Chapter 10

RETIRED HIGH SCHOOL shop Teacher Hudson Black scratched his backside over his flannel boxers as he shuffled down the hallway of his apartment. Eleven in the evening, it was the usual hour for the first of his four late-night visits to the toilet. As was his habit, he silently cursed his enlarged prostate and promised himself he’d make a doctor’s appointment in the near future to deal with the problem.

He stepped into the bathroom and flipped the light switch up, but nothing happened. “Fuck,” he grumbled to the dark cell.

Whenever he sat on the john to get his stingy stream going, he passed the time with a crossword puzzle. That required enough light to read. He flicked the switch up and down four more times, each time issuing a curse.

He reached around the doorway, fumbled along the wall, and flipped on the hallway fixture. It didn’t cast enough light for him to work the crossword puzzle, but it did allow him to notice something strange.

The bathroom’s globe-shaped light fixture was so filled with water, it could pass for a fishbowl. The floor under the light was wet, too. He glanced up at the ceiling and frowned while scratching his crotch. Crazy bitch upstairs was up to her old shenanigans again. He should have guessed something was amiss when earlier that night he’d looked out the window and caught a glimpse of her coming up the walk with a man. Then while he was using the facilities for one of his many postdinner pees, he’d heard them overhead banging and thumping and making all sorts of godawful racket. They were probably doing the dirty deed in the tub.

Because she was such a head case, he and the other tenants had grown accustomed to her crap the last couple of years and pretty much ignored it. When she was having one of her hyper episodes, she’d have the television and the stereo blaring. She’d be dancing and hopping around like someone had plugged her full of quarters. At two in the morning, she’d start running the vacuum and moving the furniture. Sometimes she’d bring home armloads of shopping bags filled with clothes and shoes and purses. Bringing boys home to bang was not out of the ordinary for her either. He swore he never saw her with the same one twice.

Her hyper episodes had made her down days seem almost pleasant. She’d be dragging her sorry butt around the building like it was the end of the world, but at least she was quiet. She did have that one day when she brought the cops to the building after swallowing a bottle of baby aspirin or some such shit. It was a weak-ass suicide attempt, but it seemed to get her the help she needed. Her up-and-down episodes weren’t nearly as frequent after that.

This water damage told him she was up to her old tricks, however. Come sunrise, he was going to phone the super and complain.

Carefully avoiding the area directly under the dripping ceiling light, he padded over to the john. With a sigh, he dropped his boxers and lowered himself onto the stool. He grabbed the puzzle book and pencil off the top of the toilet tank. Holding the book open on his lap, he squinted in the weak light thrown into the bathroom from the hallway. There was enough light to make out the empty blocks but not nearly enough to read the clues. Still, he flipped through the pages once just out of habit, then put the book back on the toilet tank.

For lack of anything better to do while he sat, he counted the drips from the light fixture as they hit the puddle on the floor. It was going to be a long night, and it was that crazy bitch’s fault. With any luck, the super was going to kick her nutty ass out onto the street by week’s end.

Chapter 11

WHILE TALKING ON the phone with Garcia, Bernadette looked over at Creed, and he shook his head solemnly.

“Who found her? When?”

“Downstairs neighbor noticed water dripping from his bathroom ceiling last night and left a message for the building caretaker this morning. Caretaker goes upstairs this afternoon, knocks on the girl’s door, doesn’t get an answer, lets himself in. Finds her dead—faceup in her own bathtub.”

Bernadette reached for a pen and a pad. “Same profile as the other victims?”

“Pretty much. Name was Kyra Klein.”

“Kyra Klein,” Bernadette repeated, looking at Creed. He scratched down the name.

“Early twenties,” Garcia continued. “Undergrad student at the U of M. Lots of problems. Tried to off herself a couple of years ago by swallowing some pills. She’s been seeing shrinks for …”

Bernadette heard some papers shuffling on Garcia’s end. “Let me guess. Depression? Anorexia?”

“Here it is … bipolar disorder.”

“Bipolar disorder,” she repeated, so Creed could keep up with the conversation. “That’s where people have big-time mood swings, right? They go from the highest high to the lowest low?”

“Something like that,” he said. “She was being treated with lithium.”

“Lithium, huh? I’ve heard of it.” She looked over at Creed, and he shrugged. “But we’re not … I’m not sure what that does exactly.”

“It’s serious shit. You don’t want to take too much.”

“Are you saying she overdosed?”

“Crime scene found an empty bottle in the medicine cabinet,” he said.

Bernadette tapped her pen on the pad. “So this could be a suicide.”

“There are restraint marks on her body and bruises on her legs, just like with the other bathtub victim,” he said.

“The killer slipped her a mickey to make his job easier, but she still put up a fight.”

“There was an empty glass with traces of wine in it,” he said.

“I’ll bet the lab finds traces of lithium, too.” She clicked her pen. “I want to talk to the doc who prescribed the stuff. Got the bottle handy?”

Paper shuffling on Garcia’s end. “I’ve got the name of her therapist.”

“That won’t do me any good,” she said. “They can’t prescribe drugs. I need the psychiatrist.”

“I’ll get his name off the police.”

“Did anybody see anything? Hear anything?”

“The downstairs neighbor, the fellow with the place right below her place, heard banging last night. Figured she was up to her old manic ‘bullshit,’ as he put it. He did see her enter the building earlier with a man.”

Bernadette looked over at Creed and said: “The neighbor saw her with someone? With a man?”

“Big blond man. That’s all he can give us. All the neighbor basically saw was the top of the guy’s head.”

“A big blond dude in a state filled with big blond dudes,” she said. “That’ll get us far.”

“Plus it was dark out, so who knows if he even got the blond part right.”

“No one else heard or saw anything?”

“Police are doing their usual. Going door to door. So far, nothing. Apparently Miss Klein was the village eccentric, and folks stopped paying attention to her comings and goings. Her gentleman visitors. I’ve been told she had a lot of those.”

“Was she hooking?”

“No. I think the sexcapades might have something to do with her manic spells.”

“I really need that doctor’s name.” She clicked her pen a couple of times.

“I said I’ll get it,” said Garcia.

“How much of this is being released to the media?” she asked.

“Police are withholding her name until they can reach her brother. He lives out in Seattle.”

“Her parents?”

“Both dead.”

“What is being handed out to the press? What are we saying about this?”

“We aren’t saying squat. Like I’ve been telling you—”

“This belongs to the Minneapolis cops. I know, I know. What are they telling the reporters?”