Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  Quinn flipped the phone shut without replying.

  “Nift?” Pearl asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want some more sausage?”

  “ No.”

  Jody stopped for a bagel at a Starbucks near Enders and Coil. She’d often had lunch with Sarah Benham, but this was their first breakfast. The two women had become even closer friends, though Sarah was still something of an enigma to Jody.

  They were at a table near the back. Sarah had a cinnamon scone, Jody a toasted everything bagel with cream cheese and strawberry jam. Both had tall lattes. Jody couldn’t help thinking how much better this was than her mother’s toasted frozen waffles and microwaved sausages.

  “So how’s your mom doing on the Daniel Danielle investigation?” Sarah asked, and took a cautious sip of her steaming latte.

  The question caught Jody off guard. “I’m surprised you’re interested?”

  “Why?”

  “You never seemed interested before.”

  “The killer’s apparently branching out,” Sarah said. “He killed two women this time, according to the news. I was just wondering what that might mean.”

  “We didn’t have time to talk about it this morning.”

  “I thought you were intrigued by your mom’s work.”

  “I am.” Jody took a bite of bagel and chewed.

  Sarah smiled. “But you’d still rather be an attorney than a cop.”

  “As of now, yes.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very strong commitment.”

  “It’s not.”

  Both women sipped their lattes, thinking about the answer that had popped out.

  Jody, not committed?

  “Something about Enders and Coil?” Sarah asked.

  “About one of their cases. A woman refusing to move out of her apartment so the client, a big development company, can tear down her building.”

  “Sounds like the plot of a movie.”

  “Or a novel.”

  “Why do they want to tear down the apartment building?”

  “They want the entire block for some big project. Office buildings, condos… they have no moral-or possibly legal-right to just plow this poor woman under.”

  “What about eminent domain?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Jody said. “Believe me.”

  “Lots of times, when you’ve finally finished thinking things through, they are simple. That’s when you make up your mind.”

  Jody laughed. “I’m not there yet.”

  Sarah looked at her more seriously. “How important to you is this woman’s plight?”

  “Very.”

  “But why? Do you know her?”

  “I feel that I do.”

  Sarah frowned. “Does anyone at Enders and Coil know how you feel?”

  “To a degree.”

  “I think you should give this a lot of thought before siding with a woman who’s going to have to move out one way or the other. You might be risking your career, your future.”

  “How do you know she’ll have to move?”

  Sarah shook her head, her expression sad. “They always do, in these kinds of cases. It’s in almost everyone’s best interest.”

  “Everyone’s but hers.”

  “There’s no denying that. But maybe they’ll offer her a large settlement to agree to move.”

  “They’ve done that and she’s refused.

  “Did she say why?”

  “No. But it isn’t about money.”

  “What money can’t do, maybe more money can. Or some other kind of persuasion.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  Sarah leaned closer across the fake marble table. Steam from the lattes rose as if the two women were engaged in some sort of alchemy. “I know someone who has a connection at the developer, Jody. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you disassociate yourself from this case, and this woman’s hopeless cause.”

  Jody was surprised, but she realized she shouldn’t be. She actually didn’t know much about Sarah Benham. “You know something Enders and Coil doesn’t?”

  “Probably.” Sarah studied Jody and then shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you, Jody. It would be betraying the confidence of a friend. I wouldn’t betray our confidences that way.”

  Jody sampled her latte and still found it too hot to sip. “See?” she said.

  “See what?”

  “It really isn’t that simple.”

  Fifteen minutes later Sarah left the coffee shop first.

  Through the window displaying pastry, Jody watched her join a sunlit crowd of people massed on the sidewalk, waiting for the traffic light to flash a walk signal so they could cross the intersection. The signal appeared like a silent command. After an aggressive cab bullied its way through a right turn, Sarah disappeared in the flow of pedestrians.

  Jody still had time to spare, so she opened her laptop. But she didn’t tap into the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi. Instead she inserted a thumb drive containing copies of Enders and Coil files and began rummaging through them. If someone from the firm, which was only a few blocks away, happened to enter the coffee shop and saw what she was doing, it would probably mean immediate dismissal. And less immediately, but just as likely, prosecution.

  Well, life wasn’t without risk.

  Jody thought about Mildred Dash trapped and terrorized in her apartment, waging the good fight against an evil manifestation of capitalism, and pressed on.

  She enjoyed the challenge and couldn’t help becoming engrossed in what she was doing. She came across no actual evidence of criminality, but she was surprised to find e-mail exchanges with Waycliffe College. All the e-mails were encrypted, and she was unable to break the code. But she did notice that some of the messages bore Elaine Pratt’s email address. That surprised her, and kept her at her task longer than she’d intended.

  Futilely trying to decode the e-mails made her almost twenty minutes late when she arrived at Enders and Coil.

  That didn’t seem to matter, though, in light of more important events. Word had arrived that Mildred Dash had been terrorized by an intruder last night and had been found by a watchman early this morning in a coma. She was hospitalized and in intensive care.

  Associate attorneys were dashing about or yammering on the phone. Jack Enders and Joseph Coil both appeared somber and determined, and totally in control. Jody had never before seen or been part of an event of such urgency at the firm.

  She was assigned to continue calling the hospital and family to learn the seriousness of Mildred’s condition. Meanwhile, litigators at Enders and Coil would be busy discussing the legal ramifications of razing her apartment building while her unit was unoccupied.

  Here was opportunity, if they seized it.

  Hours counted. Maybe minutes.

  No one actually came right out and said it would be best if Mildred Dash died, but it was on the tips of a lot of tongues.

  Jody was disgusted, but like everyone else at the firm, hanging in suspense. The mood was contagious and oddly, undeniably, pleasurable. She could see it on the faces of her coworkers. They loved being part of the drama.

  Suddenly Jody wondered, was this what Sarah Benham had known about when she’d cautioned her at breakfast?

  67

  Leighton, Wisconsin, 1986

  “You’re sure your mother thinks you went to visit your aunt in Milwaukee?” Rory asked Sherri.

  “She saw me get on the Greyhound bus. What she didn’t see was when it stopped to pick up more passengers, and let some off, down the road in Grantville. I got off along with some other people. Nobody noticed.”

  “So how’d you get back here?”

  “Hitchhiked.” She flashed him a wicked grin. “And you know why.”

  Rory did. His mother was out of town, in Milwaukee with a new boyfriend, and he and Sherri could make good use of her house. Rory simply had to be home now and then in the evening, so he could answer the phone if his mother called
to check on him. And he would be home. With Sherri.

  That was the plan.

  They were standing now outside Rory’s mother’s Chevy, parked near where Duffy had died and been buried. Where that other girl-the one only Rory and the killer knew about-had been tortured, murdered, and then buried. It gave Rory a kind of chill when he walked holding hands with Sherri and stood kissing her over the dead girl’s grave. It was a feeling he found he liked.

  Sherri thought she was having that effect, and kissed him back hard, using her tongue.

  Rory almost immediately had an erection. Beneath him was a closely kept secret only he and one other person knew. And the other person-the killer-thought only he knew what had happened here.

  Rory remembered how the girl had been bound and gagged, staring straight up at nothing. The expression on her face when the killer began to do things-such small, delicate things at first-to her with the knife. The faint movements she made. Her quivering, unfeeling fingers. The pleading sounds emanating from her taped lips. The way her nude body vibrated near the end. Most of all, her eyes… her eyes…

  What really got him was that she looked something like Sherri. Same type, anyway. Different hair, but definitely the same type.

  “… Take one,” Sherri was saying. “They’ll definitely make you feel good.”

  He looked down and saw that she was holding those same pills from her mother’s medicine cabinet.

  “I feel good already,” Rory said. If you only knew…

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” Sherri said, and pushed the vial of tablets toward him.

  His manhood having been questioned, Rory shoved them away, causing several to spill out onto the ground.

  Sherri punched his shoulder, a glancing blow, but it hurt. “Now look! You dickhead! You spilled them!”

  She was angry with him. How angry will she be when she figures out I killed her precious dog? Rory knew she was smart. She would eventually find out about Duffy.

  He bent down and began picking up the small white tablets, digging some of them out from beneath dead leaves.

  “Get them all!” Sherri demanded.

  When he had all or most of the dropped tablets in his cupped hand, Rory straightened up and threw them out toward the deeper woods.

  “What the fuck, Rory?” She came at him in anger, batting at him, and the nail of her little finger scraped the corner of his left eye. The sharp pain enraged him.

  He slapped her face hard, thinking about the girl beneath them in the earth, how she’d died. When she’d died.

  How she’d died.

  When Sherri, stunned, bent over to spit out blood, Rory brought up his knee and drove it into her midsection. He caught her to break her fall.

  He hadn’t actually planned any of this. It was simply a sort of alternate sequence of things he could do. A work of imagination, really.

  But damned if that imagined sequence hadn’t begun. And he knew he would let it play out. It was like it was meant to be.

  If it wasn’t meant to be, why had he prepared for it without even thinking about it?

  Maybe it had something to do with what he’d seen in the clearing, the god, and the girl in the ground.

  Maybe he now had the secret knowledge and was acting on it. Nothing in this world really mattered compared to this.

  The girl in the ground, she didn’t matter anymore. All she was now was memory. Secret memory.

  He went to the Chevy and opened the trunk, got the rope he’d brought, and the roll of thick electrician’s tape.

  It had only taken seconds, and Sherri was still curled on the ground, still struggling to catch her breath.

  Rory stood over her, listening to her labored, gasping breathing, thinking about the dead girl. He bent down, lashed her ankles together, and cut the long end of the knotted rope with his pocket knife. Odd that he didn’t recall taking the knife from his pocket and opening it. He maneuvered Sherri’s body around on the leaves and tied her wrists tightly behind her back. Hurts? Too bad. He yanked her up and adjusted her body so she was kneeling, then ran a rope between the knotted ropes on her ankles and wrists. Thinking about the dead girl. He pulled that rope tight, bending back Sherri’s body like the dead girl’s had been. She’d almost recovered enough to scream, so he picked up the tape he’d gotten from the trunk, reeled off a long strip, and wrapped it firmly over her mouth, around to the back of her neck, thinking about the dead girl.

  Rory used his knife to cut away Sherri’s clothes. He watched her dark and desperate eyes, thinking about the dead girl. Then he straightened up and looked around. The moon was almost full, and there was plenty of light in the clearing. But no one around to see what he was doing. Not out here in this desolate part of town, on this remote road.

  He moved around in front of Sherri and looked intently into her face, seeing the terror and incomprehension there. She stared back, pleading. He smiled, thinking about the dead girl.

  He stood where she could see him wipe the knife’s blade on the thigh of his jeans and then test its sharpness with his finger. He rolled her forward, onto her stomach, and began using the knife on her back as he’d seen the killer do to the dead girl. Sherri made the same horrified, muted noises the dead girl had made.

  After a while, he put her back on her knees, her body bowed in an almost impossible arch. Perhaps someone with a powerful telescope, on some distant star, could see the horrified expression in her staring eyes.

  There must be someone out there in the cosmos who can help you.

  Well, maybe not.

  He began working again with the knife, keeping his thumb and forefinger low on the blade, the way the killer had done with the dead girl. The screams she made now were like the dead girl’s had been, full throated but able to travel only as far as her taped mouth before changing to a frenetic low humming that barely escaped into the night.

  He worked on her for quite a while there in the otherwise silent, isolated clearing, thinking about the dead girl. Her body began a frenetic bouncing and vibration, her bare breasts jiggling and heaving. This wasn’t a surprise. Rory got comfortable and watched her eyes, watched them very carefully until all light and comprehension went out of them. Like the dead girl’s eyes.

  Then he used the knife to remove her breasts. It was easier than he’d imagined, no bone or gristle to cut, only soft flesh.

  He considered throwing the severed breasts into the woods, letting the animals dispose of them. Then he had a better idea and decided to keep them.

  Breathing hard, he stood up and went back to the car. He wrapped the breasts in an old wadded plastic cleaner’s bag tightly, so they wouldn’t leak. Then he got a shovel from the trunk.

  The earth was soft, and it didn’t take long to bury Sherri.

  Standing in the middle of the clearing, Rory looked carefully around him. It was as if he and Sherri had never been here. He would get back in his mother’s car and drive away, and all of this might never have happened.

  It might never have happened, so it didn’t happen.

  There would be a big fuss over Sherri, but she’d left on the bus and not come back. Not the first girl like her to do that. Things would quiet down after a while. The world would go on. People would forget.

  He wouldn’t forget Sherri, though. Not ever.

  The dead girl.

  68

  New York, the present

  Q uinn decided to talk to someone about Dr. Grace Moore’s files himself. After all, hadn’t her patient Linda called on him for help? Hadn’t there been dozens of other women who called Q and A or the NYPD recently maintaining that they were in danger, requesting protection? There simply were too few people to protect them, even if most of their calls weren’t legitimate and they weren’t in actual danger.

  The trouble was, some of them were in danger, and it was impossible to know which. It was a small percentage, but they were real. Linda Brooks and Grace Moore had been real, and the danger had been real, and here Quinn was investi
gating their deaths when he felt he should have known or sensed something that would have prevented them.

  That was the problem; he couldn’t predict the future, and the killer could forge it.

  The building containing Dr. Moore’s office was a haven from the heat. Everything seemed to be made of marble other than the occasional potted plant. Quinn found himself wondering what it would feel like to lie down on the cool lobby floor.

  Per Quinn’s instructions, Pearl and Fedderman were helping Sal and Harold canvass two square blocks of the neighborhood around where Linda Brooks and the doctor had been murdered. Old-fashioned, irreplaceable police legwork. Quinn wasn’t sure where Weaver was; she was Renz’s special conduit to the commissioner’s office, which made her something of an independent operator. Quinn liked it that way. Pearl and Weaver were better kept apart. They could be fuse and explosive.

  The elevator in Dr. Moore’s building was warm and slow and seemed to stop at every other floor before Quinn got out of the stifling little car. A woman in the elevator had been wearing too much perfume, and he was still trying to fight the urge to sneeze.

  When Quinn entered the doctor’s office, he found himself in a small anteroom with cream-colored walls and beige furniture. There was a rounded walnut desk with a computer, a printer, and phone on it. He heard nothing but the faint rushing sound of traffic in the street below.

  He called hello.

  A few seconds later, a door to what he assumed was a larger office opened. A distraught-looking young woman with frizzy dark hair pulled back to make her round face seem even rounder, peered out at him through dark-framed glasses. “Help you?”

  Quinn thought she looked like the one who needed help. Maybe with her midterm exams.

  He flashed his identification and explained who he was and why he was there.

  The young woman, who said her name was Cleo, looked confused and started gnawing her lower lip with large white teeth. “I’m not sure if I should even talk to you about one of Dr. Moore’s patients, much less let you see the case file.”

  Quinn gave her a smile that surprised her with its kindness. “What were you to the deceased, dear?”