Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  Pearl shrugged. “One didn’t make much sense, or maybe I couldn’t understand the caller because of her accent. The other seemed okay at first, then she asked that no one contact her doctor to let her know she’d called.”

  “She say what kind of doctor?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  Quinn punched a button on his desk phone and listened to both messages. The first was in a high-pitched voice speaking in what sounded like some kind of middle European accent he couldn’t begin to understand.

  The second caller was understandable, a woman speaking with what sounded like deliberate and fragile calm, explaining how the same man had been following her, how sometimes he let himself into her apartment. She then said that she didn’t want her doctor to know yet that she was going outside the rules, calling someone who might believe and help her. Her doctor, the woman said, didn’t think the man was real. Then she explained that it was true that he wasn’t real all the time, but only sometimes.

  Neither woman left a name, but the voice of one was familiar.

  Quinn sat for a moment mulling over the calls. He’d received dozens like them over the past several weeks. There was something about the second woman, something in her voice that signaled real if sublime fear. Perhaps she had mental problems, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be a potential victim.

  And the woman with the accent? How could he judge if he couldn’t understand her?

  He looked at caller ID. The first number was that of a large insurance firm with a Midtown office. He called there and talked to three people who had no idea of the identity of a woman with a heavy European accent who might be trying to contact him.

  The second number displayed no name but had a Manhattan prefix. He called it and got no answer and no invitation to leave a message.

  After hanging up, Quinn stared at the phone, then dug through the note papers beneath a paperweight on his desk. The second caller’s number was that of Linda Brooks, with a West Side address.

  Linda Brooks, the woman who’d approached him in the office because she thought someone might be following her. The one who was under analysis.

  She’d also left her doctor’s name and address.

  Quinn jotted down the information on a piece of scratch paper and tucked it into his wallet with similar folded slips of paper.

  He wasn’t quite sure why, considering how many women like Linda Brooks there were in the city. Seldom were their monsters real.

  Real enough to them, however. He felt a pang of pity for Linda Brooks. Started to reach again for the phone.

  But she hadn’t wanted him to call her analyst. About that she’d been specific.

  Yet she wouldn’t answer her phone. And who was to say she needed more help than the woman with the European accent who’d called? Or any of the other troubled and frightened women, most of whom weren’t in any actual danger?

  Quinn wished he could help them all, the fearful and delusional, but he couldn’t except in general ways. Like trying to stop a very real killer.

  He turned his mind to his job.

  62

  I t had taken only fifteen minutes for Dr. Grace Moore and Linda to cab from Grace’s apartment to Linda’s. Grace had changed into more comfortable shoes, and left the thumb drive video of her session with Linda with her other home files.

  The phone was ringing inside Linda’s apartment, but it stopped just as the two women got to the door.

  “Do you have an answering machine?” Grace asked.

  “Not anymore. It talked to me sometimes when it shouldn’t have.”

  Linda unlocked and opened the door but stood back, allowing Dr. Moore to enter first. Grace did just that, smoothly and confidently. She took in the apartment with a glance: neat, neutral furniture that was carefully arranged, a small flat-screen TV resting on what looked like an antique table, hardwood floors that were scratched and dented but glossy with a recent coat of wax, a bookcase stuffed with books and stacks of magazines (so Linda was a reader), and a window with half-lowered white blinds. A lineup of small, potted geraniums spanned the marble sill.

  “I bought those yesterday,” Linda explained, noticing the geraniums had caught Grace’s attention. “Now nobody can climb in through the windows without disturbing my flowerpots.”

  Grace simply nodded, thinking the flowerpots didn’t provide much security.

  Linda was only halfway into the apartment, as if she was still considering staying out in the hall. Grace gripped her gently but firmly by the arm and guided her the rest of the way in. She could feel tremors running through Linda’s body.

  “Why are you so nervous? You’re home. I’m here.”

  “And he’s here,” Linda said.

  “The reason I’m here,” Grace said, “is to demonstrate to you that he isn’t.”

  “Hah!”

  “So how does he get in?”

  “Obviously, he has a key.”

  Grace almost smiled. “Tell me, Linda, is this person part of the secret government organization you mentioned during our last session?”

  “Oh, no. He’s on his own. I’d know it if he was with the government.”

  “How?”

  “He’d be dressed differently, for one.”

  “Like the government agents you see on TV or at the movies?”

  “I don’t go to the movies very often. That stuff isn’t real.” A click and a low, soft humming made Linda’s body jerk.

  “That’s only the refrigerator,” Grace told her.

  “So maybe he’s getting something from it. A glass of milk.”

  “Has he done that before?”

  “Of course. He’s left the glass out where I could see it, with just a little milk left in it. I know why he does stuff like that, so it creeps me out. He wants me to hope he goes ahead and does whatever he’s planning, wants me to give up and put my fate in his hands. Work with him.”

  Grace raised her eyebrows. “Work with him?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Grace did. Linda was referring to the theory that victim and killer sometimes fell into a mutual rhythm and cooperation. The killer wanted his prey. The victim wanted the terror and anxiety finally to end. In a sick sense, their goals became the same.

  “Is it possible that it was a glass of milk you drank and then forgot about?” Grace asked.

  “Possible? Sure.”

  The apartment was silent except for the refrigerator’s soft hum. The air was warm and still. Grace walked to the doorway leading to the small galley kitchen and stood staring while Linda watched.

  “Nobody in there,” Grace said. “No empty glass.”

  More geraniums in green plastic pots, though, lining the windowsill. Some of them still had price tags on them.

  “I didn’t say for sure he was there,” Linda pointed out.

  Grace turned so she was facing her patient directly and made eye contact. “What do you think he wants, Linda?”

  “To do the most awful things to me.”

  “Have you been reading the papers about those women who were killed?”

  “Now and then. And I see things on television.” She didn’t tell Dr. Moore about her conversation with the detective, Quinn, who was hunting the killer. He seemed, if not to believe her, not to totally dis believe her.

  “Television can stimulate your imagination,” Dr. Moore said. “Especially if you haven’t taken your meds.”

  “It’s difficult to remember to take them,” Linda said. “And he comes when I’m not here and moves things around. Sometimes I have to hunt and search for my meds.”

  “Do you want me to look through the apartment while I’m here to convince you we’re here by ourselves?”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “But if I did it, would you be convinced?”

  “I suppose so, but-”

  “There aren’t that many places he could hide. It will only take a few minutes. Do you want to come with me?”

/>   “No. And I’d rather you didn’t go looking for him.”

  “When you think he’s here like this, do you ever simply leave?”

  “Of course I do. He just follows me. Sometimes he’s already waiting for me when I arrive wherever it is I go.”

  This interested Grace. Hallucinations weren’t uncommon in schizophrenia. Linda had reported them before.

  “How is that possible, Linda?”

  Linda shrugged and gave Grace a look that suggested the answer was obvious. “He understands me so well he knows most of the places where I go.” A glitter of fear played in her eyes. “How would you like to live with something like that?”

  “Sometimes,” Grace said, “it helps to face your problem squarely and it won’t seem so intimidating.” She began moving toward the hall leading to the rear of the apartment.

  “I wouldn’t go there,” Linda said, starting to follow her. Three steps and a pause.

  “There’s no need to come with me,” Grace said. “I’ll look every place anyone could possibly hide, then I’ll call for you.” She walked a few feet down the hall and glanced into the bathroom. The plastic shower curtain was closed. She went to it without hesitation and yanked it open.

  “The drip isn’t in here,” she said, and heard Linda, who’d been peeking around the door frame, laugh.

  Grace didn’t like the tone of that laugh. She moved farther down the hall toward the bedroom. Linda, who was torn between keeping a safe distance and not being left alone, was hanging back and looked frightened.

  “He isn’t in there,” Grace said, when she was at the bedroom’s open door.

  “He is. I can feel it.”

  “The room feels un occupied to me,” Grace said. She entered the bedroom without hesitation. She smiled as she saw the familiar geranium sentries on the windowsill. Beyond them the window was open a few inches, letting in a subtle breeze.

  Linda had made it to the doorway and was staring into the bedroom, her eyes wide, her fists clutched tightly at her sides.

  “Did you open the window?” Grace asked.

  “Of course I did.”

  Grace looked on the far side of the old walnut wardrobe; she even opened the twin doors and looked inside. The wardrobe’s interior contained nothing but clothes on hangers. It emanated a clean, cedar scent.

  “Nobody’s here,” she said reassuringly, glancing over at Linda.

  She went to the closed closet door.

  “Don’t-” she heard Linda say.

  Sure. They’re always hiding in the closet.

  Grace yanked the door open.

  There was a sagging wooden rod supporting more hangered clothes. Above them on the closet shelf were cardboard shoeboxes and a stack of self-help books. Seeing that she had Linda’s full attention, Grace stuck her arm into the darkness between the clothes so she could feel around behind them in the depths of the closet, where she couldn’t see.

  Her fingertips found only roughly plastered wall.

  She closed the closet door and, smiling, moved toward Linda. “No lurking monsters anywhere,” she said. “Now let’s have a look in your medicine cabinet and make an inventory of what it is you’ve been taking.”

  “It’s what you prescribed.”

  “I’m sure. But I’m wondering about over-the-counter drugs. You take them sometimes, too, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” Linda admitted. “To help me sleep.”

  Grace took a step toward the door.

  Linda hadn’t moved. “You didn’t look under the bed.”

  “True enough,” Grace said.

  She went to the bed, got down on her knees, and bent forward, making a show of it for Linda. She lifted the bedspread and peered into the dimness beneath the bed.

  A pair of eyes stared back at her

  63

  I t was three o’clock in the morning, already hot in a way that made the Lincoln’s windshield fog up on the inside. Renz was still at this crime scene. He’d phoned from there and given Quinn the cross streets, and remained there, waiting.

  The scene was easy enough to find. Three radio cars and a CSU van were nosed in toward the curb. An unmarked blue Chevy that Quinn was sure was NYPD was parked with one tire up on the sidewalk.

  A uniformed cop was stationed like a stern doorman at the building’s entrance. He directed Quinn and Pearl to an apartment on the fifth floor. The cop said it belonged to L. Brooks, which caused Quinn to stop so abruptly that the soles of his clunky black shoes made a slight squeaking sound.

  A simple first initial was common among women who lived alone and didn’t want to display their gender on their mailbox.

  “Linda Brooks?” he asked the uniform.

  “Couldn’t tell you, sir.”

  Quinn continued into the small lobby, Pearl at his heels. “Isn’t that the woman who phoned earlier?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t blame yourself for this one,” Pearl said, thinking ahead. She knew how Quinn would feel about this. The Brooks woman had called him yesterday and asked for help, protection, and Quinn the great protector had put her down as another nutcase or publicity junkie.

  “I blame the bastard who did it,” he said in a low, flat voice.

  The apartment door was propped open with what looked like an umbrella stand. There was a certain smell wafting out into the hall, one Quinn and Pearl recognized. Death had visited here, and not long before they’d come calling.

  Renz and the CSU techs were inside. Quinn and Pearl entered, careful not to get in anyone’s way.

  The living room was a busy place. The techs were in there, moving in their usual choreographed fashion. They barely missed bumping into each other. A flicker of brilliance like miniature lightning illuminated the walls along a narrow hallway. Quinn knew it was a camera flash.

  “The police photographer and Nift are back there with them,” Renz explained.

  “Them?”

  Renz ignored the question. “The killer called the Times, and had the paper call me. The guy at the Times said the killer told him he might make me a leather product like he made for you.”

  “He knew about the victims’ breasts being removed?”

  “That so-called secret information meant he was the real thing. That’s how he got through to me instead of being brushed off as a head case.”

  “You get a voice print or phone trace?” Quinn asked.

  “A voice print, yeah. But he musta made the call with one of those cheap-ass throwaway phones. I listened to a recording. The voice was normal, and so was his phrasing, like he had some education. Even apologized for waking me up. He knew about the tits being cut off. I asked him how he knew, and he told me. I asked him, ‘Did you cut off the tits this time?’ He said yeah, he did it to one of them.

  “ One of them. When I got here as he advised me-as if I wouldn’t have come anyway-I saw what he meant.”

  Another flash from down the hall.

  “Whaddya mean, ‘what he meant’?”

  “C’mon,” Renz said. “I’ll show you.”

  He started leading the way to the back of the apartment, then stopped and looked at Pearl. Then at Quinn.

  “Jesus!” Pearl said. “I’m a cop. I’ve been to dozens of murder scenes. I’m not gonna faint or puke at the sight of a dead body.”

  “Nice of you to think of her, though,” Quinn said to Renz. Not acting like yourself at all.

  Renz gave his nasty fat man’s smile. “I just don’t want her upchucking all over the crime scene. Making a mess.”

  When they entered the bedroom, Pearl did feel a queasiness she hadn’t expected. On the bed kneeled an almost nude dead woman in the usual hog-tied, body-bowed pose. Her wrists and ankles were wrapped and then tethered so that she was trapped in her awkward position, body arched, staring with unseeing eyes at the ceiling. She was gagged with a rectangle of gray duct tape. Her breasts had been removed. She looked afraid but not surprised.

  Next to her lay another bound woman, thi
s one flat on her back, her arms knotted by a rope to a belt cinched tightly around her waist. It was gray cloth and looked like a woman’s belt. There was identically colored material showing in a jumble of clothes that looked as if they’d been tossed into a corner. Her ankles were tied. She’d been stabbed in the heart, and her throat had been slashed. There was surprisingly little blood, suggesting that the stab wound had been first and fatal. Near the stab wound, just above her sternum, her breasts lay spread and flaccid against her torso, still attached and apparently uninjured. As with the first woman, a rectangle of tape was plastered over her mouth.

  The kneeling victim was wearing blue panties, and also appeared to have been stabbed in the heart.

  Nift, who’d been poking at the hog-tied victim with something resembling a large dental pick, said, “Looks like he went for the best of the pair. This one”-he pointed at the prone woman-“has got considerably more years and mileage on her.”

  “They’re not used cars,” Pearl said through clenched teeth.

  “They’re pretty damn well used, though,” Nift said, absently prodding the dead hog-tied woman with the steel instrument. She didn’t object, as Pearl halfway expected she might.

  The supine woman seemed to be staring at the ceiling with half closed eyes that had the stillness of marbles. Blue eyes. She had blond hair, but it was obviously dyed. She hadn’t been bad looking but was nothing special.

  The hog-tied woman next to her, festooned with the familiar knife nicks of violence, had dark eyes and genuinely dark hair, and appeared to have had large breasts.

  “Have you guessed which one was Linda Brooks?” Renz asked.

  “The one who looks like Pearl,” Nift said, from where he knelt on the floor in a position suggesting he was about to do some gynecological examination.

  Pearl started toward him, but Quinn held on to her elbow.

  “Damn it, Quinn, that hurts. All I want to do is twist his head off.”

  Nift smiled. “By head I presume you mean-”

  “Never mind that,” Renz said.

  “What about her panties?” Quinn asked.