper cups, Bane stopped. "I wanted to ask you, Kath. Here or at that magazine office, did you pick up any signs of telepathy?"
"No. I was looking, too. That doesn't mean anything one way or the other, to be honest."
"It doesn't?"
"Not really. Many people don't realize they have telepathy. They assume they simply have hunches that come true or that they are good at judging people's intentions. Unless they get some training, telepaths may go through their lives never realizing their potential." She gave Bane a smug little grin. "I happen to have an exceptionally strong gift."
The Dire Wolf studied her face for a second. "So," he said, "we could have been talking to a telepath just now and you would not have been able to tell?"
"Quite so," she answered. "Just as you might chat with an Olympic sprinter while they were seated and have no hint of their capabilities. Is it Rossi that you suspect?"
"Yeah. He's so eager to go after Uncle Giallo, I wonder if he wants that so he can steer the investigation. He was in Rome during the original murders, and he could have been the one who killed Anna Maria."
"His own sister...?!"
"If she was pregnant and unmarried, sure. Some Italian families are still very strict and unforgiving. They used to say an Italian girl left the family home in a wedding dress or a funeral shroud." Bane glanced back at the closed door to the squad room. "Strong little guy, too. Did you see the arms on him? If he got hold of an intended victim, that grip would be hard to break."
Katherine gave a visible shudder and folded her arms across her chest. "Ugh. Well, my friend, what now?"
"Back to Mr Dred, I guess." Bane sounded angry and disgusted. "We sure aren't making much progress so far."
Heading back to the Buick, she said, "At least I hope the housekeeper made a meal for us. Her cooking is so much better than mine."
VI.
At one in the morning, the two of them were standing in the underground garage beneath the Kline Building where Katherine had witnessed the murder only the day before. The phone call after midnight had barely given them enough time to get here. Bane had actually parked in the street and they had walked in down the wide concrete ramp. As they came within view of the enclosed booth by the opening, the guard on duty suddenly became preoccupied with his feet. He was staring down at them as Bane and Katherine walked right past without being seen.
"That's how it's done," she whispered as they headed down to the lower level. She was wearing a light jacket zipped all the way up, with her black hair in a ponytail. "He felt like something sharp was in his shoe. While he was fiddling with that shoe, we could have led a herd of cows through here."
"It's a great ability," the Dire Wolf said in all sincerity. He thought how useful it would have been to him as a child living on the streets by thievery. "Here we are on Level B. Can you sense anyone nearby?"
Katherine did not reply immediately. She touched Bane's sleeve lightly and answered in a low voice, "Yes. But it's so confusing. I'm getting so many conflicting impressions."
Stepping slightly away from her, arms flexed slightly and balance shifted, Bane readied himself to react to any attack. "Like what?" he said as his eyes moved ceaselessly over the rows of neat shiny cars between concrete pillars.
"It's like.. like trying to understand a conversation in a loud night club," she said. "I don't know how else to explain it. There's a telepathic mind here but untrained, undisciplined. The thoughts are overwhelming."
Rising up from behind a gleaming Lincoln Continental was a stocky figure wrapped in a tightly belted black trenchcoat, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora over a face entirely hidden by a silk stocking mask. In one gloved hand, a Colt .45 revolver was pointed steadily right at them.
"Welcome," the masked figure hissed in a way that would make it hard to identify the voice. "We have much to discuss."
"Detective Maurizio Rossi," Bane announced in a loud clear voice. "You haven't had that outfit on in a long time, have you?"
"You're wrong," said the masked man. He took a step closer. "Listen. The two women who have been killed were not slain the hand of Uncle Giallo. That is a name being misused."
"Oh, I think we know better," the Dire Wolf said, apparently unconcerned about the pistol aimed at him. "Anna Maria had to die, poor girl, because of your medieval concepts of honor. And her boyfriend had to die as well. The other three deaths in between were just to cloud the issue. They were random victims." Bane slowly brought his hands up to cross them over his chest, placing the hilts of his silver daggers within reach.
"No, no, you understand NOTHING!" The dark figure moved nearer, standing next to a thick concrete pillar that had a placard B-18 on it. "Uncle Giallo was no more. He was history. The murders done in the past few days are not about honor."
"Jeremy..." Katherine said, "Something is very wrong. There's someone else..."
Her sentence was cut off as two leather-gloved hands darted out from behind the pillar. One seized the gunman's head and jerked it brutally back to expose the neck which was sliced wide open from one side of the jaw to the other. Blood sprayed out with amazing force. Rossi could only make gurgling noises as he dropped his gun to try and close the wide deep gap in his throat. He was dead almost instantly, sagging to the cold cement floor of the garage.
An identical figure swung around from behind the pillar to stand over the corpse of Maurizio Rossi. Wearing the same sort of trenchcoat and fedora and stocking mask, the newcomer was taller and less bulky. In a gloved hand was, not a revolver, but an old-style straight razor whose edge dripped with fresh blood.
"The new Uncle Giallo," Bane said as calmly as if a savage murder had not taken place within ten feet of him. "Or should I say, Aunt Giallo?"
As the murderer froze in surprise, Katherine Wheatley snapped her fingers. "Of course! She's the killer. Samantha Hopkins! She's the telepath. Even now, she is trying to blink out of our perception and escape."
"I've got my eye on her. Okay, you. What's your reason for killing those two? Because they were young and pretty and you were envious? Is that all there is to it?"
The masked figure flicked the razor to snap of the blood off it. "What would you know? Why is it that a woman is cast aside because she has a few too many birthdays or puts on a pound or two? Why is the game so unfair?"
"Oh, spare me," Bane snorted. "What do you think happens to boxers when they hit thirty? Or football players or other athletes? Actors can't play child roles when they're forty. You knew the rules of the game when you agreed to play."
The masked killer flourished the straight razor so it caught a gleam of light. "You will never tell anyone what you have learned, heh heh."
"Heh heh yourself," Bane answered as he slid the matched silver daggers from the sheaths beneath his sleeves. The way he held them, the posture he assumed as he took a single step forward were incredibly menacing. He intended to kill the new "Uncle Giallo" and her telepathic mind flooded with the realization.
The masked figure seemed to flicker in and out of visibility. It was difficult to tell where she was. Bane caught a glimpse of the dark form racing for the ramp up to the street.
"She's clouding our minds!" Katherine yelled. "I can't.. she's getting away!"
Then, in an instant, it was all over. A maroon BMW rolled quickly down the ramp from the street, its motor gunning as it downshifted, and there was a dreadful thumping noise. The driver slammed on the brakes at once. Ten feet ahead of the front bumper, a body dressed all in black was sprawled, arms spread out as if crucified.
"Now that's ironic," Bane said as he replaced the daggers up his sleeves and headed for the death scene. "Her trick worked better than she realized." He bent over the corpse and tugged the stocking mask off to reveal the staring eyes of Samantha Hopkins.
"Katherine," he told his partner, "maybe you'd better go up to the guard booth and have him call the police. I spot six security cameras down here, so our story has lots of backing. I wonder what Chief Mueller will say when they bring one of his detectives in wearing an Uncle Giallo outfit?"
"I'll be right back," the telepath said as she trotted up the ramp and out of sight.
The driver of the BMW had gotten out to stand by her open door. She was a middle-aged woman in a dark evening dress, and she was trembling visibly. "I didn't see her. I swear to God, I was looking straight ahead and she came literally out of nowhere."
"It wasn't your fault," Bane told her with what he tried to make a sympathetic tone.
"I swear, I did NOT see her!"
"I know you didn't," he said. "She didn't want you to see her."
2/12/2016
10/2-10/4/1978
I.
She had never been to the observation deck of the Empire State Building before, despite having lived in Manhattan for four years. Late on a warm afternoon at the beginning of October, Katherine Wheatley was enjoying both the view and the fact that her insisting on coming here seemed to annoy Jeremy Bane. While peering over the fencing down at the tops of other buildings, Katherine kept stealing glances at Bane. The young man who was called Dire Wolf was only only a year older than her at most, barely twenty-one yet, but he was always so damn serious that she felt compelled to tease him for his own good.
Even more than that, Katherine had to admit, her pestering him was a way to deal with the way she found him very attractive but he seemed to be absolutely neutral toward her. The telepath knew objectively she was pretty, with bright blue eyes and long stright black hair, as well as an ingratiating smile. Naturally slim at five feet four, she was wearing olive jeans and a white long-sleeved pullover, both rather snug. Her nylon windbreaker hung over one arm. As she meet Bane's gaze with a grin, she saw nothing in his face but the usual sober brooding stare he always displayed. This annoyed her beyond reason.
Her telepathy failed her with him, as well. Under the guidance of Kenneth Dred, she had been refining and expanding her natural gift. But she could not get even a glimpse of what was going on in Bane's mind. He was so tightly repressed and defensive that her probes could only pick up on his surface thoughts. Her reaction was to take this as a challenge. Fishing in her pockets for another quarter, Katherine stepped up on the little platform that held one of the mounted binoculars and dropped the coin in. With a click and a whir, the machine came to life and she was peering through the lenses at the people rushing back and forth on the sidewalks. She had already studied Ellis Island and the Chrysler Building.
"We need to get moving soon," Bane said quietly, coming up next to her.
"Just a few more minutes," she sang back pleasantly. As the Dire Wolf moved away, Katherine swung the machine up and past rows of office windows in the building across the street. She stopped as she saw the murder take place.
In a corner window, a woman with long blonde hair was struggling to get away from a bulky figure in a black trenchcoat. One gloved hand swung up and then back and forth, and light flashed on the blade of an old-fashioned straight razor. Bright arterial blood sprayed in a red jet. Without intending it, Katherine reached out with her mind to contact the killer, perhaps to try to stop him or perhaps just to identify who he was. To her shock, her tentative probe was thrust brutally away. Under a wide-brimmed hat, a blank white-masked face glared across the street at her and she felt a powerful mental force slam into her head like a punch.
Katherine yelped and fell backwards to the deck. No one else was on that side of the building at the moment to see. Even as she hit, Jeremy Bane was at her side, crouching down over her.
"What was that? Are you okay?" he demanded. Bane's most noticeable feature was the pale eyes, icy grey under heavy black brows. Those eyes met hers with obvious concern but she was too shaken to notice.
"Oh dear God," she said, getting up as he took her arm. "Jeremy! I just saw a woman being killed. In that building across the street. And the killer is a telepath, too. He looked right at me. He knows I saw the whole thing."
The young Dire Wolf glared across 34th Street as if daring anyone to show themselves. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he asked, "Which window, Katherine? Point it out to me."
Stepping up behind him, she tried to spot exactly which window it had been. She wasn't certain, since it was a sixty-story building and every floor seemed exactly the same. Katherine tried to think. When she had fallen, she had knocked the telescope upward, so it was no longer pointing where it had been.
"I can't be sure," she admitted finally.
"Get up on the platform," Bane said. "Okay. Now look through the lenses the way you had been. That must be about the right height. Can you be more specific now?"
Katherine started counting down from her line of sight to the street. "Oh, this is bloody hard," she said under her breath. "We're on the 86th floor after all. The sixtieth floor I should think, but maybe one above or below."
Turning to her, Bane made a noticeable effort to soften his usual tone. "How do you feel, Kath? Are you hurt somehow?"
"No, no, just shaken up a bit." She managed a reassuring smile. "I was just so... surprised. Seeing a murder like that, with no idea it was going to happen. Jeremy, we MUST phone your police."
"We will. What's this about the killer being telepathic like you?"
Going over to the wire fence that kept people from jumping off, the British girl stared at the building across the street. "Gone now. I can't sense his presence. Somehow he picked up that I was watching and he shoved my mind back, the way you'd shove a cat off your lap. He's as strong mentally as I am. Stronger."
Bane made a rare comforting gesture, placing his open hand high on her back and pressing. "All right. I bet that's what drew you to look over there. You picked up on his telepathy. Let's head down to the lobby and find a phone booth. First, I want to tell Mr Dred what happened, then we're going to visit the NYPD once again."
As he turned to start heading for the elevator door, Katherine stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. "I just thought of something. All I saw was a white mask and a black hat. I can't identify him but maybe he read my thoughts enough that he'll be able to identify me. I'm a witness. He may come for me!"
Jabbing a thumb at his own chest, Bane said coldly, "He'll have to get through me first."
II.
The squad room was old, with floor boards that creaked and high narrow windows that only looked out at the blank wall of a warehouse. A ceiling fan managed a few turns each minute but had little effect on the cigarette smoke. Five chipped and stained desks were arranged around the room, each with an extra chair beside it for suspects or civilians. In one corner, an older detective in his shirtsleeves pecked away doggedly at a manual typewriter, while next to him a young black man in a neat tailored suit read a report to him out loud.
Bane had been in other police stations a few times, under varying circumstances. He stood in front of the door to the office of Chief of Detectives Bernard Mueller, glaring at the frosted glass panel impatiently. Beside him, Katherine glanced curiously around the room and met the stares from the detectives with a polite smile. Minutes crept by.
A detective came over who looked Southern Chinese, stout around the middle and with eyeglasses far down his snub nose. "Want some coffee, miss? Either of you?"
Before Katherine could answer, the older detective over at the typewriter called out, "You'll be sorry. That coffee is more bitter than my wife."
The door opened and Mueller emerged with a cigar burning between his fingers. He was hitting sixty, with grizzled hair but a mustache that had stayed black. "Reports are coming back. No body on floors fifty-eight to sixty-one, no blood anywhere. No one reports seeing a guy in a black trenchcoat with a white mask and black fedora. Looks like a false alarm, miss."
"Really." She folded her arms stubbornly. "I don't believe I imagined all that, sir."
"Could be a TV in one office, facing the window," Chief Mueller said dismissively. "Stranger things have happened."
Katherine turned to Bane for support, but he seemed deeply distracted as if trying to remember something.
Standing up from behind the desk nearest the office door, a short stocky man with hairy forearms revealed by rolled-up sleeves announced, "Uncle Giallo."
There was a wave of comments from around the room. "No!" "Come on!" "Damn it, Maurizio, you and your cold cases," they all shouted.
Chief Mueller shook his head firmly. "The Uncle Giallo murders were eighteen years ago. Forget it, he's in the ground somewhere."
"That's what I was trying to remember," Bane said with a finger snap. "Of course. It was before my time but I've read about it."
The detective who had stood up came over. He had the curly black hair, hooked Roman nose and swarthy skin that made the name Maurizio appropriate. "Bernie, it has to be him. The hat, the mask, the trenchcoat. And killing a young woman with a razor. Of course it's Uncle Giallo."
Chief Mueller looked over at the two civilians. "This is Detective Maurizio Rossi. He was still riding around in a prowl car when there were five brutal slashings in the metropolitan area. The murderer was never caught. One victim lived long enough to provide a description--"
"Which matches what this young lady saw tonight!" yelled Rossi. "It has to be Uncle Giallo."
"The killings were in 1961, Maurizio."
"So freakin' what. Bernie, if the killer was thirty then, he'd be hitting fifty today. Still young enough to do some razor work. I say we re-open the Uncle Giallo file right now," he demanded.
Mueller noticed his cigar had gone out and he flicked it into a wastepaper basket. "No body, no blood, no missing persons report. There's no evidence that a crime was even committed." He turned to Katherine. "No disrepect, miss. When you're a cop, you soon realize that people misread what they see all the time."
"I understand," she said. Since entering police headquarters, Katherine had deliberately withdrawn her telepathic awareness into herself. It could be distracting when she first met people. Now she lightly skimmed over the mind of Chief Mueller and saw nothing to rouse suspicion. He was dedicated, conscientous, a little emotionally depressed and anxious to finish his paperwork and go home to his wife. She turned her attention to Rossi and was interested at the intensity of his involvement with the discussion.
Without knowing she was going to speak, Katherine asked Rossi, "Do you have some personal stake in the Uncle Giallo case?"
The Italian detective stepped back a pace at that. "Yeah, yeah I do. You could say that."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be personal. Well then, I believe we will be shoving off then."
"Sorry, miss." Chief Mueller pointed a finger at Bane. "You, though. I've heard about you. The Dire Wolf, so-called. You've been working for Kenneth Dred, I understand, and he certainly has been a great help to the force over the years. But you haven't established yourself."
"And?" Just the single word without inflection.
"Watch your step, son. Be careful. Vigilantes break the law, they are as big a problem as the criminals. Read me?"
Bane nodded in silence and took Katherine's arm to escort her from the squad room. As they left, Maurizio Rossi called after them, "If you think of any more details, ask for me."
III.
They returned to the nine story stone building on East 38th Street just after nine that night. In the front hall where they entered, the door to the reception room was open to their left and Kenneth Dred saw them. "Ah! There you two are. Come in here, please."
Sitting behind his desk under a huge hand-painted map of the world, Dred placed a slip of paper to mark where he had been and placed a decrepit old book, HUMAN BEASTS OF PRAGUE, to one side. Nearing eighty, he was a slight, bent figure with thin brown hair far back on a large head. Dred's gnomish face lit with happiness as he watched his two proteges enter and pull up chairs in front of his desk. He had been afraid for some time that he would not find successors he could trust.
"I don't know if you children have eaten?" he began. "There is nearly a whole chicken left in the kitchen, with the usual side dishes."
"Sounds great, sir, but first we have a report. Something strange." Bane turned his head to the girl seated next to him. "Katherine, it's really your story."
"I was just about to point that out," she said with a trace of sharpness. "Mr Dred, here's what happened. At five-thirty today, Jeremy and I were on the outside observation deck of your Empire State Building..."
when she finished with Mueller's final sentence, the young telepath leaned back and folded her hands in her laps. "And so here we are, sir."
Kenneth Dred had listened without comment. "Dear me. Yes, I remember the 'Uncle Giallo' killings quite well. There is one detail you may need to know. The final victim was a young woman named Anna Marie Rossi, the younger sister of Maurizio Rossi."
"That's what I was picking up from him, then. The poor fellow. No wonder he is so determined to open up the case again." Katherine's voice was low. "What were the crimes about? What was the motive?"
"Ah, that was only discovered later," Dred told them. "It developed that the women involved did not know each other directly. No common link was ever found and yet..." He hesitated and shifted his weight uncomfortably, "I remain convinced there was something connecting them. Something they knew that the killer wanted to keep secret, that was my theory."
Katherine interrupted, "Isn't 'giallo' the Italian word for yellow? What's the significance of that?"
"Oh, yes. There were a popular series of crime thrillers with yellow covers in Italy, so they were known as 'giallo' and the genre became known by that word. I myself have read a few Edgar Wallace crime mysteries in that field and found them entertaining. The unknown killer had some traits found in the giallo books and he was given that nickname." Dred shrugged, then continued, "That's all there is to that. I am concerned that the current murderer shares your telepathic nature."
"Naturally, it worries me as well," she said. "The mind I touched was just beastly."
Dred leaned over to the side of his desk and tugged his telephone over in front of him. "I may be able to get some useful information. Meanwhile, I would feel more at ease if you two warmed up dinner and served yourselves. Mrs Winscomb spent some time preparing it and I do like to get my money's worth."
Standing up, Jeremy Bane gave one of his rare smiles. "I'm more than ready to carry out that order, sir. Coming, Katherine?"
She got to her feet as well, suddenly aware that she was in fact ravenous. With his enhanced metabolism, Bane was always starving but she realized she herself had not eaten since breakfast. "What about you, sir?"
"Eh? Oh, I've already eaten all I want, thank you. Afraid I'm at the age where I don't need much food. You two go to it, I want to make a few phone calls."
As Bane and Katherine moved around the kitchen at the rear of the main hall, bringing out plates and cutlery, moving a large fried chicken to the round table with its accompanying containers of sweet potatoes and mixed vegetables, they were lost in the mundane tasks for the moment. Neither had any idea that, at the same moment, a beautiful model who was known as Fiorella was lying on her bathroom floor with the last of her life blood trickling out from her gashed throat.
IV.
At six the next morning, the doorbell rang. In the reception room, Jeremy Bane leaped off the couch to his feet and was moving toward the front door as if he had been awake and waiting. He sometimes slept down there instead of in his own room on the third floor. He could not give a reason why he did this, other than instinct. Even his boots were still on. As he whipped out into the front hall, he was tugging on the sport jacket over the long-sleeved turtleneck, all black as always.
By the inner door, the Dire Wolf took a second to check the little monitor screen usually hidden behind a sliding wood panel. It had been his idea to install a closed-circuit camera over the front door, and he had insisted over Dred's reluctance. Watching the image, he frowned as he recognized the man out on the steps. As the doorbell rang again, Bane opened the inner door and stepped out into a vestibule just large enough for a bench and a shelf with a ceramic lamp and a few magazines. On the wall to his right hung a large aerial photograph of Manhattan.
Bane swung open the outer door and said, "Morning, Detective Rossi. A little early, isn't it?"
Neatly dressed and clean-shaven, unruly hair slicked down, the man looked more presentable than he had the evening before. "I report for my shift at seven. But before I punch in, I wanted to give you folks some news."
"Come in," Bane said rather grudgingly. As the detective brushed past him, the young Dire Wolf swept 38th Street with suspicious grey eyes that missed very little. He saw no one out there in a doorway or sitting in a parked car. Bane followed Rossi into the front hall.
"I've read a file on you, Bane," the detective said. "Even before you started working for Dred, you apparently always got mixed up in creepy business. The guys in the badlands called you Dire Wolf when you were only fifteen." He glanced at the hallway, lined with bookcases and ending in a wide staircase leading upward. Unmarked doors on both sides of the hall were all closed.
"Where are you going with this?" Bane asked bluntly.
"Ah, my parents came from a small village in the old country. I grew up with stories about La Strega... witches and curses and the creatures of the night." Rossi met Bane's stare with a completely serious expression. "I don't shrug that stuff off. What you have done to destroy those monsters is good work, son."
"Thanks. That's not what brings you here, is it?"
"No. I checked overnight reports from the Benjamin Kline Building, where your friend thought she saw something. Still no signs of violence, but there is one thing odd. There's a magazine office on that floor, something called CHATOYANCE, fashion rag for rich dames. The receptionist was questioned back and forth, up and down, and she finally remembered that she saw one employee come in at ten, she talked with the woman at four... but when they closed up the offices at six, it occurred to her that she had never seen the woman leave."
"That IS interesting," Bane said. "What did this employee look like?"
"Long blonde hair. As you were already thinking. Her name was Helene Coleman, age thirty-one. Her roommate down on 14th Street says Helene never came home yesterday." Detective Rossi saw the sudden predatory glint in those grey eyes and he smiled slightly. "So now an investigation is underway. I aim to be assigned to it."
"I hope you are, detective. When Mr Dred wakes up, I'll tell him all this. And I will be looking into it, as well." Bane had not exactly loosened up but he no longer watched Rossi as if ready for a duel any second. "We should keep in touch."
"Gotcha," Rossi said as he turned back toward the door. "Oh, listen. The way the department works with your boss is all unofficial. Off the record. If you or I are ever asked, I wasn't here this morning and you never heard anything from me."
"I understand," the Dire Wolf answered, watching the detective go down the steps to the sidewalk before closing the outer door. To himself, he added, "I wouldn't have it any other way." He turned around and strode over to the elevator door just as it opened and Kenneth Dred emerged.
The elderly man was wrapped in a thick maroon bathrobe over blue pajamas, with slippers on his gnarled feet. It was unusual for him to come downstairs not fully dressed and Bane must have shown surprise because Dred began, "There is a buzzer by my bed that sounds when the front door opens. Ah me, it took me so long to get my robe on and hobble to the elevator that I arrived just in time to see that policeman leave. Detective Rossi, was it?"
"Yes, sir." Bane accompanied Dred across the hall to the reception room and watched him gingerly lower himself behind the desk. The Dire Wolf repeated the conversation he had just had with Rossi word for word, even mentioning gestures and facial expressions.
"You have gotten to be excellent at reporting," Dred told him. "Good work indeed. Of course you remember the telepath you met back in January, up in Maybrook?"
"What, the blonde? Sure."
"I have been unable to contact her. This is not alarming in itself, Cindy Brunner has been known to move frequently. She sometimes stays with friends for extended periods. It's too bad. I hoped to see if she would help out in this case. Having her alongside Katherine would double the telepathic force available." Dred started to work his way to a standing position again. "It is much too early. I intend to get another hour or two of sleep before starting for the day. When Katherine comes downstairs, fill her in, will you?"
With a deadpan expression that hid his concern, Bane escorted the old man back across the hall to the elevator. He wished Dred would use a cane. At the sound of the machinery hauling the cage back up to the fourth floor, the Dire Wolf stood lost in thought for a few seconds. He himself seldom slept more than four hours a night. Trotting up the stairs to his room on the third floor, he took a hot shower and shaved, then changed into a fresh outfit identical to the black slacks and turtleneck he always wore.
During the shower, the Dire Wolf had unstrapped soft leather sheaths from his forearms. They held the silver-bladed daggers which Dred had given him on their first meeting. In just over a year, Bane had found the silver blades effective against any creatures of the night he had met. He spent much of his free time practicing the throwing of those knives from different angles and positions, and it seemed so natural to him that he felt he had been using them all his life.
Dressed again, brushing his damp hair with his fingers, he thought he had time to get in some throwing practice. It was just after seven, Katherine usually woke up at eight and came down for breakfast by eight-thirty at the latest. The Dire Wolf had stepped out by the staircase just as the phone in the reception room began to ring. He flashed back into his room, thumbed a button on the phone on his nightstand and took the call. "Hello. Yeah, this is Kenneth Dred's residence. Who's calling? Oh? Tell me everything..."
A few minutes later, Bane lowered the handset to its receiver with a click. Now there was a lot to think about. He figured the ringing would have woken everyone again, so he went down to the first floor and to the kitchen. Taking two pieces of thick rye bread, he smeared some butter on them,sliced a few chunks off what was left of the chicken from the night before and devoured the sandwich nearly in one bite. A tumbler of cold apple juice followed.
As he finished, a slim figured appeared in the doorway. Katherine Wheatley had tied her hair back into a thick ponytail and was wearing jeans and a plain white polo shirt. "I dare say, I need to retire earlier. What was that phone call about, Jeremy?" She went over and started brewing coffee.
"Things are hopping," he said. "Detective Rossi was already here this morning, and now he just called again. One missing woman, one dead one. Both worked at an office in that building you were looking at yesterday. Helene Coleman is missing. And someone just found a model named Fiorella lying in her bathroom with her throat slit from ear to ear. It happened around ten o'clock last night."
Watching the coffee start to drip, Katherine rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. "This is a bit dodgy isn't it? Give me half a moment to take it in. What do you think, Jeremy?"
As the Dire Wolf started to speak, Kenneth Dred came into the kitchen. He was wearing one of his old-fashioned suits, complete with vest and thin black tie. The old man greeted them with a rather grumpy tone and lowered himself to the round table in the corner. "Is that coffee you're making, dear? What a fine idea."
Katherine and Dred each started on a cup of coffee as they came fully awake. Bane explained about Detective Rossi's visit and about his phone call just a few minutes earlier. "He seems eager to get us in on the case, sir."
Sipping at his cup, the elderly scholar took a second. "My feeling is that he doesn't think the police department will really get anywhere. He wants to have us investigating on our own as a back-up, to increase the chances of solving this 'Uncle Giallo' business. May I have a second cup, son?"
"Oh, sure." Bane poured more coffee for both Dred and Katherine, then got down two frying pans from where they hung on the wall. As the other sat and came to life, he broke a half dozen eggs into one pan and some bacon into the other. Katherine shook her head, got up and began to help. She started slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster, got out the strawberry jam and the butter dish and set them up with plates for everyone.
"You two are a great boon on a morning like this," Kenneth Dred said. "Jeremy, I image you intend to visit that office where the victims worked?"
"Yes, sir. There may not be anyone there, of course. That depends on whether they have heard about Fiorella and how they felt about her." He started spreading the bacon out on paper towels to absorb some of the grease. "I figure that with Katherine here and her telepathy, we can get some information the cops won't have."
As they ate, all three were silent for a few moments. Finally, with every scrap gone, Bane jumped up again and began clearing away the dishes.
"You might leave them, Jeremy," Kenneth Dred said. "Mrs Winscomb and her daughter will be coming today to clean. They won't be back until Monday. I asked them to stock the refrigerator as well. You and Katherine will have your hands full with Uncle Giallo."
Wiping her lips on a paper napkin, the young telepath raised her eyes to follow Bane's movements. "I don't think it was mere coincidence that I was on that observation deck yesterday," she announced. "I think the nearness of another telepath drew me. The murder caught me off-guard but I was already waiting for something to happen."
The Dire Wolf paused in the doorway. "We can get started when you're ready. I'm going down to check on the Buick." With that, he was striding down the hall to disappear into a walk-in closet. Katherine got to her feet and accompanied Kenneth Dred to the reception room. As her mentor seated himself behind his desk, she said, "You seem worried about this case, if I may say so."
"Yes. Something about Detective Rossi's eagerness to draw us in rings false. Perhaps I am being too suspicious but in a murder investigation, no one is exempt from being a suspect." Dred adjusted the phone in front of him and got a notepad and pen from the center drawer of the desk. "I expect to make many calls today. Perhaps Bleak has heard something about this? Several of my contacts are in town now."
"Well, sir, if you don't mind, I need to make myself presentable," Katherine said. "I'll be right back."
As the girl took off for her room on the third floor, Kenneth Dred sat in thought. The arthritis in his hands ached but he could still write legibly. On the pad in front of him, he began with the date and the day of the week, then added 'A Visit From Uncle Giallo?' and underlined it.
V.
The sign of the door read CHATOYANCE MAGAZINE in a distinctive swirling logo, red letters against a Navy blue background. Bane opened the door without knocking or anything, with Katherine right behind him. She had changed into a simple pair of dark slacks, white rollneck blouse with a silver chain necklace and a lightweight blazer. For once, she had applied some make-up, just the barest trace of blush and mascara and lipstick, but more than she normally wore.
The offices were rather small and cluttered, which surprised them. Out front was an area with plain tables and chairs, piles of paper scraps and loose photos and tools such as razor styluses and rubber cement. A brilliant light on an adjustable arm was clamped to one table. In the corner were two green metal filing cabinets and shelf piled high with magazines. No one was in sight here. In the far wall was a plain wooden door marked PRIVATE and Bane strode over and rapped sharply on it with his knuckles.
Immediately, the door swung outward and an angry woman about fifty years old stuck her head out. "Oh, so you decided to show- Oh. Sorry. I thought you were my assistant Helene."
"No," the Dire Wolf said. "We're looking into recent events here."
"More police? Honestly, I've spent more time recently with the NYPD than with my husband. You aren't cops, though, you're both too young." The woman was slightly overweight, which she tried to camoflauge with a lacy shawl around her shoulders and with a burst of frizzy brown hair as a visual distraction. She had cat's-eye glasses with a chain fastened to their earpiece. "You look like college kids."
Katherine reached out subtly, slightly, with her mind, sending a friendly tone that was the equivalent of humming reassuringly. It seemed to work as the woman visibly lowered her shoulders and relaxed.
"You're Samantha Hopkins, then? Editor of CHATOYANCE?" asked Bane.
"In a way," the woman sighed, adjusting her glasses and getting a better look at her visitors. "We are just the American edition of a French magazine. I translate most of the articles and sometimes bat out a filler piece if we run short. A few times each issue, we need a new photo to take up a page and my assistant does that." Hopkins glanced over at the empty workspace. "Not that I can blame Selma for not coming in today. After what happened."
"That's what we need to ask about, I fear," Katherine said in a gentle tone. "This poor woman, Fiorella. She didn't work for your full-time?"
"Eh? No, no, she was called in once a month or so to pose. We would have half a page empty because the French edition might have an ad there that we don't carry. Not so long ago, I would have posed myself. I might have had quite a modeling career of my own but the market is just for skin and bones with lots of bleached teeth...." Samantha Hopkins seemed to be studying Bane with a touch of prurient interest. "Those are amazing eyes you have. I don't think I've ever seen quite that shade before. How do you look in photographs?"
The Dire Wolf seemed not to hear that. "I'm sure the police have already asked you about any enemies Fiorella might have had, jealous boyfriends, if she was in over her head with debt. That sort of thing."
"Fiorella? She was hard-headed as a judge. That woman knew where every penny went and her dates were under her thumb." Hopkins smiled the automatic insincere smile that never reached her eyes. "I've thought it over, believe me, and I figure it must have been some madman. I just can't imagine Fiorella being off her guard with anyone she knew."
"Hmm. Interesting. Have you heard anything about Helene Coleman?"
"What? Wait a second, Helene's name has not been in the papers or on TV. How do you know about all this, I think I should ask."
Bane was not intimidated in the least, "We work unofficially with the police on unusual cases. You might call us civilian consultants."
Before Hopkins could say anything more, Katherine took Bane's sleeve. "I believe we have taken up too much of this woman's time as it is. Our condolences for your loss, Miss Hopkins, and I hope Miss Coleman turns up safely."
"Yes. I see. Thank you." The editor gave Bane a final lingering stare. "I wasn't friends with Fiorella, you understand, but even so... her death under these circumstances is quite a shock. As for Helene, she hasn't answered her phone this morning but that's not unusual for her. She is a bit of a wild child."
"We'll do our best," Katherine promised. Out in the hall, she pulled Bane by one arm to the flanked elevators. "Well, I never," she said after pressing the button. "That woman quite fancied you, you know."
"Nothing fancy about me," he said in slight confusion.
"No, I mean she was interested in you! I expected her to ask you out to dinner next. Didn't you see that?"
Bane shrugged and stepped into the elevator as the cage opened. "I didn't notice. I'm thinking about the case."
"Honestly, you're blind in some ways," Katherine told him. "I was in her mind while she was flirting with you. That woman is just not right. Her head is so crammed with resentment and jealousy and frustration that it was most unpleasant being in there. I couldn't concentrate. She thinks she could have been a supermodel except she put on a few pounds. Now she despises the pretty thin women she has to write about...."
"Nothing about Uncle Giallo?" asked Bane. "No images of a white mask or a straight razor?"
"No, nothing of that sort. Sorry. If we need to question her again, I should step back and let her hang all over you. Maybe you could get answers from her."
Bane did not respond the way she had hoped. Instead, as the elevator doors opened into the lobby, he said, "Did you notice the photo of her on the wall by the worktable? It must have been ten years ago, but she WAS thin and beautiful back then."
"I didn't see that," Katherine said. "Where to next, Mr Dire Wolf?"
Outside, a brisk wind made it much cooler than it had been the past few days. Bane led her to where Kenneth Dred's massive Buick Regal was parked and held the door for her. Katherine felt a brief flicker of triumph that she had taught him at least that tiny bit of courtesy. As he got behind the wheel, the Dire Wolf said, "I think we should check the area where the second victim was found. Sound good to you?"
"It makes sense," she replied. Watching traffic as they headed south, she thought for a second. "Jeremy, I don't understand what happened to the body? If Uncle Giallo killed that woman Helene Coleman in that office yesterday, what did he do with the body? The police searched that entire floor, I'm certain they would have found it if it were simply concealed in a cabinet or something."
"Maybe it's the mind control at work. Another telepath I met could make people look the other way just long enough to sneak by. Giallo could carry the body out unseen that way. You've done the distraction a few times."
"Yesss," she said doubtfully. "If the killer waited for convenient moments when there would be only one possible observer, he could have distracted him with telepathy. I can do it, it's easy enough."
They did not make much progress with the investigation about Fiorella. Her apartment on the twenty-eighth floor of a posh building overlooking Central Park West was still sealed off with the yellow tape. A pair of sullen uniformed officers were posted in the hall, too tough-minded for Katherine to distract both at once with telepathy. Approaching them, mentioning he was working for Kenneth Dred, Bane still got brushed off completely.
As they made their way back to the lobby, Bane was fuming. "This is why I need a Private Investigator license," he said. "If I had some leverage to start with... Mr Dred knows a man named Michael Hawk who said he would give me some training and help me get my license. But he hasn't shown up yet."
"It would simplify things," Katherine said. She took his arm as they walked and he didn't resist. "I got no results either. Those policemen were hopeless, one was thinking about sports and the other about some strumpets he had met."
In the lobby, Bane phoned Kenneth Dred. After five minutes of conversation, he handed the phone over to Katherine so she could be filled in as well. Dred had been contacting his many sources and had turned up a few interesting facts that might be relevant. "Uncle Giallo" had first been reported in Rome back in 1959, for example, and was thought to have drowned after jumping off a bridge into the Tiber. So any further appearances might well have been imitation Uncle Giallos. For a time, children used to threaten each other with "You deserve a visit from Uncle Giallo." There was also information about Maurizio Rossi's family and the missing Coleman woman. For one thing, Detective Rossi had been visiting his parents in Rome at the time of the Uncle Giallo killings.
Back at the car, they both grumbled about their lack of progress. Bane swung around on Fifth Avenue and headed for the police precinct where they had been the day before. The sergeant at the front desk waved them through disinterestedly, hardly looking up from his copy of the DAILY NEWS. They trudged up a flight of stairs and found the squad room seemingly unchanged from the night before. Not only were the detectives in the same spots, they apparently had the same suits on as before. The only difference was a pungent and not entirely pleasant aroma from where the Chinese detective had some fish heads and vegetables sizzling on a hot plate.
"Hey, kids," he said amiably. "How about some coffee?"
"Don't do it!" yelled out the old man in the corner, again pecking away at the typerwriter. "That coffee dissolved the plastic spoon I stirred it with."
"Oh, thank you, no," Katherine said in the cheeriest voice she could manage. "Is Detective Rossi here today?"
The Chinese man jerked a thumb toward the door of Chief Duggan's office. "He's in there now trying to change Bernie's mind. Which is like trying to tell the leaves on the trees when to change color. Bernie Mueller is a stubborn boss." He poked uneasily at the steaming fish heads. "Think these are done?"
"How can you tell?" grumbled the old man, lighting up a Camel with a friction match that he lit with his thumbnail. "Make charcoal outta them, it'd be an improvement."
Coming over from his desk was a young black man in a rather snappy tan suit with a dark brown shirt and black tie. He had longish hair, not quite at Afro length, and a neat mustache. "Come with me over here," he said quietly. "I'm Lon Grazier, let me fill you kids in on a few things." He got Katherine and Bane huddled quite close and kept a wary eye on the office door.
"Detective Rossi is a good man. Good cop. But he does have this obsession with Uncle Giallo. Every time a woman is murdered with an edged weapon, Rossi swears up and down it's Uncle Giallo back in action and we have to talk him down." Grazier looked down at the floor and sighed. "It's too bad. This current case, where the young lady here reports seeing someone actually dressed like Uncle Giallo, has really set Maurizio off."
"We learned about his sister," Bane said. "The autopsy revealed her condition when she was killed in 1961."
Frazier's mouth fell open and he made a squeaking noise. "How did you... I mean, say what? I can't confirm any ancient rumors you may have uncovered? It wouldn't be any of your business in any case!"
The Dire Wolf was not diplomatic at best. "Next I want to find if Anna Maria had any boyfriends who disappeared at the same time. If some one was that offended by her pregnancy, what would he have done to the father? Obviously, a shotgun wedding wasn't going to happen."
"Stop. Just stop. I need to remind you that you are just a citizen making inquiries into matters you are not cleared to know about!" Frazier's voice had an edge to it now. "In fact, I think the Chief needs to talk you about keeping your nose out of police business."
Meeting that angry stare directly, Bane was unmoved. "Helene Coleman did not show up for work today. She did not answer her phone. She matches the description of the woman that Katherine saw being murdered. Any progress there?"
About to have a stroke, Detective Frazier rubbed the lower portion of his face and visibly got hold of himself. "This.. this is over the line. I think the two of you should leave now and not return unless brought here by an officer. Which I admit is a likely prospect."
The conversation was broken off as the officer door swung open and then closed sharply, not quite slamming. Maurizio Rossi stomped out, holding a clipboard packed with sheets of reports in one hand. When he saw Bane and Katherine in the squad room, the surly expression on his face lightened.
"Hey, you two again. Still interested in the Uncle Giallo case?" he called out.
"Indeed yes," Katherine answered.
"Well, you won't find me on it. I'm assigned to keeping tabs on the peep shows along Eighth Avenue. Helluva note! Any other time, I'd have kinda enjoyed the assignment, know what I mean?" He leered at them in a way Katherine found unsavory but she gave him leeway because he was covering his true feelings about the task.
"Too bad," Bane said. "I know you wanted to get going on the Uncle Giallo business."
"Yeah. Well, Bernie won't be deciding who goes on that until later today. He says we have enough ongoing as it is, so he has to do some juggling of the roster." Rossi thumbed through the papers on the clipboard he was holding. "I guess some naked boobies are more urgent than a murder or two."
The Dire Wolf started toward the door, glancing at Katherine to see if she was coming with him. "We'll keep in touch," he said. Out in the hall, next to a water cooler that dispensed conical paper cups, Bane stopped. "I wanted to ask you, Kath. Here or at that magazine office, did you pick up any signs of telepathy?"
"No. I was looking, too. That doesn't mean anything one way or the other, to be honest."
"It doesn't?"
"Not really. Many people don't realize they have telepathy. They assume they simply have hunches that come true or that they are good at judging people's intentions. Unless they get some training, telepaths may go through their lives never realizing their potential." She gave Bane a smug little grin. "I happen to have an exceptionally strong gift."
The Dire Wolf studied her face for a second. "So," he said, "we could have been talking to a telepath just now and you would not have been able to tell?"
"Quite so," she answered. "Just as you might chat with an Olympic sprinter while they were seated and have no hint of their capabilities. Is it Rossi that you suspect?"
"Yeah. He's so eager to go after Uncle Giallo, I wonder if he wants that so he can steer the investigation. He was in Rome during the original murders, and he could have been the one who killed Anna Maria."
"His own sister...?!"
"If she was pregnant and unmarried, sure. Some Italian families are still very strict and unforgiving. They used to say an Italian girl left the family home in a wedding dress or a funeral shroud." Bane glanced back at the closed door to the squad room. "Strong little guy, too. Did you see the arms on him? If he got hold of an intended victim, that grip would be hard to break."
Katherine gave a visible shudder and folded her arms across her chest. "Ugh. Well, my friend, what now?"
"Back to Mr Dred, I guess." Bane sounded angry and disgusted. "We sure aren't making much progress so far."
Heading back to the Buick, she said, "At least I hope the housekeeper made a meal for us. Her cooking is so much better than mine."
VI.
At one in the morning, the two of them were standing in the underground garage beneath the Kline Building where Katherine had witnessed the murder only the day before. The phone call after midnight had barely given them enough time to get here. Bane had actually parked in the street and they had walked in down the wide concrete ramp. As they came within view of the enclosed booth by the opening, the guard on duty suddenly became preoccupied with his feet. He was staring down at them as Bane and Katherine walked right past without being seen.
"That's how it's done," she whispered as they headed down to the lower level. She was wearing a light jacket zipped all the way up, with her black hair in a ponytail. "He felt like something sharp was in his shoe. While he was fiddling with that shoe, we could have led a herd of cows through here."
"It's a great ability," the Dire Wolf said in all sincerity. He thought how useful it would have been to him as a child living on the streets by thievery. "Here we are on Level B. Can you sense anyone nearby?"
Katherine did not reply immediately. She touched Bane's sleeve lightly and answered in a low voice, "Yes. But it's so confusing. I'm getting so many conflicting impressions."
Stepping slightly away from her, arms flexed slightly and balance shifted, Bane readied himself to react to any attack. "Like what?" he said as his eyes moved ceaselessly over the rows of neat shiny cars between concrete pillars.
"It's like.. like trying to understand a conversation in a loud night club," she said. "I don't know how else to explain it. There's a telepathic mind here but untrained, undisciplined. The thoughts are overwhelming."
Rising up from behind a gleaming Lincoln Continental was a stocky figure wrapped in a tightly belted black trenchcoat, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora over a face entirely hidden by a silk stocking mask. In one gloved hand, a Colt .45 revolver was pointed steadily right at them.
"Welcome," the masked figure hissed in a way that would make it hard to identify the voice. "We have much to discuss."
"Detective Maurizio Rossi," Bane announced in a loud clear voice. "You haven't had that outfit on in a long time, have you?"
"You're wrong," said the masked man. He took a step closer. "Listen. The two women who have been killed were not slain the hand of Uncle Giallo. That is a name being misused."
"Oh, I think we know better," the Dire Wolf said, apparently unconcerned about the pistol aimed at him. "Anna Maria had to die, poor girl, because of your medieval concepts of honor. And her boyfriend had to die as well. The other three deaths in between were just to cloud the issue. They were random victims." Bane slowly brought his hands up to cross them over his chest, placing the hilts of his silver daggers within reach.
"No, no, you understand NOTHING!" The dark figure moved nearer, standing next to a thick concrete pillar that had a placard B-18 on it. "Uncle Giallo was no more. He was history. The murders done in the past few days are not about honor."
"Jeremy..." Katherine said, "Something is very wrong. There's someone else..."
Her sentence was cut off as two leather-gloved hands darted out from behind the pillar. One seized the gunman's head and jerked it brutally back to expose the neck which was sliced wide open from one side of the jaw to the other. Blood sprayed out with amazing force. Rossi could only make gurgling noises as he dropped his gun to try and close the wide deep gap in his throat. He was dead almost instantly, sagging to the cold cement floor of the garage.
An identical figure swung around from behind the pillar to stand over the corpse of Maurizio Rossi. Wearing the same sort of trenchcoat and fedora and stocking mask, the newcomer was taller and less bulky. In a gloved hand was, not a revolver, but an old-style straight razor whose edge dripped with fresh blood.
"The new Uncle Giallo," Bane said as calmly as if a savage murder had not taken place within ten feet of him. "Or should I say, Aunt Giallo?"
As the murderer froze in surprise, Katherine Wheatley snapped her fingers. "Of course! She's the killer. Samantha Hopkins! She's the telepath. Even now, she is trying to blink out of our perception and escape."
"I've got my eye on her. Okay, you. What's your reason for killing those two? Because they were young and pretty and you were envious? Is that all there is to it?"
The masked figure flicked the razor to snap of the blood off it. "What would you know? Why is it that a woman is cast aside because she has a few too many birthdays or puts on a pound or two? Why is the game so unfair?"
"Oh, spare me," Bane snorted. "What do you think happens to boxers when they hit thirty? Or football players or other athletes? Actors can't play child roles when they're forty. You knew the rules of the game when you agreed to play."
The masked killer flourished the straight razor so it caught a gleam of light. "You will never tell anyone what you have learned, heh heh."
"Heh heh yourself," Bane answered as he slid the matched silver daggers from the sheaths beneath his sleeves. The way he held them, the posture he assumed as he took a single step forward were incredibly menacing. He intended to kill the new "Uncle Giallo" and her telepathic mind flooded with the realization.
The masked figure seemed to flicker in and out of visibility. It was difficult to tell where she was. Bane caught a glimpse of the dark form racing for the ramp up to the street.
"She's clouding our minds!" Katherine yelled. "I can't.. she's getting away!"
Then, in an instant, it was all over. A maroon BMW rolled quickly down the ramp from the street, its motor gunning as it downshifted, and there was a dreadful thumping noise. The driver slammed on the brakes at once. Ten feet ahead of the front bumper, a body dressed all in black was sprawled, arms spread out as if crucified.
"Now that's ironic," Bane said as he replaced the daggers up his sleeves and headed for the death scene. "Her trick worked better than she realized." He bent over the corpse and tugged the stocking mask off to reveal the staring eyes of Samantha Hopkins.
"Katherine," he told his partner, "maybe you'd better go up to the guard booth and have him call the police. I spot six security cameras down here, so our story has lots of backing. I wonder what Chief Mueller will say when they bring one of his detectives in wearing an Uncle Giallo outfit?"
"I'll be right back," the telepath said as she trotted up the ramp and out of sight.
The driver of the BMW had gotten out to stand by her open door. She was a middle-aged woman in a dark evening dress, and she was trembling visibly. "I didn't see her. I swear to God, I was looking straight ahead and she came literally out of nowhere."
"It wasn't your fault," Bane told her with what he tried to make a sympathetic tone.
"I swear, I did NOT see her!"
"I know you didn't," he said. "She didn't want you to see her."
2/12/2016