Authors: Kathy Reichs
My stomach roiled. I tasted bile and felt tremors under my tongue.
A familiar back stoop.
Fear shot through me. We were at the Annex. Why?
Dragging me from the car, Gunther prodded me toward the porch, muzzle once again pressed to the base of my skul.
I stumbled forward, grasping for comprehension. For details to remember. To recount. To reconstruct.
Back door open. Kitchen windows casting rectangles of light on the lawn. Purse tossed, contents scattered like wind-blown leaves on the grass.
Gunther shoved me up the steps. I entered my home on trembling legs.
From somewhere in the house I heard frenzied rattling and scraping. Birdie? Too loud. Then what? I couldn’t tel. Blood jackhammered in my brain.
Gunther paused, licked his lips. For the first time I had a view of his face. He looked like someone’s older brother, a tennis coach, a preacher at the church. His eyes were green, but shifting wildly. His hair was chestnut and neatly side-parted. He had one thing right. Switch-hitter though he was, with his feminine good looks he’d be grade-A prime in prison.
Moving almost imperceptibly, I flattened my back and shoulders to the wal beside the jamb and raised up on my toes. Something clicked, and the light faling through the door changed subtly.
Where was Bird? I listened for the jangle of the bel on his colar. Nothing.
Pushing hard, Gunther forced me through the swinging door into the dining room, then through to the halway.
Slidel’s back was to us. He was hunched, wrenching at cuffs chaining his wrists to the newel post of the staircase.
“Easy, Detective.” Agitated and tense.
Slidel whirled as best he could.
“You’re going down, you dickless shit.” Slidel’s voice was ragged from exertion and rage.
“Then what have I got to lose with two more corpses?”
Moving me into Slidel’s field of vision, Gunther jammed his gun into my trachea and forced my chin upward.
Slidel hauled on the cuffs, fury radiating from him like heat.
Gunther forced the barrel so deep I cried out in pain.
Slidel’s fingers curled into fists. “You hurt her I’l fucking kil you myself.”
“Don’t see how you’l manage that. Turn around.”
Slidel didn’t budge.
“Move! Now! Or your buddies wil be scraping her brains off the wal with a sponge.” The calm was gone and Gunther again sounded psychoticaly overwrought. Was the man roler-coastering on speed or some other drug?
Eyes burning with hatred, Slidel began a slow pivot.
Lunging forward, Gunther arced the gun fast toward Slidel’s temple. It connected with a sickening crack.
Slidel went down and lay stil, cuffed arms crooked heavenward as if he were a supplicant in prayer.
Then, Gunther moved fast. So fast I couldn’t react.
Shoving me to the staircase, he mashed me facedown, produced a key, and freed Slidel’s left hand. Looping the chain through the banister uprights, he clamped the free cuff onto my right wrist. I heard movement and felt pressure on my arms. In seconds, the ropes fel from my hands.
Adrenaline surged through me as comprehension dawned. I was handcuffed to Slidel. Gunther planned to kil us both.
Stall, Brennan.
Pushing to my knees, I half turned to face my aggressor.
“You already burned a kid, a cop, and one of your ex-clients, right? Why more murders?”
“Kiss my ass.” Gunther’s eyes were jumping al over the room.
“He’s right, you know.” I swalowed back nausea. “They’l hunt you down and run you to ground. There’s nowhere you can hide.”
“The cops don’t know I exist. Your pal here cracked under pressure. Murdered Evans, then you, then committed suicide.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Despondent over the death of his partner. Over getting poor Asa Finney shot. Over kiling you.”
“No one wil believe that. It’s preposterous.”
“He blamed you for making him arrest the wrong man. For goading Lingo into stirring up trouble.”
Slidel groaned. I looked at him. In the murky light I could see an angry welt on his temple.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I watch television.”
My eyes snapped back to Gunther.
“That bruise wil look wrong when they do the autopsy. I’ve thought of that.” Gunther shot a hand through his hair. “I’ve thought of everything. That’s where the nice bulet wil blow through his head.”
He’s delusional. Keep him talking.
“You fed Rinaldi false information,” I said. “You must have done a lousy job if you had to kil him.”
“The man was a moron.”
“He was smart enough to figure out you kiled Klapec.”
“Jimmy made a big mistake. He cut into my trade. I had to straighten up his thinking. Things got out of hand.” Gunther licked his lips. “I didn’t mean to waste Jimmy. It just happened.”
“And Rinaldi?”
“Skank made the mistake of tying Klapec to me.”
“So you eliminated the competition, then threw suspicion on your disloyal customer.”
I saw Gunther’s finger twitch against the trigger. “Briliant, eh?”
“Why behead Klapec?”
Gunther snorted a laugh. “To fit him into an old crone’s cheap-ass freezer.”
A chil traveled my spine. The man felt absolutely no remorse.
Buy time.
“Why carve him up?”
“When that cauldron story broke, I said to myself, ‘Vince my man, the devil’s looking out for you. You got a frozen headless body you need to offload and ole Lucifer’s offering the perfect cover.’”
Again, it was as though a switch had been thrown. Abruptly, Gunther sounded calm, confident, almost amused.
“You put Klapec’s head in Evans’s freezer tonight to tighten the noose.”
Gunther clicked his teeth and cocked his head.
“Don’t forget the saw. That was a nice touch.”
“You made one mistake. You shot Evans with your own gun.”
“Please. Don’t be dumb. Every cop carries backup. After Slidel used his thirty-eight on Evans he came here and shot you. The bulets wil match. Then, being old school, Slidel ate his own piece.”
“No one wil believe a scenario as absurd as that. The homicide detectives know you are in town and that you have access to a white Durango. They’l be on you within hours.
”
Gunther’s face tensed and his eyes went hard and began to dance. “I know what you’re trying to do, lady. You think you can delay me. You think you’re smart. But it won’t work with me.”
Gunther shifted the thirty-eight to his left hand and yanked Slidel’s Glock from his waistband. The
chink-chink
of the slide sounded deafening in the closeness of the hal.
Ignoring the pain in my wrist, I hurled myself past the newel post and stretched out over Slidel as far as my manacled hand would alow.
I heard angry footsteps, then a hand grasped my hair and jerked my head up. Vertebrae crunched in my neck.
Stil clutching my hair, Gunther knocked me sideways with an elbow to the face. My head ricocheted off the banister.
The room pressed in, drew back. I felt warmth trickle from my nose.
With one boot, Gunther levered me from Slidel and roled me to the left.
“No!” I screamed, struggling to rise up on al fours.
Through a tangle of hair I saw Gunther bend over Slidel.
I stretched out a hand, tears streaming my cheeks.
Reaching down, Gunther pressed the Glock to Slidel’s temple.
The moment froze into a deadly snapshot.
Unable to bear the sight of Slidel’s death, I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then the world exploded.
38
AFTER PULLING THE TRIGGER, RYAN LAID HIS GUN ON THE MANTEL, unlocked the cuffs, checked Slidel for a pulse, and dialed 911. Units came screaming from al over Charlotte. So did two ambulances, later the ME van.
Vince Gunther was pronounced dead at 10:47 P.M.
Slidel and I were transported to Carolinas Medical Center, both protesting loudly. My concussion was minor. Slidel’s was severe and his scalp required stitches. We gave statements from our hospital beds.
Ryan remained at the Annex to answer questions. I learned details late the next morning.
Returning to the Annex, Ryan had seen the porch light shining. He edged up to the house and spotted my purse in the grass where Gunther had tossed it after removing my keys. Sensing trouble, he’d used his own key, crept into the house, come upon the scene in the halway, and taken Gunther out with a single round to the head. Providentialy, Ryan’s bulet had knocked Gunther sideways, and Gunther’s death throes had not resulted in a squeezing of the trigger.
At the ME office, Gunther’s true identity began to emerge. Prints showed he was a twenty-seven-year-old con man with several aliases. Under his real name, Vern Ziegler, he rented an apartment off Harris Boulevard and attended UNCC. Male prostitution provided but one of many ilicit income streams.
Charlie Hunt came to see me early the next morning. Held my hand. Looked genuinely concerned.
Katy caled. She was stil tagging documents in Buncombe County, but would return to Charlotte for the weekend. She was finding the project, big surprise, boring. The upside was she was talking about graduate studies, maybe law.
Pete also caled. He was relieved to learn that I’d suffer no lasting consequences, pleased to hear of Katy’s mention of law school. As we talked, Summer was out perusing china patterns.
I was discharged by 10 A.M. To his dismay, Slidel had to stay longer. Before leaving the hospital, Ryan and I stopped by his room. He’d already talked to members of the Rinaldi task force. Ryan was somber, quiet. Between us, we pieced together the story.
My wild guess had been intuitive and right on the mark. Evans was a closet gay who cruised NoDa wearing a bal cap puled low to disguise his identity. Usualy he picked up Gunther. One night he spotted Klapec and got a taste for fresh talent. Pleased with performance, he switched service providers. Gunther was furious and confronted Klapec, his sometime friend. Klapec argued free trade, things got physical, and Gunther kiled him.
I remembered Gunther’s words in my halway.
“For a guy who prided himself on covering al angles, he sure hadn’t worked out an exit strategy. He didn’t want the body found, but he had no idea what to do with it.”
Buying time, Gunther crammed Klapec into Pinder’s grandmother’s freezer. When he read about Cuervo’s altar and cauldrons, he thought his problem was solved. Knowing nothing about Santería, Wicca, or devil worship, he decided to make the murder appear satanic. After carving symbols in Klapec’s flesh, he dumped the stil frozen corpse at Lake Wylie.
“Gunther knew there was a possibility Pinder or one of the chicken hawks might link him to Klapec, so he began feeding false information to Rinaldi,” Slidel said.
“Do you think Gunther knew Evans was Lingo’s right-hand man?” I asked.
“The guy wasn’t stupid, but he definitely had some screws loose,” Slidel said. “They found Tegretol in his apartment. Lots of it.”
“That’s a medication for bipolar disorder.” Ryan.
Slidel’s eyes roled to the ceiling. “Like I said. The guy was a whack job.”
I considered, decided against attempting to explain manic depression to Slidel.
“He’d stopped taking his meds?” I guessed.
“Clever move, eh? Doc said he was probably in something caled an acutely manic period.”
Impatient with the topic of Gunther’s mental health, Slidel segued back to Evans. “Maybe Gunther learned Evans’s name from Rinaldi. Or spotted him on the tube with Lingo.”
“Lingo’s tirades fed right into Gunther’s delusion,” I said.
“And set Asa Finney up as a perfect patsy to take the fal for Klapec,” Ryan added.
“Here’s the biggest mind-fuck,” said Slidel. “Gunther didn’t know Finney and didn’t know he’d been shot by Klapec’s father. If he’d heard that, he wouldn’t have bothered with the frame on Evans, unless he just wanted to burn the guy.”
Slidel shook his head.
“I was way off base on Finney. The guy was just trying to make a dime and be left alone. His income came from Dr. Games and other sites loading ads on gamers. And the Ford Focus spotted near the witch camp turned out to belong to a cousin of one of the locals.”
“Did CSS find anything useful in Granny’s freezer or basement?” Ryan asked.
“Enough blood for a transfusion. DNA’l show it came from Klapec.”
“I suspect some of the blood may belong to Señor Snake,” Ryan said.
“Gunther left the copperhead on my porch?”
Slidel nodded. “Probably meant as another satanic misdirect. Or maybe Gunther thought he could scare you off the case.”
I just looked at him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Slidel said. “Maybe the guy wasn’t so smart after al.”
“Why did Evans come home early last night?” I asked.
“Landlady dimed him. Told you that old harpy was trouble.”
“Why did Evans park way up the block instead of just puling into the driveway?”
“He was probably worried that our warrant might include his vehicle. He must have surprised Gunther sneaking in from the golf course.”
“To plant the saw and Klapec’s head.”
Slidel nodded again.
“When Gunther learned we’d questioned Pinder he decided it was time to get the goods out of Granny’s basement. After capping Evans, he saw us right there in the garage.
Things were spinning out of control and he was thinking wildly. That’s when he dreamed up the murder-suicide plan.”
More came out over the course of that day.
At age six, April Pinder had taken a car bumper to the side of her head. The injury resulted in an inability to properly sequence certain types of information. Time was one area that caused her difficulty. Pinder had mixed up dates, confusing the day Gunther got out of jail with the day before he went in.
Turned out Gunther/Ziegler did have a record. Using a long list of aliases he’d worked a number of con games over the years, most bilking elderly or retarded women. A scam based on checking obits, then delivering COD packages requiring payment of money due. Door-to-door peddling of candy, candles, and popcorn for false charities. Sale of
“winning” lottery tickets and counterfeited contest coupons. Al petty stuff. Nothing violent. His boyish good looks undoubtedly served him wel. It was only after going off his meds in August that he started showing bursts of violent behavior.