by John Lutz
36
Palmer Stone sat in his office at E-Bliss.org and looked across his desk at Victor Lamping. For the first time, he was worried about his business partner and longtime associate. It wasn’t so much anything Victor had done. It was more his behavior. He seemed distant sometimes, distracted. This could be bad for business.
On a table near the office window, a small TV was tuned to local cable news. The volume was muted, but closed-caption lettering appeared at the bottom of the screen. It was all about politics, sports, celebrity name-calling, a man who’d set a hamburger-eating record.
“How do you explain it?” Palmer asked.
He wasn’t yet aware that Charlotte Lowenstein’s torso had been found. What was the delay? He’d expected the news on TV hours ago.
Victor knew what he was talking about. “I don’t explain it,” he said. “Gloria and I did our work, including placing the object where it was sure to be discovered. I wouldn’t worry. It has to be found soon. It isn’t the kind of thing people consciously step over.”
Stone’s desk chair was located where he could see his reflection in a small framed mirror. He glanced at the suave middle-aged man in the mirror and automatically adjusted his imported silk tie. He always dressed well, leaving his suit coat on in the office, though it was rare that a client or anyone else ever dropped in. Almost all of E-Bliss.org’s business was done via the Internet.
His hand came away from the straightened tie knot as he saw the increasingly familiar faraway look transform Victor’s eyes. That look seemed to occur off and on during the first few days after a client deletion. Where had Victor gone? He certainly wasn’t in the office.
Daydreaming didn’t suit Victor, who, like Stone, was a dedicated businessman who let nothing interfere with the pursuit of profit. What Victor and Gloria did in the course of their work for E-Bliss.org was for them simply part of the job. Or so Stone had thought. He hadn’t seen Gloria since the Charlotte Lowenstein deletion, but he doubted there was anything different about her behavior. Victor seemed to be another matter.
Stone smiled, making him look like a kindly father on a TV sitcom. “Something bothering you, Victor?”
Victor’s attentiveness returned like a lamp switching on. He was back in the here and now. “No. Why do you ask?”
Stone shrugged. “You seem preoccupied lately.”
Victor, in some ways a younger version of Stone, smiled like the dutiful son in the same sitcom. “I’m fine, Palmer.”
“And Gloria?”
“The same.”
“The messy part of the work you two do, it’s simply business, Victor. Like a medical procedure. The termination of life, the dissection, and the diversionary act—it’s all about money, and nothing else. Of course, I can understand how you might form something like an affection for the deleted client.”
“I guard against that from the beginning,” Victor said.
“Of course you do. What about Gloria?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“Do you think she might have gotten more involved than she should have with the last client? Charlotte?”
Victor laughed. “Palmer, she’s…Gloria.” He placed his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “What’s bothering you, Palmer?”
“In the kind of work you and Gloria undertake, there are two dangers. One is developing a revulsion for what you must do. The other is getting to like that part of the job too much.”
“There’s no danger of either of those things happening,” Victor said. “Not with me, and not with Gloria.”
“Fine,” Stone said, sitting back in his leather upholstered executive chair and beaming with satisfaction.
But he’d seen the change of light in Victor’s eyes and knew Victor was lying. The question was, who had the problem? Was it Gloria, or Victor? And what was the problem—revulsion, or too much attraction?
“Ah!” Stone said.
He was staring at the TV. Local cable news was running the story about another Torso Murders victim. The torso of an unidentified woman had been found only hours ago on the Lower East Side. Palmer knew the police would soon note the similarities of the crime with the other Torso Murders, and they would match at least one of the two bullets removed from in or near the heart with the gun that had killed the previous victims.
Victor was also staring at the TV. “Feel better now, Palmer?”
“Infinitely,” Stone said. “Nothing makes me happier than business as usual.”
If only Victor were as usual.
37
Quinn decided that sex with Linda Chavesky was better each time. He knew it had to do with trust. They’d both entered the country of lovers cautiously, knowing now there was no turning back. But they were learning and were more at ease with each other every time.
Of course, there were adjustments for each of them to make. Right now, lying next to Linda in his bed, watching the dying light around the blinds indicate the sun was about to set, Quinn would have enjoyed smoking a cigar. He could imagine himself doing that with Linda propped up beside him smoking an after-sex cigarette. But he knew it was only a mental image and would never become reality. Hell, for all he knew, smoking a cigar in bed might have become illegal in New York when he wasn’t paying attention.
It hadn’t been that long ago when Pearl had lain there beside him in postcoital languor, but it seemed to have happened in another world. It wasn’t so much time as it was events that turned life’s pages.
Quinn did still think of Pearl as more than simply a colleague who happened to be his former lover. When Pearl had found out about Linda, he’d read something in her eyes. Suddenly, with their romantic relationship supplanted by another for him, a part of her wanted him back. But only a part of her.
Maybe it was always that way with ex-lovers, even after tempestuous relationships. A reflexive thing. The heart refusing to surrender completely a piece of its past. He did love Linda, but he wondered in an abstract way if a part of him wanted Pearl back.
“What are you thinking?” Linda asked.
“That the Yankees should trade for pitching.”
“I thought maybe about the latest Torso Murder victim.”
Images of corrupt flesh, exposed bone, dried blood, and fecal matter cascaded through Quinn’s mind. He went quietly mad for a few seconds.
“I’ve learned to push that kind of stuff aside,” he said.
“Are you happy?”
“About the Yankees?”
She laughed and poked a rigid forefinger between his ribs. It hurt quite a bit.
She nestled deeper in the bed, lying on her side next to him so she could look him in the eye over the arc of her pillow. “Nift is keeping a few things back about the latest torso victim,” she said. “He’s obviously decided to delay as long as possible before sending the postmortem information along to Renz.”
“Then he’s probably already sent it to somebody else.”
“He has. To Deputy Chief Wes Nobbler.”
Quinn knew Nobbler. He was deceptively ambitious and rumored to be bent. As with many such bureaucratic climbers, there was a cult of junior officers who’d hitched their wagons to his star. Nobbler wasn’t someone to be taken lightly. “You sure?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t prove it.”
She fell silent but for the faint sound of her breathing.
Quinn waited, knowing when not to press. That trust thing. Linda had already stuck her neck way out for him. Would she stick it out even further?
He felt her shift position again next to him on the bed, rustling the mussed sheets and causing the box springs to ping and the mattress to give. She might be stirring with her reluctance to say anything more. She was risking her career for Quinn.
“She wasn’t dead when the broomstick stake was inserted,” she said.
The images came again, like disjointed snapshots. Push them aside. Stop the slide show.
“And it wasn’t the same as the last stake,” Linda added. “It was like the
other, earlier ones, furniture oil and all.”
“Was the stake the cause of death?”
“No. She was alive for quite a while after it was inserted.”
God! “Did the bullets match?”
“Uh-huh. No doubt they were fired from the same gun used on all the other victims. A twenty-two caliber. Two shots to the heart, but the heart had already stopped.”
“The matching broomstick stake, along with the bullets, pretty much leaves out a copycat killer,” Quinn said. “But then why the variation with the victim before last, who was penetrated with a different kind of stake?”
“Anal penetration,” Linda said.
“I can understand that,” Quinn said. “Had to be, because the victim was a man.”
“No,” Linda said. “I mean with this last victim, the woman, there was anal penetration.”
Quinn was surprised. Another deviation from the usual M.O. But with the usual kind of sharpened broomstick stake. And the usual gun.
And what about the latest victim? The latest chunk of meat lying cold and unidentified in the morgue. Meat that had once been a woman. If Quinn and his team had immediately gone storming after E-Bliss.org, even without the necessary proof to convict, might she still be alive?
Quinn doubted it.
Or convinced himself that he doubted it. If Jill Clark’s story was accurate all the way down the line, the machinery leading to the last victim’s death had been in place for weeks or longer.
He lay on his back with his fingers laced behind his head staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of these latest developments. Psychotic killers stricken by compulsion didn’t follow the kind of interior script exhibited by the Torso Murderer in any way other than with strict repetition. But in this case there were anomalies. Not a lot of them, but they were significant. The question was, what did they mean?
Almost certainly this latest victim was slain by the same killer, and if accumulating evidence pointed the same way, E-Bliss.org was behind all the murders. Pearl’s theory that the sexual mutilations were acts of misdirection, to dupe the police into searching for a standard compulsive psychosexual serial killer, continued to prove out. Pearl and her canny insights.
On the other hand, the latest victims had been alive when the stakes penetrated them. They’d suffered long and terribly. The killer had committed acts of ritualistic sadism, exactly like those of a psychotic driven by compulsion. Not like the work of an E-Bliss.org employee, a stone-cold killer simply attending to business, grisly business though it might be.
Quinn had an idea where this latest development might be leading them.
He wished again he could smoke a cigar.
“Two killers acting as a team?” Linda asked.
“That would be my guess,” Quinn said.
And that’s all it is—a guess.
“I promise you we’ll know for sure soon,” he added.
Linda leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
“You’re the detective.”
38
It didn’t take long for Pearl, as Jewel, to move into the vacant apartment on the eighth floor of Jill Clark’s building. She was in 8G, not exactly above Jill’s 7C unit, but close enough. She could get to the fire stairs in a hurry if she had to, and be downstairs and pounding on Jill’s door, or kicking it in, within less than a minute. She made a mental note to tell Jill that. It would reassure her.
Pearl had brought everything she thought she’d need. It was packed in a twenty-six-inch rolling suitcase. Almost everything. The only thing not in the suitcase was the folding cot Quinn had given her. It was brand new from a discount store, still in the box. There should be instructions with it.
She unpacked the suitcase, then got the folding cot from its box and looked at it. She saw rolled green canvas, and what looked like aluminum tubes that must be legs. She withdrew one of the tubes and was surprised when another came with it. They were attached by a small metal plate of some kind run through with a bolt or rivet. She fumbled around and soon saw that the two tubes could be separated to form an X. Another of the metal tubes telescoped. Perhaps this was one of the side bars running down each edge of the cot. But how did you get the canvas on the damned thing? The canvas was what she was interested in, what she was going to sleep on. She played with the telescoping tube for a while, trying to figure out how it related to the canvas, until it pinched her finger painfully and she cursed and tossed it down on the rest of the cot’s various parts sticking out of the box.
How had all those parts, along with the canvas, ever fit in the stupid box? It didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t possible. It was a trick, so the cot would be impossible to return.
Something white attracted her attention. Directions. She unfolded them and saw that they were in Spanish, also French and German, and some language she didn’t recognize. Ah, there was the English part, on the back.
She studied the instructions. They confused her.
Quinn, she thought. Was he trying to mess with her mind, giving her something like this to sleep on? Or was it just his usual insensitivity? Either way, the cot was his idea, so let him put the damned thing together.
She’d go down and talk to Jill Clark. They were supposed to meet at her apartment in—Pearl glanced at her watch—ten minutes.
Without a backward look at the unassembled cot, Pearl headed for the door.
She had to descend only one floor, so she decided to take the stairs. That was the way she’d go if she had to get to Jill’s apartment in a hurry, so she might as well familiarize herself with the route.
The stairwell wasn’t air conditioned. There were two sets of wooden stairs with rubber treads, with a tiny landing in between so the steps could make their angled turn. Nothing she couldn’t negotiate in a hurry. She opened the door to the seventh-floor hall and a noticeable movement of somewhat cooler air.
There was Jill Clark down the hall, in jeans and a yellow T-shirt, just stepping into the elevator.
“Jill!”
But the momentum of her step caused Jill to disappear into the elevator. Pearl wasn’t sure if she’d heard.
Pearl hurried toward the elevator. “Jill! It’s Jewel!”
The elevator door was closing.
It was almost all the way closed when Pearl looked in and saw Jill staring out at her.
“We were supposed to meet.”
Jill looked startled and fumbled with the elevator’s keypad to stop the door. Pearl tried to hold the closing door with her hand, but mechanics had taken over and wouldn’t be denied. Pearl yanked her hand out of there before she got a finger pressed in the rubber seal.
As the door growled shut, Jill looked out at Pearl with a helpless smile and shrugged. “I’ll be right back up.”
The indicator above the elevator doors said the elevator was dropping.
Pearl was alone in the hall. She didn’t have a key yet to Jill’s apartment, so she decided to walk down and stand by the door.
She’d taken two steps when she heard the other elevator door softly rumble open behind her.
She turned around and saw Jill step out into the hall.
Pearl stepped toward her and realized suddenly that this was impossible. There was no way Jill could have ridden the elevator down to the lobby, and then returned on the second elevator. And why would she have taken a different elevator back up?
And why was she wearing different clothes?
Her hair was the same color as that of the woman in the other elevator, and worn in the same style. Her face…It wasn’t exactly the same, Pearl realized. The first Jill had somewhat broader features, and something about her neck and jaw wasn’t quite the same.
Pearl called up the image of the other Jill, commanding her mind to re-create the woman in fine detail. She was sure the other Jill, smiling helplessly out at her as she seemingly tried to stop the elevator’s closing door, but was probably holding in the button to close it, had the same light pattern of freckles along and abo
ve the bridge of her nose. Nothing you’d call a flaw. A minor distinguishing feature only a cop would notice.
My God! Even the freckles!
“I saw her,” Pearl said.
Jill looked confused. “Saw who?”
“The other you. She was riding the elevator down to the lobby while you were coming up. You had to have passed each other. She must have been in your apartment and seen you approach out the window. Or maybe somebody called from outside and warned her.”
Pearl dug her cell phone out of her blazer pocket, then put it back. Too much time had passed. The other Jill would be out of the building and putting distance between it and her. She’d be blocks away within minutes.
Jill had gone pale and was leaning with an arm against the wall.
Pearl steadied her. “It’s okay. It was quite a shock to me too, and I’m not even you.”
“She must have been learning about me, seeing what was in my refrigerator, my bedroom drawers, maybe trying on my clothes….”
“Maybe stealing some of your clothes.”
“I don’t think it would be the first time.” Jill stood away from the wall and Pearl released her hold on her arm. “A week ago I blamed the dry cleaners for something they lost, something I couldn’t find the receipt for. And there’ve been a few other items, even some jewelry, that seem to have disappeared.” She gave Pearl a wan smile. “At least you believe me now.”
“Oh, we believe you,” Pearl said.
Jill looked around as if suddenly realizing they were in the hall. “C’mon, Jewel. Somebody’s liable to overhear us and think we’re nuts.”
At first Pearl didn’t know who Jill was talking to. She almost glanced around. Then she realized she was Jewel and followed Jill down the hall to her apartment.
The door was unlocked.
“She must have left in a hurry,” Jill said. “Maybe somebody did call and warn her.”
Pearl edged in front of Jill. “Let me go in first.”
Jill seemed to resist at first, then moved aside.
Pearl drew her 9mm Glock from its belt holster and used her free hand to push the door almost closed. She motioned for Jill to stay in the hall, and then Pearl was inside.