Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson

information.
    â€œYeah, that’s what I thought,” Manderly said. “I suppose you have a theory on the neighbor?”
    â€œAn older woman like that . . . she was probably a longtime resident of the building. When this one became a problem, he turned to the older one for what he wanted.”
    â€œAnd what did he want?”
    â€œThere’s a contract hit out,” Larson explained, stretching the truth. “I’m supposed to stop it. This razor . . .” Larson indicated the cuts. “We’ve seen him before.”
    â€œSo have we,” Manderly said.
    Larson rose to his feet, heady from the fatigue and moving too quickly. But more than all his physical challenges, it was this information that made him stumble a step. “What’s that?”
    â€œWe had a similar killing, a razor like this, earlier today. We figure we got ourselves a serial killer.” He added, “And I’m thinking you federal boys have lost one. Am I right?”
    â€œThe other victim look anything like this one?” Larson indicated the dead woman on the floor.
    â€œNot really. Older, maybe four or five inches shorter. Smaller overall.”
    Larson felt himself relax a little. Hope might look older, but she couldn’t have shrunk. Sunderland had provided a possible place of Hope’s employment. “This wouldn’t have been an employee of St. Luke’s Hospital, by any chance. Would it have?”
    Manderly’s face registered his astonishment. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
    â€œI’ll need to speak to the investigating detective,” Larson said.
    Manderly stood and brought his face close to Larson’s. “You’re looking at him,” he said. “It’s been a long fucking day, pal, and it just got longer for both of us. You’re coming to the office. And if I have to cuff you to get you there,” he said, a couple of his uniforms perking up and stepping toward them, “I will.”
    â€œThis dumb-ass picked the wrong closet,” Manderly explained. Nearly two hours had passed amid the familiar smell of burned coffee and male sweat. Cop shops weren’t so different, one to the next. It had been a while since Larson had been inside an actual police department, his time typically occupied in federal facilities. But the lighting, the low hum of printers and copiers, of keyboards and muted conversation were nearly the same.
    Manderly and Larson occupied chairs in a good-sized conference room with gray carpeting and an oval table that sat eight. The room’s single window might have had a good view if the blinds hadn’t been drawn. A computer and keyboard, a blank whiteboard, a pair of phones, and a video projector accounted for most of the room’s electronics. On a separate dolly, a TV and VCR held the attention of both men.
    â€œThing is,” Manderly said, further explaining himself, “evidently hospital scrubs make pretty good pajamas, and this closet in ER was getting hit the hardest. That, and antibacterial soap, and shit like that. So Admin gets a heads-up from IT that they can mount a wireless webcam in there for peanuts and monitor it for theft. This jerk-off drags her in there to do his thing, having no idea he’s on
Candid Camera
.”
    On the screen, in the silent, jerky motion of low-frame-count surveillance video, to which Larson was becoming accustomed, the abduction and murder played out again.
    â€œEither he got seriously lucky here, or he’d scouted it and took his chances, but his back is always to the camera. We never get a look at his face.”
    â€œOther security video?”
    â€œThey got cameras all over the entrance to the ER, ’cause that’s where the trouble always comes from. But this turd entered ER from the main wing. We got a profile of him while he sat in a chair scoping the vic, but that’s about it. And in terms of quality, it sucks. Grainy and