by John Lutz
“You’ve been there?”
“Damned right.”
May laughed. “Good. That’s comforting. She’s still working there, so you must have thought the place was okay.”
“It’s a job,” Quinn said. “A start.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s not home right now.”
“It’s eleven-thirty, Quinn.”
Damned Worm! “She’s on a date.”
May didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Oh. It didn’t take her long to get into circulation.”
“She’s a beautiful girl, May. Like you’re a beautiful woman.”
“Spare me the Irish bullshit. Who’s she going out with? Another of the food servers?”
“A musician from the band that’s playing at the restaurant. There’s a bar there, too, with live music.”
“Pakistani music?”
“For all I know,” Quinn said, remembering the high-decibel onslaught of “Lost in Bonkers.” “I’ve met the guy. He seems…safe.”
“Is that what your cop’s instincts tell you?”
They tell me what to tell you. “He’s a scrawny young kid, looks like he’s never had real sex. If you could see him, May, you wouldn’t worry so much.”
“What’s his name?”
“Wormy.”
“God! Is that a nickname?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s French and I might be pronouncing it wrong.”
Quinn heard noises in the hall, then the key ratcheting in the lock.
The door opened and Lauri came in alone. A vague, S-shaped shadow behind her writhed and flitted away in the hall.
“She just got home,” Quinn said, trying to sound reassuring. He mouthed to Lauri, You’re late.
“Close, though,” she whispered back.
Quinn studied her. Clothes not too mussed, lipstick unsmeared, pretty much the same Lauri who’d left with the human worm.
“She all right?” asked the voice from California.
“Fine, fine…” Quinn held the phone out toward Lauri. “It’s your mother. She wants to talk to you.”
Lauri seemed to think about that, then shrugged and walked over to where Quinn sat on the sofa. He handed her the phone, then stood up and diplomatically left the room.
In the kitchen, he opened a cold Budweiser and for a brief moment considered listening in on the extension, then thought he’d probably be caught at it.
Sitting at the table, sipping his beer, he couldn’t make out the contents of the conversation in the next room, but it didn’t take long, and Lauri’s tone was curt.
After a few minutes of silence, she appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Your mother still on the line?” Quinn asked.
“No. I guess she didn’t have anything more to say to you.” She smiled at him. “I’m going to bed. Unless you wanna chew me out first for being forty-five minutes late.”
“You were close enough,” Quinn said. “Besides, eleven-thirty wasn’t a promise, it was just something Wormy mentioned.” He took a sip of beer. “You like that guy?”
“Not nearly as much as he likes me.”
Quinn tilted back the bottle for another sip. “You’d better get used to that kind of thing.”
Lauri looked at him. “Fatherly wisdom, along with a compliment. I like that. Thanks.” She waved languidly to him. “’Night.”
“’Night,” he said, not sure whether she was kidding.
He sat for a while absently peeling the label from the beer bottle, trying to sort through how he was feeling, not getting anywhere. Probably like a lot of fathers of teenage girls. Unknowing. Unsettled.
He decided he’d ask Pearl to talk with Lauri, to just sort of get acquainted. Maybe she could figure things out and enlighten him.
Then maybe Lauri could explain Pearl.
22
“It somehow makes the murder more intimate,” Renz said.
He unmistakably winked at Pearl before he glanced around. It was the first time he’d been in the office space the city had rented for Quinn and his team, and he was obviously thrown by the idea of the place as an ersatz squad room. It looked more like the scene of a boiler room operation that had folded only minutes before the police arrived.
Zzzziiiiiiiiiii, went a drill at Nothing but the Tooth.
Renz winced.
“Murder itself is as intimate as it gets,” Quinn said. “The fact that the killer displayed some of the victim’s pubic hair after dismembering the body doesn’t make it any worse.”
“No,” Pearl said, “Deputy Chief Renz is right. There’s something especially intimate about that kind of thing that gets to people—especially women. But men, too, if they have any sensitivity.” She was perched on the edge of her desk, where she could usually be found instead of in her chair.
Quinn gave her a dark look from behind his desk. Was she ticked off at him over something? And Renz was at least sensitive enough to know he was being played.
But Renz was smiling; Pearl was playing his game. “Officer Kasner has it figured right, Quinn. That’s why the chief and the commissioner and everybody who ever so much as ran for office in New York is on my ass.”
“Which is why you’re here,” Quinn said.
“Yep. Pass the potato. You and your team have gotta start showing some results, or the entire NYPD will be in so much deep shit with the pols it’ll be traded for Boston’s police department.”
“Or Mayberry’s,” Fedderman said. Pearl figured he must have seen Renz’s earlier wink.
Renz grinned. “I like that. Your team’s at least got a sense of humor, Quinn. Like a lot of losers, they’ve learned to laugh at themselves.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Quinn said.
Now Renz was laughing. They were all laughing. Oh, it was a jolly world.
Renz wiped his eyes. “I was told by the chief to come here and shake a knot in your tail. I’m going easy because I know how it is, how clean this bastard works, so there’s nothing you can grasp that doesn’t slide right outta your mind. All I’m saying is, remember who hired you. We’re working together while you’re working for me.”
“And we are working,” Pearl said, having lost track of who was doing the kidding.
“And hard,” Fedderman added.
“Don’t I know it?” Renz said. “This visit is just a political necessity.” He studied Quinn. “So what ails you? Have a bad night?”
“Real bad,” Quinn said. He wondered if Renz would have a sense of humor if he had Lauri for a daughter.
“Anything I can help with?” Renz asked sincerely, probably putting on Quinn again.
“No. It’s family stuff. Kinda thing you’ve gotta shake off so you can get to work.”
“So I was about to say,” Renz told him.
There was a sudden, muffled yelp.
Renz appeared startled. “What the hell was that?”
“Could be a root canal,” Quinn said. “At the dental clinic on the other side of the building. That was the drilling you heard earlier.”
“Ah. I thought maybe the Butcher was killing somebody right next door. Just the sort of thing he’d do to make us look bad.”
“Different kinda sadist over there,” Fedderman said, smiling with bad teeth.
Renz looked around again at the cluster of desks and workstations, the walls that were bare except for occasional nails or screws and clean rectangles where frames had been hung, the hardwood floor with clumps of tangled wiring jutting up from of it. “Place is a minefield. What happens if you step on one of those wiring masses? You get zapped?”
“Maybe,” Pearl said.
Renz hitched his belt up over his belly and glanced down to make sure the drape of his pants was right. Quinn knew it was a sign he was about to leave.
Renz said, “Well, you people can consider yourself chewed out. Far as the chief knows, that’s what happened here this morning.”
“Thanks,” Pearl said. She thought
somebody should say it so Renz would leave believing his line of crap had been a sale.
Renz nodded to her, let his gaze slide over Quinn and Fedderman, then turned and went out the door.
“Man’s some piece of work,” Pearl said.
“Piece of something,” Fedderman said. He got up from behind his desk and sauntered across the minefield to pour himself a cup of coffee.
Pearl waited until he was out of earshot. “What kind of family problem?” she asked Quinn.
“The Lauri kind.”
She looked simultaneously sympathetic and amused. “From what I know of her, which is very little, she seems like a nice kid.”
“She is. And a naïve one. She’s got some misconceptions that I’m afraid make her vulnerable.”
“We talking about a boyfriend?”
“If you can call him that.”
“Well, I think I understand the situation. She’s probably not as naïve and vulnerable as you imagine, Quinn.”
“That’s what I’d like you to find out.”
Pearl raised her vivid eyebrows in surprise. She wasn’t sure what to think of this. Family was sticky.
God! I really should call my mother, after hanging up on her the way I did.
“Just meet and talk with her,” Quinn implored. “Get to know her a little. She might tell another female stuff she wouldn’t tell her father.”
“Oh, she might,” Pearl said. What must it be like to have Quinn for a father?
“Will you do that, Pearl?”
“Sure.” But she knew from the expression on Quinn’s face that she hadn’t sounded sufficiently enthusiastic.
They both fell silent as Fedderman returned with his coffee.
“Mayberry,” Fedderman said thoughtfully. “Things are quieter there. Remember Floyd the barber?”
“What you both oughta know,” Quinn said, “is that Renz isn’t to be taken lightly just because he’s talking like he’s one of us. He’ll act all buddy-buddy, but he’ll jam us up in a minute if it’ll help him get promoted.”
“We know it,” Pearl said. “We were only putting you on, Quinn.”
“Still,” Fedderman said, “Mayberry…”
“New York,” Quinn said. “Marilyn Nelson was the second N, but that doesn’t mean she was the final victim.”
Searching the weeds again. That was what Quinn called it, and that was what Pearl was doing here in Marilyn Nelson’s modest West Side apartment that still held the disinfected scent of death. Searching the weeds again. Hoping to find something, anything of use, on ground already covered.
Pearl walked around slowly in a second, more careful search of the apartment, paying closer attention. It was cheaply but tastefully decorated. Probably Marilyn Nelson had thought she earned a pretty good salary but found out it didn’t go far in Manhattan. The bedroom closet contained some interchangeable black outfits—Marilyn catching on—and some great outdoorsy-looking items. They would have suggested Marilyn was a hiker or rock climber, if Pearl didn’t know she worked for a clothing chain, and the rough-textured, riveted clothing and heavy boots were more for style than hard use.
There was nothing noteworthy in the refrigerator—an unopened bottle of orange juice, some leftover pizza in a takeout box, a half-gallon carton of milk well past its expiration date and almost empty, some bagged and sealed lettuce for salads on the go, the usual condiments. Pearl leaned close and breathed in some of the cool air before closing the refrigerator door.
Nothing new in the bedroom, either, but she went through drawers and the closet, even checked between the mattress and box spring, making sure a Dial In cell phone vibrator hadn’t been overlooked. It would have been nice to tie Marilyn Nelson in with two of the other victims. Tidy. Clean. Pearl swallowed. Clean was beginning to seem like a nasty word to her.
She made herself spend more time in the bathroom than was necessary, as if testing herself. The gleaming old porcelain tub was to her more disgusting than if it had been stained with the victim’s blood.
Sickened, she left the bathroom, then quickly made her way through the hall and living room toward the door. She would replace the yellow crime scene tape she’d untied from the doorknob, then get back out into the fresh air and the wider world where death wasn’t so near.
After a last, sad glance around the living room, she opened the door to the hall.
Her breath caught in her throat.
23
Bocanne, Florida, 1980
Sherman was dreaming, and suddenly he was awake and unable to recall the dream.
It had frightened him, though. He was drenched in sweat, and his heart was pounding in his ears, the loudest thing in the night other than the buzz of insects in the nearby swamp.
Then the voices. Like the ones in the dream. Sam’s deep voice, and Sherman’s mother’s. His was calm; hers higher-pitched, faster-paced. It sounded as if Sam and Myrna were arguing in the bedroom down the hall, where they slept in the sagging double bed. Sherman’s body grew rigid and he realized he was squeezing his thumbs in his clenched fists, a habit he’d pretty much gotten over since Sam arrived.
There was a sound that might have been a slap. Flesh on flesh—hard.
Sherman’s grip on his thumbs tightened so that they ached.
His mother’s voice, then, much louder. Even though Sherman couldn’t make out the words, he was sure she was furious, cursing at Sam.
Sam’s voice was softer but not as calm, as if he didn’t want to wake Sherman, trying to get Myrna to regain control of herself. Another slap. Then another, terrible sound Sherman had never heard. He was sure his mother was weeping.
Sam again, speaking angrily but softly, in that slow, reasoned tone he used when patiently teaching Sherman to fish or telling him something interesting about the Civil War.
There was a war going on in his mother’s bedroom, Sherman thought. One he wanted no part of.
He lay motionless for a long time, waiting for more noise from the bedroom down the hall, but there was only the buzzing of the swamp in the night. He could smell the swamp through his open screened window, the rotting death scent of it, the fear and the fight of it within its lush green beauty. Thousands of cicadas were screaming now; Sam had told Sherman it was their mating call. It sounded desperate. Amidst the shrillness came a faint splashing and a deep, primal grunt. Something moving in the blackness not far away from the house. Not far away at all.
In the bedroom down the hall there was only silence.
The next morning, Sherman thought he was first up, but when he padded barefoot down the hall, there was his mom in the kitchen. She was lighting the butane stove to cook some eggs that were lying on the sink counter. Her hair was wild and there was a thoughtful expression on her face, but she didn’t look upset. She had on her old pink robe, its sash yanked tight around her narrow waist. Like her son, she was barefoot, the way she liked to be most of the time. Her toenails were painted red and one of them looked broken and as if it had been bleeding.
Sherman didn’t think she’d seen him. He changed direction and trudged toward the bathroom, seeing through the inch-wide crack where his mother’s bedroom door was open. There was Sam’s bare lower leg and foot on the bed. He must still be asleep.
Sherman thought that maybe last night—everything he’d heard—had been a dream. It was possible. Dreams and reality sometimes met and became entangled in his mind.
He urinated and then flushed the leaking old toilet so it would drain to the septic tank buried alongside the house. The washbasin’s ancient faucet handles squealed when he rotated them. He washed his hands and dried them carefully before leaving the bathroom.
The plank floor was cool beneath his bare feet as he returned to the kitchen. He noticed that now his mother’s bedroom door was closed all the way. He slowed so he might try the knob, see if it was locked.
“You want some eggs?” she asked.
“Toast is all,” Sherman said, picking up his pace.
“You
go get some pants on first.”
Sherman was wearing only his Jockey shorts. He nodded and went back to his bedroom and put on his jeans. The morning was already hot and humid. He tried wrestling back into the T-shirt he’d worn yesterday, but it stuck to his damp skin so that it was difficult to pull down in back. He peeled it off and tossed it on the floor, then went shirtless back to the kitchen, this time not pausing near his mother’s bedroom door.
There was a slice of buttered toast and a glass of milk where Sherman always sat at the table. His mother was being nice to him this morning; usually he prepared his own breakfast.
She’d cooked up some eggs for herself. Now she used the rubber spatula to slide them onto a plate. Next to them she plopped down the second slice of toast from the old toaster.
Without speaking to or looking at Sherman, she sat down across from him at the table and began to eat.
“Sleep okay?” she asked, through a bite of egg she’d forked into her mouth.
“Always do.” Sherman took a big bite of toast.
“You’re young and you got no troubles,” she said, smiling.
“Got some.”
“Yeah, I guess ever’body does.”
They continued to eat, not looking at each other.
Then Sherman became aware that he was the only one eating.
His mother slowly raised her fork with a bite of egg halfway to her mouth, then set it back down on her plate. The expression on her face changed, like she was aging right in front of Sherman. She slid her chair back with a loud scraping sound, stood up from the table, and hurried into the bathroom.
She hadn’t even taken time to shut the door. Sherman could hear her retching in there.
Absently carrying what was left of his toast, he got up and walked to where he could see into the bathroom.
His mother was kneeling on the tile floor, her head hung over the yellowed porcelain toilet bowl so that some of her long brown hair dangled down into the water. Her face was as pale as Sherman had ever seen it.
She made a horrible grunting sound like the one Sherman had heard last night from the swamp, then retched and vomited into the toilet bowl. Sherman saw that a lot of what she was bringing up was blood. There was a smear of blood on the floor near her broken toenail.