Frenzy

by John Lutz

  The plan presented only one problem to Fedderman. The plug already contained a listening device behind its plate.

  Fedderman knew where to look for any additional bugs.

  It didn’t take him long to determine that the entire apartment was already bugged. It wasn’t as sophisticated a system as the one Fedderman had brought, but it was effective.

  Who would have—could have—done such a thing?

  A few names immediately leaped to mind. Renz! Minnie Miner!

  The killer?

  Would D.O.A. have had the time and opportunity? The balls?

  Fedderman decided to let Quinn wrestle with those questions. But before he left the apartment, he did a simple splice into the listening system.

  That kind of amused Fedderman. New technology partnering with the old.

  Now it was a party line.

  39

  Sarasota, 1993

  The courts building’s air-conditioning system was operating, but not very effectively. It couldn’t keep up with the heat. Florida Power and Light would get around to finding the problem and setting it right as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the courtroom in downtown Sarasota was almost too warm to use.

  The judge was a balding, cantankerous man well into his sixties, with a weight problem and what appeared to be a drinker’s nose, bright pink with ruptured capillaries. He wanted this trial to progress at full speed. The jurors looked either aggravated or bored. The foreman’s obviously dyed black hair was plastered flat to his forehead and dripping perspiration onto his face, and then onto the front of his white shirt. The judge was in shirt sleeves, and had given everyone in the courtroom permission to be the same. The only three people wearing jacket and tie were the prosecutor, the defending attorney, and the defendant, Bill Phoenix.

  The witness, Dwayne Aikin, was wearing faded jeans and a green T-shirt. The shirt’s chest and back advertised a surfers’ supply store and bore the image of a slim, graceful man riding a wave. The prosecutor had requested that Dwayne look and seem young to the jury, thus the shirt. As if the word of anyone youthful who surfed could not be impugned. A surfer was an innocent; not like Bill Phoenix the amorous pool cleaner. The judge knew what was going on and didn’t like it, but he wasn’t surprised. This prosecutor, Elliott Murray, not much older than the defendant, was a smartass.

  But Murray, a tall, blond man who himself looked like a surfer, was a smartass with a solid case. The jurors had seen photos of the victim’s dead body, and of the pool service van parked in the driveway of a house whose pool didn’t need cleaning, and wasn’t scheduled to be cleaned the day of the murder. There was a close-up photo of the murder knife, taken where it was found hidden beneath a front seat of the defendant’s van. The victim’s blood was on the knife blade.

  Smartass Murray was the only one in the court room who didn’t seem to be in a hurry to reach judgment and go to some cooler place and get something cold to drink. He was also the only one in the room who wasn’t drenched in sweat, despite the coat and tie.

  “Did the defendant visit the victim, Maude Evans, only on days the pool was to be serviced?” Murray asked in a calm voice.

  Dwayne Aikin said, “No.”

  Murray shot a knowing look at the jury, whose members he had charmed from the first day of the trial. “Did these visits last longer than it takes to clean and service a swimming pool?” he asked the witness.

  “Sometimes. Uh, yes.”

  “Was the pool serviced on a regular basis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the defendant visit to work on the pool between these regular visits?”

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “Fifty percent of the time?”

  “No.”

  “Higher or lower?”

  “Higher.”

  The jury stirred despite their impending heat prostration.

  “Did the pool actually require servicing on all of the defendant’s visits?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Was the pool maintenance man there because something was broken?”

  “No.”

  “Or because the pool needed regular maintenance?”

  “No.”

  Murray had begun a confined little pacing, three steps each way, with the rhythm of his questions. “Did the pool usually need cleaning when he came to the house and spent time with Maude Evans?”

  “No.”

  “Did the defendant spend some of his time with the victim out by the pool?”

  “Yes.”

  “Most of his time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever hear them discuss the victim’s husband’s will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they discuss how the proceeds of that will could be obtained?”

  “Yes.”

  Three steps this way, three steps back.

  “Did this process involve the premature death of the victim’s—”

  “Objection!” yelped the defendant’s lawyer. He had his jacket buttoned and his tie knotted at his throat, like Murray’s, but he was gleaming with perspiration. Weary to begin with, he had suddenly realized his own body was moving to the rhythm of Murray and the witness’s little verbal dance.

  “Goes to motive,” Murray said calmly.

  “Overruled,” said the judge.

  “Did they sometimes leave the pool and go into the house together?” Murray asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say the defendant made himself at home?”

  “Objection! Calls for—”

  “Sustained.” The judge, who himself had been swaying with the testimony, now wanted to hurry this process along.

  Murray obviously knew that and was now happy to oblige. “Mr. Aikin, did you ever see the defendant, Bill Phoenix, engage in sexual activity with—”

  “Objection! Objection! Objection!”

  “Overruled,” said the judge. “Witness may answer the quest—”

  “Yes.”

  “But not yet.” The judge sighed and held up a hand palm out to signal for silence. A bead of perspiration ran to the tip of his florid nose, clung for a few seconds, then dropped onto some papers before him with a faint but audible splat. “Mr. Murray, you may now complete your question—without interruption.”

  “Of course, your honor. . . . Sexual activity with the victim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they ever, before, after, or during sex, discuss what they would do with the inheritance money if your father were to die?”

  “Obje—”

  “Overruled.” The judge used an already damp handkerchief to dab perspiration from his forehead. He wiped his face, smacked his lips, growled, and said, “On with it.”

  After the jury found the defendant, William Alan Phoenix, guilty of first-degree murder, the jurors were released and filed out. There was no doubt in their bearing or on their faces that at his sentencing appearance, Phoenix would learn he was to die at the hands of the state.

  Dwayne Aikin was sitting in the back of the courtroom. He watched without expression as Bill Phoenix was led away in handcuffs, to be transferred to a holdover cell. Phoenix caught sight of Dwayne, locked gazes with him, and didn’t look away, craning his neck to see him until it was impossible.

  The fear and wonder in Phoenix’s eyes was something Dwayne would never forget. He enjoyed calling it to memory from time to time when he needed something to think about in order to fall asleep.

  40

  New York, the present

  They were in the Q&A offices on West 79th Street. Quinn was seated behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair with his fingers laced behind his head as if he were a POW. He was leaning dangerously far back in the chair, but Helen the profiler, who was half sitting, half standing, with her haunches propped on Pearl’s desk, wasn’t worried about him falling. Quinn habitually sat that way, and never had fallen. At least not when anyone was around to see him. Helen wondered.

  Quinn was wo
ndering, too. His gaze took in the entire six feet plus of the lanky, athletic woman. Like many redheads, she had a sprinkling of freckles along the bridge of her nose and on her upper chest. The freckles on her chest were visible because her baggy T-shirt sagged enough at the neck almost to reveal whatever cleavage there was. Quinn was musing that he’d not heard of Helen dating or getting involved with a man—or another woman, for that matter. Well, it was none of his—

  “It’s none of my business,” Helen said, “but what are you thinking?”

  As she so often did, Helen had picked up something in his demeanor. “About the case,” he lied.

  “Which case? D.O.A. or the missing Michelangelo piece?”

  “They’re the same,” Quinn said.

  “Really? You think D.O.A. killed Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson because of Bellezza?”

  “There’s not much question about it.”

  “But some question?”

  Quinn shifted forward in his chair, looking much larger behind the desk. He was a man who could loom even when seated. “There’s almost always some question.”

  “What about the killer trying for Nancy Weaver?” Helen asked. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with Bellezza.”

  “Which means it successfully diverts and lessens our resources. Feds is on that job now, playing unseen guardian angel for Weaver. Sal, and then Harold, will relieve him.”

  “They’re angelic, all right, all three of them.”

  “Less sinful, anyway,” Quinn said with a smile.

  “By a long shot.”

  “What do you think?” Quinn asked.

  “I think D.O.A. went after Weaver to turn up the heat on you,” Helen said. “Not because he’s searching for some Renaissance marble bust. It’s part of his sick game.” Helen crossed her arms, muscular as a man’s against her baggy shirt, beneath where breasts must be. Her triceps rippled. “On the other hand,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be either/or.”

  “If Bellezza is involved,” Quinn said, “it can’t be either /or. It has to be both.”

  As he often did when frustrated, Quinn wished he could light a cigar. He played with the idea of depending on Helen not to rat on him, and then decided he shouldn’t compel her to keep something like cigar smoking secret from Pearl. Or from Jody.

  He would play it safe and go cigarless.

  “You said you were thinking about the case,” Helen reminded him.

  “About that oddball family,” Quinn said.

  “Oddball in what way?”

  “They’re thick in the way few families are, and it’s hard to keep straight who’s a blood relative. Most of this family isn’t actually part of it. They were adopted, or somehow fell in together.”

  “Give me a for instance.”

  “Ida Tucker. She says she’s the dead girls’ mother, but looks too old for the part.”

  “Not if they were adopted,” Helen pointed out.

  “Yeah. Maybe. And what about this package of bricks and straw shipped from England during World War Two?”

  “It strongly suggests that something about the size and weight of a small marble bust was stolen in transit, and replaced with bricks and straw. That kind of petty crime was probably a common occurrence in wartime.”

  “Not so petty if Michelangelo really sculpted it.”

  “Big if.” Helen said.

  “Also, it was sent by somebody else who apparently wasn’t a blood relation. A nurse who for God’s sake died in the blitz. That was a long time ago.”

  “Those people lived and breathed and made mistakes,” Helen said.

  “And most were actually related. Not like this bunch. The lack of DNA in common seems to have bonded this family with an extra strength.”

  “Oh, it has,” Helen said. “The reason why is they need each other more than ordinary families. They feel grafted to the family tree, even though they aren’t actually descendents of the original green shoot.”

  Quinn laced his fingers back behind his head. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.” But he couldn’t. Not really. On the other hand, he knew how he felt about Jody.

  “Family is thicker than blood,” Helen said.

  “That’s not exactly how the old saying goes, but I hear you. So where does Bellezza figure in? Is Michelangelo a distant relative?”

  “In a way. Bellezza is their raison d’être. That’s French for ‘reason for being.’ ”

  “And what would that be for this family?”

  “Michelangelo created it.”

  “You’re saying the missing marble bust is what makes their lives meaningful.”

  “No, the search for it does. It’s what makes them a real family, with a common cause, common branches if not roots, and a common dream. It’s the glue that holds them tight to each other in a shifting world, and I wouldn’t underestimate its strength.”

  “So it doesn’t really matter who’s actually related and who’s pretending. Or who changed their name how many times. Or if Robert Kingdom became Winston Castle so he could open a New York restaurant for Anglophiles.”

  Helen nodded. A strand of red hair fell over one green eye. “Not as long as the other family members pretend along with the pretender. If virtually everyone is an imposter, then nobody is. Not in the common adventure they’re living out together.”

  “Life is just a dream,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah. Not just a song title. For these people, apparently. And maybe for the rest of us, too, only we don’t know it.”

  “Helen, Helen . . .”

  She smiled, stood up straight, and stretched. If she wore six-inch heels, could she touch the ceiling?

  “Sounds like a cult,” Quinn said.

  “Like the Manson family.”

  “Or the Flintstones, or Simpsons.”

  “See,” Helen said. “they’re not real families, either, and look how close they are.”

  Quinn did understand what she was saying. It was what drew criminals back together when they were released after serving long terms in prison. They were willing to risk everything simply by associating with each other while out on parole. They trusted each other as they trusted no one else.

  There were families and then there were families. Most people knew about the biggest crime family, but there were also plenty of smaller ones. Gang members who went where the other members went, did what they did, ate what they ate. They sometimes referred to themselves as “family.”

  “One thing, though,” Quinn said.

  Helen flexed her long fingers as if preparing to play a piano. “What’s that?”

  “Everything we just agreed on wouldn’t mean diddly to the courts if it came to inheritance law.” Quinn’s gaze went to the drawer holding his cigars and he forced himself to look away. “Or if it came to splitting the fortune that some obsessive collector is going to pay for a stolen Michelangelo bust.”

  “They’d never sell Bellezza,” Helen said. “Because then the search would be ended.”

  “Couldn’t they start a search for something else?”

  She smiled. “Dreams don’t work that way.”

  “There’s another way dreams don’t work,” Quinn said. “This family has acquired a member they definitely should regard as a black sheep. He’s killing them one by one because he does want the search to end.”

  Helen thought about that.

  Said, “Don’t kid yourself.”

  41

  When Helen had left Q&A, Quinn thought about what she’d said. Thought about the letters Ida Tucker had mentioned.

  He phoned the Ohio number she’d given him, not knowing if there had been time for her to return home and deliver her daughters to a local mortuary.

  The phone in Ohio rang five times, then Ida did pick up.

  “Nice to hear from you, Detective Quinn. I hope the air conditioner in your office is working better today. And that you don’t lean so far back in your desk chair that you actually fall.”

  Quinn thought she sounded m
uch younger over the phone. And was something of a smart mouth for a mature and dignified woman.

  “Caller ID,” he said.

  “So everything up to date isn’t in Kansas City,” she said. “Have you learned anything more about the murders?”

  “That’s why I called. You mentioned some envelopes that were in the crate that came from England. Are these letters that might have been taken from Jeanine’s safe?”

  “I suppose it’s possible. I don’t know how much they might help you. They might be letters I wrote.”

  “You wrote them?”

  “Yes. I don’t mean the original letters. The ones that were found with the bricks and straw in the box. They seem to have disappeared years ago. The letters we’re talking about now are my letters, describing what was in the originals. How Henry Tucker and Betsy Douglass met, how love bloomed in the hospital, and then poor Henry’s death from his wounds. Then they tell how a German bomb killed Betsy, but not before she’d shipped the crate to her sister Willa, all the way across the ocean to the United States.” Ida Tucker paused as if to catch her breath. “It must have been horrible, that war.”

  “Horrible,” Quinn agreed. Letters describing what was in letters. How would that kind of evidence hold up in court?

  But he knew how.

  The information Ida’s letters contained might reveal something that could lead somewhere interesting. If it was true. Or maybe what was in the letters would simply be a rehash about what was already known: that Henry Tucker was given a marble bust that he passed on to Nurse Betsy Douglass, and that she shipped it from England to her sister, and then was killed in an air raid. Somewhere along the way, the bust, if it ever existed, disappeared.

  And how could Quinn find out how, with the truth concealed among layers and layers of lies? It might be impossible to find because there was no truth.

  No, he told himself. There’s always a truth. Don’t doubt that.