by John Lutz
There was nowhere for him to go, anyway. No one he had to see or who wanted to see him.
He reread yesterday’s newspaper, which he’d gotten out of a trash receptacle. Then he put the paper aside and lay quietly, outwardly calm, watching the shadows grow and listening to his heart.
Cannibalism.
Such rumors died hard.
The Skinner tossed his folded Post aside and sipped some more of his espresso. There was no doubt now that the rumors of cannibalism were started by Quinn, in an attempt to rattle him.
Quinn seemed to have rattled the women of New York even more. Before the cannibalism speculation, the Skinner could sense their uneasiness in dark or crowded places, in the subways or narrow streets, or chattering together as they strode in tandem along wide sidewalks. He walked among them and secretly enjoyed that rippling undercurrent of fear.
Now he saw in New York’s women a quieter, deeper fear. They were scared shitless, and all thanks to Quinn. The media of course, had cooperated, but surely even they didn’t truly make the leap from severed tongues to cannibalism. They pretended. That was fine with the Skinner. The whole world was pretense. Sometimes he thought he was the only real thing in it.
He glanced at his watch.
Tom Stopp was home sleeping, or perhaps in an alcoholic stupor. The Skinner had seen him negotiate the narrow steps to his pathetic apartment he shared with the roaches. Stopp wouldn’t reappear until late tomorrow morning. That was his routine. He was where he was supposed to be, a game piece in its place on the board. And a move was about to be made.
It was almost time to leave the restaurant and do something very real.
Something Quinn could read about in the papers.
69
Edmundsville, the present
Beth was carrying groceries in from the car when Westerley’s SUV, with its roof bar lights and sheriff’s markings, pulled in behind her. Her car was in the garage, where it was shaded, but the opened trunk, containing the groceries, was in the sun.
Westerley got out of the SUV and smiled at Beth as he came around the front of the vehicle.
“I’ll help you with those,” he said.
She kissed his cheek as he relieved her of a bulging plastic bag that contained a half-gallon jug of milk, as well as assorted canned goods.
After placing the bag on the kitchen table, he made another trip to the car and got the rest of the plastic bags from the trunk. Juggling another heavy load of groceries, he slammed the trunk lid shut and headed for the door to the house.
The swinging wooden garage doors he left open; there was no way to close them with his SUV parked behind the used Kia Beth had bought when her old Honda finally refused to run. Westerley had helped her trade in the Honda.
She’d finished with the first load of groceries, but there were more on the kitchen table, and the refrigerator door still hung open. Westerley stood at the table and handed boxes, cans, and frozen vegetable bags over to Beth to put away in the nearby cupboard and refrigerator.
“Eddie home?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“He’s in Iowa, taking summer classes at the university. Wants to make up some credits he lost when he had the flu last winter.”
“Good for him. Where’s Link?”
“Won’t be home for a couple of days. There’s a big numismatic convention in Kansas City.”
“How come I didn’t hear about it?”
“You don’t hang around with people who save their wheat pennies.”
“Link does love his coins.”
Beth finished with the groceries, swung the refrigerator door shut, and leaned against the table. The kitchen was warm and she was perspiring. Westerley thought she was beautiful when her face took on a moistness that glowed and lent her a kind of life force. He moved closer and kissed her forehead. It was cool despite the moistness of her flesh. He even liked the taste of her when she perspired.
She backed away from him, as if she were still tired from lugging the groceries and didn’t want one thing to lead to another. Not yet.
“Get any results back?” she asked. It had been two weeks since he’d sent the DNA samples in for analysis.
“Not yet,” Westerley said. “The folks at the lab don’t see it as top priority, Beth. I wish I had the clout to make them change their minds.”
She smiled. “You got plenty of clout with me.” She wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. “Want something to drink?”
“Beer’d be fine. I’ll get it. You go on in the living room and sit down.”
“Fix me a glass of ice water, too.”
He nodded and watched her make her way out of the kitchen; then he opened the refrigerator. A cold can of Budweiser was hiding behind the new plastic jug of milk. He worked the can out over the top of the milk and pulled the opener, feeling the cold fizz of beer on a knuckle. Beth was moving around in the living room. He heard the window airconditioning unit kick on in there. He didn’t hear her move down the hall, but a while later the bedroom unit started to hum. Westerley smiled and used the icemaker to clunk some cubes into a water tumbler. He ran in some filtered water from the refrigerator and carried the can and glass into the living room.
Beth was seated on the sofa with her legs curled under her. The flimsy skirt she wore had worked its way up. The sight of her tanned knees and thighs made something tighten in him. He handed her the glass of water and sat down beside her. Beth took a sip of water and then tilted sideways against him, as if her end of the sofa had lifted. She rested her head on Westerley’s shoulder.
They sat silently for a while, sipping their respective drinks, enjoying each other’s presence, and feeling the living room cool down.
“You think it’s cool in the bedroom yet?” Westerley asked.
“Should be,” Beth said.
“Let’s do something about that,” Westerley said.
Beth stood up first, and held out her hand as if to lead him.
They lay together afterward, nude and perspiring on Beth’s bed, feeling the cool caresses of the window air conditioner breeze on their damp bare flesh. There was a slight variation in the unit’s soft humming, almost like a three-note tune being played over and over. They both found it restful rather than irritating. The bedspread and top sheet had found their way onto the floor, and the wrinkled sheet beneath them was damp and still smelled of sex.
Beth’s hand wandered over and lay lightly on Westerley’s thigh. “I wish things would never change,” she said.
They were both staring at the ceiling, maybe seeing the same pattern of cracks there.
“Except you want the results of those DNA tests,” Westerley said.
“No. I mean, yes, I do. But I wish things didn’t ever have to change from this minute. Ever.”
“It’d be nice,” Westerley said, “if the afterglow lasted forever.”
“Be no wars or crime.”
“Be no sheriffs.”
Beth laughed and moved her hand, squeezing him slightly where he didn’t want to be squeezed at all. “You are way too practical sometimes,” she said.
“Somebody has to be.” He turned to her, kissed her on the lips, and maneuvered to the side so he could sit on the edge of the mattress.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid it’s not that perfect world yet, Beth. If I don’t leave and do my job, the county might elect somebody else.”
She grinned. “Never happen. You’re too good at your work to be replaced. I know that.”
She reached for him but he stood up. “Seriously, Beth, I better shower and go give out some speeding tickets.”
“Your deputy can do that.”
“Billy? He doesn’t like doing that to people. He’s missing a mean streak.”
“But you’re not?”
“No. I’m perverse.”
She got out of bed on the other side. “Not too perverse for me.” The sheet and spread were tangled up with a stack of
folded clothes that had been on the floor near the wall.
Westerley padded barefoot into the bathroom and took a quick, cold shower.
When he returned to the bedroom, the bed was stripped and the stack of clothes was on top of the mattress pad. Beth was wearing a pair of Levi’s cutoffs and a blouse she hadn’t bothered to button. Something to cover her until he was gone, then she’d take her own shower and get dressed. She was holding a slip of white paper out for Westerley to see.
“Is that a thank-you note?” Westerley said, still rubbing his hair dry with the towel from the bathroom.
“It’s a restaurant receipt.”
He stopped rubbing with the towel. “And?”
“It’s from a restaurant in New York, dated two weeks ago. When Link was supposed to be in Houston.”
Westerley took the receipt from her and looked at it. Someone had paid cash for a thirty-six-dollar meal at a restaurant called Dannay’s on Tenth Street. He handed the receipt back to her.
“It was in the pocket of Link’s suit,” Beth said, motioning with her head toward the stack of clothes on the bed. There was a dark blue suit at the bottom of the stack. “I was gonna take it to the cleaners with the rest of those clothes and thought I should go through the pockets. Last time I took one of his suits to be cleaned, I left a ballpoint pen in one of the pockets and it made a stain.”
Westerley handed the receipt back to her. “New York’s a long way from Houston,” he said.
“So how’d this receipt get in Link’s pocket?”
“I don’t know. Far be it from me to defend your husband, but things like that sometimes happen for reasons we don’t imagine. I mean, maybe it’s a national chain restaurant with New York headquarters, so they print all their receipts with the New York address so customers will identify them with the city. Like with Nathan’s hot dogs. Or maybe the machine that printed the date was set wrong. Or maybe Link’s having a secret affair.”
“Do you really think that last one’s possible?”
Westerley smiled. “Should we of all people doubt the possibility?”
Beth crumpled the receipt and tossed it in a nearby wastebasket.
“I’ll go with the machine that’s set wrong,” she said.
“I’ll bet on somebody else’s old receipt, and Link picked it up with some other stuff and stuck it in his pocket.”
“Yeah, that’s a possibility, too.”
But they were both thinking the same thing.
Maybe, when the DNA results came in, it wouldn’t matter.
When Westerley got back to the office, Billy was hunched over the computer. The tip of his tongue was protruding from the corner of his mouth, where it always was when he was deep in concentration. Mathew Wellman was standing behind him, observing what Billy was doing. Mathew was smiling. He greeted Westerley with his usual politeness.
“Hi, Sheriff Westerley. Billy’s got a good feel for this.”
Westerley said, “I’m glad somebody in this department does.”
“This software the state supplied you with is ideal for data mining.”
“That’s what we do,” Westerley said, “mine data.”
“Seeking gold nuggets of evidence,” Billy said. “That’s neat.”
Westerley thought his deputy might be spending too much time with Mathew.
For a second Westerley wondered if Mathew could use this wonderful new software to hack into the lab’s system and see what there was to see about the tests on the DNA samples he’d sent them over two weeks ago.
But that would be illegal.
And he was the sheriff.
70
New York, the present
Quinn wasn’t surprised when he picked up his desk phone and found himself talking with Nancy Weaver in Philadelphia.
He was the first one in the office, as he often was, and he suspected she’d phoned at the early hour to talk to him when he was alone, before things got busy.
Her voice had changed, he noticed, gotten huskier, and she seemed to be forcing her words.
“The news I’m reading and seeing makes it seem you’re not making much progress,” she said.
He smiled. “You call to chew me out?”
“No. To thank you, more than anything. You looked after me. Then you got me off the treadmill where I was running faster and faster but didn’t realize it.”
“Now that you’ve slowed down,” Quinn said, “how are you doing?”
“I’m feeling better, but after the first whack on the back of my head, I don’t remember much of anything until I woke up in the hospital. I lie in bed every night and work on it until I go to sleep, but I don’t think I got a clear look at whoever attacked me. I can’t say for sure it was Sanderson.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore-not to you, Nancy. You’re out of this one, and out of anything else, until you get back to being yourself.”
“I’m enough like myself to view what’s happening at a distance. It still looks to me like you’ve gotta pull out all the stops until you nail this asshole.”
Quinn wondered whether the way she was mixing metaphors meant her mind still wasn’t functioning at full capacity. Or maybe he was falling into the trap of playing amateur psychologist. “We’re doing what we have to,” he said. “We’ll get him. You take care of yourself and let us worry about who gets nailed when the stops are pulled.”
“Huh? You okay, Quinn?”
He grinned. “Maybe I need time off more than you do.”
He heard the street door, then the office door open. Pearl had arrived.
“What’s going on there?” Weaver asked on the phone.
“Pearl just came in.”
“Tell her I said hello,” Weaver said, and hung up.
Good buddies, as long as they’re in different cities.
“Who was that?” Pearl asked, from where she was standing by the coffee machine.
“Weaver.”
“Her brain still Jell-O?”
“More or less.”
The street door made its clattering, pneumatic sound again. There were footfalls in the tile foyer, and then the office door flew open.
Quinn had expected to see Fedderman. Instead, Jerry Lido came bursting in. His khaki pants were amazingly wrinkled, his gray shirt was crookedly buttoned, and his tousled hair stuck out over his ears like wings.
Lido’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot from fatigue, but his skinny body throbbed with energy. He was grinning with every snaggletooth and his face seemed to be illuminated from inside like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern’s.
“I got something!” he almost shouted, his voice cracking as if he were a teenager grown too old for the choir.
“I hope to hell it isn’t catching,” Pearl said.
He aimed his glow of animated enthusiasm at her and then plopped heavily into her desk chair. “Pour me some coffee, Pearl.”
She looked at him as if he’d gone insane. “I’ve got some boiling hot in this cup. Tell me where you want me to pour it.”
Lido ignored her and turned his illuminated glassy stare toward Quinn. He sighed, as if he’d finally caught his breath. “I’ve got something,” he repeated, only slightly more calmly.
“What have you got other than delirium tremens?” Pearl asked.
Quinn glanced at her and held out a hand palm down, signaling for her to lay off Lido so they could find out why he was so excited. He knew Lido and was sure that if he was this ecstatic he must at least think he had good reason. Besides, Quinn was sure that Lido wasn’t drunk or hungover. Quinn recognized the symptoms. Lido was high on adrenaline while walking the jagged edge of exhaustion.
Lido beamed at both of them. “I worked the Internet all night, and I came up with a name.”
No one moved or said anything for several seconds.
“The name we’ve been looking for?” Pearl asked.
Lido placed a cupped hand on each kneecap and nodded. “The name we’ve got for sure.”
Pear
l walked over to the brewer and poured him a cup of coffee.
Tanya Moody had overslept. Her first thought when she opened her eyes was that she shouldn’t have taken that extra sleeping pill last night to calm her nerves. Daylight was streaming into the bedroom. She’d left the drapes opened wide and the window raised, so she could get some breeze during the first cool night forecast in weeks.
Tanya’s second thought was that she was going to be late for work, and cascading behind that came the realization that something was wrong. She couldn’t move. She became aware that she was breathing through her nose, and that realization made it suddenly difficult to breathe.
She tried to explore with her tongue, but even that was constricted. Her mouth was stuffed with material of some sort. Silk? She probed with her tongue’s tip and found the backs of her teeth, managed to open her mouth slightly, and beyond the folds of material felt the tacky surface of… tape!
And the material jammed into her mouth was silk…
She knew immediately what was happening. The open window she’d thought was far enough from the fire escape hadn’t been far enough away at all.
She had a visitor.
Panic hit her as if she’d been Tasered. Her body vibrated and bucked, but she remained lying on her stomach, her wrists taped tightly behind her at the small of her back, her legs taped firmly together.
Finally the panic passed. The terror remained.
For some reason she thought of mermaids. Mermaids have no legs, only a single tail that they can flop around helplessly when out of the water. But mermaids could at least speak. With her panties wadded into a mass in her mouth, and her lips sealed with duct tape, Tanya could make only a low humming sound.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” a man’s voice said.
She managed to swivel her head toward the sound, causing a sharp ache in her neck, as if she’d been jabbed with a needle. Outlined against the angled morning sunlight splashed on the white sheer curtains, she saw the dim silhouette of a man.
As he moved toward her she noticed something short and curved in his hand. She could tell by the way he was holding it-out away from his body and with respect-that it was a knife.