Pulse fq-7

by John Lutz

  “Not much one way or the other. Primo loses an Olivia or two every year.”

  Renz suppressed a surge of grief and anger. “I suppose.” It was amazing, he thought, the way the truth could be bent and the past revised.

  “I was thinking it’d be nice to work plainclothes.” Tennyson smiled. “I’m getting tired of dressing like a bum and not showering. Of course, nobody’s ever completely clean.”

  “Nobody’s ever out of danger.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing.”

  “I’ll see about the plainclothes assignment,” Renz said. “Over in Queens. Plenty of white-collar investigations there.”

  “That’d be fine. Maybe you could replace me with Weaver. I been seeing her around lately, out of uniform, almost like she was tailing me. She’d make a great decoy, playing the whore. If you could keep her from actually screwing the suspects.”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “I was onto her from the beginning and she knows nothing,” Tennyson said. “I guarantee that.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “For all of us.” Tennyson hitched his thumbs into his vest and moved toward the door. Before going out, he turned. “Sorry again about Olivia.”

  Renz didn’t move for a while, thinking about Tennyson. His suggestion about Weaver was worth considering. Weaver as a decoy hooker. Like typecasting.

  78

  In the offices of Enders and Coil was what Jody could only think of as a subdued celebration.

  Mildred Dash’s death solved a lot of problems.

  Jack Enders, holding what looked like a scotch on the rocks, leaned toward Jody in passing and whispered, “ Deus ex machina.” He grinned. “Know what that means?”

  “I think it’s Latin for ‘We didn’t have to kill her,’ ” Jody said.

  Enders moved away, holding the grin for her benefit.

  Joseph Coil edged up to Jody and beamed down at her. “You feeling okay? You look a little pale.”

  “My stomach’s a bit upset,” Jody said.

  “The excitement, maybe.” He took a sip of whatever he was drinking. It looked like water. “Listen, Jody, I know this case was of particular interest to you. That you even had a special sympathy for Mildred Dash. You might find it difficult to believe, but we all felt that way about her. At least most of us.”

  “The law is the law,” Jody said.

  Coil looked at her seriously. “No, Jody, it isn’t.”

  Dollie the receptionist squeezed past them, bumping Coil’s elbow so some of his drink spilled on Jody’s arm. Unaware that she’d caused the problem, Dollie continued on her way.

  Coil took the napkin he’d been using to hold his glass and patted Jody’s arm dry.

  “You do look rather peaked,” he said. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Rest up. Give it a new start tomorrow.”

  Jody smiled at him and nodded. There was no way to dislike this man on a personal level, even if he was a highway robber.

  “I think I will,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Take in a show tonight,” Coil suggested. “Forget about this.”

  “Maybe I will. Something with a happy ending.”

  “It all depends what kind of ticket you buy,” Coil said, raising his glass to her and showing her his back.

  Meaning my future is my choice.

  Everything everybody said in this place seemed to have at least a double meaning. As if life were a courtroom and their words would be reviewed on appeal, and God help them if they were too honest and plainspoken.

  Jody was getting tired of that delicate verbal dance and the alertness and dexterity it demanded.

  What the hell aren’t they telling me?

  She didn’t go out to a play or swoon into a faint after leaving the firm’s ghoulish celebration. Where Jody went after leaving Enders and Coil was to the Meeding Properties demolition site.

  Meeding had obviously been prepared and wasted no time. Mildred Dash’s possessions had been removed from her apartment and put in storage, in case an heir chose to claim them. Where her apartment had stood was nothing but a cracked concrete slab.

  The development company seemed to have sprung to work only moments after Mildred’s death. No doubt on the advice of Enders and Coil, they’d made sure the deed was done before any possible sort of stay could be issued.

  The block-long wound in the landscape was now unbroken by anything higher than three feet. Yellow bulldozers were scooping up dirt and debris and dropping it into the beds of sturdy-looking trucks. The trucks bounced and shuddered as each mass of weight suddenly crashed down with the metallic clang of the dozer blades. Then they emitted much roaring and clouds of dark exhaust and drove away. Workers in hard hats stood off to the side, leaning on shovels and conferring like wise men witnessing some solemn event.

  Well, they were right about that. The end of Mildred Dash’s long struggle, everything she’d fought for being devoured by yellow monsters, was indeed somber. Unfair and final and debasing. As far as the eye could see was the mud of defeat.

  A short, heavy woman with a round, seamed face like a withered apple approached Jody. She was wearing joggers, jeans, and a T-shirt. At first Jody assumed she was one of the workers and was too careless to wear her hard hat. She looked familiar, but Jody couldn’t place her.

  “The hospital waiting room this morning,” the woman said, seeing that Jody was searching her memory. “We weren’t introduced. I’m Iva Dunn, Mildred Dash’s niece.”

  “Jody Jason.”

  “I know who you are,” Iva Dunn said. “And I know of your concern about Mildred losing her apartment.”

  “I thought she had a legal right to live there. Or at least to slow down the process of eviction so she had some kind of leverage.”

  “She did slow it down,” Iva said, with a glance at open space where the apartment building had stood.

  “But not enough.” Jody pointed. “Look at them, like voracious monsters eating up the past and the future.”

  “I just see machinery,” Iva said.

  Jody shook her head. “I see defeat.”

  “I thought you might. That’s why when I saw you I came over here. Not just to thank you for your efforts, but because you really should believe that Mildred won her battle.”

  Jody looked at her, confused. Iva Dunn seemed serious. Joseph Coil was so right about the truth being complicated. “How so?” she asked. “The building is gone, along with her apartment. Let’s face it; the developer got lucky and Mildred died instead of hanging on for weeks or months. It no longer remains necessary to physically remove her from where she lived for over twenty years, or to stop the demolition.”

  Iva gave her that knowing smile again. “It was never Mildred’s intention to actually stop the demolition. Or even to delay it all that much.”

  “I understand that. But still and all…”

  “Mildred knew she’d be gone within weeks. If she had to die soon, she wanted to die here. And she got her wish. Believe me, Jody, she won.”

  Jody looked again at the yellow dozers scooping up the debris of a life, of so many lives, claimed not by corporate progress but by time. Simple and inexorable time.

  “We all fight different battles, Jody. We tell different lies and we know different truths.”

  Jody thought Iva Dunn sounded a lot like Joseph Coil.

  “If that’s how Mildred saw it, then I guess it’s her victory at that,” she said, turning around.

  But Iva Dunn was gone.

  Jody stayed for a while and watched the demolition.

  Malleability.

  79

  Quinn sat at his Q and A desk and wondered. What was the secret, or secrets, connecting Waycliffe College, Enders and Coil, and the series of young women’s deaths? Victims who sometimes bore striking resemblances to Pearl.

  If he was a copycat killer, this murderer had done his homework. Macy Collins, interning at Enders and Coil, might have learned something
she shouldn’t have, and paid with her life. The method of that madness was eerily like that of Daniel Danielle. Perhaps Macy had triggered the other murders, reenergized the bloodlust. Possibly this killer was the real Daniel Danielle, and not a copycat.

  It was unlikely, though, that Daniel had survived the hurricane-spawned tornadoes of central Florida.

  Most likely his was among the many unrecovered bodies after the deadly hurricane, and the copycat had known the police would at least have to investigate with Daniel Danielle in mind.

  Quinn couldn’t keep his mind from picking at the subject.

  How might Jody fit in? After all, she was a student at Waycliffe.

  No doubt she’d asked herself the same question.

  What’s the thread connecting a victim of Daniel Danielle’s-or a copycat’s-to Enders and Coil, and to Waycliffe College? Quinn’s mood became grim. And possibly to Pearl’s daughter, Jody?

  The phone jangled so abruptly it made his body jerk.

  There’s such a thing as concentrating too hard.

  He reached for the receiver and pressed it to his ear, at the same time glancing at caller ID.

  “Whaddya know, Jerry?” he asked Lido.

  “Something you should,” Lido said. “I was on my computer, giving my browser a workout, when it came up with something interesting. A couple of kids trying to camp out illegally and build a fire pit dug it up.”

  “Fire pit?”

  “Yeah. They dig down a couple of feet so they can build a fire slightly below ground level and it won’t be spotted from a distance.”

  “Smart.”

  “Not this time. They happened to be on top of a shallow grave and dug up a body.”

  Quinn had been leaning back in his chair. He let it tilt forward. “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Kids had their cell phones handy and called it in right away. Creeped the hell out of them. That was the end of the camping trip.”

  “Body identified?”

  “Not yet. Woman probably in her twenties, average size, what look like knife nicks on some bones, like she was tortured with a blade. Body bent back and bound. She was buried in an awkward position.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah. The ropes hadn’t rotted completely away. Neither had the tape that was used as a gag.”

  “Ropes rotted away? How old is this body?”

  “The M.E. there figures at least twenty-five years.”

  “Where’s there?”

  “Near Leighton, Wisconsin.”

  “Long way from here. Long time ago.”

  “They might know who it is. Girl named Sherri Klinger, disappeared in nineteen eighty-six. Her family’s since moved out of the area. Father died five years ago. A mother’s all that’s left. They’ve contacted her, but I can’t scare up any info on that yet.”

  Quinn was silent for a while, trying to process this.

  “It might mean nothing,” he said.

  “Yeah, but I got a couple of things I’d like to fax to you. A police artist’s drawing of how the dead woman might have looked with flesh on her. Also, there are some old photographs of Sherri Klinger.”

  Even as Lido was speaking, the fax machine on the other side of the office started to click and buzz.

  “Coming through,” Quinn said, and the two men sat and waited.

  When the buzzing and clicking stopped, and a beeper sounded, Quinn stood up and went over to the fax machine.

  He drew four pages from the plastic basket. The first was the police artist’s rendition of how the dead woman might have looked when alive, front and profile. The three accompanying pages were copies of old newspaper photos of Sherri Klinger.

  All of them looked like Pearl.

  Quinn stood staring for several seconds then, carrying the faxes, returned to his desk.

  “Pearl,” he said.

  “Not exactly,” Lido said, “but it could be her sister. Anyway, that was the first body.”

  “What?”

  “A cadaver dog found another body, buried about twenty feet from Sherri’s Klinger’s grave. Young woman, killed the same way as Sherri. Haven’t identified that one yet.”

  “She’ll resemble Pearl,” Quinn said.

  And then said something else, under his breath:

  “Daniel Danielle.”

  80

  Quinn phoned Chancellor Schueller at Waycliffe and posed the same questions.

  The chancellor’s voice got higher, as if he were experiencing sudden gravitational pull. He said, absently, “I’m not aware of any of these so-called connections. As for Professor Pratt gathering material for a topical subject… why, that’s easy enough to understand.”

  Yet you seemed troubled when I asked you about it.

  “I suppose,” Quinn said.

  Schueller absently repeated it. “An eminent domain case in the city… does it have something to do with Waycliffe?”

  “It might.” Quinn could picture Schueller, youthful and dynamic, as university chancellors went, seated at his desk, sucking his unlit pipe, wearing his blazer with the leather elbow patches, lying his ass off.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  “Ah! Yes!” Schueller said. Was he snapping his fingers, up there at Waycliffe? He was trying to sell what he was saying; Quinn could easily sense that, even over the phone. For a guy like Schueller, who was used to lying and was practiced and smooth at it, the slight upward pitch of his voice told Quinn he was hearing bullshit.

  Quinn waited.

  “I remember now,” Schueller said. “If I’m not mistaken, some of Waycliffe’s money is invested in Meeding Properties stock. But then so are the funds of a number of investment firms.”

  “I’m thinking of a law firm that recently celebrated a woman’s death so they could advise their clients to move in on her property.”

  “You’re speaking of Enders and Coil, I assume. We and that firm have a long history. They employ several Waycliffe alumni. Two associates and an intern, if memory serves.”

  “I think it does.”

  “Even students bright enough to matriculate at Waycliffe like to party,” Schueller said.

  Quinn couldn’t argue with that.

  “Law firms aside, why do you suddenly inquire about a serial killer in connection with Waycliffe?” Schueller asked.

  “He isn’t nearly finished.”

  “Good Lord! How can you know that?”

  “There were two similar murders in Wisconsin,” Quinn said.

  “Recently?”

  “About twenty-five years ago. Two young women, buried not far apart.”

  “Surely that has nothing to do with what’s happening in New York now.”

  “ Surely is a word I use carefully.”

  “I understand that. But what have murders that happened long ago in Leighton, Wisconsin, have to do with-”

  “Did I mention Leighton?”

  For a fraction of a second, Schueller was silent. When he did speak, there was no uncertainty in his voice. “I’m pretty sure you did. Or maybe I saw or heard it on the news without realizing it and it stuck in my mind.”

  “That word sure again,” Quinn said.

  “Perhaps, like many people, I use it too much,” Schueller said.

  “I think we all do,” Quinn said. “I overheard some detectives talking about the Wisconsin cases and was sure somebody mentioned Waycliffe. He might not even have said that, but something that rhymes with it. Or maybe somebody named Waycliffe. Turns out it had nothing to do with the college. You’ve satisfied my curiosity, Chancellor.”

  “Good. That’s more or less our business.”

  “I appreciate you taking the time.”

  “Those deaths in Wisconsin,” Schueller said, “is there some suspicion that they somehow, in some manner, involved Waycliffe College?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m interested in anything that involves our young people. Or our grand tradition. I’m
proud to say there aren’t many historical black marks on this institution. I’d appreciate it if you’d confirm my belief that no one at Waycliffe was involved.”

  Quinn considered lying to him, then decided that if Schueller knew more than he was telling, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let him sweat.

  “We always try to look at every possibility,” he said. “Thanks again for your time, Chancellor.”

  He hung up before Schueller had a chance to reply.

  The chancellor sat silently for a long while, trying to think of something that rhymed with Waycliffe.

  The sun sent angled rays of gold through the tall windows of the Albert A. Aal Memorial Library, illuminating the Crime Fiction section of the Literary Department. The rays were also heating the glue of the book spines so that they emitted the certain smell that could be found only in repositories of old books. Ms. Culver loved that smell.

  The morning should have been conducive to her happiness, but it wasn’t.

  “Amazon announced again that it’s selling more e-books than conventional paper and text books,” Ms. Culver said. She was woefully reading the news online while seated at one of the library’s computers, but Penny thought it would be wise not to point that out.

  Instead, she said, “Someone told me that at one time people thought the gramophone would destroy the book market. That people would be making celebrities of professional narrators rather than writers. Folks would be no more interested in whoever wrote what was being read than they’re interested in screenplay writers today.”

  “It makes a kind of sense,” Ms. Culver said.

  “Yet books continued to thrive.”

  Ms. Culver didn’t bother looking over at her. She didn’t see how you could make the comparison. “Apples and bicycles.”

  “Those are still thriving, too,” Penny pointed out.

  One of the library doors opened and closed. Not time yet for the mail, so it should be a reader. Both Penny and Ms. Culver turned to peer toward the front of the library.

  A tall, thin but potbellied man in a wrinkled Armani suit appeared around the corner of nonfiction. Larry Fedderman, showing the effects of the heat outside the comparatively cool and quiet library.