Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  For some reason that reminded the chancellor of that cop, Quinn.

  70

  S aturday in the summer. Hot, humid, lushly green. Hardly anything or anyone was moving fast in the area of Waycliffe College. Jody figured the campus would be nearly deserted today. That was in her favor.

  She parked her rental car at the far end of one of the visitor lots, out of sight from most of the campus, including the administration building. There were a few other cars on the lot, mostly students’ vehicles, using the visitors’ lot because it was closer to where they were going than student parking. There were quite a few cars in the students’ lot.

  As she left the cool interior of the car, she glanced around. There were only a few people visible, well off in the distance, and they looked like denim-clad students.

  Jody walked hurriedly toward the psych building, but not so fast that she might draw attention, passing only a few students. Once inside, she was pleased to find that the only class being held was on the second floor. No one seemed to be on the main floor. She made her way down the deserted hall to Professor Elaine Pratt’s office.

  Someone had once advised her that if she was going to do something illegal, she should do it fast.

  She approached the door to the complex of offices and tried the knob. It turned and she was inside.

  She was now faced with three other doors lined up ahead of her. She chose the one that was Professor Pratt’s office and rotated the doorknob.

  But only her sweating hand rotated. The door was locked.

  Prepared for this, Jody reached into her purse and withdrew an expired credit card with a honed edge. This was something Quinn had told her about. She was grateful for his know-how as she slid the card between latch and doorframe, depressing the latch, and the door opened. She was feeling better now. Her nightmare had been what would happen if the card didn’t work and fell down on the other side of the door, where she couldn’t reach it.

  There was no point in agonizing about something in the past; it was best to move forward. Someone, in one of her classes, had stressed that to her.

  She was in. Ready to go forward.

  There was enough light streaming through the window that she wouldn’t have to switch on a lamp.

  She immediately bent to the task of searching through Professor Pratt’s desk, and then her file cabinets.

  Do it fast…

  She was surprised when an hour had passed. And disappointed that she’d been unable to break the encryption code or find any sign of correspondence about her or anything else pertaining to Enders and Coil.

  She did find a stock prospectus for Meeding Holding Company, which seemed to be a parent company of Meeding Properties.

  So what does this mean? That Elaine Pratt is a shareholder?

  So what would that mean? If anything important.

  A faint shadow crossed the desk. Someone walking past outside?

  She heard a door open and close, not near. Her heart began an accelerated beat and she felt flush, nauseated.

  Another door, closer. Leading to the complex of offices. Coming her way.

  That was when Jody realized that when she’d entered she hadn’t relocked the door to Professor Pratt’s office. She backed toward the wall the door was on, with its frosted panes. If anyone peered in, they wouldn’t see her. If anyone entered, Jody would… what?

  Brazen it through, pretend I have an appointment and I’m waiting for Elaine Pratt?

  No, won’t work!

  Plan ahead!

  When the door opens, run out of here like a scalded rabbit, keep my face hidden, become an unknown intruder who’ll eventually be forgotten.

  Like that character in Chicago. Mr. Cellophane.

  A figure appeared in dim silhouette on the frosted glass.

  The doorknob slowly rotated.

  Jody thought she might faint.

  She held her breath, listening to her frightened heart, and pressed motionless against the wall.

  The knob turned all the way and the door opened about six inches. A woman’s hand explored inside the office like some curious tentacled sea creature, found the knob, and turned the raised ridge that activated the lock. Then she pulled the door closed and tested the knob to make sure it was locked.

  Jody got down behind Elaine Pratt’s desk and didn’t so much as breathe out for fear she’d make some slight noise that would be noticed. Someone had checked and assumed Professor Pratt had forgotten to lock her office door, and locked it for her.

  Jody made herself wait ten minutes before moving. Then, since she was behind the desk, she slowly opened and closed its drawers, checking the contents. There was something damned curious there.

  In the bottom drawer was a folder with old photos and news articles about Daniel Danielle, how he’d killed a lot of people, been convicted of murder, and then died in a hurricane.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so curious. After all, Daniel Danielle was a sort of iconic serial killer. And often in the news. Possibly Professor Pratt was researching sociopath behavior for one of her classes. She and her students had analyzed and discussed plenty of grisly subjects, real and fictional. They’d spent almost a week discussing Silence of the Lambs.

  Jody closed the drawer, then took the time to arrange everything in the office as it was when she’d entered.

  She drew a deep breath, told herself to pretend she belonged here in the building, and quickly and silently left the office and made her way back to the hall.

  She was safe in the hall. She was sure no one had seen her enter or exit the suite of offices, and the odds were against her encountering someone who knew her before she left the building. She was simply another faceless visitor on campus.

  She was walking toward the exit at the far end of the hall when she saw a figure stride past where another hall intersected.

  It had all happened too fast and too far away to be sure, but Jody thought the figure might have been Sarah Benham.

  The privacy tag still hung on the doorknob of Olivia’s room at the Hamaker Hotel. From outside came the sounds of the city, the honking horns, racing bus or truck engines, occasional muffled shouts. Far away a jackhammer began its muffled chattering.

  Inside the room, the only sound was the deep and steady rhythm of Olivia’s breathing. Her breasts rose and fell. She was wearing a pink diaphanous nightgown and had one knee raised.

  She straightened the knee.

  Her breathing became fainter, and was underscored by a soft rattling sound. Flat on her back, her head comfortably resting on a pillow, Olivia raised her right hand and made a flitting motion with it, as if trying to shoo away something bothersome.

  Then she lowered her hand and the room was silent.

  71

  W hen she entered the offices of Enders and Coil Monday morning, Jody saw through the glass wall of the conference room that something big was going on. Both Enders and Coil were at the long polished table, Enders standing and talking, gesticulating.

  Three men and two women, all in business suits, were sitting across from them. Jody recognized the lead attorney for Meeding Properties. She didn’t know the other men or the women. As she watched, one of the women raised the water glass before her and took a sip, seemingly only mildly interested in what Enders was saying.

  Dollie Baker, forty-five-year-old paralegal and receptionist, looked up from filing a fingernail and saw Jody gazing into the conference room.

  “Important stuff,” she said.

  Jody had within a week pegged Dollie as too loose with her tongue and the facts to be working at a law firm. And she liked to trail gossip bait.

  Even knowing this, Jody bit. “Important how?”

  “They’re deciding whether to go ahead and raze Dash’s apartment building while Dash is still in the hospital.”

  “They’ve been arguing that for days.”

  “But Dash has been given a release date. She comes home from the hospital tomorrow, if home is still standing.”

/>   That explained the sense of urgency Enders was emitting. He was probably arguing to turn the dinosaur-like wrecking machines loose on the building while it stood empty. That’s how Jody had come to think of the destruction of the apartment building, an attack by iron-jawed prehistoric beasts as might be depicted in a high-tech science fiction movie.

  “Leaving Mildred Dash an invalid with no home to return to would create such a firestorm of bad press, it wouldn’t be worthwhile,” Jody said.

  “You should be telling that to them in there.”

  “Hah! Anyway, I thought that was already decided. So what’s changed?”

  “The development company’s position. They’d rather be the bad guys, figuring it would cost less to repair their reputation than it would to delay the project even longer.”

  “But it isn’t a dollars and-”

  Dollie grinned and held up her hand in a stop signal. “I hear you, Jody. But the fact is, for them and for us, it is a dollars-and-cents issue.”

  “There’s always right and wrong,” Jody said.

  Dollie smiled. “Notice how odd that sounds in here?”

  Jody had noticed. It was as if her words had been absorbed and made meaningless by the deep carpet and thick drapes.

  Dollie gave her a reassuring smile. “Remember, kid, this is a law office.”

  Jody did remember. For a moment she stood watching the silent storm of discussion in the conference room.

  “What are you thinking, Jody?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  She was wondering what the development company’s position would be if the Dash apartment building was occupied by someone other than Mildred Dash.

  Weaver entered Harley Renz’s office and laid a padded yellow envelope on his desk.

  Renz reached into it cautiously, as if fearing something might bite him, and pulled out a plastic tube with a metal plug on the end.

  “Know what those are?” Weaver asked.

  “Thumb drives for a computer,” Renz said.

  “Right. You plug them into a USB port and you can transfer information to or from them.”

  “I know all that. I’m not a computer Luddite, whatever that is. Where’d they come from?”

  Weaver thought the question a little odd, since it was Renz who’d suggested-indirectly, of course-that Weaver enter Dr. Grace Moore’s apartment and search for more information about her patients than her files had provided. Who could tell what kinds of information might be on those drives? Information was Renz’s lifeblood, and nobody knew better than Weaver how to scour an apartment.

  Weaver also knew enough not to answer the question directly. “They came into my possession last night.”

  Renz looked at her carefully across his desk. She noticed how red his eyes were and how he appeared more jowly than ever. As if gravity were tugging at his features extra hard this morning.

  “Anything about Tennyson?” he asked.

  He’d tried to make the question sound casual, but there was a charge in the air that made Weaver’s scalp tingle.

  She could have said she couldn’t know about Tennyson, because Renz had suggested she seek an opportunity to get into Moore’s apartment, and she couldn’t be two places at once. But she simply said, “Nothing.”

  Something was very wrong here. It was time to tiptoe.

  “Harl-Commissioner, is everything all right?”

  He sat back as if the question needed to be mulled over. “Yes. I’d say so.” He leaned forward and began shuffling papers on his desk. A caricature of a busy executive. “We got a double homicide in the West Village, an ambulance shot at on Broadway, a foreign dignitary arrested in a bar fight, a professional escort dead from a heroin overdose in a Midtown hotel… the usual.”

  Professional escort?

  Weaver’s voice was steady. “Got a name on the escort?”

  Renz pretended to check for information in his mess of papers. “Olivia something…”

  Weaver showed no emotion. A game needed to be played here, and she was learning the rules as it went along.

  “Any indication of foul play?”

  “Not really.” He trained sad, angry eyes on her and shrugged. “But who knows for sure?”

  “I’m… sorry,” Weaver said.

  Renz suddenly smiled slyly at her. “What for? You want the escort case?”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. Pretending could have its moments, and once you sold your soul to the devil there was a lot to smile about.

  “If it’s okay with you, sir, I’ll stay on my present assignment with Quinn and his gang.”

  “Watch those people,” Renz said. “All of them. They’re slippery as hell.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Weaver said.

  But it wasn’t the slipperiness of Quinn and Q amp;A that concerned her. Not right now, anyway. Other questions were tumbling around in her brain. Had street-smart Tennyson figured out what was going on and killed Olivia so the murder might be blamed on Weaver? Did he think it would appear that Weaver had killed Olivia as a favor to Renz?

  Sure, Weaver had an alibi; she was illegally searching Dr. Grace Moore’s apartment. Try that one on a judge or jury.

  Had Harry Primo suspected that Olivia was an informer and killed her because she was a threat to his business? Did Tennyson think Weaver actually had killed Olivia? Did Renz suspect her? Had Olivia simply overdosed on heroin and died on her own, leaving behind the other players to decide what had happened?

  There were plenty of questions here that no one wanted asked, much less answered. One thing might lead to another, might lead to total ruin. A balance must be maintained.

  It seemed that the three of them, Renz, Tennyson, and Weaver, would forever be locked together in this grotesque dance. That was how it worked-closer than family.

  God, corruption could be complicated!

  Renz pretended to become preoccupied with the paper storm on his desk, and Weaver left the office.

  Wondering what ever happened to closure?

  72

  T hey had dinner in the brownstone.

  Pearl had outdone herself in the kitchen this evening, stopping at two delis for pre-cooked and heated vegetables that went perfectly with the stuffed pork chops she’d had delivered from a restaurant six blocks away.

  “Delicious,” Quinn proclaimed, wondering if this was as close as he’d ever again come to a home-cooked meal. He pushed his plate away to signify that he was finished.

  “Much better than passable,” Jody said.

  “It’s all in the timing,” Pearl said.

  “What’s that, Mom?”

  “Being a good cook is all in the timing, having everything ready and heated at the same time.”

  Quinn and Jody exchanged glances. Neither knew if Pearl was kidding, so they maintained wooden expressions.

  Pearl brought in vanilla ice cream and coffee for dessert. The ice cream was from D’Agostino, some brand Quinn had never heard of, but it was pretty good. The coffee tasted much like the coffee she made at the office. They ate the ice cream with chocolate syrup and a sprinkling of chopped nuts on it.

  The ice cream was in fact so good that no one spoke until they were finished eating it. They sipped their coffees contentedly without speaking. A family scene too late for Rockwell. Quinn was reminded of his first marriage, with May, when their daughter Lauri was young and living at home. Somehow the memory didn’t make him sad. This was good, what he, Pearl, and Jody had. For Quinn it was like an unexpected bonus. He wondered if the other two felt the same way. He was pretty sure Jody did. Not so sure about Pearl.

  Jody dabbed at her lips with a napkin, which she then wadded and put on the table. “Either of you heard of Waycliffe College being involved with Meeding Properties?” she asked.

  “Involved how?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard mention of the college at the firm, and it’s usually in an odd way, as if there’s some kind of secret connection.”

 
; “Some kind of legal matter,” Quinn suggested. “I hear they do that kind of thing there.”

  Pearl gave him a be serious look.

  Jody shook her head, not noticing Quinn’s sarcasm. “No, I, er, checked and the firm doesn’t have anything pending with the school.”

  “Checked how?” Quinn asked.

  “Never mind that.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Snitch, the cat, appeared and Jody placed her paper deli dish on the floor so the animal could lap up what was left of her ice cream.

  “Maybe there’s something hush-hush about the way the internship dropped into my lap after Macy Collins was killed.”

  “You’re in an advanced student program,” Pearl reminded her. She couldn’t help sounding a little proud. “There’s nothing that unusual about you getting the open internship.”

  “Yeah, so maybe I got the wrong impression. About Meeding Properties, too. They’re always whispering about that at the firm.”

  Quinn sipped his coffee and studied Jody over the cup’s plasticized paper rim, which was beginning to break down from the heat. “You’re linking the law firm, Meeding Industries, and Waycliffe College together?”

  “And Sarah Benham.”

  “The woman you sometimes go to lunch with?”

  “Yeah. We’ve become pretty good friends. She’s also a former Enders and Coil client, but only in a small way. A class action suit against a mutual fund. Diddly-squat for everyone but the lawyers. Anyway, I’m sure I heard her mention my name when she and Jack Enders were talking.”

  “While you were eavesdropping,” Pearl said.

  “I was out at Waycliffe today and I think I caught a glimpse of her.”

  Pearl placed her heated, cooled, and reheated coffee cup where the tablecloth was already stained. “So what were you doing at Waycliffe?”

  “I’d gone through all the files at Enders and Coil. Because of the Mildred Dash dilemma.”

  “Dilemma?” Quinn asked.

  “Sure. You must have been reading about it in the papers. How Mildred Dash is in a coma and she’s-”