Killer Instinct Page 20

  “What's wrong? I thought you would be pleased? Do you want someone to rip us off?”

  There was nothing he could do about it at this point. It was done. He tried desperately to calm down. “When do you expect to hear back from the Patent Office?”

  “It's impossible to say. I was hoping that by now—”

  “All right.”

  “I'm really surprised at your attitude.”

  He thought fast. “You just caught me off guard, Lowenthal.”

  “If you wish, I could call them, ask about the delay.”

  “No, no! You'd probably just anger them... seem pushy and they'd only delay it longer.”

  “Have you given any idea to how we will market our little fluid drainer?”

  “Through my usual accounts, at first, until we get word around.” Lowenthal must go, he was thinking as he spoke to the man. “Are you keeping an accurate record... of your dealings with the Patent Office? Your designs?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I am. And what about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The prototype, of course!”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So how is it performing? Any complaints from Dr.— what was his name in Indiana?”

  “Grubber.”

  “Ahhh, yes. Grabber. So?”

  “It has delighted Grabber to no end.”

  “Excellent. Then we do stand a chance to make some money, after all?”

  “Of course we do. Perhaps we should get together soon. say tonight, go over the details. I'd like to see what you've sent on to the patent people.”

  “I've sent a copy of the design, of course, and an explanation of the use. There's no reason whatever we shouldn't be granted the patent.”

  “I'd just like to see your file on it, okay, Maurice?”

  “Yes, well, of course. Tonight, about seven? You'll come here?”

  “I'll see you then.”

  As he hung up, he reaffirmed his feelings. Lowenthal must go. But how to do it so as to cast no suspicion on himself, that was the important consideration, the one that would occupy Teach's brain all day.

  Later in the day, he went into the corporate offices in suburban Elmhurst, Illinois, where he deposited new orders that he had taken in Indiana and Zion. His boss, Mr. Sarafian, caught sight of him as he was leaving with a handful of memos and orders that he must attend to. Sarafian asked after his health and told him that he looked quite pale, asked if the “road” was taking too much of a toll on him.

  “No, no, sir, I love my work,” he said, mustering as much enthusiasm as he could find.

  “You read about that poor woman in Zion, Matt?”

  Matisak stared back, his face showing complete confusion. “Woman in Zion?”

  “Hell, you must've heard about it. It's on every radio station in Chicago. Sonofabitch hung her up by her heels and cut her throat and drained her of every ounce of blood, like she was a slaughter animal.”

  “I don't listen to the radio.”

  “Oh, yeah, tapes—symphonies, right. You told me before. But you must've seen the papers this morning.”

  He had seen the Tribune, which was delivered to his doorstep, and he had read the stories, but he again feigned ignorance, his shoulders hunched.

  Mr. Sarafian walked with him to the office shared by the salesmen who came and went. He asked Matisak, “You were in Zion, and you were at the same friggin' hospital where she worked, Matisak. You really ought to read the story. He plunked down a copy of the Sun-Times onto the desk where Matisak sat.

  Matt Matisak perused the story while his boss stood over him.

  “Any chance you might've seen anything out there that night the cops'd be interested in, Matt?”

  “I... No, nothing. I didn't know the woman. Says here she was killed at her home.”

  He glanced over Renee's photo, a picture of her in her white nurse's uniform.

  “Damned cops haven't got a clue. Brought in the FBI.”

  He scanned for the letters F-B-I in the news account, and for the name of Dr. Jessica Coran. She was there, in the morning edition. The Trib hadn't had this information. The FBI broad had flown into Zion as she had Wekosha. She recognized his work. Someone recognized his hand in both killings, what the FBI would call his “signature.” It had been a carefully orchestrated signature, to throw them off his trail. Zion had been too close to home. He should have resisted his urges. Now here he was, sitting before his boss, who had records that showed that he was in Zion the night Renee was drained of her life.

  He controlled the panic he felt welling up. How much did the FBI know? How much did Coran know? The story was not saying; the reporters didn't know what Coran knew.

  What did she know?

  “They'll never catch this guy,” he said to Sarafian suddenly.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They don't have a clue—not a clue! Can't you read?”

  ' 'Cops aren't going to spread out their cards in the papers. Matt.”

  “Ahh, what do I care. Has nothing to do with me,” he said, and returned to the importance of his new orders, and thoughts of Lowenthal's goddamned patent, and the problems he faced there.

  He wondered if his writing to Dr. Jessica Coran had been self-destructive and foolish.

  He wondered how he could cloak himself, as he was feeling naked before Sarafian, as if even a fool like Sarafian could see that he was staring at the so-called Chicago vampire.

  “So, Matt... ah.” It wasn't like Sarafian to be nervously talking.

  “Yes?”

  “You seeing a dermatologist? You know, for your face and hands?”

  “Yes. Now, if you will please let my personal life be my personal life!” Matisak instinctively hid his hands, but what could he do about his face?

  “Hey, Matisak, when your appearance begins to affect your performance, then it's no longer a personal matter, it's a business matter—and that's my only concern.”

  “Have you had complaints about my appearance?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “From whom?”

  “A hospital administrator in Iowa—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “A physician in Kansas City.”

  “Is that all, Mr. Sarafian?”

  “Just a little friendly advice, Matt. You can't be an effective salesman in dark glasses, below that hat of yours with... with scales on your face. You either improve in this department of grooming or you may face a firing.”

  “Fire me on those grounds and I'll sue this goddamned place for every dime I can get.”

  Sarafian stormed out, and Matisak was glad to see him go. He was all bluff and thunder and bullshit. No matter what anyone said, Matisak was Balue-Stork's top salesperson. He had proven that over and over again.

  He turned his attention once more to Lowenthal and to Dr. Jessica Coran, possibly the only two people on the globe that could conceivably place him with the murder weapon or on the scene. It was, he believed, elimination time... or a time for simple diversion. A little sleight of hand, a bit of smoke and mirrors. Perhaps he need only kill Lowenthal and convince Coran that he, Lowenthal, was the vampire.

  With his ridiculous patent, Lowenthal had signed his own death warrant.

  # # #

  At seven that evening, Matthew Matisak arrived at the home of Maurice Lowenthal. It was a small bungalow filled with bric-a-brac, the lights muted, and on the shelves were hundreds of books, mostly medical and scientific books, but some fiction and biographies and histories. Lowenthal had a book on the coffee table in his little living room, a marker deep in its pages. The book was about the latest discoveries of an oceanographer, the man who had located both the sunken Bismarck and the Titanic, Robert Ballard. Matisak almost reached out for it, but remembered not to touch anything. Outside, he had used his elbow to ring the doorbell.

  Lowenthal offered tea, and so he had accepted. Matisak looked about for the file containing the information on the patent. He didn't se
e it readily lying about as he had hoped. Once more he silently cursed Lowenthal.

  Lowenthal reentered the room with two steaming cups of liquid.

  “How're you enjoying retirement?” he asked, taking the cup and saucer gingerly into his possession, his mind flashing snapshot-fashion on the invisible prints forming on the porcelain dishes.

  “I feared it would be a tremendous bore, and it is. But I've managed to keep busy—reading, doing some writing, even! Always wanted to do some writing.”

  “Really? About your experiences at the lab?”

  “That, yes, but I've kind of gotten off on a tangent—gone self-indulgent, I suppose—writing about myself, my innermost thoughts, that sort of thing. Asking questions that defy answer.”

  “Careful,” said Matisak, looking around, “that can prove dangerous.”

  “To the suicidal, perhaps, but I'm a survivor, Matt. Always have been, and when something comes along to excite my interest, say like our little invention—”

  “Yes, well, that's why I'm here. Where is... where are the papers you've drawn up?”

  “In a safe place, trust me.”

  “But you said we would go over them tonight.” His voice rose out of control.

  Lowenthal put up his hands as if he were being held at gunpoint. He got up quickly, paced the room and grimaced, saying, “We are equal partners in this, and we can have the papers drawn up. But as for me, I trust you, Matisak, regardless of whether you trust me or not.” He reached for his tea, took a sip and sat back down all in one easy motion. He was comfortable with his place, his things.

  Matisak guessed that the only reason he had gotten involved in the “patent” was to keep busy, to, as he had said, have something to do. Once involved, he was excited by the prospects of the instrument that he had designed. It had become for Lowenthal a shining example of how he could help suffering humanity, something he could leave behind so that his life might count for something.

  “So, Maurice, are we going to go over the details tonight, or not?”

  “Really, what's to go over? I've completed the technical drawings and copy, including the new materials, so that you don't get that wobbling effect, you know, when you insert the tube, so that it doesn't pull on the vessel you attach it to. You told me that was a problem; that you had to use adhesive tape, remember? All that's been worked out. And with your records, showing its usefulness, what more is there to say? Did you bring some notes?” he asked, indicating the briefcase that Matisak had brought in with him.

  “Yes, a few,” he lied.

  “I'll be happy to go over them with you.”

  “You must think I'm a fool, Lowenthal.”

  “What?”

  “You plan to take over this entire idea, gaining the patent in your name, and—”

  “I only did so because I'm no longer associated with Balue-Stork. If I used your name—”

  “Then my name is nowhere on the patent papers?”

  “Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean we can't have papers drawn up to indicate that we are equal partners.”

  “Good, all right,” he said, calming. “My sentiments exactly. So, where are the patent papers?”

  “My safety-deposit box.”

  “I thought so.”

  “There's no safer place for them.”

  Matisak nodded, got to his feet and snapped open the briefcase, snatching forth a manila file folder, handing it to Lowenthal, who began to scan the typed words, flipping through. All of the information was bogus, but Lowenthal didn't know that.

  “This is remarkable. It can be used then for water on the knee, fluid on the brain, fluid in the lungs. This news is wonderful! Wonderful!”

  “While Lowenthal read, Matisak removed the surgical gloves, the chloroform and the scalpel from his briefcase and slowly moved around to the other side of the couch where Lowenthal sat hunched over the papers.

  With Lowenthal's back to him, he poured some of the pungent liquid into a handkerchief and suddenly pressed this to Lowenthal's eyes, nose and mouth. The other man struggled and kicked, the manila folder and its contents flying like loose pigeons before his feet until he fell unconscious on the sofa.

  All was going as planned. Matisak slipped on his surgical gloves and remained behind the man now under his power. He felt a great elation come welling up from within him, and he pitied the fact he could not take Lowenthal's blood, but he quickly rationalized this away because it was an old man's blood; besides, he needed the blood to be spilt.

  Holding the slumping figure up, leaning in over his shoulder, Matisak lifted the man's left forearm, and with his own right hand and scalpel, Teach Matisak taught Lowenthal a valuable lesson. He severed the arteries of the left wrist. The blood gushed from the deep wound. And now Teach lifted Lowenthal's right forearm and, using his left hand and the scalpel in it, he carved the right wrist. In so doing, no one, not even Jessica Coran, could tell that someone other than Lowenthal himself had done the cutting.

  The hard part was watching the sad waste of the red fluid as it made wine stains in the man's clothing and spread over the weave of his flowered couch. The blood odor made him pant.

  Matisak had some additional details to take care of. He pressed the dying man's right index finger and thumb around the handle of the scalpel, and then he repeated the process with the other hand. Some blood had smeared on the scalpel, but the dead man's prints ought to be clear.

  Matisak, keeping the gloves on, retrieved his teacup and saucer as Lowenthal continued to bleed to death on the sofa where he now slumped over. In the kitchen he washed the cup and saucer, dried them and put them away. The dishwater also cleaned his gloves of blood, so he wouldn't be leaving any telltale bloody finger marks on a doorknob or door facing.

  Lowenthal lived in a silent little neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago where the houses were older than Matisak. There were no children or dogs or young people strolling about, only an occasional old man with a cane. The street was tree-lined. Trash cans had been put out on the street for the next day's pickup. Matisak's van in Lowenthal's driveway drew no attention, and most windows were lit with the shimmery blue light of TV screens. Teach stepped back out into the night and surveyed the neighborhood from the front porch, where Lowenthal had hung a little swing. He cautiously went down to his van and unloaded what he had brought with him, evidence for the authorities. He had left the cutting tools dirty in his sink the night before without reason or good cause, but now he found good cause.

  He returned to the house with the box of instruments he had used on successive victims. Inside the house again, he found that Lowenthal had moved, or had fallen, his body slumped over the suicide note, his remaining tea dripping over the edge, mingling with his blood.

  Still using the gloves, careful to leave no prints, he located the other man's basement door, found a light switch and calmly moved down the steps. They creaked below his weight.

  He located matching tools where he could for the ones that he had brought, exchanging these, hanging his on nails and placing his on shelves where he found replaceable ones. Lowenthal's stuff was top quality, like his own. The man knew machinery. But now Lowenthal's would be caked with the blood of the Indiana boy, Fowler, still nasty with chewed flesh. And when the authorities found the old man's body, they'd also find his sketches of the spigot and the patent application papers in his safe-deposit box, and they'd find his suicide note, a note that Matisak had written in Renee's blood from the inkwell with his quill pen, all of which he had brought with him.

  And so they would have their nasty old Chicago vampire in Lowenthal, and Teach could go for some time on the supply of blood that he had, allowing things to cool a bit, just so that Dr. Jessica Coran was satisfied that she had gotten the man she wanted.

  It was a perfectly orchestrated plan of genius, killing two problems with one suicide. The only drawback was losing his grandfather's quill pen, but this couldn't be helped. He knew that the FBI could not be fooled by a subs
titute, and since he had written the earlier letter to Coran with it, he must sacrifice this.

  When he returned from the basement, he saw that Lowenthal was fully dead and that the suicide could not look more authentic. The only missing ingredient was the letter, the inkwell and the pen. As far as stocking Lowenthal's refrigerator with blood, he wasn't about to give up everything for the plan. He had brought two pints. If this did not suffice, so be it. The authorities would simply decide that he had another hiding place for the blood, or that his appetite for it was completely insatiable.

  He surveyed the work, ticking off each detail, going through his plan as he had a hundred times throughout the day. With the blood in the freezer compartment, he decided that his work was done, save for the letter. This he pulled from his briefcase, little blood flecks popping off it as he moved it into place, atop the coffee table amid splatters of Lowenthal's blood.

  It looked perfect there.

  He left with his new tools, glancing back at Lowenthal's body where it had eerily slumped over the coffee table.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jessica Coran had had to spend another day and night in Chicago, poring over the list of pharmaceutical companies and hospital supply companies in the Chicagoland area. The list was endless. Pages upon pages, and none of the names—in and of itself—was of help. Still, she narrowed the firms down to the several hundred who either distributed or made their own surgical equipment.

  She had telephoned HQ in Quantico and had gotten J.T., who sounded a little strange, but when she asked him what was going on, all he said was, “Be careful out there, Jess.”

  She tried to get him to talk, but he dove into the case with some new twist that might have been the cause of the shakiness in his voice. “Robertson says the semen samples taken from Wekosha are definitely from a different man than those you sent from Zion.”

  “What about the Indiana killing? I sent the samples earlier today. You get them?”

  “Just got in the door, but from first scoping, I'd have to say no connection with Wekosha. That means no DNA match. That means—”

  “I know what it means, John!” She sounded more caustic than she meant to. “I think I know what it means.”