Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  “Same size as the last victim’s,” Nift said. He smiled. “That was the first thing I checked.”

  “I’ll bet not,” Renz said. He looked at Quinn. “How do you figure the second dead woman?”

  “Offhand,” Quinn said, “I’d say she happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “She probably knew the dead woman.”

  “Most likely,” Quinn said. “A visiting friend.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have to undress them,” Nift said. “Maybe they were getting it on together and he interrupted them.”

  Pearl gave him a hard look. “Listen, you scumbag-”

  Loud noises, raised voices out in the hall, made everyone in the apartment stop what he or she was doing.

  Nift gave Pearl a superior little smile and stood poised and motionless with a stainless-steel implement in his right hand, like a figure in a wax museum. Part of the Famous Assholes exhibit.

  There was more noise from outside, down in the street. A man’s voice yelled something Quinn couldn’t understand.

  “What the hell’s going on? Quinn asked.

  “That would be a media wolfpack,” Renz said, looking at his wristwatch. “The killer said he’d wait an hour so the Times could have its scoop, then he’d call the rest of the papers and television news.”

  “Did he say anything else?” Pearl asked.

  “Only to give his best to you,” Renz said.

  It didn’t take long to identify Linda Brooks’s visitor. Her purse with identification and seventy-three dollars in it was found beneath the pile of clothes in the bedroom corner.

  “A doctor,” Quinn said.

  “Not just any doctor,” one of the CSU techs said. He handed a white business card to Quinn. “This was in one of the victim’s desk drawers.”

  The card identified the dead woman as Dr. Grace Moore, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

  A further examination of the desk, Linda Brooks’s checkbook, and a nearby file cabinet, indicated that Dr. Grace Moore was treating Brooks, and had been for some time. There was a home file of rough and incomplete notes, but its contents, including documents signed by Grace Moore, described Brooks as a paranoid schizophrenic.

  “That explains the pharmacy in the bathroom medicine cabinet,” Renz said. “The lady lived on pills.”

  “I’ll send Feds to Moore’s office, see what else there is to see,” Quinn said. “No need for a warrant. Doctor-patient confidentiality doesn’t apply when both have been killed by the same madman.”

  Questionable legality. Quinn was glad Jody wasn’t along on this one.

  “Sounds right to me,” Renz said. “But I didn’t know you were gonna send somebody over there.”

  “Send somebody?” Quinn said. “Over where?”

  Renz placed his hands over both ears and turned away.

  John Lutz

  Pulse

  PART THREE

  And to die is different from what anyone supposed,

  And luckier.

  — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself ”

  64

  Leighton, Wisconsin, 1986

  T ime passed, and no one ever found out what really had happened to Duffy. Maybe there weren’t enough clues. Or maybe it was because no one cared. No one other than Sherri, anyway.

  The road repair was finished and looked much the same, only the trees began slightly farther from the gravel shoulder. Rory wasn’t sure what drew him there, but sometimes, at night, he went alone to the spot near where he’d buried Duffy. Gotten away with murder, Sherri would say. If she knew.

  He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but maybe that was something he enjoyed, having gotten away with murder. Here on this desolate stretch of road, with its nearby concealing woods and very private clearing, was the perfect spot for it.

  It was also the perfect spot for secret sex. Rory had often made use of it with Sherri, once he’d gotten her past her hesitation because Duffy had died nearby. Mostly past her hesitation, anyway. She still sometimes tried to talk him into parking elsewhere for their hurried trysts, and often he’d comply. But there was something special about this remote place beneath and among the trees, with only an occasional flicker of headlights from passing traffic as a reminder of the outside world. Things happened as usual out there. Not in here, to Sherri. Not to Rory.

  Sex was definitely better here.

  And so was quiet contemplation.

  Rory wasn’t the only one who appreciated this secluded area. Alone there one moonlit night, he’d parked the car out of sight among the trees, and was standing and smoking a cigarette, when he heard the sound of a car stopping on the gravel shoulder. He moved farther back into the woods and waited.

  Tires crunched louder on gravel, and he saw the dark shape of a car with its lights out moving slowly to where it wouldn’t be seen from the road.

  Rory smiled. Somebody parking here to make out, probably. And Rory’s car was parked where it couldn’t be seen. Should he stay and watch? Was he a Peeping Tom as well as a dog slayer?

  He saw the dark form of a slender man-or maybe a teenage boy-in jeans and a dark T-shirt-get out of the car, walk around to the back of the vehicle, and open the trunk.

  He removed a nude, bound woman and laid her gently on the ground, then stood with his hands on his hips and glanced around. His gaze traveled smoothly past Rory, who was standing in shock, well concealed in the deep shadows.

  Rory became aware that he was breathing heavily. He swallowed so loudly he was actually afraid the man might hear. Motionless, he watched transfixed, as if he were seeing a movie scene unfold.

  The driver of the dark car had set to work. He bent over the dead or unconscious woman, untied her, then rearranged her body, making sure that her legs were bound tightly with rope. Then he propped her in a kneeling position, looped rope around her elbows behind her back, and pressed her upper body backward so her spine was drawn like a bow and she was staring up at the stars where she might point an arrow. Her eyes were open wide, focused upward as if seeking some message of hope. So she wasn’t dead. Even from this distance Rory saw her blink and move her head slightly. The man pressed something, some kind of tape, over her mouth and unreeled it and fastened it behind her head. Rory could barely hear her making desperate humming noises, trying to shake her head from side to side. But so tight was the tape and the tension of her bound body that she was barely able to move her head, and completely unable to move anything else other than her fingers, which writhed and flexed in search of any sort of tactile contact. She was seeking anything that she could touch, grip, hold on to. But nothing was within reach.

  Rory’s heart was pounding and his mouth was dry, and he couldn’t stop watching. He knew he should yell, or go get the cops, or do anything that might help this young woman. It wasn’t going to happen.

  He could see that she was attractive, with bountiful breasts and long black hair. Dark eyes fixed in an expression of sheer horror. Her frantic attempts to move caused her breasts to jiggle slightly, which seemed to amuse the man, because he briefly cupped one in his hand and pinched the nipple. The frightened humming grew slightly louder. Rory was aware that he had an erection. He had to do something. But he couldn’t budge. He was as immobilized as the woman in the clearing. Even if he wanted to take some sort of action, he knew his limbs wouldn’t respond.

  He couldn’t stop watching.

  Not even when a knife glinted in the moonlight and there was little doubt about what was going to happen.

  The man squatted beside the woman. He was wearing a cap with a bill, and Rory couldn’t make out his features, but he was smiling as he held the blade so it glinted in the moonlight before the woman’s face. No part of her moved other than her horrified eyes, which rolled wildly.

  He began using the knife with delicate skill, making tiny, twisting cuts. The humming changed little in volume but was more desperate and slightly higher pitched, almost a monotone that yet expressed what must be going on in
the helpless and doomed woman’s mind.

  Rory’s own body was almost vibrating.

  He couldn’t stop watching.

  The man with the knife began to work on the woman with intensity. Rory’s hand moved to his crotch. He couldn’t stop watching. This was wrong, he knew, and he’d never be able to tell anyone about it. He’d be some kind of accomplice if he did. He knew that all he had to do was remain silent and unmoving, and he’d see everything. Probably even the man burying the woman not far from where Rory had buried Duffy.

  The all-encompassing power of the killer was stunning. Watching him was like watching God at work. Who wouldn’t kill to exercise such power? Who wouldn’t idolize such a creature?

  Even the woman in the clearing-especially the woman in the clearing-must in her terror submit to and pray to the ultimate power of life and death, at the point when death would become a gift.

  The humming grew more desperate and the woman’s body shimmied with pain in the moonlight. Almost like an engine racing and vibrating toward an explosion. The man shifted position slightly, then crooked his elbow and turned the knife blade sideways. He began to remove the woman’s breasts. Rory didn’t blink, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move.

  He couldn’t stop watching.

  65

  New York City, the present

  J erry Lido said, “We’ve got a problem.”

  Quinn and Pearl were in the office with him. They stopped what they were doing at their desks and looked at him.

  “Someone’s been here,” he said.

  Quinn glanced around as if to find what Lido was talking about.

  “Not here,” Lido said. “But here virtually. Our virtual here.”

  “On our computers?” Pearl asked.

  “Of course.” For Lido the virtual world of computers was the real world. Then there was Lido’s world where other people lived. And his world when he was drinking.

  “My computer’s been acting a little funky,” Pearl said, wondering how Lido kept it all straight.

  He grinned at her. “Exactly! We’ve been hacked. In fact, we’re in the process of being hacked right now.”

  Helen the profiler entered the office, looking tall and lean as a fashion model, only a little too muscular. As usual, there was a fine sheen of perspiration on whatever bare flesh showed, as if she’d been working out. She’d caught the tail end of the conversation. “Somebody wants to know what’s on our computers,” she said.

  “Somebody knows,” Lido corrected her. He explained to her about having been hacked.

  “Can you find out who he was?”

  “Is,” Lido said. “And that’s what I’ve been trying to do the last two hours. He’s put up Chinese walls, firewalls, indestructible walls. Our computerized information is going only one way-out.”

  “He’s toying with you,” Helen said.

  Pearl immediately started to close down her computer.

  “Better unplug it, too,” Lido said.

  She did. Quinn and Helen went around unplugging the other desk computers.

  “You think he could turn them back on if they were plugged in?” Helen asked.

  Lido grinned. “He might have installed the software to do that without us knowing about it. He might be online here at two in the morning, for all we know.”

  “If he can do that kind of thing to us,” Quinn said, “can we do it to him?” Like Quinn to go on the offensive.

  “If we knew about him what he knows about us, yes,” Lido said. He stood up from his darkened computer screen.

  “Where you going?” Pearl asked.

  “Home, where I don’t have to work using this limited equipment.”

  “I thought you installed new memory in our computers,” Quinn said.

  Lido gave him a pitying look.

  “Doesn’t Q and A have virus protection and firewalls and Chinese walls and all that stuff?” Helen asked.

  Lido’s expression turned to one of contempt. Not for Helen, but for whoever had trespassed in his world and made his skills seem minor. “The hacker got in somehow, then deleted all possible links, so a trace, even by an expert like me, is impossible. Supposedly.” He snatched up a few items from his desk and then stalked out.

  “His alcohol-tainted blood is up,” Helen said.

  “I wouldn’t bet against him learning everything about this hacker,” Quinn said.

  Helen went to the desk Lido had just vacated and perched on the edge. Quinn couldn’t help noticing her legs could use a shave. “Think about this,” she said. “The hacker might have been secretly browsing your computers for information for a long time.”

  “He probably has been,” Quinn said. “But Lido inevitably caught up with him.”

  Helen gave him her thinnest of smiles. “That’s one way of looking at it. Another is to figure that if the hacker had the skills to hack into your system without being noticed, then circumvent your high-tech security and learn what you were doing, wouldn’t he also have the skills to withdraw unnoticed?”

  “Probably,” Quinn said. “But that would mean-”

  Helen’s smile widened. “That the intruder wants you to know your computers have been hacked.”

  At two minutes to midnight Lido called Quinn’s cell phone and woke him up. His words were slurred, and it took him a while to arrange his sentences with enough order for Quinn to understand that whatever precautions the mystery hacker had employed, they had worked. Lido gave Quinn a lot of tech talk he wouldn’t have understood even if Lido was sober and speaking clearly. The message was, there was no way to backtrack the hacker’s online footprints to the source.

  Quinn lay awake in the dark for a long time after the phone call, wondering who would have the ability to outfox Lido on a computer.

  Every possibility he came up with was a worry.

  66

  A fter an uneasy night of patchwork dreams, Quinn was eating a late breakfast with Pearl in the brownstone’s kitchen. Waffles and sausage patties, all pre-prepared, and the finished issue of toaster and microwave. Pearl’s idea of cooking. It didn’t smell bad, though. The faint haze suspended in the warm kitchen was pungent and conducive to the appetite. But it didn’t fool Quinn or Jody. They’d been tricked before.

  Jody had already left, explaining that she wasn’t hungry and would stop on the way to her job at Enders and Coil for a bagel. Smart young woman, Quinn thought, not unlike her mother.

  He wondered if, when he left the brownstone, he’d smell like waffles and sausage. And if so, for how long?

  Quinn’s cell phone played a cavalry charge trumpet tune and he dug it out of his pocket to see who was calling. Nift at the morgue. Quinn swallowed what he suspected would be his last bite of sausage and pressed the talk button.

  “Mornin’, Nift. Whaddya got?”

  The annoying little M.E. didn’t bother saying hello. “You talking with your mouth full, Quinn?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I was you, I know what it would be full of,” Nift said. Quinn could somehow hear the nasty grin on the little bastard’s face.

  “This a business call?” Quinn asked, with a hint of warning.

  A hint was enough to scare Nift into a strictly business mode. “Linda Brooks died from a heart attack, no doubt caused by shock. Like the other victims when the killer played his games with them. By the time he got around to administering the coup de grace, she was already dead.”

  “I hope that was a disappointment to him.”

  “No doubt it was. But he worked clean as usual. No usable prints, no DNA traces. Not even indefinite ones like with Macy Collins.”

  Quinn had never had much hope for the meager Collins sample that might have been mostly her own blood.

  “There was a slight residue of condom lubricant in the vagina,” Nift said. “The murder weapon was probably the same knife. Also used to remove Linda’s substantial knockers. No sign of those, by the way.”

  “What about Grace Moore?”
r />   “Probably not enough of a rack to interest our killer. He’s definitely a breast man with high standards.”

  “At least she wasn’t mutilated,” Quinn said. He looked across the table and saw Pearl watching him intensely, interested in his end of the conversation.

  “My guess is her death was comparatively easy,” Nift said. “A quick choke to silence her, then a single, accurate stab wound to the heart. I think she was simply in the way. Unlucky in the extreme.”

  “Torture wounds have any commonality with the other victims?”

  “You saw them. They almost had to have been the result of the same knife, the same killer. And they resemble morgue photos of Daniel Danielle’s work so many years ago. He loves to carve.”

  “Yet he left Grace Moore untouched in that regard.”

  “She wasn’t in his plans,” Nift said. “I can understand that.”

  My God, so can I, Quinn thought. What’s it doing to me, getting into the heads of these sickos? Hunter thinking like prey, a part of him living inside their skulls. The killer is doing that with his potential victims. It’s part of his game. But I’m not playing a game. Am I?

  “Speaking of commonalities,” Nift said, “the panties on Linda Brooks were the same size and brand as the previous victim’s. We even found a pubic hair for analysis that confirms the fact they were hers. Also, elastic marks, the lay of the material, looks like he temporarily untied the victim’s legs and did the panty exchange postmortem, but before rigor mortis set in.”

  Quinn couldn’t help imagining the killer maneuvering dead limbs into various positions to work off and on the panties. A complicated task, but it might be a chore he for some reason immensely enjoyed. One he was compelled to do as an exercise in total control. Quinn’s stomach did a loop.

  Pearl was giving him her narrowed eye look. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?” Nift asked on the phone.

  “Anything else we might deem important?” Quinn asked.

  “No. Let me know if you happen to find the boobs. And say hello to Pearl.”