by John Lutz
When she and Quinn entered the blue-tiled bathroom, she was glad to inhale the menthol. She knew what had happened here. Like the other victims, this one, Maria Cirillo, had been bound and gagged with duct tape, drowned in her bathtub, then disassembled like a helpless doll, her body parts stacked in ritual order in the tub. There was the head resting on its side on top of the severed arms, sunken eyes closed, as if Maria were napping.
Nift was playing with the doll now. He’d removed his suit coat and had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, but he was the only one in the apartment not sweating.
“Though you wouldn’t guess it now unless you had a trained eye,” he said, “this one was a real beauty.” He straightened up from where he was crouched froglike by the tub. “Best rack in the house, present company excepted.”
“You’re in the wrong end of the medical business,” Pearl said. “You should be a patient.”
Nift smiled, glad to be under her skin.
Standing beside Pearl, Quinn said, “Give us the particulars.”
Nift shrugged somehow without moving his shoulders, an illusion he managed to create just with his mouth and eyebrows. “Trauma wound to the head consistent with being knocked unconscious with a blunt object. Tape marks and adhesive traces on her arms and legs, and across her mouth. Death by drowning, then she was dissected with what my guess is were the same instruments—or similar ones—used on the previous Butcher victims. The killer then cleaned her body parts, making them more sterile than any cadaver I ever handled during medical training.” He motioned with his head and waved an arm to encompass the tiny blue-tiled bathroom. “It’s a wonder he didn’t melt her down with all that stuff.”
Or she didn’t melt away from the heat, Pearl thought.
Quinn glanced around at the cleaning agent containers lying capless and empty on the floor—a shampoo squeeze bottle, a box that had contained dishwasher detergent, bottled hand soap with a plunger, a spot remover bottle. There was an empty white plastic bleach jug on the floor, another upright on the porcelain top of the toilet tank.
“It’d smell good in here if it weren’t for Maria,” Nift said.
“Don’t you have the slightest respect for the dead?” Pearl asked.
“Never had any complaints.”
In the afterlife, asshole.
Nift must have read her thoughts. “When we all meet again in the great hereafter, we won’t take death so seriously.”
There was a sadness in the way he said it that threw Pearl. If violent death could become so matter-of-fact to a cop, how must it seem to a medical examiner? Was crossing the line between life and death more significant than stepping outside to flag a cab?
Pearl looked at the woman in the bathtub and told herself she hadn’t thought death mundane. Something precious and irrecoverable had been taken from Maria Cirillo. Stolen by a monster.
“Time of death,” Nift said, “was around seven P.M. evening before last, give or take a few hours.”
More or less what Renz had said.
“Why’s the odor so strong?” Quinn asked.
“The air conditioner was turned off, probably by the killer.”
“Jesus!” To Pearl: “Go out there and make sure the techs have examined it, then turn the damned thing back on.”
Pearl squeezed past him to leave the bathroom and made her way toward the living room.
“My guess is,” Nift said, “the killer wanted this body to be found earlier rather than later. They can be home alone for more than a week sometimes before anyone notices, if the conditions are right and the place is tight. So he switched off the air conditioner so Maria would get ripe faster and attract attention.”
Quinn’s guess was the same, but he merely nodded, then left the bathroom to join Pearl and Fedderman—if Feds was done talking to the uniforms and neighbors.
He wasn’t, so they waited for him out in the hall where the odor wasn’t so bad. Pearl peeled off her crime scene gloves and hoped Fedderman hadn’t used all his menthol cream.
He hadn’t, and when Fedderman arrived ten minutes later she dabbed some more beneath her nose.
The three of them walked another twenty feet down the narrow hall, toward some fire stairs, to be out of earshot of the uniform standing outside the apartment door.
“Neighbors saw and heard nothing,” Fedderman said. “Mrs. Avarian, old woman who lives in the adjoining apartment, smelled something, though, and notified the super. He let himself in, saw the victim, then backed out and tried not to touch anything. He upchucked on the carpet, though, about six feet inside the door.”
“I noticed that,” Pearl said, “and assumed it was one of the cops.”
“We’ll tell Nift to check it,” Quinn said, “just in case the victim or killer vomited.”
Pearl smiled. “I’ll tell him before we leave.”
“This victim’s the same type as the others, but she followed the last one more closely, and there was no note beforehand to challenge and antagonize us.”
“He’s changed his MO again,” Pearl said. “Even changed his timing.”
“More likely this one was a target of opportunity,” Fedderman said.
Pearl looked at him, thinking he was a good cop despite being a sartorial disaster. He could be surprising.
“The killer knew we had his brother in custody,” Quinn said, “and killed Maria Cirillo then switched off the air conditioner to make sure she’d be discovered soon. His way of letting us know Jeb wasn’t the Butcher. He didn’t have time to do much research on her. He might have simply latched onto her as she was walking along the sidewalk and followed her home, made sure she lived alone, then killed her.”
“Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Pearl said.
“And having the wrong hair color,” Fedderman added.
“And looking so much like Mom,” Quinn said.
“I don’t know,” Pearl said. “Maria’s such a good example of type, it could be that she was slated to be his next victim and he moved her time up.”
“Either way,” Quinn said, “the message is the same—set my brother free.”
“Sounds almost noble,” Fedderman said.
“Not even close,” Pearl told him. She borrowed Fedderman’s jar and rubbed more mentholated ointment beneath her nose. “I’m going back in and talk to Nift.”
Quinn thought Nift would probably tell her to instruct the SCU team to bag a sample of the vomit on the floor, then who knew how Pearl would react? She was on tilt already, after their visit with the late Maria Cirillo.
He told Fedderman he’d be right back, and then went inside the apartment so he could be there to extinguish any sparks between Pearl and Nift.
Looking out for Pearl was an old habit hard to break.
55
“I often think of all that precious time lost between mother and son,” Myrna said to Quinn, “and my own boy Sherman out there somewhere hunted and frightened.”
Myrna had more of a southern accent today. It wasn’t so much on the edges, and it still dripped pure molasses. She’d been trying to hide it before, Pearl thought, trying to make herself seem as educated as her sons.
She was seated in a wooden chair at the small desk in her room at the Meredith, her body shifted sideways, one elbow on the desk. Her posture caused one of her shoulders to rise sexily so she looked like a femme fatale in an old movie. She was wearing a midnight blue silk robe that made her hair and eyes look darker. Her hair was brushed out so that it appeared longer, a hint of bangs on her broad, unlined forehead. The scent of soap hung in the air, as if she’d just shampooed and dried her hair.
Quinn had left Fedderman to do more legwork at the Cirillo murder scene and brought Pearl with him to the Meredith, thinking the woman’s touch might come in handy in convincing Myrna Kraft to act as bait for her son Sherman. Not that they’d use the word bait.
“Did your dear son ever try to contact you during all those lost years?” Quinn asked. Dear
. Pearl saw that Quinn was wearing his compassionate attitude, the one that evoked confidences and confessions, as if he were a priest with the power to heal. While it struck a phony note with Pearl, it might score with Myrna.
“Why, I’d have no way of knowing,” Myrna said. “But, yes, something in my heart tells me he tried. Yes, he must have tried. Whatever awful things happened to Sherman during that time in the swamp, they must surely have put him in deep shock, as they would any normal nine-year-old boy. I read it was months before he even uttered a word.”
“I read that word was Mother,” Pearl said.
There was no change of expression in the hard, handsome planes of Myrna’s face, but something primal moved behind those dark eyes.
“I never read or heard that,” she said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me that a lost boy’s first words would be of the mother he loved.”
“It’s because you love him that we came to you,” Quinn said. “And because he must love you.”
Pearl tried not to look at him as he doled out his unctuous Irish charm. Why didn’t these people see through such bullshit? But Pearl knew they seldom did.
Seldom, but sometimes. When Quinn encountered someone not so unlike himself.
“He must indeed,” Myrna said, “and in a sense I suspect I failed him. All I can say is I did it for Jeb. I was forced to make a mother’s terrible choice. I believed so fiercely that at least one of my sons must be saved, and I lived my new life according to that belief. Tell you true, in those days and beyond, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for that boy. It was like he was both my sons become one.”
“Do you still feel that way about Jeb?”
“I’d have to swear I do.”
“And now God’s given you a chance to help your other son,” Quinn said. He walked over and sat perched on the desk, so Myrna had to look up at him, into his sincere gaze. “I shouldn’t tell you this, and certainly I’m not referring to myself or Officer Kasner, but you’re correct in your fear that some nervous trigger finger might twitch and take Sherman’s life. The police are human, after all, and this killer has taunted them. Most of us act as professionals, but as in every profession, there are those who have their own agenda.”
“I do understand,” Myrna said. She hadn’t blinked in the force of Quinn’s charm attack.
Quinn persisted. “Hard as it might be for you to believe, you and Jeb aren’t the only ones who want to see Sherman taken into custody unharmed. He’s a sick man—to you a boy still—and he desperately needs the proper treatment.”
Myrna gnawed on her lower lip for at least a minute. Then she sat back in her chair, stared down at her lap, then back up at Quinn. “Explain exactly what you’d expect of me.”
“Of course. We want you simply to remain in your room here as if you were an ordinary guest at the hotel. You won’t see us, but we’ll be there and we’ll have you under our protection at all times.” His smile was incongruously beatific on such a rough looking man. “We’ll be your guardian angels.”
“My angels haven’t always been on duty in the past, Detective Quinn.”
“We’re more professional and closer to the ground,” Quinn said. “I promise you’ll be safe.”
“Oh, I’m not so worried about myself. No woman fears her true son. But you must know how smart Sherman is. Won’t he be suspicious of such a plan, especially if I stay here holed up in my room?”
“If he knows where you are and loves you enough,” Quinn said, “he’ll try to reach out for you.”
“Or if he hates me enough,” Myrna said. “That’s what you really think.” For a second it seemed she might actually cry. “Oh, how you must see me…”
Quinn gently patted her shoulder. “I don’t think, dear, that your own true son would hate you after all these years. And you won’t be strictly confined to this room or even this hotel. You should go out, just as anyone might who’s visiting New York. Shop, sightsee, walk about, take a cab. You’ll be safe out there. Your angels, invisible to you or anyone else who might be looking, will be with you every step.”
“You mentioned shopping,” Myrna said. “Will I have a shopping allowance?”
That brought Quinn up short, and he almost stood up from where he was perched on the desk. What kind of woman is this? What kind of wheels turn in her mind? Her own son might be stalking her to kill her, and she has her sights set on sales and merchandise.
“She should do a lot of shopping if her movements are going to appear normal,” Pearl said, pitching in. To Myrna: “You’re a woman in New York. Even under the circumstances, it would make sense that you’d shop.”
If you were a homicidal psychopath with your own sick reality.
Quinn settled back down and gave Myrna the old sweet smile. “Of course you’ll be given money to shop. At taxpayer expense. That’s only fair, because in the end you’re doing this for the taxpayer as well as for Sherman, for other people as well as yourself.”
“Something else I want’s a gun,” Myrna said.
“We’ll be protecting you, dear.”
“Oh, it isn’t for self-protection. It’s to protect Sherman.”
“But you’d use it if you had to in order to protect yourself,” Pearl said.
Myrna gave her a cold glance that made Pearl wish she hadn’t spoken. She and Myrna understood each other too well for comfort. Monster slayer and monster—was there that much difference once the battle was joined and blood was spilled?
“I’ll see that you have a small handgun to keep beneath your pillow,” Quinn said.
“I spent my girlhood and much of my womanhood in or near the swamp, Detective Quinn. I’d be most comfortable with a shotgun, as I owned one as a youngster.”
“A shotgun…”
Myrna smiled at him in a way that seemed to hypnotize him. “If you think this whole thing is a bad idea—”
“No, no, dear. You can have a shotgun. I’ll bring one next time I see you.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll feel a lot safer for Sherman and for me.”
“I don’t think it will come to gunfire,” Quinn said. “You have my solemn word I’ll do everything possible to see that no harm comes to you or to your boy.”
“If I do agree, what’s the next step?”
“We’ll see that your presence in the city is leaked to the media, to make sure Sherman knows you’re here. The danger to you would begin late tonight or tomorrow morning, with broadcast news and the appearance of the newspapers.”
“The danger to Sherman, you mean.”
“To both of you,” Quinn said. “We know we’re asking a lot of you.”
“However much it is, I do agree. I’ll do as you suggest.”
Quinn smiled widely and patted her shoulder again, this time slightly harder and more reassuringly. “That’s the best thing, honestly.”
“We’re very good at what we do,” Pearl said, “and we’ll see that you stay safe.”
“My uppermost thought is safety,” Myrna said, “but Lord knows, not for myself.”
Lauri knew she was going to sleep with Joe Hooker. She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d decided, and it hadn’t been sudden. And she knew it was the result of his subtle but persistent plan of seduction. In small but intimate ways he was moving their still young relationship in that direction; in the quiet way he regarded her, the amusing double entendres, the casual but suggestive touching of her arm, her shoulder, her neck. In a way, that was what fascinated her, watching an older, experienced seducer work, being the object of his efforts and moved inch by inch by him. She knew it was happening, it was deliberate, yet she let herself be moved, she wanted it, even knowing it was like drifting farther and farther into a strong current that would inevitably claim her completely. This guy wasn’t Wormy, who was usually so wrapped up in his music he didn’t seem to know she was around unless he wanted sex.
Sex, music, sex, with little time left over for companionship and tenderness.
It didn’t have
to be that way. That was what all of Joe’s actions, all of his thoughtfulness and smiles, and his slight but unrelenting pressure, were telling her. It didn’t have to be the way it was with Wormy.
Not that she wasn’t still fond of Wormy. But she was an adult and could have a relationship with more than one man. (Was Wormy really a man?) Wormy was takeout food, cheap weed, and wine, and frantic trysts in his dump of an apartment he shared with two other members of the band who weren’t away often enough. Joe promised dinner at nice restaurants, leisurely walks in the park, Broadway plays, and…what was inevitable. Joe was a Mercedes. Wormy was…transportation.
Lauri feigned a headache and upset stomach after work and didn’t go with Wormy and the others to a club in the Village. Instead she walked around the corner from the Hungry U, where a cab was waiting, and inside the cab was Joe Hooker.
When she climbed in the back of the cab he pecked her on the cheek and briefly touched her arm.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She laughed. “I just got off work at a restaurant.”
He grinned in the darkness. “I know; I had to ask. If you’re not hungry, you must be thirsty. I know a little piano cabaret where we can have some drinks and talk about my favorite subject.”
Lauri didn’t have to ask what his favorite subject was. Should she tell him she might be carded?
“They know me there,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. Then he added, “So we can get a good table. Besides, I already gave the cabbie the address.”
She was wearing jeans and a white blouse with a small floral design. She’d changed from her food-server shoes to heels, though. “Am I dressed okay for it?”
“Beautiful women are always dressed for wherever they are.”
She laughed, trying to keep her tone low and sexy. Adult. “You know something, Joe Hooker? You’re dangerous.”
He glanced over at her as if caught off guard, then smiled. “Spice of life, danger.”
“Live fast, die young,” she said, not knowing what else to say and finding herself temporarily tongue-tied.