by John Lutz
“I’d describe talking to you as a struggle. In fact—”
“Look like the same knife that killed the other married couples?” Quinn interrupted. Sometimes it was difficult to maintain a businesslike atmosphere with Pearl around.
“The Night Prowler’s knife? Yeah, it could have been. Remember, I’ve only done the prelim, so that’s all I can tell you right now.”
“Nift—”
“Let’s go,” Quinn said, gripping Pearl’s elbow and steering her away. After a few steps she jerked her arm out of his grasp and gave him a look he felt bounce off the back of his skull.
They went into the kitchen to examine the carnage.
There was the husband on the floor, dead with his eyes open in suspended surprise. There was the wife about five feet away from him, lying on her back in a bed of blood, with her legs splayed and her bared breasts carved by a madman. Her left nipple was missing. Pearl thought she saw it on the floor near the woman’s hip, but it was difficult to know for sure, the way it was coated with dried blood.
“He’s getting more violent,” Pearl said, feeling bile rise in her throat. Don’t get sick and lose it. Not in front of Quinn. Or Nift. Can’t be weak….
“Check out the table,” Quinn said.
Pearl looked to her left and saw an open milk carton.
She went over and peered closely at it without touching it. “Expiration date’s not for another three days.” She touched the carton lightly now with the inside of her bare wrist. “Room temperature.”
Two detectives who’d been in a back room, apparently the bedroom, entered the kitchen. One was a seriously overweight guy with a shaved head. His partner was a handsome African American in his forties who looked as if he worked out and lived in a health store. They were Egan’s troops.
Quinn and Pearl reached for their shields. “We’re—”
“We know who you are,” the bald one said. He gave Quinn a nasty grin. “I thought you were assigned to juvenile.”
“I’m Lou Jefferson,” said the black cop. “My partner’s Wayne Frist.”
Pearl was giving Frist a dead-eyed look. “We all going to cooperate?” she asked.
Frist looked away as if dismissing her.
“As long as we’re here together,” Jefferson said, “we might as well make nice.”
“We already got the victims’ names,” Quinn said, trying to prime the pump.
“Here’s some more on them.” Jefferson was referring to his notepad. “They owned a jewelry store on Forty-seventh, L and L’s Diamond Emporium. I know it; it’s one of those long, narrow places lined with showcases. They sell mostly diamonds, but also other kinds of gems and jewelry. There are a couple of valuable pieces laying around the apartment, but Wayne and I just finished tossing the bedroom. Nothing seems to have been stolen, but we’ll try to get an inventory from somebody who’ll know.”
“Lou…,” Frist said, sending an angry look Jefferson’s way. Clearly, he thought Jefferson was being too cooperative.
“Anybody see or hear anything suspicious?” Quinn asked.
“We haven’t talked to the neighbors or doorman yet. We just got here about twenty minutes ago.”
“I’ve gotta get some air before I puke,” Frist said with a sideways glance at Quinn. He eased around a puddle of blood and out the door.
“He seems so sensitive,” Pearl said.
Jefferson paid her no attention and addressed Quinn. “You talked to the ME, so he told you about stab wounds and such?”
“Yeah, he was very cooperative.”
“For such a dickhead,” Pearl added.
Jefferson grinned and flipped his notepad closed. “I heard she was kinda rowdy,” he said to Quinn.
“Oh, she is.”
Not giving up his grin, Jefferson gave them a little half salute and left the kitchen to join his partner.
“What a putz,” Pearl said.
“Forget being testy for a while. What do you think here?”
“Gotta be our guy,” Pearl said.
Quinn stooped low and looked at the couple whose marriage had ended so suddenly and unexpectedly. Lisa had been quite beautiful. Leon, the older of the two, with gray hair and beard stubble, had been a lucky man.
Pearl went to the refrigerator and opened it. “Gift box of chocolates,” she said. “Expensive. Any woman would appreciate a present like that.”
Quinn stood up, hearing the cartilage in his knees crack. “I’m sure we’ll learn that Lisa loved chocolate.”
“And she loved jewelry, judging by the wedding ring she slept in and those diamond stud earrings she must have been too tired to remove when she went to bed last night. They look like they cost what a cop makes in a year.”
“She and Hubby owned the shop,” Quinn said, “so why not?”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” Pearl said. “I was complaining.”
There was nothing unexpected in the bedroom. The kingsize bed was unmade, two pillows obviously used and the covers thrown back. It looked as if the bed’s occupants had gotten up in mild haste and expected to return.
Pearl and Quinn didn’t spend a lot of time there.
When they returned to the living room, the techs were still busy and Nift hadn’t left. He was talking on the phone near the door. Pearl drifted away and took a short tour of the rest of the apartment, in part to admire the decor.
When she got back, Quinn was standing by the window. Pearl went over and stood next to him, then looked down to see what he was staring at.
Jefferson and Frist were below, talking to the uniformed doorman, who must have just come on duty, his schedule altered by the murders.
“I went into the dining room,” Pearl said softly. “There’s a vase of yellow roses in there. Fresh ones.”
Quinn looked over at her.
“This is the third murder with at least one yellow rose present someplace in the apartment.”
“More pattern, huh?”
“I’d say so. And it’s always possible Mary Navarre, the only roseless victim, received roses earlier and they wilted and she threw them out. I know they weren’t in her trash, but she might have dropped them down to the incinerator.”
Fedderman entered and walked over to join them.
“Let’s go,” Quinn said, sounding businesslike.
“Where?” Fedderman asked.
“It’s ten o’clock. Frist and Jefferson are down there interviewing the doorman, who was no doubt asleep at the time of the murders and doesn’t know anything. You two start with the neighbors. By the time Frist and Jefferson get done jerking around outside, you’ll be a couple of apartments ahead of them.”
“Sounds right,” Pearl said.
The three of them moved toward the door. Nift had just hung up the phone and was standing there.
Pearl paused in front of him. “Leonard or Robinson?” she asked.
Nift stared at her. “Huh?”
“You called me Sugar Ray. Which Sugar Ray?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Who the fuck cares? Only Sugar Ray I know is Leonard.”
“I’m Robinson,” Pearl said, and gave his tie a sharp yank so the gold clasp popped off and bounced on the carpet. “Find that or you’ll be a suspect.”
She was out the door and gone before Nift could get over his shocked anger and think of a counterpunch.
Anna Caruso stood across the street from the apartment building Quinn and his detectives had entered. She wasn’t noticeable because she was only one of several dozen people gathered in a knot of onlookers that shrank and grew as passersby joined the group and others left.
There really wasn’t much to see except parked police and emergency vehicles, including an ambulance. What people were waiting to see, Anna knew, was if someone would be carted out and placed in the ambulance either alive or dead. That was how people were. Since the ambulance had been there for some time and there was obviously no rush, the odds were improved that someone inside the building was dead. Anna had hea
rd several of her fellow gawkers speculate that this might be another Night Prowler murder.
Anna shrank back a few feet to be less noticeable as her interest increased. The two guys in suits who had to be cops had left after talking with the doorman, and now Quinn emerged from the building.
He, too, walked over to accost the doorman, who excused himself for a moment to hold the door open for one of the building’s tenants. The doorman seemed a little annoyed, as if murder shouldn’t interfere with his job. There were doors to open, packages to sign for, cabs to hail.
After about five minutes Quinn left the beleaguered doorman alone and walked toward the corner.
Anna followed, hanging back and staying, as was her strategy from watching movies and TV, on the opposite side of the street. Tailing somebody really wasn’t all that difficult. For Anna, it had become an obsession.
What would it be like to be a cop, instead of playing music?
At the intersection a cab pulled over near a fire hydrant and a woman laden with shopping bags struggled out from the backseat.
Quinn picked up his pace and retrieved one of the plastic bags the woman had dropped, then exchanged a few words with her and took over the cab. Anna saw him in sharp profile as he leaned forward in the back of the cab and told the driver their destination.
She decided not to try to follow. What was the use? By the time she found a cab herself, Quinn would be well out of sight. The “follow that cab” method seemed to work only in fiction.
She stood rooted by anger as she watched the cab drive away. Usually she rode the bus or took the subway. Quinn could afford cab fare these days, on the money the city was paying him—the city that should have prosecuted him.
Anna wandered back to the building, where she knew two more Night Prowler victims probably lay dead.
Her thoughts were jumbled by her insistent rage. She should feel sorry for the victims, but she could only feel sorry for herself. After all, if it weren’t for the Night Prowler and his victims, Quinn would still be under whatever rock he’d retreated to in order to escape a trial and prison.
While Anna lived with her rage and shame, circumstances had worked in her attacker’s favor. A serial killer roamed the city, and the police thought Quinn was their best chance to stop him. The city needed Quinn, so the city embraced him—after discarding Anna.
It isn’t fair! she kept repeating to herself as she walked faster and faster.
Her anger was a driving force she could no longer control.
It isn’t fair!
44
Seated in the back of the cab, Quinn called Harley Renz on his cell phone and gave him the details of the latest Night Prowler killings.
He slipped easily into cop talk, clipped, incisive, and impersonal.
“It’s gonna get even stickier,” Renz said when Quinn was finished. “The public’ll be leaning on the pols, who’re already leaning on the department higher-ups, who’re leaning on folks like me. Shit rolls downhill and picks up speed, Quinn, and that’s where you are, at the very bottom of the hill.”
“Well, let’s hope it hits the fan before it reaches me. You got anything I should know?”
“Only that Egan and his pals are saying bad things about you. Off the record, of course.”
“Off the record to the media.”
“So astute you are sometimes.”
“Maybe I can be astute and deduce something before Egan’s troops do.”
“They sense a shift in the balance, Quinn; innocent Anna is becoming the seriously wronged and sympathetic party, and you’re on your way to becoming the villain again.”
“I sense it, too,” Quinn said. “We’ll just have to work through it. When you can, let me know what the postmortems reveal.”
“Okay. Speaking of Egan’s troops, who drew the case?”
“Couple of guys named Frist and Jefferson.”
“Both deep in hock to Egan. Jefferson’s okay, just in a bind and covering his ass. Frist is a jack-off under the best of circumstances.”
“That’s kind of how I read them. Frist is afraid of Pearl.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Anything new on the silencer?” Quinn asked, getting in a dig.
“You laugh about the silencer, but we’re narrowing it down. It’s the kinda police work you never did grow into, Quinn, which is why your career turned to garbage.”
Quinn thought Renz might have a point.
“Where you going now?” Renz asked.
“How’d you know I’m going someplace?”
“I deduced from the car engine and traffic noise, plus the rattling when you hit potholes indicates a New York cab.”
“That’s good deducing.”
“I’m a policeman, you know.”
“I didn’t. I’m on my way to my place to reexamine the murder files. I want to make sure of something.”
“What would that be?”
“Deduce,” Quinn said, and cut the connection.
The buzzing had abated.
The Night Prowler sat at an outdoor table at a restaurant on Amsterdam and ate eggs over easy while enjoying the beautiful morning. It was the beginning of another warm day, but with a gentle breeze that made being outside comfortable and chased away exhaust fumes.
Three tables away sat a woman with long brown hair, sipping coffee and studying papers she’d removed from a briefcase that was alongside her chair. She had striking blue eyes and slender, delicate features. The expanse of nyloned leg visible between black high-heeled pumps and the hem of her blue skirt was difficult not to keep glancing at, and she knew he was watching her—he was sure of it.
You like being observed, studied. You like it very much.
Are you feeling between your thighs, in the core of you and in your heart, what I’m feeling? Are you?
Sensing his thoughts, he was sure, she looked over at him, then quickly back down at her papers on the table. No change of expression. But he’d seen her blush, caught the subtle alteration of color in her flesh, the soft rose hue that came and went with emotional tide.
The Night Prowler didn’t change expression, either. He simply looked slightly away and took a sip of his own coffee, talking to her in his mind.
You’re not as untouchable as you’d like to think. You can be touched, so pink and red and brown. You’re a confection. What color are your nipples? You can be had. You can be had by me.
She used a pen to make a notation on one of the papers, not looking over at him. But he knew she’d heard in her mind the message of his own.
A man in his thirties, with wind-mussed blond hair and carrying his suit coat slung over his shoulder, entered the restaurant’s cordoned-off seating area and sat down across from the woman. She smiled at him and immediately tapped the edges of her papers on the table to align them, then leaned sideways gracefully and slid them back into her briefcase.
The Night Prowler made it a point to ignore her now, not wanting to be noticed and outnumbered. He tried to avoid scenes.
But I haven’t forgotten you. I put you away in my mind and I’ll get you out later, when I need you.
Nothing will come of it.
Or maybe something will.
He looked down and saw that he was gripping his spoon almost hard enough to bend it. Lowering the spoon to the table, he felt a sudden chill, as if the morning had cooled abruptly.
This woman was a total stranger, he cautioned himself. They had never spoken. He knew nothing about her other than how she looked. How she held herself in repose. How she moved.
But wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work, according to the literature, to the police, to the hunter Quinn? Compulsion. Something distinctive about the woman might have triggered my compulsion!
The cops, the FBI, assumed that after a certain amount of blood and benediction, the serial killer’s compulsion would become stronger and seize complete control of him, and eventually force mistakes.
Control was some
thing the Night Prowler refused to relinquish. Powerful hidden desires could be coped with and managed. They could be channeled and fulfilled. That was something the so-called experts were afraid to acknowledge. But they knew it. And if they didn’t, they were learning. He was teaching them.
He finished his eggs, which were cooling in the breeze, then signaled the waiter for a refill on his coffee and began reading the newspapers he’d bought at two separate kiosks. This was enjoyable, sitting in the sun and at his leisure leafing through the papers for news of himself. His anonymous, famous self.
His gaze fell on a name he recognized. In a weekly celebrity feature called “Showbiz Shebangs,” halfway down an inside page. Claire Briggs.
But what made him sit up straight was the information that surrounded her boldly printed name. He read the paragraph again:
Actress Claire Briggs, currently charming Broadway audiences in Hail to the Chef, will be married next week to her longtime love interest, actor Jubal Day. Time and place are of course a secret, now that Claire glitters as a major Broadway star. Congrats to the happy couple.
The Night Prowler read the paragraph several times, completely forgetting about the woman three tables away. He couldn’t help smiling as he added cream to his coffee and stirred. He watched as the marbled liquid absorbed the whirlpooled white strands and became a uniformly rich but light caramel color. What color are your nipples? Then he turned his attention yet again to the show business gossip column. He couldn’t stop reading it.
Compulsion? Maybe. But surely there’s a proper time for compulsion if it’s controlled. If it’s focused. So enjoy, enjoy….
Who said the papers never printed good news? Claire Briggs was getting married. She of the braided hair and beguiling grace.
Claire Briggs!
Congrats to the happy couple!
45
When Quinn climbed out of the cab in front of his apartment building, he saw a gray-haired man about sixty sitting slumped on the concrete stoop.