Silent Prey

something . . . .”
    “I’ll be goddamned if I can see it,” Fell said. “The other guys made a list, like the stuff you were talking about at the meeting this morning. He needs an income. He needs a place to hide. He needs a vehicle. He needs to change his face. So they’ve put out the publicity to employers: watch who you’re paying. They’ve contacted all the hotels and flophouses and anyplace else he might stay. They’re talking with the taxi companies, thinking maybe he’s moving around in the cab—that would explain how he gases them, using the backseat as a gas chamber. They’ve gone to all the stores that sell cover-up makeup for people who are disfigured, and every placethat sells theatrical makeup. The narcotics guys are talking to dealers, and we’re chasing fences. What else is there?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s not enough,” Lucas said. He flipped his hand at the stack of paper. “Let’s look at the victims first . . . .”
    They spent an hour at it. Bekker had killed six people in Manhattan, their bodies found scattered around Midtown, the Village, SoHo and Little Italy. Working on the theory he wouldn’t take them far, he was probably south of Central Park, north of the financial district. The zip codes on the envelopes he’d mailed to the medical journals suggested the same thing: three papers, three different zips: 10002, 10003 and 10013.
    “He uses halothane?”
    “That’s what they assume,” Fell said, nodding. “They found traces in three people when they were doing the blood chemistry. And that supposedly accounts for the lack of any sign of a struggle. The stuff is quick. Like one-two-three-gone.”
    “Where did he get it?”
    “Don’t know yet—we’ve run all the hospitals in Manhattan, northern Jersey, Connecticut. Nothing yet, but you know, nobody tracks exact amounts of the stuff. You could transfer some from one tank to another. If the tank wasn’t gone, how could you tell?”
    “Nnn. Okay. But how does he get close enough to whip it on them?” Lucas got up and went out into the hallway, came back with a cone-shaped throwaway water cup. “Stand up.”
    She stood up. “What?”
    He thrust the cup at her face. “If I come at you like this, from the front, I can’t get the leverage.”
    Fell stepped back and the cup came free.
    “Even if they got some gas, they could get far enough back to scream,” he said.
    “We don’t know that they didn’t scream,” said Fell.
    “Nobody heard anything.”
    She nodded. “So if he hits them on the street, he must come up from the back.”
    “Yeah. He grabs them, pulls them in, claps it over their mouth . . .” He turned her around, clapped the cup over her mouth, his elbow in her spine, his hand hooked over her shoulder. “One, two, three . . . Gone.”
    “Do it again,” she said.
    He did it again, but this time, she grabbed his wrist and twisted. The paper cup crumbled and her mouth was open. “Scream,” she said. He let go and she said, “That doesn’t work too well, either.”
    “This woman . . . Ellen Foen.” Lucas picked up the file, flipped it open. “Statements from her friends say she was very cautious. She’d had some trouble with street people—they hang out in the alley behind the place she worked, going through the dumpsters. She could look out through the glass port in the door while it was still locked, and she always checked before she went out. So if Bekker was there, she must have seen him.”
    “It was late.”
    “Nine o’clock. Not quite dark.”
    “Maybe he was dressed okay. He’s not a real big guy—maybe she just wasn’t worried.”
    “But with his face?”
    “Makeup. Or . . . I don’t know. It makes more sense to me that he’s driving a cab. She gets in, he’s got one of the security windows between himself and the backseat. He’s got it sealed up somehow, and when she shuts the door, he turns on the gas. She passes out. I mean, I just can’t see a woman, somebody supposedly cautious,letting a guy get that close to her. And even if he comes up from behind, she’d fight it. You’re a hell of a lot bigger than Bekker, but you’d have a hard time holding a mask over my mouth, even from behind.”
    “Maybe that’s why he picks small people, women,” Lucas suggested.
    “Even so, you just twist away. Even if he gets you, there’d be bruises—but the M.E. hasn’t found any bruises. It’s gotta be a cab, or something like it.”
    “But