by John Lutz
The waiter arrived with the check and surveyed their half-eaten food. “Wanna box?” he asked.
Fedderman, who’d planned on spending the evening with Penny in her apartment and wanted to punch someone, felt like telling him yes, he did want to box, but instead declined.
Penny accepted the waiter’s offer, but she had in mind angel-hair pasta rather than pugilism.
44
When he glanced across the room, over what was left of Judith Blaney, Quinn saw Fedderman enter the apartment. Fedderman had his designer suit on, causing a few of the uniformed cops and white-clad techs to regard him with new respect. Maybe Fedderman had been elevated to their superior in some way they didn’t yet know.
It was a good thing the victim’s apartment was spacious. Vitali and Mishkin were also there, along with Pearl. Nancy Weaver, in plain clothes, was also there, and nodded to Fedderman, or to the suit. Nift was at work on the body. The techs were doing the dance of white gloves. The two uniformed cops who’d taken the squeal stood near the door, controlling entrance and egress. They were Bob Stanze and Paul Goldak, two of the NYPD’s best. Fedderman wondered if they’d just happened to take the call or they were there by design because Judith Blaney was somebody important. The apartment was big and in an expensive neighborhood-but not that expensive for Manhattan.
“Was she queen of something?” Fedderman asked Stanze, as the handsome young cop moved to block the entrance again.
“Office manager for Bleaker and Sunshine, Mad Avenue ad agency.”
Fedderman must have looked blank.
“You know, the talking goose?” Stanze said.
“Oh, yeah. The Southern Morgan Bank commercials.”
“Blaney must have known everything the goose was gonna say,” Goldak said. He was a small man with a big heart, and a kidder. It was impossible to know if he was joking or suggesting a possible motive.
Quinn, wondering what they were talking about, motioned Fedderman over.
“What was that all about, Feds?”
“Talking goose.”
Quinn felt like sighing. Did talent for detective work come with a skewed view of the world?
Like the killer’s?
“Lots of artistic blade work this time,” Quinn said, gazing again at the victim.
The silver letter S and its chain were draped across Judith Blaney’s forehead and open eyes instead of looped around her neck and resting on her chest and breasts, as with the previous victims. Part of the reason was that the Skinner had removed both breasts and tucked each neatly in its corresponding armpit. The usual shreds of flesh were there, barely still attached to the rest of the body. This time there were also intricate, curving cuts. Designs. Then the wild stabbing and slashing of the abdomen and pubic area. A waddedpanties gag lay near the victim, presumably removed by Nift, and her mouth was open, clogged with blood that had welled up from her throat instead of a scream.
“No shoe in the mouth this time,” Nift said, “like with the last victim.”
“Same killer, though,” Quinn said. “He’s just trying to throw shit in the game. They do that sometimes.”
“Or he might not have found a shoe he liked,” Fedderman said. “One that would make a good unicorn horn-if that’s what it was supposed to be.”
Nift nudged Judith’s hair aside, and for the first time Quinn noticed something white stuffed in her ear. “What’s that?”
“Cigarette butt,” Nift said. “He extinguished a cigarette in each ear. Looks as if it happened some time before her death.”
“Mother of God!” said one of the techs, who’d overheard.
“Hardly.” Weaver’s voice.
“Anybody make anything out of those carved designs or symbols?” Quinn asked.
“Just that the Skinner’s a head case,” Vitali rasped.
“The letter S seems to turn up several times,” Weaver said, “but that could be because the Skinner just liked to make wavy cuts with his knife.”
“Or because you’re looking for them,” Quinn said.
“They could have some sort of religious significance,” Pearl said. “The necklaces with the letter S, for Satan.” She thought for a moment. “Or for sacrificial goat. Remember the victim with the high heel taped to her head to look like a horn.”
Weaver ignored Pearl’s brainstorming other than to give a disbelieving little “Hmph.” Quinn could see that Pearl didn’t like that. He reminded himself again to keep these two separate as much as possible. Not easy to do, since Weaver was Renz’s liaison officer.
Screw them! Quinn thought. If they couldn’t get over their petty disagreements and do their jobs, they could take a walk.
Of course, he had to live with Pearl.
Wanted to, anyway.
Pearl might have been right about Weaver imagining her own letters on what were random carvings. There seemed nothing significant in the almost elegant cuts other than that the killer was having his grotesque version of fun.
“Did the same knife do the carving that did the rest of the work?” Quinn asked Nift.
The little ME with the Napoleon haircut squatted with his head bowed for a few seconds, pondering. “Yes. I think we can assume the same knife did all the cutting, including the removal of the breasts. And the nipples. Which are, incidentally, beneath the breasts.”
Nift stood up and puffed out his chest. Quinn thought he might have actually slipped his fingers inside his shirt a la the famous Napoleon portrait, but for the bloody gloves. “Odd thing about this one. The hate is there. The passion. But there’s also a kind of wild exuberance in the random, swerving cutting on the body. More as if the killer was entertaining himself instead of grimly exercising vengeance. And those aren’t deep cuts. She was alive and watching and feeling when those were happening. How the Skinner must have enjoyed it!”
Quinn turned away and exchanged glances with Pearl. Nift sounded exuberant himself, and it was sickening.
“When are they gonna-” Pearl began, but Quinn raised a hand to silence her, then led her away.
“I was just wondering when that little prick will finally be fired,” Pearl whispered to Quinn.
“He’s a city employee,” Quinn said, “and he knows the secrets of the dead.” He gave her shoulder a slight squeeze to make sure he had her attention. “He’s our colleague.”
Pearl said something about lying down with dogs and wandered away. Quinn could tell she was seething.
“Girlfriend’s got the jumps,” a voice said beside Quinn. Nancy Weaver, who’d noticed something wrong between Pearl and him and sidled over.
“Let’s all just do our jobs, Nancy,” Quinn said. And moved closer to the corpse.
The Skinner watched the man who’d been in Judith Blaney’s apartment approach him where he sat sipping a chocolate latte at an outside table. Traffic streamed past only a few yards away. The Skinner was unbothered by the low haze of exhaust fumes. There was a tilted green umbrella above the table that kept the sun out of his eyes but allowed for a warm slice of light across his bare forearms.
The man came and stood by the table but didn’t move to sit down. The Skinner didn’t invite him to sit.
The man reached into a pocket and laid a used and canceled theater ticket on the table next to the latte mug.
“Your alibi,” he said. “And there’s no way to prove you weren’t there last night at the time of…” He glanced around. No one was seated near enough to overhear. He smiled. “We don’t need to say it out loud.”
“It was really a crap play,” the Skinner said. He returned the smile but in a way that was creepily joyful. “But the encore performance was terrific.”
“I’m glad you had a good time.” The man turned to walk away, and then hesitated. “You like baseball?”
“The way I like Mom and apple pie. ’Specially Mom. Why?”
“You didn’t enjoy the play. Maybe next time we can make it a ball game.”
The Skinner didn’t like hearing that. Not at a
ll. A “next time” with this potential blackmailer’s involvement wasn’t what he had in mind. He worked alone. A secret between two people wasn’t a secret. People like this, bullies and parasites-he didn’t like them at all. They hadn’t the right to live.
On the other hand, they were usually smart, and cautious with their information. Someone else knew, or there was a letter with a lawyer or in a safe deposit box. Insurance. The unpleasant man knew he didn’t even have to tell the Skinner about such insurance. They both knew he was safe.
The man walked along the street parallel to the curb as he was trying to hail a cab. It brought him close again to the Skinner’s table.
A cab slowed and swerved toward him and he pointed a finger at the Skinner, his thumb raised like the hammer of a revolver. Grinning, he brought the thumb down and said, “Yankees fan! Am I right?”
The Skinner said nothing as the man climbed into the cab and it drove away.
Cocky little bastard.
But he’ll learn.
45
Quinn was on the sofa in the brownstone, leafing through the autopsy photos of Judith Blaney, studying each one carefully. The workmen were busy on the top floor. Sounds of sawing and hammering could be heard, but barely, muted by the thick floor and walls.
Pearl was standing behind the sofa, leaning over Quinn’s shoulder. Her hand rested lightly on his back, weightless as a small bird that had lit there. The hand was either for balance or to display affection. Quinn couldn’t be sure which.
They were going to make a lunch of the lasagna they hadn’t eaten last night at Ricco’s Restaurant. That the gruesome morgue photographs of Judith Blaney didn’t affect their appetites suggested to Quinn that maybe they’d been in this business too long.
He glanced back at Pearl, then straightened the stack of black-and-white photos and placed them on the coffee table. Pearl came around and sat in a chair facing him.
“I was studying those wavering cuts in her torso and thighs,” Quinn said.
“We both were.”
“See anything to them? I mean, in the way of some message being communicated?”
“The message I get is that the Skinner is one sick cookie. Sick and sadistic.”
Quinn sighed and leaned back in the sofa. “What kind of knife do you supposed made those cuts?”
“Something sharp and with a fine point. Probably made for a specific purpose. A specialty scalpel?”
“Nift says no. He doesn’t think the killer’s using any sort of medical implement. But he does admit he can’t be certain.”
“Maybe something for cleaning fish.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Quinn said.
“Maybe it’s simply another diversion. We are all agreed that the business with the Socrates’s Cavern membership list and letter S are simply that. Not to mention the shoe in the mouth.”
“Diversions, but we’re still forced to waste time checking them out.”
“So maybe we’re supposed to run around in circles trying to figure out what the fancy cut marks on the victims mean. Or maybe they mean nothing.”
“One distinction,” Quinn said. “The killer seems to have enjoyed carving designs in Judith Blaney. He apparently spent a lot of time doing it.”
“I get you,” Pearl said. “It’s his pleasure as well as a diversion.” She sat back and thought. “The wrong rapist identification factor-now that’s a solid connecting thread. I’m sure we’ll find it in Judith Blaney’s murder.”
“That’s what the killer wanted to conceal in the beginning,” Quinn said. “He must have known we’d eventually tumble to it.”
“You don’t suppose,” Pearl said, “that he’s using the rape misidentifications the same way he used the Socrates’s Cavern diversion.”
“You mean there might be a third, actual motive? You’re making my head hurt, Pearl.” But he had to admire her mind’s reach. “It would require too many victims,” he added. “The risk increases with each one.”
“He’s a psycho,” Pearl said. “He might not have done a risk analysis and determined a point of diminishing returns.”
“Oh, I bet he did. In fact, I think we can rely on it.”
She gave Quinn a level stare. A lock of her dark hair dangled near her left eye, giving her a tousled, sexy look. “Are we getting closer?” Her voice seemed slightly husky.
He didn’t want to misunderstand her. “To the killer?”
“Of course.” Her strictly business voice now.
He stared at her. She didn’t seem to have noticed the double entendre. Or maybe she had and was playing dumb. He wished she’d spend the afternoon with him in bed so he could make love to her, try again to convince her that she should move in with him. Yancy Taggart had died long enough ago that his memory no longer stood in the way. Quinn was reasonably sure of that. If only she could make up her mind. Her heart.
“I feel that we are getting closer,” Quinn said, “but I couldn’t tell you why.”
A persistent high-pitched dinging drifted from the kitchen. The oven timer.
“Pearl,” Quinn said, “do you want to stay here after lunch? Maybe spend the night?”
“The lasagna’s ready,” Pearl said. “I’m not.”
When they were almost finished with lunch, the brownstone phone rang.
Nift again.
“I thought I should mention what else I discovered when I cleaned all the blood out of Judith Blaney’s mouth and throat,” he said.
Quinn looked at what was left of his lasagna.
“It seems her tongue was removed,” Nift said.
“Removed?”
“Cut out. Back near its base. Very deftly.”
Quinn said nothing.
“Am I calling at a bad time?” Nift asked.
“No, not at all. Thanks.” Quinn hung up the phone. He looked at Pearl.
“Anything important?” Pearl asked.
“I’ll tell you after you finish lunch,” Quinn said.
Marinara sauce dripped from a corner of Pearl’s mouth. Her tongue darted out and she licked it away. Shrugged. “Whatever.”
Pearl, Pearl…
46
Pearl was glad she’d drawn this assignment. She’d given her interview with Jock Sanderson a lot of thought. The way she figured it, they were already in the territory where the Skinner might assume the woman who was his main target, the focus of his revenge, would seem to be simply one in a line of Skinner victims, none distinguishable from the others. Thus none of the suspects would in any meaningful way be distinguishable from the others. At least that was how the killer would see it. When he thought his safety in numbers was adequate, he would kill the one true object of his rampage.
And of course, his one true object couldn’t be distinguished by being the last killed.
Perhaps that one true object had been Judith Blaney.
Sanderson seemed surprised to see Pearl, which struck her as odd, considering they had an appointment. Pearl wondered if he preferred that his questioner were a man. Maybe a woman seeking the killer of women made him uneasy. If so, all the better.
Afraid of women? Sometimes these creeps are deeply afraid.
Jock Sanderson was a medium-height man whose compact build made him appear shorter. It was Pearl’s experience that men with that physical characteristic were deceptively strong. But then Quinn was tall and rangy, and he was unusually strong even for his size. Pearl warned herself not to categorize people on the basis of small samplings; in her business that could prove fatal.
Sanderson had the kind of eyes that picked up the dominant color around them, and a full head of wavy black hair. He would have been downright handsome if there hadn’t been a crookedness to his features that spoiled the effect. He had a nice smile.
“Please come in,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his right arm to invite her grandly into his squalid apartment, as if he were a butler at a posh estate.
Well, the apartment wasn’t actually squalid. Though
the furniture was a bit worn and mismatched, the place was clean and ordered. So much so, in fact, that Pearl pegged Sanderson for kind of a neatnik.
As she moved past him he did a nifty little dance to get out of her way, as if he wanted to stay on the perimeter of her attention but not too close.
Pearl crossed the living room and sat on a sofa draped with a rose-pattern slipcover. It reminded her of the sofa in her mother’s living room when she was a kid. There was what looked like a cigarette burn in it.
“Cool enough in here for you?” Sanderson asked, smiling for about the third time since she’d arrived. He had even white teeth that he obviously liked to flash.
“Just right,” Pearl said. Though it was past eleven and the morning hadn’t yet heated up, an old window unit was humming away on alert without the compressor engaged. There was a faint odor in the place, as if someone had recently been frying fish. She drew her notepad from a pocket of her linen jacket and found the pencil tucked inside its leather cover. She flipped to the first unmarked page. “You said on the phone that you already knew about Judith Blaney’s death.”
“True,” Sanderson said. “I always watch local news in the morning before I go to bed.” He sat perched on the substantial arm of a hulking chair covered with brown corduroy. “The murder of a beautiful woman. Another Skinner victim. That kind of thing doesn’t take long to make the news.”
“You said you watched the morning news ‘before’ going to bed?”
“True.” As if Pearl had gotten another one right. The white smile. “I work nights. Usually get home sometime around six in the morning. Then I shower, shave, eat a healthy breakfast, and go to bed.”
Too much detail, Pearl thought. Lying?
“How did you feel when you heard about Judith Blaney’s death?” Pearl asked.
“I was glad.” No change of expression on the almosthandsome features.
“She was tortured before she died.”
“I know a lot about torture.”