Pulse

by John Lutz

  Enders grinned. A handsome man over six feet tall, impeccably tailored and with flowing black hair just beginning to gray, he was an intriguing combination of dignity and virility. “1912,” he said. “That’s the year the Titanic went down. I don’t think a decision in the Edwardian era will in any way influence a multimillion-dollar New York commercial real estate transaction.”

  “I don’t know,” Jody said. “The specificity clause. Isn’t there one in the Dash-Meeding case?”

  “Not one the former owners of the property authorized. That’s why the first judge brushed the claim away without a second thought.”

  “Is it under appeal?” As if I don’t know.

  “Yes. But only as a matter of formality.”

  “But I don’t see how authorization—”

  “Look, Jody, I don’t want to discuss Dash-Meeding. I came here to see if you wanted to go to dinner. You don’t have to starve yourself to work here, especially if it’s work done on your own concerning an action that’s been all but decided.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Jody said, “but I’ve got another dinner date in a few hours.”

  Enders gave her his handsome white smile. “A beautiful young woman like you, I should have known.”

  Jody smiled. “It was nice of you to ask, sir.”

  Still smiling: “Oh, a distancing sir. Are you afraid to socialize with the boss?”

  “I’m just remembering he’s the boss,” Jody said. “And I meant it when I said I appreciate the offer.”

  Enders reached behind him and gripped the brass doorknob, but he didn’t turn to leave. “You really do have potential, Jody.”

  “Thank you.” What kind of potential are we talking about?

  He started to open the door, and then hesitated. “A bit of advice?”

  “Always.”

  “Your time would be better spent dining with the boss than working on an all but decided case.”

  Jody smiled at him. “That makes sense.”

  He nodded. “I’m not surprised you came to that sensible conclusion.”

  He left and closed the door behind him.

  Jody knew there was another sensible conclusion to be reached here. There might be a good reason Enders didn’t want her learning more about Dash-Meeding.

  Enders had tried to give her advice, but instead given her motivation.

  When Jody left Enders and Coil she took a subway uptown and walked to Quinn and Pearl’s brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. She liked Quinn a lot; he was like some kind of Bible-illustration Old Testament guy who’d gotten a shave and haircut and looked pretty sexy. Seemed to think like one, too. But at other times he was surprisingly modern in his attitude. Contrast, Jody thought. The world’s full of it.

  Like with her mom, who had turned out to be not at all what she’d expected. Pearl had a hard surface, but know her for a little while and you realized that beneath that surface she was even harder. The thing was, she hadn’t any real meanness in her; she was simply realistic. Nothing she knew or did was tinged with false hope. That was what Jody liked about Pearl—she was a person who met the truth head-on. It was the way Jody thought of herself, though she knew she wasn’t completely like that. Emotion got in her way. She’d inherited it from Pearl, probably—getting pissed off when somebody you might not even know got the dirty end of the stick. Maybe that was why Pearl was a cop. She’d figured out how to use that emotion for energy and determination. Maybe I should go into criminal law, Jody thought.

  Odd the things you think about when you let your mind wander while you walk.

  She took the steps up to the brownstone’s stoop and pressed the buzzer button that let her into the foyer. Quinn and Pearl were expecting her, so she didn’t have to use the intercom to be buzzed up.

  Pearl was wearing her gray slacks from work, black leather moccasins, and a white blouse. Quinn had on pinstripe brown pants that looked like half of a suit, and a blue pullover golf shirt with a collar. Socks but no shoes. He seemed unconcerned that he was breaking several fashion laws.

  Pearl smiled at Jody and kissed her on the cheek. Quinn did the same. Jody thought she might faint.

  Where am I going? What am I doing? And is it real?

  The dining room table was set for three beneath the gigantic antique crystal gas chandelier that had sometime in the past hundred-plus years been converted to electricity.

  Jody realized she was staring at it.

  “It won’t fall,” Quinn assured her.

  Pearl and Quinn together brought the food in from the kitchen. Some kind of noodle and meat casserole, tossed salad, warm rolls. Quinn brought in a bottle of Australian red wine and filled three glasses with it, then placed it on the table, where all three of them could reach it.

  When they were seated, he raised his wine and they clinked glasses and toasted the future.

  After they were finished eating, but still drinking wine, Pearl looked across the table at Jody and said, “We have a proposition.”

  Quinn cut in before Jody could say anything. “You aren’t crazy about the apartment that the school and law firm provide for your internship.”

  True, Jody had bitched about it. The roaches, mainly. Also, Jack Enders had taken to dropping by. He had one thing in mind, and Jody was getting bored with the challenge offending him off without losing her internship.

  “The place has pests,” Jody said.

  “It seems ... right that you should take one of the upstairs bedrooms here,” Pearl said.

  “She means live here,” Quinn said. “With us.”

  Jody looked at him. There was no way to read this man’s thoughts.

  “What do you think about the idea?” she asked him.

  “I think you’re family.”

  That struck Jody as a wild and wonderful thing to say, considering he wasn’t officially married to her mom.

  “It’s only a short subway ride from here to Enders and Coil,” Quinn said.

  “I’ll take that ride,” Jody said. “And thank you. Both of you.” She knew her eyes were moist, but she didn’t touch them.

  They sat silently like that. Jody’s eyes almost watering, Quinn stone-faced.

  Pearl said, “Goddamn it!” and wiped away a tear.

  “I do have another favor to ask you,” Jody said, when she’d been shown her room and a date had been designated moving day. “I mean, besides the free room and board.” She had to smile at her own chutzpah.

  “You are definitely Pearl’s daughter,” Quinn said.

  The three of them were seated in the living room, with its tall, draped windows facing the street, its inlaid hardwood floor, and red carpet. Substitute horses clopping outside for traffic sounds, and it might as well have been 1885. Jody didn’t know when she’d been more comfortable.

  “Fire away, Jody,” Pearl said.

  “Following you around the way I did, Pearl”—she still vacillated between Pearl and Mom—“I got kind of interested in what you were doing. And since I’ve gotten to know you, and Quinn, I’ve become even more interested. I’d like to shadow you.”

  “Didn’t you do that for several days?” Pearl said.

  “Yeah, and not very well. But that’s not what I meant. I want to shadow you when you work, observe you on the job. I want to go to a crime scene with you.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Pearl said.

  Jody gave Quinn a smile. “She’s protective of me.”

  And you’re working me, Quinn thought. How did I get mixed up with these two females? “She’s right,” he said to Pearl, choosing sides. “Maybe we should let the kid tag along.”

  “The kid might see things she’ll dream about the rest of her life.”

  “I’m willing to take the chance,” Jody said.

  “Of course you are.”

  “And I’m not actually a kid,” Jody said to Quinn.

  “That was what I was trying to say,” Quinn lied to the kid.

  “Do you r
eally want to let her do this?” Pearl asked Quinn. “Do you want her to see what we see? Meet the people we meet?”

  “No. But Jody wants to do it, and I think she can handle it. And if she can’t ... well, she’ll find out.”

  “It might turn all her dreams to nightmares.”

  “You’re being overdramatic, Mom.” Huh? It just slipped out.

  Pearl studied her for a long time, and then said, “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thanks to both of you again,” Jody said with a wide grin.

  “You might change your mind,” Pearl said.

  “I’ve done that before,” Jody said.

  “So has your mother,” Quinn said.

  Pearl gave him a look that Jody decided to imitate and practice in the mirror.

  “Don’t expect a lot of excitement,” Pearl said.

  The phone rang.

  36

  The troops had arrived before Pearl and Quinn—and Jody. There were three radio cars parked at forty-five-degree angles to the curb. Just beyond them was an ambulance, lights out, with two paramedics sitting in it, waiting for the work to be done upstairs.

  Quinn felt his throat tighten as he observed the two white-clad men. Taking out the dead. Some occupation, always to arrive at a crime scene when the battle’s lost.

  Beyond the ambulance a black Chevy was parked properly at the curb. Quinn recognized it as Nift the M.E.’s car. Pearl had noticed the car, too. “He’s put himself on all these cases,” she said.

  Quinn nodded. “He always does.”

  “Who is he?” Jody asked, walking alongside Pearl.

  “Dr. Nift,” Quinn said.

  “Think of a cross between Napoleon and Frankenstein,” Pearl said.

  Jody didn’t quite understand that, but she didn’t push it, reminding herself she was here as an observer.

  A big uniformed cop was standing sentry at the building entrance. Quinn knew him. His name was Harmon and he lifted weights and could pass for thirty even though he had to be about Quinn’s age. Quinn wondered why he, Quinn, didn’t work out, as he always wondered when he saw Harmon.

  “Apartment’s on the fifth floor, right where you get off the elevator,” Harmon said to Quinn and Pearl, pointing and making a huge bicep stretch the material of his shirt. He looked at Jody and smiled. It was scary. “Journalist?”

  “Observer,” Quinn explained.

  Harmon didn’t press. If the young woman with the springy red hair was with Quinn and Pearl, that was good enough. But she had that look about her, like a journalist. Curious as a cat that had used up about eight lives.

  They entered the building and took the creaky old elevator to the fifth floor.

  When the door slid open, there was the crime scene.

  The opened apartment door had 5-A on it in those luminous stick-on parallelogram labels. A tech guy with white gloves looked out at them as he passed the door carrying a plastic evidence bag. There were two more techs in the room, one of them a woman. The corpse was in the middle of the room, centered on the carpet as if on display.

  Beside Quinn, Jody said, “Holy shit!”

  Everyone in the room except the dead woman looked at her.

  “Observer,” Quinn said, by way of explanation.

  After a few seconds, the rest of the room’s occupants turned back to their work.

  Fedderman came in from a hall that led to the back of the apartment. He came over to stand by Quinn and Pearl. “Her name was Deena Vess. Twenty-four, single, occupation food server.” He glanced over at Jody, back to Quinn.

  “This is Jody Jason,” Quinn said. He turned toward Jody. “This is Larry Fedderman. Don’t let his casual sloppy persona fool you. He’s even worse than he seems.”

  Jody nodded hello to Fedderman with a sickly smile.

  “She’s an observer,” Quinn said.

  “Really?” Fedderman might never have heard the word before.

  “Pearl’s daughter,” Quinn said.

  “Huh?” Fedderman stared at Jody. Everyone alive in the room stared at her. Deena Vess stared straight ahead. The expression on her face made you wonder what she might have been looking at when she died.

  “Explanations later,” Pearl said. Mind your own damn business!

  Everyone dutifully looked away. Even Nift, though he looked away last. He smiled. “I can see the resemblances.”

  “It’ll be the last thing you see if I shove those tweezers up your ass,” Pearl told him. Jody stared at her.

  Nift shrugged and continued to pick with the tweezers where Vess’s left breast had been.

  Jody swallowed loud enough for everyone to hear. No one spoke. Quinn looked at Jody and she looked back, knowing what he was wondering. She subtly shook her head no and he smiled.

  The victim, who was wearing only panties, had been hog-tied in the same manner as the previous victim, tilted back on her knees so her breasts would have jutted out, if she’d still had breasts. A rectangle of duct tape was fixed firmly to her mouth. Quinn didn’t want to ask Nift if she’d been alive when her breasts were sliced off. He already knew the answer; she’d been alive, like the other victims.

  “It looks like what he did to her was the same as with Ann Spellman,” Nift said. “Hog-tied her, then stood straddling her, grabbing her by the hair or under the chin, and bent her up toward him so her breasts dangled and he could reach down and remove them easily and completely.”

  “You pretty sure about that?” Pearl said.

  “It’s how I’d do it. Unless ...”

  “What?”

  “The victim’s breasts were very firm. Then I’d have her on her knees, bent back and facing up. Looking at the ceiling.” Nift’s mind seemed to have drifted. He came back abruptly. “Our killer’s certainly a breast man,” he said. “Likes his women with long dark hair, too.” He pointedly did not look at Pearl.

  “How long’s she been gone?” Quinn asked.

  “I’d say only a few hours.”

  “Same guy?”

  “Same guy, and probably the same knife. He made small torture cuts on her. Some of them are beneath her panties.”

  “Which are the size worn by Ann Spellman,” Quinn said.

  Nift looked at him in faux admiration. “Damn, you’re smart.”

  “Sometimes,” Quinn said.

  “He puts the previous victim’s panties on them,” Pearl said softly, explaining to Jody.

  “Why?”

  Pearl shrugged. “Why does he kill them in the first place?”

  “Something different here, though.” Nift had held something back, as he often did for dramatic effect.

  Quinn arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “She had a broken ankle.”

  “He broke it?” Pearl asked.

  “I don’t think so. Be a good detective and look over there.”

  “The cat?” Pearl asked, seeing a tabby-striped gray cat slide around the corner of the sofa and disappear. Sometimes she wondered if she was the only person in New York who didn’t own a cat. City of cats.

  “Not the cat. Though she might be the only witness to the crime. Over there.”

  Pearl looked where Nift was pointing and saw a metal cane and a plastic cast. The cane was leaning in a corner. The cast was near it on the floor as if it had been carelessly tossed there. “Looks like the killer removed the cast and used the ankle to torture her. A broken bone must have been like a gift to him.”

  “You would understand that,” Pearl said.

  “Another thing,” Nift said, ignoring her. He pointed to a small metal object near where the victim’s long hair spilled onto the carpet from her thrown-back head. “That was balanced on her forehead when she was discovered.”

  “What is it?” Quinn asked, looking closer.

  “It’s a roller-skate key,” Pearl said. “The sort that tightens the kind of skates that fit over your shoes.”

  “What the hell could that mean?” Fedderman asked. He looked at Jody as if she migh
t supply the answer. She felt flattered that he was including her in the conversation. “The key to the case ...” she offered.

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  “She might be right,” Quinn said, in such a way that all laughter stopped. What the hell am I doing now, getting protective?

  “One thing it might explain,” Pearl said. “She might have hurt herself skating, and the broken ankle is why he wasn’t able to lure her someplace and decided to kill her in her apartment. She’s the first victim found indoors.”

  “How many of Daniel Danielle’s victims were found indoors?” Fedderman asked.

  “Two out of twelve,” Pearl said. “Of course, he might have murdered over a hundred women, so we don’t know for sure how many were indoors when they were killed.”

  “More than a hundred?” Jody asked.

  Quinn stared at her somberly. “It’s a dangerous world.”

  She looked dubious and shook her head. Even let slip a slight smile.

  Oh, God! He was beginning to feel like a parent again, not being taken seriously.

  Pearl was looking at him in a kind of surprised way. Had she experienced the same sensation?

  She had, he was sure.

  It was disconcerting.

  “I’ve got a question,” Jody said. “What’s going to happen to the victim’s cat?”

  “No!” Quinn and Pearl said simultaneously.

  37

  Jody, unaware of a similar cat that had run away, renamed this dark gray tabby cat Snitch, after a cat she’d had when she was ten years old. She would feed it and it would sleep in her room. Everyone agreed to that but the cat. The food plan was okay with Snitch, but she slept where she damn well pleased. Sometimes that was at the foot of Quinn and Pearl’s bed.

  Living in the brownstone was light-years better than living in the cramped apartment Jody’d had. And she was allowed to keep the rent money allocated to her. The only downside was that she had to travel farther to get to work, across town to the East Side.

  Jody stood now in the Enders and Coil conference room with the firm’s avuncular and wise senior partner, Joseph Coil. Well-padded black leather chairs rimmed the long mahogany table. There was on the table a large crystal vase of incredibly realistic silk roses as a centerpiece that was removed when the room was being used for serious business. That Coil hadn’t sat down, or invited Jody to sit, indicated this was to be a short, informal conversation.