It was Kurtz's turn to nod. Different names. But all from Cleveland. And the handwriting was the same. "Maybe our Dr. Conway is just the dentist to psychopaths around the country. Probably was Ted Bundy's dentist."
"Uh-huh." Arlene stubbed her cigarette out and came over to Kurtz's desk. "What about the other I.D. factors? The tattoo in the Hansen killings? The scar in the Whittaker case?"
"My guess is that Hansen finds his replacement for the fire firstsome street person or male hooker or somethingkills him, stores the body, and then decorates himself accordingly. If they have a tattoo, he sports a fake one. Whatever. It's just a few months."
"Jesus."
"I'll need his current" began Kurtz.
She handed him a three-by-five card with Dr. Howard K. Conway's business address on it. "I called this morning and tried to make an appointment, but Dr. Conway is semiretired and isn't accepting new patients. A younger man answered the phone and shooed me away. I found listings for Dr. Conway going back to the early fifties, so the guy must be ancient."
Kurtz was looking at the photographs of the murdered girls. "Why would Hansen leave Conway alive all these years?"
"I guess it's easier than getting a new dentist all the time. Plus, the dental records are probably all older
than whatever identity Hansenwhatever his name isis using at the time. It'd be weird, something even local cops would notice, if their killer only had dental records a few months old."
"And it's not weird that someone living in Houston or Albany or Atlanta goes to a Cleveland dentist?"
Arlene shrugged. "The nut cases all moved from Cleveland in the past year or two. No reason for local homicide cops to red-flag that."
"No."
"What are you going to do, Joe?" There was an edge to Arlene's voice that he had rarely heard when he had been a P.I.
He looked at her.
"Come here often?" said Kurtz.
Angelina Farino Ferrara just sighed. They were working in the weight room today, and the Boys were outside on the treadmills.
Kurtz and Arlene had chosen the video-store basement for their office because it was cheap and because it had several exits: back door to the alley, stairway door to the now-defunct video store upstairs, and side door to the condemned parking garage next door. The drug dealers who had owned the place when it was a real bookstore had liked all those exits. So did Kurtz. It had come in handy when he'd left half an hour ago.
Arlene's late husband's Harley had been parked on the dark lower level, just beyond the metal door. Greg had left a helmet on the handlebars and the keys in the ignition. Kurtz had straddled the machine, fired it up, and weaved his way up ramps and out of the basement of the empty parking garage, snaking by the permanent barricade on Market Street that kept cars out. Detective Brubaker presumably still had been on watch on the alley side, and Detective Myers on the street side, but no one was watching the Market Street garage exit. Taking care on the snowy and icy streets, reminding himself that he'd not been on a bike for fifteen years or more, Kurtz had ridden to the health club.
Now he was doing repetitions on the chest-press machine with two hundred pounds. He had done twenty-three reps when Angelina said, "You're showing off."
"Absolutely."
"You can stop now."
"Thank you." He lowered the bar and left it lowered. Angelina was doing curls with fifteen-pound weights. Her biceps were feminine but well-defined. No one was within earshot. "When do you have lunch with Gonzaga this week?"
"Tomorrow, Tuesday. Then again on Thursday. Did you bring my property?"
"No. Tell me the drill when you and the Boys go for lunch." There was a heavy bag and a speed bag in the room, and he put on gloves and began working on the heavy bag.
Angelina set down the dumbbells and went to a bench to do some pull-ups. "The car takes us to Grand Island"
"Your car or Gonzaga's?"
"His."
"How many people other than the driver?"
"One. The Asian stone-killer called Mickey Kee. But the driver's carrying as well."
"What can, you tell me about Kee?"
"He's from South Korea. He was trained in their Special Forcessort of Green Berets by way of SMERSH. I think he got a lot of on-the-job experience assassinating North Korean infiltrators, people the regime didn't like, that sort of thing. He's probably the most efficient killer in New York State right now."
"When you go to lunch, they pick you up at the Marina Tower?"
"Yeah."
"Frisk you there?"
"No. They take the Boys' guns at the guardhouse. Then they drive us the rest of the way. There's a metal-detector at the entrance to the main houseit's subtle, but it's thereand then I get frisked again by a woman in a private room off the foyer before being allowed into Emilio's presence. I guess they're afraid I'll go at him with a hat pin or something."
"A hat pin," repeated Kurtz. "You're older than you look."
Angelina ignored him. "The Boys sit on a couch in the foyer while the Gonzaga goons watch them. The Boys get their guns back when we drive out."