Serial fq-6

by John Lutz

  And of course she was. Any attractive woman on a packed New York subway train was the object of male attention. Bodies pressed bodies. Sometimes, when the train jerked or swayed on its tracks, supposedly accidental contact was made. Nora was used to that kind of thing.

  But this was different. Or maybe she felt that way because she was tired, and because of her rapist being released from prison.

  She still found herself trusting her memory and doubting the DNA evidence. DNA used in criminal trials couldn’t be as foolproof as defense attorneys would have people believe. Nothing, even in science, was that certain. Maybe especially in science. Not that long ago science was telling people to avoid the night air and go to barbers to have their blood drawn when they were ill.

  But everyone else accepted DNA as absolute proof, and Nora felt the weight of that, the crush of disapproval. With her wrong identification, she had caused an innocent man to spend over five years in prison. She should pay for that. Somebody should pay.

  The train lurched. Nora slid a few inches across the plastic seat until her body met that of a man reading a folded Times in his lap. He didn’t seem to mind. She found herself staring at the newspaper. She’d heard that perverts on the subway used newspapers to conceal their erections.

  Don’t be an idiot! Don’t believe everything you hear. This guy’s probably a clerk or accountant or editor, taking the train home to his wife and kids.

  Besides, I can take care of myself.

  She wasn’t sure about that last part. Six weeks of karate lessons had made a difference, but not that much difference. And it had taught her just how strong men in general were. The smallest man could generate more strength than even a large woman. It had to do with percentage of muscle mass.

  Hunters. The bastards are hunters.

  Knock it off, Nora.

  The train’s wheels squealed on iron rails as it slowed approaching her stop. She waited for the complete stop and then the sudden backward lurch before standing up and elbowing her way toward the sliding doors and the concrete platform.

  Fear slipped away as she pushed through the metal turnstile and climbed littered concrete steps to the upper world.

  The evening was still bright and the sidewalks crowded with human energy.

  About half the outside tables at Perfect Pizza were occupied. On impulse, she stepped through the opening in the iron fence that separated the dining area from the wide sidewalk and found a table beneath an umbrella. A waitress named Emma, whom Nora knew somewhat, immediately came toward her. They exchanged greetings, and Emma smiled the smile that could break the resolve of a professional mourner. Nora was glad she’d decided to come here. She ordered a slice of pizza with ham and pineapple on it, and a glass of burgundy.

  She sat back and let her gaze roam over the diners. What would really cheer her up was if she could spot a woman wearing a Nora N. original. It had happened once before; a woman in the neighborhood had bought a T-shirt with a sequin design and asymmetrical neck, and a month or so later here the woman had been in Perfect Pizza, flaunting Nora’s creation. It could happen again, but the odds were long. Like a writer spotting someone reading his or her book.

  After the pizza slice and a second glass of wine, Nora left the restaurant and walked the remaining block and a half to her apartment. She felt better now. Unafraid. The wine could do that, push lingering uneasiness away from the active part of her mind. Useful stuff, wine. She might have a glass or two tonight before bedtime.

  When she reached her apartment building, she trudged up the worn stone steps with a cautious look left and right.

  Nothing suspicious, she decided.

  Besides me.

  She reminded herself that she’d decided not to let fear do its inevitable damage. She would keep that commitment.

  Nora was actually humming as she worked the three locks on her apartment door. They were all sturdy locks. Two of them set automatically when the door was closed. One of them was a dead bolt. She would feel safe on the other side of those locks.

  She carefully locked herself in, then went to the kitchen and, after deciding against actually drinking another glass of wine, downed a glass of water. Walking the streets of Manhattan had made her thirsty, even after the wine she’d had at Perfect Pizza. Maybe it was the saltiness of the pizza. Whatever. She wondered how people who lived on the streets could stay hydrated.

  How awful it must be to live that way. And it could happen to anyone. That possibility was why Nora worked so hard at her trade. She, like so many living in the city, felt always close to becoming one of the pathetic people she saw every day, panhandling on the sidewalks. Maybe that was why New Yorkers seemed always distracted and in a hurry; visible all around them were the consequences of living without a net.

  The spare bedroom in Nora Noon’s apartment was for storage. It was stuffed with clothing of her design, cloth creations draped on hangers affixed to shoulder-high steel racks that were on wheels. There was room for an aisle down the middle of the room, but sometimes Nora had to shift the overloaded rolling racks from one side to the other to reach the garment she wanted.

  Tonight what she wanted was a dress that had been bothering her for days. It was this afternoon that she’d decided a higher waistline might be exactly what the design needed. Nora could alter the waist and try the dress on herself in front of the triple mirror at her studio. That was one of the advantages of Nora N. designs being for ordinary-sized women.

  It was bright in the room with the overhead fixture blazing, and the air was still and stuffy. Some of the material she touched was warm from the sunbeams lancing in at the edges of the drawn shades. There was a faint odor of mothballs. Too faint, Nora decided. Most of her garments had a high wool content. Moths were the enemy.

  She pushed aside two of the swaying, overloaded racks and saw the dress she wanted. Dark green with black piping. Maybe that had been a mistake, too, choosing a dark color for the piping.

  She reached for the dress’s hanger, and a hand appeared from between the garments on the nearest rack and reached for her.

  The sounds of her struggle were muffled among the overstuffed racks of clothing. Every time she tried to escape her assailant’s grip, her arms and legs would become entangled in material. She soon became swathed in the stuff. The karate lessons were useless. So were her screams, with her mouth jammed with what she knew was fifty percent cashmere.

  Nora regained consciousness in her own bed. It was still futile to try to move her arms and legs. She was on her back, with her wrists bound to the headboard. Her legs were spread wide, her ankles tied to the bottom corners of the steel bed frame beneath the mattress. The rope was knotted so tightly that her hands and feet were numb. She attempted to say something but couldn’t utter more than a moan. Her tongue probed and found a rough surface. Her mouth was still crammed with material, but it was smoother.

  She raised her head to look around her. That was when she realized she was nude and became really afraid.

  Fighting off panic, she let her head loll back. There was no pillow so she was staring up at the headboard and the surface of the wall behind it.

  Moving her head had caused a tremendous pain in the back of her neck. She remembered a hand clutching her there, squeezing. A man’s grip. No woman could encompass her neck so and squeeze so hard.

  She let her eyes roll to the right and her gaze fell on an unfamiliar object on the nightstand by the bed. A curling iron. It wasn’t hers, though. This one had a white handle and a white cord that ran from the nightstand and disappeared. She knew the cord would be run to the socket just below where the lamp was plugged in. The metal brace was flipped downward so the main shaft of the curling iron was suspended an inch above the surface of the nightstand. A tiny red light glittered on the white handle. It indicated that the curling iron was turned on.

  Nora sensed or heard a movement to her left, alongside the headboard and back where she couldn’t see who or what it was. She strained to see but
couldn’t; the pain at the base of her neck prevented her from turning her head far enough.

  Her body gave an involuntary jerk. Fingertips gently caressed her perspiring cheeks and then the vulnerable area beneath her chin. They brushed a strand of hair back off her forehead.

  “It’s possible that your hair is going to curl,” a man’s voice said softly. “But the curling iron will never touch it.”

  13

  Michelle Roper was quite beautiful, which made her one of Nora Noon’s favorite clients. Michelle had dark hair and eyes, high cheekbones, and a trim and graceful figure. Though not a tall woman, she carried herself with a kind of regal bearing. Surely in her ancestry were kings and queens. With Michelle roaming around New York, wearing Nora N. creations to all the fashionable clubs, Nora had her own walking advertisement.

  “I was supposed to meet with Nora at nine,” Michelle was telling the super of Nora’s building. “It’s already nine-thirty.”

  “She might still show up,” the super said. He was a middle-aged guy wearing a green work shirt over a bulging stomach. He didn’t seem too interested in Michelle’s story, though he did seem to have an eye for Michelle.

  “There’s no showing up involved,” Michelle explained. “She sleeps here. We were going to meet at her apartment so I could look at some swatches, then go have breakfast together. She doesn’t answer her phone, and her message machine is off. That’s not like Nora. Maybe you can raise her. You’re the super-”

  “Leonard,” the super said.

  “What?”

  “My name is Leonard.” He gave her a broken-toothed smile.

  “Michelle.”

  “Much as I’d like to help you, Michelle,” Leonard said, “I got no right to enter a tenant’s apartment because she don’t answer her phone. You try her cell?”

  “Yes. She doesn’t answer that one, either.” Michelle decided to use what influence she obviously had with Leonard. She put on a concerned look. “This is going to sound funny, Leonard, but I’m half Cherokee, and I have a certain sense about such things. An instinct. I just know something is wrong in that apartment.” The Cherokee part was true, but that was all.

  “Cherokee Native American? No kidding?” He stared closely at her. “Once you know, it’s easy to see it.” He gave her a shy smile. “It looks good on you.”

  “Nora and I are friends, Leonard. I’d know if she simply wasn’t home. She doesn’t answer at her workshop, either, and I’ve been in touch with several people she knows and they haven’t seen her since yesterday.” Michelle touched his arm and he almost melted. “If Nora was having some kind of medical problem in there, Leonard, you wouldn’t want to be responsible for her not getting help in time, would you?”

  “No… ’course not. But…”

  “So how about if we step inside and call out her name, look around to make sure she isn’t in there somewhere hurt and unable to get to a phone. Then we’ll leave.”

  “What if the chain’s on?”

  “Then we’ll call her name through the narrow door opening. If Nora doesn’t answer, and we know she’s inside because the chain lock is attached, we’ll know there might be something seriously wrong. She might be unconscious and need medical attention.” She smiled at him with perfect white teeth. “Make sense?”

  “Makes sense,” Leonard admitted, and reached for the bulky key ring attached to his belt.

  Michelle was surprised when there was a brief clatter and the chain lock stopped the apartment door after about four inches. She and Leonard exchanged glances. Genuine worry was gaining ground.

  Michelle moved near the door and called Nora’s name three times. Then Leonard nudged her aside and put his face up to the space provided by the partly opened door. “Mizz Noon?” he boomed several times.

  Silence.

  “You got a bolt cutter?” Michelle asked.

  Leonard nodded. “I’ll be right back, Michelle.”

  He took the stairs rather than wait for the elevator, and within a few minutes returned with a long-handled bolt cutter.

  The thick brass chain on Nora’s door didn’t stand a chance. It parted, and a severed link bounced noisily on the hardwood floor like a coin. The door swung open.

  Leonard called Nora’s name again as Michelle let him lead the way inside.

  The window air conditioner wasn’t running and the apartment was way too warm. Michelle stopped and stood still, touching Leonard’s shoulder so he’d stop, too. The two of them stood there. They both smelled the peculiar odor, like something… maybe meat… had been overdone to the point of becoming charred.

  Leonard moved away toward the kitchen. Underlying that smell was a sharp, ammonia scent. Michelle, maybe because she did sense something terrible, made herself walk slowly to the bedroom she knew Nora used for sleeping and not storage.

  She stood stunned in the doorway, staring at what was on the bed.

  Leonard edged up behind her and looked over her shoulder.

  “Oh, God!” he said, and squatted down, his head bowed.

  Michelle turned to look at him. “If you’re going to puke, Leonard, try to do it out in the hall.”

  Taking deep breaths, he straightened up slowly, carefully not looking again into the bedroom. His face was pale and perspiring, and his features were drawn tight as if he might cry. “I’ll be okay,” he said.

  Michelle had long ago been married to a cop. He had told her about his work. Maybe too much. Too much communication could destroy a marriage. But it could also prepare a woman for what she might see at a murder scene.

  She rested a hand on Leonard’s shoulder and guided him toward the door to the hall.

  “We’re getting out of here and then I’ll use my cell to call nine-one-one,” she said.

  “Right,” Leonard gasped, as if he were out of breath.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she added.

  “I don’t need reminding,” he said.

  14

  Hogart, 1991

  The woods were dark, but Beth was familiar with them. She was making good time along a scarcely defined dirt path, Roy’s six-pack of beer tucked beneath her arm, when she heard a sound off to her right. She’d grown up in the country and spent time in the woods, even had camped in them as a young girl. She knew which sounds were natural and which weren’t. No animal moved in such a way, brushing low branches and taking even strides through the crisp carpet of last year’s dead leaves. No animal other than human.

  Zombies, Beth thought, and she giggled. She’d watched an old zombie movie on TV last night, after Roy had fallen asleep. She hadn’t dreamed or thought about zombies since, though, until now.

  Zombies on your brain, girl.

  She made herself smile and continued her pace along the dirt path.

  The sound she’d heard didn’t seem to move with her. The woods were silent now. More silent than they should be.

  After about a dozen paces, she stopped. She knew she was approximately halfway through the stand of trees. Though there wasn’t the slightest breeze, she was aware of shadows on the periphery of her vision in slight motion.

  Through the shadows, where the moonlight penetrated the canopy of leaves, she saw something shining. It was dark and metallic.

  Beth got a firmer grip on the cool paper sack containing the beer and slowly moved forward.

  She was relieved to see, parked off the path ahead of her, a motorcycle. A dark blue or black Harley, by the look of it. Nothing supernatural. No zombies. She heard herself breathe out her relief.

  Something struck her from behind and she was on the ground. She’d landed with the sack in front of her, so that the six-pack of beer rammed into her stomach and drove the breath from her. She lay curled on her side, hearing her own half gasps, able to move only to draw her legs up after the shock of being unexpectedly knocked down.

  Then, realizing what was happening, she became paralyzed with fear.

  She could only occasionally glimpse her attacker in the moonl
ight as he ripped her shorts and panties and worked them down her legs. She tried to scream but made no sound. Her lungs wouldn’t work. He was laughing low in his throat, knowing she was breathless and helpless, without even the means to scream. Taking his time. Being methodical. Enjoying himself.

  She got only a brief look at his face in profile, and not a clear look. He had long, stringy dark hair and a full beard. He was heavy, and strong, with a belly that hung over his jeans. His breath smelled like onions and gasoline, though she knew the gas smell had to be from the nearby Harley.

  Her head was forced back so her mouth gaped open, and he placed his hand over her mouth in such a way that it stayed in front of her teeth and she couldn’t bite him. Struggling not to choke, she tasted oil and grit from the man’s palm and thick fingers. The edge of his palm pressed against her nostrils so she couldn’t breathe.

  Then the man was on her. He weighed so much more than Roy. He was crushing her. His weight lifted momentarily and he pried her bare legs apart. She tried to kick but could only wave one calf helplessly in the air. She heard one of her rubber thongs land near her left ear.

  His free hand was between her legs, his fingers oily. A later examination would reveal that oil was used as a lubricant for the rape. Valvoline thirty-weight.

  He was on her again. In her! Piercing deep and hard, moving back and forth inside her. He quickly built up a desperate, driving rhythm. She knew it wasn’t going to last long, but it hurt so much. She had her teeth clenched and realized she was breathing again, slightly, through her nose. Because he was letting her.

  This can’t be happening! Not to me!

  She became someone else, moving off to the side, an onlooker who, thank God, couldn’t see through the darkness of the night.

  She hid from what was happening. Hid in the darkness until it was finally over.

  Huffing and puffing noisily, the man partially raised his weight from her. Then he patted her on her bare side, as if she’d done a good job. Was he thanking her for keeping quiet? Weren’t you supposed to scream as loud as you could if you were being raped? Beth had read that somewhere or heard it on TV, but she didn’t want to imagine what might happen to her if she did manage to scream.