His face reddened more. “Nothing I can do,” he insisted. “Rules are rules.”
Lori had half a pound of roast beef in her oversized handbag, which was the main reason Lucky had been behaving himself—his attention focused solely on her bag. While she was talking with the super, she had unzipped her bag and pulled out a slice, which she held to Nathan. He gave it and then her a baffled look, as if he thought she was trying to bribe him with cold cuts.
“Why don’t you feed this to Lucky?”
It took him a moment to make sense of what she was suggesting. His eyes instantly dulled, as if he were going to flatly refuse, but he just as quickly weakened and accepted the meat, which he held out to Lucky. The dog snatched it out of his hand without taking off any fingers, but he also wagged his tail slightly as if he was still trying to decide whether the squat super was friend or foe. Lori gave the super another slice of roast beef to feed Lucky, and this time the dog made up his mind and let out an appreciative grunt. He even pushed his thick head closer to the super so the man could pet him.
Nathan looked perturbed by all this as he struggled to make a decision, but Lori saw something melt in his eyes. She knew the man liked her and found her attractive. She also knew he was harmless, and his feelings for her might very well have been along the lines of a brother toward a much younger sister (even though there was a good twenty-five years separating them) rather than any romantic longings. She also had no doubt that he was a loner and had guessed he would warm up to Lucky if given a chance. It looked like she was right.
“If he bothers other tenants or makes a nuisance of himself—”
“He won’t! I promise. And I won’t be leaving him alone in my apartment. I’ll be taking him to work with me each day.”
The super’s mouth pinched as if he were suffering indigestion. But this was just for show. A decision had already been made. He cautiously began rubbing Lucky behind his ear, and a contented noise rumbled out of the dog’s throat. Kindred spirits.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he confided. “When a letter goes to the landlord, he calls me to make the decision. You can keep him as long as he don’t cause any trouble.”
Lori could’ve kissed him, except it would’ve confused the situation. “Thank you so much, Nathan. And he won’t cause any trouble. I’ll make sure of it.”
The super shifted his gaze from the dog to Lori. He smiled, revealing cracked and chipped teeth stained worse than his undershirt. It might’ve been the first time she had ever seen his teeth.
He said, “If you want to let him eat Weinstein’s yappy little dog, that will be okay with me. The thing gives me a headache. But make sure he don’t cause no other trouble.”
Chapter 5
Three years ago, Morris Brick was a star within the LAPD after solving three high-profile serial killer cases in a span of seven years. His last investigation as a homicide detective had him chasing down the Hillside Cannibal Killer, which not only made him a national celebrity but also almost made him the Cannibal’s last victim. When he decided to quit the department and start MBI, Police Commissioner Martin Hadley made only a perfunctory effort at best to talk him out of it. While that might’ve surprised others, Morris pretty much expected it from Hadley—after all, the two of them strongly disliked each other and had been butting heads since he made detective. Hadley, however, went ballistic when he found out Morris had arranged for three other LAPD homicide detectives—Charlie Bogle, Fred Lemmon, and Dennis Polk—to join him in his new venture. The police commissioner would’ve blown a gasket entirely if he’d known Morris also took copies of his cold cases with him on his way out the door.
Morris had no intention of actively working any of these unsolved crimes, but he wanted the files in case inspiration struck. Of all of them, the ones he prayed most to be solved were the Nightmare Man murders. He also dreaded the thought of ever opening the thick manila folder that held the sickening details and secrets of those killings.
It was a little after four when he returned with Parker in tow to MBI’s office suite on Wilshire Boulevard. He’d been coaxed by Stonehedge to have three le daiquiris (his actor friend was right—they were delicious), but he could’ve had half a dozen more and it wouldn’t have mattered. Thinking about the Nightmare Man sobered him up more than guzzling a thermos of black coffee or dumping a bucket of ice water on his head.
He was fourteen when the Nightmare Man first struck, but even though he had been almost a decade away from becoming a police officer, he was still connected with those murders since his dad, who was then an LAPD homicide detective, was the lead investigator. He didn’t see his dad much during the seventeen days that the killings took place, nor the four months that followed as his dad continued to chase dead ends. The times that he did see him, Sam Brick had tried to hide the horror of the killings from his family. He never talked about them. Not a word. But there were cracks in the façade he put up, moments when Morris caught a glimpse of the weariness his dad tried so hard to conceal.
It wasn’t as much a coincidence as it might’ve seemed when in 2001 he made detective at thirty-one and only a month later was assigned to the case when the murders started up again. All he ever wanted to do as a kid was follow in his dad’s footsteps and become a police detective, and somehow it seemed fitting that he’d finish the job his dad started and be the one to catch the Nightmare Man. But it didn’t happen. Just as in 1984, the Nightmare Man slipped away after seventeen days of bloody carnage, his crimes remaining unsolved.
Morris dug the Nightmare Man folder from its hiding place under a pile of boxes and other papers stored away in the back of his coat closet. He hadn’t been aware of it until then, but at a subconscious level he must’ve been trying to hide the file’s existence—that had to be why he’d buried it where he had. The other cold case files were kept in his bottom desk drawer.
Parker had accompanied Morris to the closet, making sure to stick his nose into things. The bull terrier followed Morris back to his desk and with a grunt lowered himself onto the carpeted floor. Within minutes he was lying on his side and snoring heavily. It was tiring work mooching as much as Parker had done that afternoon!
For several minutes Morris sat Buddha-like, staring at the folder. He hadn’t touched it since dropping it onto his desk, and the thought of doing so gave him an uneasy, hollow feeling deep in his stomach as if he had swallowed a peach pit. More a delaying tactic than actually wanting coffee, he left his office and walked to the kitchen area. He found the coffeepot holding an inch of cold, congealed, grayish sludge that must’ve been left over from yesterday. Before meeting with Stonehedge, he’d been out of the office tracking down several crates of stolen machinery parts for a client. Likewise, Lemmon and Polk were out on assignment. Adam Felger, MBI’s millennial computer and hacking specialist, whom Morris talked to briefly when he returned from his late lunch, drank only Red Bull and had an impressive collection of empty cans stacked up in his office, and Greta Lindstrom, MBI’s office manager and receptionist, eschewed coffee for bottled water.
Morris scrubbed the glass carafe clean and started a fresh pot brewing. Several times during the year he had considered replacing the antiquated coffeemaker with a single cup brewer that worked with individual-sized flavored pods, but he was old-fashioned when it came to coffee and liked the idea of always having a pot available.
The coffee finished brewing, and he stared at it, reluctant to pour himself a cup. Once he did, he’d be done with excuses for not opening the Nightmare Man folder. As he stood silently he thought about the approaching seventeen-year anniversary and how that number held a special significance for the killer. As with the killings in 1984, those in 2001 also took place over a seventeen-day period. The victims were all women. All of them were found naked in bed, and with each murder the killer pulled off seventeen finger- and toenails and used a hunting knife to slice off seventeen pieces of flesh, and then arranged all this at the foot of the bed into a grisly “17.” But that wasn’t all he did to the victims. There were the seventeen burn marks