by John Lutz
“What about the screams?”
“I told you, they were muffled. All part of kinky sex, far as I could tell.”
“But eventually you did call.”
“I got to thinking about it. How she sounded. I decided. . .”
“What?”
“It didn’t really sound like kinky sex. It sounded more like somebody might really be hurting her. Still, I didn’t know enough to go pounding on her door, or go barging in there to save her. And I knew the cops would be here fast once I called.” He let out a long breath and sat back. “Which is how it happened.” He bowed his head. “Not fast enough.”
“You couldn’t have broken in and saved her,” Fedderman said, staying on Beck’s side. “Probably you would have just hastened her death, then maybe caused your own. This guy doesn’t play gently, and you would have been between him and freedom.”
“So he’s the D.O.A. guy? Back with us?”
“Not much doubt about it.” Fedderman snapped his leather notebook shut. “We’ll need you to go down to the precinct house and add to and sign a statement.”
“Assault can sound like sex,” Beck said, feeling guilty and fishing for Fedderman’s agreement. He needed atonement.
“Sometimes they aren’t that different,” Fedderman said. “Then there are those times when one partner turns up dead.”
“Then it’s time to do my duty as a citizen. And I will.” Beck chewed his lower lip for a few seconds. “Listen, if me making a statement gets in the papers or on TV, this killer’s not likely to come after me, is he?”
“That’s not his game,” Fedderman said. “He’s probably already stalking his next female victim. But if you’re worried about that, the sooner you put your signature on a statement, the sooner you’ll be safe. You can’t be prevented from doing what you’ve already done.”
Beck visibly brightened. “That makes sense.”
Fedderman guessed it did. Would it make sense to a sadistic killer? He wasn’t so sure.
57
The hot spell hadn’t subsided, but rain was added to the mix. It fell in large drops straight down, bouncing like stones off window ledges, air conditioner covers, metal trash containers, and crawling traffic. If you were indoors, it was a good place to stay.
Some of the detectives were thrashing things out in the office at Q&A. It was a sauna, even though the air conditioner was vibrating and humming along.
Quinn and Pearl listened to Fedderman’s account of his interview with Justin Beck. Helen’s lanky body was slouched asymmetrically in a chair. It was between their desks, but nearer to Quinn’s. Fedderman was in one of the clients’ chairs, facing them all.
“Not really of much help,” Pearl said, when Fedderman was finished talking.
Quinn agreed. “I didn’t hear much of what we didn’t already know.”
“That’s kind of the point,” Helen said.
“The killer didn’t say anything about the earlier murders,” Quinn said, “or any plans he has for future victims.”
Fedderman absently straightened a nonexistent crease in his pants. “I got the impression that Beck didn’t happen to eavesdrop on Honor Tripp’s bedroom only the night of her murder. And the killer must have noticed that vent in the wall, right next to her bed.”
“He knew someone was listening,” Helen said.
Fedderman said, “I kind of got that same creepy feeling. Mess around next to that big vent and someone almost has to overhear.”
“But why would the killer want that?” Pearl asked.
“Maybe he gets his kicks that way,” Fedderman said, “being watched. Or in this case, heard.”
“I didn’t read anything important in his statement,” Pearl said. “So I’m guessing he didn’t overhear anything important in his vent.”
“That’s the notable thing about what Beck says he overheard,” Helen said. “There was nothing about art. And Honor Tripp was a genre writer. A mystery novelist. Mysteries are thought by some naïve souls to be the opposite of art.”
“So that’s the message?” Quinn asked. “The killer is parading the fact that this murder had nothing to do with art in general, and so not with Bellezza specifically?”
“That could be it,” Helen said.
Fedderman looked at her.
“Wouldn’t a simpler way to put it be that he’s trying to throw us off the scent?”
“You know this guy better than that, Feds.”
“He’s going to up the ante,” Pearl said. “That’s the sicko’s message.”
“Exactly,” Helen said. “And the pool of his potential victims has widened. From now on they won’t have to know anything about art, or be aware of missing Michelangelo pieces. This killer is no longer playing games. The treasure hunt is over.”
“Which makes our work harder,” Quinn said.
They all sat in silence for several seconds, considering. Trying to get into the killer’s mind, knowing it wasn’t a nice place to visit.
“He’s going to force a showdown,” Quinn said.
“Something like that,” Helen said. “He doesn’t like balancing on the head of a pin.”
“All of them eventually come to that place,” Fedderman said. “They need for it to go one way or the other. To be over.”
Helen said, “You can count on it. The killer wants to press what he sees as his advantage. He regards himself as invulnerable at this point. Godlike. He feels a need to demonstrate that.”
“Or?” Pearl said.
“He simply wants us to know he’s no longer an art aficionado,” Quinn said.
Helen said, “There’s a possibility.” And smiled. Quinn knew that smile and didn’t like it.
The killer had followed them home from their morning jog, watching them slow to a walk that demanded an occasional little skip, and enter their apartment building on Central Park West. It didn’t take him long to narrow down their unit’s number on the third floor of the brick and marble building.
Or to learn other things about them. Details were so important.
The man was of least interest. He was in his thirties and apparently in good shape except for a roll of fat around his midsection. He invariably ran in khaki shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and white jogging shoes. Ben Swift was his name, but he didn’t look so swift jogging alongside his wife, Beth. Ben had a lot of side-to-side motion that slowed him down. Beth was built for speed, with a slim body, muscular legs, and a stride that wasted no motion. It was obvious that Ben was struggling to keep up with her. He was forever a yard or two behind, staring at his wife’s blond ponytail swinging with the regularity of a metronome. Her jogging shoes were red, her T-shirt white like her husband’s, her shorts blue. That amused the killer, who saw himself as something of a patriot.
He put on speed and pulled ahead of them, then slouched on a bench with his head thrown back, as if winded and resting. They huffed and puffed past him and continued jogging as the path fell away. From where he sat on the bench in the sun, he watched them with binoculars, usually focusing on Beth’s slim hips, the rhythmic motion of her body.
A perfect running machine, he thought, wondering if she competed in the New York Marathon. She and Ben were an active, healthy couple. Apparently with plenty of spare time. Nothing else to do. So maybe she was in training. He would ask her about that.
But then, what would be the point?
He’d watched the building for several days, and now knew the security setup, and the hours kept by the doorman, Carl.
Carl worked short hours in the morning, then was replaced by another man, Arthur, who worked into the late afternoon. Carl would then show up to provide a doorman presence until midnight. Both men were in their forties and looked fit, except for a slight paunch on Carl. It was a shame they had to wear those hideous brown uniforms with the striped trousers.
However they were dressed, the killer mused, it would be simple for him to deal with whichever man was on duty. The building actually had pretty good s
ecurity, especially when the street doors were locked after midnight, no doorman was present, and no one could enter without a resident’s card key and a five-number code.
The fact was, for someone like the killer, it was easier to get into the building unseen with the doors unlocked and a doorman on duty.
No problem at all, for someone willing to go to extremes. Who knew the wisdom of acting promptly and boldly when an opponent was reeling and back on his heels.
The killer cautioned himself against being overconfident. Quinn and his detectives weren’t exactly reeling.
The killer smiled.
But they will be.
He checked his wristwatch, then left the park and walked to a diner on Amsterdam, where he knew there’d be a TV tuned to Minnie Miner ASAP. It was time for a burger and a cup of coffee. And some quiet contemplation.
Maybe even some information.
People leaked things to Minnie. Sometimes anonymously. When it came to the media, she was one of his favorite people.
And occasionally useful.
58
“I see the same creep watching us whenever we go jogging,” Beth Swift said to her husband, Ben.
They were in their apartment kitchen. It was painted pale yellow and had a single window that looked out on an air shaft. The kitchen was the only thing about the apartment that wasn’t ultramodern and expensive. Rehabbing it was the next thing on their budget, starting with granite countertops.
Ben stood at a Formica counter next to the refrigerator and continued building sandwiches of cold cuts and vegetables. He was taking his time, obviously deriving some pleasure from his task.
“Most likely you’re the one he’s watching,” he said, laying on blood sausage, lettuce, pickle loaf. He didn’t have to be careful about ingredients; Beth enjoyed his monstrous health-and-energy sandwiches as much as he did.
“Am I supposed to feel complimented?”
“In a yucky kind of way.”
“Either way, I don’t like it. I’m thinking about jogging over to him and asking if we know each other. Just to see what he says.”
“You’ll probably fluster him and scare him away.” Ben added layers of cheese, and then topped off the sandwich with perhaps the most important ingredient. The second slice of Asiago bread, with cheese-flavored, toasted crust. “You can have that effect on people.”
“Only those who need scaring,” she said.
He added tomato slices and spread some mayonnaise. It took a certain touch, making a sandwich like this. A certain harmony of taste and texture. This was to be their supper. Along with a good white wine. Some of their friends thought they were crazy; doing all that exercising, then shoveling in all those calories. Beth and Ben, who kept almost hourly counts of calories in, calories out, figured they knew what they were doing. Like so many things, it was a balancing act.
It was also, in a way, economical. Because one of Ben’s custom sandwiches provided at least two meals.
Beth and Ben had what many people would consider blah jobs. She copyedited advertising, and he was an accountant at a car-rental agency. So they figured a little eccentricity in their lives was a good thing.
They talked no more about the man who might be watching one, the other, or both of them on their daily runs. Ben figured Beth had forgotten about confronting him, but if she hadn’t that was okay, too. It might be interesting to see how the man would react. Beth’s unabashed directness was a quality Ben liked in her. Adored, actually.
After eating, they put the remaining portions of their sandwiches, and what was left of the wine—half the bottle—in the yellowed refrigerator Beth so looked forward to replacing. She knew where to put the wine on the top shelf so its temperature would be just right after it sat out for fifteen minutes.
Ben settled into his chair and watched the news on TV—more about the nutcase torturing and killing women. Wasn’t there always some sicko like that operating in New York? Why couldn’t they spot those characters ahead of time and do something about them before they went around killing people?
After the news the couple walked to an art theater in the neighborhood that showed indie movies. There was a Woody Allen film playing there, about three beautiful women in Spain. After the movie, maybe they’d kill the rest of the wine, then go to bed and make love.
Sometimes Beth thought Woody Allen should make a movie about their lives. She’d mentioned that to Ben. He’d thought maybe Quentin Tarantino.
In another part of town, business was brisk at the Far Castle. When he wasn’t in the kitchen spurring on the cooks, Winston Castle, looking like a chef in a PBS special, smiled fiercely as he dashed from table to table, reassuring some diners that their food would arrive soon, making sure others were enjoying their meals. This also gave Castle a chance to get outside, since the evening was pleasantly cool and the outside tables were fully occupied. Still, he was sweating from his effort.
He’d assured a well-dressed man, accompanied by a woman who looked like a tramp, that their lamb chop dinners were minutes from being ready, when he glanced across the street.
The man in the gray car was still parked directly opposite the restaurant. He was staring at the Far Castle, watching what was happening. He seemed to be watching Winston Castle in particular.
Castle veered away and stood beneath an arbor of grape wines, where the diners wouldn’t notice him. He got out his iPhone, went to contacts, and pressed Quinn.
Quinn picked up almost immediately. “What’s up, Winston?”
“You said to call you if I noticed anything unusual,” Castle said.
“So what’s unusual?”
“Maybe it’s nothing, but this man in a gray car is parked right across the street and staring over at me.”
“Has he been there long?”
“Yes and no. He seems to come and go.”
“You sure he’s looking at you?”
“Reasonably so, yes. Although I can’t see his features, I feel his eyes on me.”
Quinn couldn’t imagine that, but let it pass. “Has this happened before?”
“Yes. Too often for it to be my natural paranoia. And I have no idea how many times he was there before I noticed him.”
“What about Maria? Might he be observing her?”
“She’s in the office, not visible.”
“What kind of car is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s gray. Looks like it might be a . . . well, anything. Not new but not old. A midsized, four-door sedan.”
Average, average. “Unmarked police car?”
“Not impossible, but it doesn’t smell that way.”
Quinn decided not to ask Winston what that meant. “Is the man alone?”
“Excellent question.” Castle moved over and peered around the arbor vines, across the street where traffic was running heavy now.
The car was gone.
“He left.”
“You don’t sound relieved, Winston.”
“When you live as I do, you learn to smell danger. That was danger.”
“Isn’t that from a Humphrey Bogart movie?” Isn’t your entire family from a Humphrey Bogart movie?
“You’re the one who wanted to know about anything unusual,” Castle said “And we hired you for security.”
“You hired me to help locate a marble bust. A man looking at your restaurant then driving away doesn’t seem relevant.”
“It was the way he was looking.”
“I thought you couldn’t make out his features?”
Castle sighed. “You needed to be here.”
“If he returns, call me again.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll come there.”
Castle made a humph! sound, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and looked across the street again.
The gray car was still gone.
The danger lingered.
Castle wasn’t reassured. He knew that Quinn considered him and his entire family dramatic posers. So what if
they were? Plenty of people acted out their own dramatic lives. There was—and Winston Castle firmly believed this—an art to it. It was life!
Humphrey Bogart!
He adjusted his towering chef’s cap.
Almost always, people die in Bogart movies.
After breaking the connection with Winston Castle, Quinn used his cell to call Sal Vitali.
Seated at an outdoor table at the Far Castle, Sal answered his phone quickly, before it could disturb any of the other diners.
Quinn spoke first. “See anything of a guy in a gray car parked across the street and scoping out somebody in the restaurant?”
“I’m at an outside table and did notice a car parked across the street for a while, with the driver in it. Next time I checked, he was gone. There was a group of three over there for a while, too, looking over the place, maybe searching for somebody, then they moved on.”
“What about that group?” Quinn asked.
“Nothing about them. That’s my point. People stare across the street at this restaurant all the time. Maybe they’re looking for somebody, or maybe they’re trying to make out the specials on the board in front.”
“So the guy in the gray car didn’t seem suspicious?”
“Not particularly, but maybe you should talk to Harold. If the same guy in the same car was surveying the place during Harold’s watch, too, it could be we’ve got something.”
“Winston Castle says he smells danger.”
Sal laughed. “What he smells are spices from his own kitchen. The danger is from calories.”
“Nevertheless,” Quinn said.
“Calories can kill,” Sal said, in his hoarse smoker’s voice.
After talking to Sal, Quinn called Harold Mishkin and woke him up.
“Sorry to pull you out of a deep well,” Quinn said, “but Winston Castle called and said he’s worried some guy in a gray car is watching the restaurant. Or somebody at the restaurant. Sal’s seen the car, too. I’m wondering if you saw it on your watch.”
“I saw it,” Harold said. “It caught my attention ’cause the driver never got out. I couldn’t make out what make the car was, or the plate numbers. It wasn’t new, though. I could tell that by its styling. Maybe five or six years old.”