Pulse

by John Lutz

  “We all fight different battles, Jody. We tell different lies and we know different truths.”

  Jody thought Iva Dunn sounded a lot like Joseph Coil.

  “If that’s how Mildred saw it, then I guess it’s her victory at that,” she said, turning around.

  But Iva Dunn was gone.

  Jody stayed for a while and watched the demolition.

  Malleability.

  79

  Quinn sat at his Q&A desk and wondered. What was the secret, or secrets, connecting Waycliffe College, Enders and Coil, and the series of young women’s deaths? Victims who sometimes bore striking resemblances to Pearl.

  If he was a copycat killer, this murderer had done his homework. Macy Collins, interning at Enders and Coil, might have learned something she shouldn’t have, and paid with her life. The method of that madness was eerily like that of Daniel Danielle. Perhaps Macy had triggered the other murders, reenergized the bloodlust. Possibly this killer was the real Daniel Danielle, and not a copycat.

  It was unlikely, though, that Daniel had survived the hurricane-spawned tornadoes of central Florida.

  Most likely his was among the many unrecovered bodies after the deadly hurricane, and the copycat had known the police would at least have to investigate with Daniel Danielle in mind.

  Quinn couldn’t keep his mind from picking at the subject.

  How might Jody fit in? After all, she was a student at Waycliffe.

  No doubt she’d asked herself the same question.

  What’s the thread connecting a victim of Daniel Danielle’s—or a copycat’s—to Enders and Coil, and to Waycliffe College? Quinn’s mood became grim. And possibly to Pearl’s daughter, Jody?

  The phone jangled so abruptly it made his body jerk.

  There’s such a thing as concentrating too hard.

  He reached for the receiver and pressed it to his ear, at the same time glancing at caller ID.

  “Whaddya know, Jerry?” he asked Lido.

  “Something you should,” Lido said. “I was on my computer, giving my browser a workout, when it came up with something interesting. A couple of kids trying to camp out illegally and build a fire pit dug it up.”

  “Fire pit?”

  “Yeah. They dig down a couple of feet so they can build a fire slightly below ground level and it won’t be spotted from a distance.”

  “Smart.”

  “Not this time. They happened to be on top of a shallow grave and dug up a body.”

  Quinn had been leaning back in his chair. He let it tilt forward. “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Kids had their cell phones handy and called it in right away. Creeped the hell out of them. That was the end of the camping trip.”

  “Body identified?”

  “Not yet. Woman probably in her twenties, average size, what look like knife nicks on some bones, like she was tortured with a blade. Body bent back and bound. She was buried in an awkward position.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah. The ropes hadn’t rotted completely away. Neither had the tape that was used as a gag.”

  “Ropes rotted away? How old is this body?”

  “The M.E. there figures at least twenty-five years.”

  “Where’s there?”

  “Near Leighton, Wisconsin.”

  “Long way from here. Long time ago.”

  “They might know who it is. Girl named Sherri Klinger, disappeared in nineteen eighty-six. Her family’s since moved out of the area. Father died five years ago. A mother’s all that’s left. They’ve contacted her, but I can’t scare up any info on that yet.”

  Quinn was silent for a while, trying to process this.

  “It might mean nothing,” he said.

  “Yeah, but I got a couple of things I’d like to fax to you. A police artist’s drawing of how the dead woman might have looked with flesh on her. Also, there are some old photographs of Sherri Klinger.”

  Even as Lido was speaking, the fax machine on the other side of the office started to click and buzz.

  “Coming through,” Quinn said, and the two men sat and waited.

  When the buzzing and clicking stopped, and a beeper sounded, Quinn stood up and went over to the fax machine.

  He drew four pages from the plastic basket. The first was the police artist’s rendition of how the dead woman might have looked when alive, front and profile. The three accompanying pages were copies of old newspaper photos of Sherri Klinger.

  All of them looked like Pearl.

  Quinn stood staring for several seconds then, carrying the faxes, returned to his desk.

  “Pearl,” he said.

  “Not exactly,” Lido said, “but it could be her sister. Anyway, that was the first body.”

  “What?”

  “A cadaver dog found another body, buried about twenty feet from Sherri’s Klinger’s grave. Young woman, killed the same way as Sherri. Haven’t identified that one yet.”

  “She’ll resemble Pearl,” Quinn said.

  And then said something else, under his breath:

  “Daniel Danielle.”

  80

  Quinn phoned Chancellor Schueller at Waycliffe and posed the same questions.

  The chancellor’s voice got higher, as if he were experiencing sudden gravitational pull. He said, absently, “I’m not aware of any of these so-called connections. As for Professor Pratt gathering material for a topical subject ... why, that’s easy enough to understand.”

  Yet you seemed troubled when I asked you about it.

  “I suppose,” Quinn said.

  Schueller absently repeated it. “An eminent domain case in the city ... does it have something to do with Waycliffe?”

  “It might.” Quinn could picture Schueller, youthful and dynamic, as university chancellors went, seated at his desk, sucking his unlit pipe, wearing his blazer with the leather elbow patches, lying his ass off.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  “Ah! Yes!” Schueller said. Was he snapping his fingers, up there at Waycliffe? He was trying to sell what he was saying; Quinn could easily sense that, even over the phone. For a guy like Schueller, who was used to lying and was practiced and smooth at it, the slight upward pitch of his voice told Quinn he was hearing bullshit.

  Quinn waited.

  “I remember now,” Schueller said. “If I’m not mistaken, some of Waycliffe’s money is invested in Meeding Properties stock. But then so are the funds of a number of investment firms.”

  “I’m thinking of a law firm that recently celebrated a woman’s death so they could advise their clients to move in on her property.”

  “You’re speaking of Enders and Coil, I assume. We and that firm have a long history. They employ several Waycliffe alumni. Two associates and an intern, if memory serves.”

  “I think it does.”

  “Even students bright enough to matriculate at Waycliffe like to party,” Schueller said.

  Quinn couldn’t argue with that.

  “Law firms aside, why do you suddenly inquire about a serial killer in connection with Waycliffe?” Schueller asked.

  “He isn’t nearly finished.”

  “Good Lord! How can you know that?”

  “There were two similar murders in Wisconsin,” Quinn said.

  “Recently?”

  “About twenty-five years ago. Two young women, buried not far apart.”

  “Surely that has nothing to do with what’s happening in New York now.”

  “Surely is a word I use carefully.”

  “I understand that. But what have murders that happened long ago in Leighton, Wisconsin, have to do with—”

  “Did I mention Leighton?”

  For a fraction of a second, Schueller was silent. When he did speak, there was no uncertainty in his voice. “I’m pretty sure you did. Or maybe I saw or heard it on the news without realizing it and it stuck in my mind.”

  “That word sure again,” Quinn said.

&nb
sp; “Perhaps, like many people, I use it too much,” Schueller said.

  “I think we all do,” Quinn said. “I overheard some detectives talking about the Wisconsin cases and was sure somebody mentioned Waycliffe. He might not even have said that, but something that rhymes with it. Or maybe somebody named Waycliffe. Turns out it had nothing to do with the college. You’ve satisfied my curiosity, Chancellor.”

  “Good. That’s more or less our business.”

  “I appreciate you taking the time.”

  “Those deaths in Wisconsin,” Schueller said, “is there some suspicion that they somehow, in some manner, involved Waycliffe College?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m interested in anything that involves our young people. Or our grand tradition. I’m proud to say there aren’t many historical black marks on this institution. I’d appreciate it if you’d confirm my belief that no one at Waycliffe was involved.”

  Quinn considered lying to him, then decided that if Schueller knew more than he was telling, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let him sweat.

  “We always try to look at every possibility,” he said. “Thanks again for your time, Chancellor.”

  He hung up before Schueller had a chance to reply.

  The chancellor sat silently for a long while, trying to think of something that rhymed with Waycliffe.

  The sun sent angled rays of gold through the tall windows of the Albert A. Aal Memorial Library, illuminating the Crime Fiction section of the Literary Department. The rays were also heating the glue of the book spines so that they emitted the certain smell that could be found only in repositories of old books. Ms. Culver loved that smell.

  The morning should have been conducive to her happiness, but it wasn’t.

  “Amazon announced again that it’s selling more e-books than conventional paper and text books,” Ms. Culver said. She was woefully reading the news online while seated at one of the library’s computers, but Penny thought it would be wise not to point that out.

  Instead, she said, “Someone told me that at one time people thought the gramophone would destroy the book market. That people would be making celebrities of professional narrators rather than writers. Folks would be no more interested in whoever wrote what was being read than they’re interested in screenplay writers today.”

  “It makes a kind of sense,” Ms. Culver said.

  “Yet books continued to thrive.”

  Ms. Culver didn’t bother looking over at her. She didn’t see how you could make the comparison. “Apples and bicycles.”

  “Those are still thriving, too,” Penny pointed out.

  One of the library doors opened and closed. Not time yet for the mail, so it should be a reader. Both Penny and Ms. Culver turned to peer toward the front of the library.

  A tall, thin but potbellied man in a wrinkled Armani suit appeared around the corner of nonfiction. Larry Fedderman, showing the effects of the heat outside the comparatively cool and quiet library.

  “Your husband,” Ms. Culver said in a neutral voice.

  Penny brightened. “Feds!”

  Then she remembered she was annoyed with him. Despondent over the fact that he kept pursuing a job that might abruptly end his life and their happiness. Pursuing a killer. With effort, she changed her expression to one of grim tolerance.

  What Penny felt like doing was dropping by the shooting range and blasting away at the anonymous male figure on the target sheets.

  Fedderman grinned as he came toward them.

  “Apples and bicycles,” Ms. Culver said.

  “Nooners are out already,” Mimms, the vice cop, said, where he sat with Nancy Weaver in a battered, unlettered white van. He was a veteran cop with tiny dark eyes that were set too close together and almost nonexistent lips.

  Another cop, known by Weaver only as Chick, probably because of his blond cowlick that looked like a rooster comb, sat in the seat behind her. Behind Chick, the van was caged and equipped to serve as a temporary holding cell and a paddy wagon.

  Chick was wearing earphones that were plugged into a receiver bolted to the bottom of the van’s dash board. Also mounted in the van was a small video recorder, the camera of which was concealed in the van’s grille and aimed at a moderately busy corner in South Manhattan. There was a second camera on a nearby streetlight, aimed at the same area as the first but at a different angle. Both cameras’ feeds were to the digital video recorder inside the van. The corner where the van was parked had a reputation something like Weaver’s.

  All three cops were in plainclothes, though Weaver’s short red skirt, fishnet stockings, tight black T-shirt, and black calf-length boots didn’t quite fit the description.

  “It’s not even eleven-thirty,” Weaver said, trying to tuck in the flimsy T-shirt. It was made out of some kind of stretch material that kept working back up from beneath her thick black leather belt.

  “That’s okay,” Mimms said. “We can nail the johns out for early nooners.” He pointed out the van’s windshield. “Go stand on the corner over there and say something, so Chick knows your wire’s working okay. We’ll flash the headlights if you’re coming through loud and clear.”

  “And remember,” Chick said. “Get them to give you the money. Then you say something to let us know the exchange has been made, and we’ll be over there and reading them their rights in no time.”

  “You won’t be in any danger,” Mimms assured her for about the twentieth time.

  Weaver didn’t see why not.

  She waited until there was a slowdown in traffic, so a minimum of people would notice her exit the van. Then she opened the door and lowered herself onto the street, trying to do it modestly and almost falling in her five-inch heels. When she found her balance and stood up straight she felt tall in the boots. Hell, she was tall.

  The embarrassment she’d felt climbing down out of the van left her. She tucked in the T-shirt again, felt it pop up above her belt, and decided to leave it there. Bare midriff would be a turn-on for these jokers.

  Walking in the boots was kind of a hoot. She could feel people’s eyes on her, and Chick and Mimms had to be watching from inside the van.

  She brought her elbows back so her breasts protruded, then gave her ass a lot of swing as she crossed the street and took up position on the corner in front of a closed tavern.

  There was a NO PARKING TO CORNER sign there that made it possible for cars to pull to the curb. Weaver stuck out a hip.

  “Everything seem to be working okay?” she asked the air.

  The van’s headlights blinked on and off enthusiastically.

  No sooner had that happened than a blue Lexus SUV pulled toward the curb near her. The driver-side tinted window dropped.

  At first Weaver just stood there, then she sashayed around the car and peered in through the window. A guy in his fifties leaned toward her. He had a buzz haircut to disguise the fact that he had little hair anyway, and was wearing a jacket and tie. Mr. Executive. Maybe he was only going to ask for directions.

  “You got a permit for those dangerous weapons?” he asked, nodding toward her boobs.

  Weaver grinned. “Awww, how sweet.”

  She realized that for some reason she’d laid on a Southern accent. She could imagine Mimms and Chick laughing back in the van.

  “You working?” the man in the Lexus asked.

  Weaver gave him her biggest smile. “Ah surely am. Ah cain’t just give it away.”

  The man reached for his wallet, all the while unable to take his eyes off her. Mimms and Chick had told her the going rate on this corner was fifty. But what the hell, the guy was driving a Lexus. “Ah don’t come cheap.”

  “A hunert dollars do it?”

  “A hunert’ll get you somethin’ real special,” she said.

  He held out a single bill. “You gotta earn it, sweetheart. Fifty up front, the rest afterward.”

  “Ah do thank you for this,” Weaver said. She stood up straight, tucking the bi
ll beneath her belt for the benefit of the camera and for Mimms and Chick.

  She had the view from the SUV blocked, but she saw the van’s doors open and her two fellow cops emerge and start striding across the street. They were both grinning like hyenas, but they had on their deadpan expressions by the time they were flashing their shields and asking the Lexus driver to step out of his vehicle.

  Mr. Executive began cursing Weaver as soon as his rights had been read. She ignored him and lit a cigarette. Smoked it in a long ivory-colored holder. For all she knew it was illegal to smoke here, but so what? It went with the outfit.

  Mimms looked at her and rolled his eyes. Chick loved it.

  They were right about the nooner business. It was brisk until almost two o’clock.

  Weaver started having fun well before then.

  81

  It was approaching midnight, and Jerry Lido was out-and-out drunk.

  Sober, he was an expert on the computer. Inebriated past a certain point, he was an Internet genius.

  Tonight he’d sacrificed his sobriety in order to solve at least part of the nagging problem Quinn had laid in his lap.

  As usual, he wrote everything down so he’d remember it when he recovered from his alcohol-saturated state the morning after. He wrote very carefully with a rollerball pen on a single sheet of lined paper. From time to time he would sit back and marvel at the fullness and clarity of his handwriting. The written English language could be so elegant! Such a beautiful thing in and of itself! It was poetry without poetry—insightful and inspiring.

  He wondered just how drunk he was. He knew that a certain part of his mind was functioning very well indeed. Staring at the cursive glory of his thoughts on paper, he stifled a sob of joy. And yet ...

  A quill! He wished he had a quill to do his thoughts true justice.

  Might there be a pigeon about?

  He stood up unsteadily and stumbled to the window, threw it open and felt a bracing wall of cool air engulf him.

  What?

  What on earth would I want with a pigeon? And don’t’t they sleep at night?

  He staggered away from the open window, toward the sagging sofa. He fell forward on the sofa so that he was lying on his stomach, one arm dragging on the carpet.