by John Lutz
Of course, you never knew about people.
Yeah, she thought. Some people suspect things that never happened.
She had to admit it was possible that she’d hung her clothes in the closet exactly as they were. Same way with the cosmetics. The mind could play tricks. Memory was a joker.
The phone jangled, jarring her out of her thoughts. Not her cell phone. She ran to the table near the sofa, where the land line phone rested.
It was David.
The receiver pasted to her ear, she dropped onto the sofa and sat slumped in a cushioned corner. “The oddest thing just happened,” she said. “When I opened my closet it struck me that some of the clothes weren’t where I’d hung them.”
“Never mind that,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
She smiled. “I should hope so.”
Their journey from acquaintances to lovers had been smooth and natural, and Shellie couldn’t imagine being happier. Their personalities meshed perfectly, which added to the sexual sparks. He left nothing to wish for, in any respect. David was a gentleman who knew his way around, both in and out of bed.
Especially in bed.
“I want you to move in with me,” he said.
She was pleased but surprised. This was so fast. “I don’t know….”
“I didn’t think you’d hesitate.” He sounded disappointed.
“I mean, this is so sudden. I’ve been stuck in a routine: my apartment, my job—whenever I work.”
“You won’t have to worry about a job, darling. I’ll support you. I can afford it easily. I’d say I won’t even notice you’re around, only I’ll notice you all the time, even when I’m not home.”
“I don’t know, David….” But she did know. She’d already made up her mind.
“Two apartments,” he said. “All that money unnecessarily spent on rent.”
She laughed. Didn’t he know she was already convinced? “We’ve left the subject of love and we’re talking about money now.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m only kidding, David. Of course I’ll move in with you. It makes perfect sense. Why should we rotate where we spend our nights?”
“I don’t care where they’re spent as long as we’re together. I thought about giving up my apartment and moving in with you, taking over the rent payments.”
“This place is a broom closet compared to your apartment.”
“That’s what I decided. You deserve better, darling.”
“David, I’ve got better. You.”
“You know I love you.”
“I do know that. It’s more important than my address.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Nobody makes up their mind and then moves tomorrow, David. I need time to pack, decide what I want to keep, put things in boxes.”
“Get busy. I’ll come over and help you.”
“Why so fast?”
“I don’t want you to change your mind.”
Within four days, Shellie was totally moved into David’s apartment. He’d paid the remaining time on her lease, making the real estate agency that managed the building happy. A small moving company transferred the things Shellie wanted to keep. What was left was bought and moved out of her old apartment by an estate liquidation company. Most of it would probably turn up in flea markets, where Shellie had bought it. Life could certainly change in a hurry, sometimes for the better.
There was only one hitch.
David explained it to her over their first breakfast at home. They were almost like a married couple talking over…the things Shellie imagined married people discussed.
“I sublease the place,” David said, after swallowing a bite of buttered toast. He took a sip of the coffee he’d assured her was just right. “Part of the deal is that I can’t have a roommate.”
Shellie paused in raising a bite of egg on her fork. “You mean my living here has to be a secret?”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t put it so melodramatically. I mean, you don’t have to hide or skulk around. A big apartment building like this, hardly anybody knows or even notices their neighbors. Once you close the door to the hall behind you, they don’t know which apartment you’ve just exited. In the elevator, they don’t know which floor you’ve come from. What’s more, they don’t care. There’s a rapid tenant turnover here.”
“Am I supposed to look both ways in the hall before I go out the door?”
He smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt. What I mean, though, darling, is just don’t make it a point to get to know the neighbors. You don’t have to run and hide if anybody sees you.”
“You make it sound like a game.”
“It is one,” he said. “The way subleases and rental agreements work, lots of New Yorkers play it. If we lose, they’ll throw you out. Which means they’ll throw us both out, because I’ll go with you.” He shrugged. “Getting evicted wouldn’t be the end of the world. It happens somewhere in the city every day.”
“Not to us,” she said, then chewed and swallowed her bite of egg. “Not here. I promise to be careful.”
“Probably,” he said, “no one would turn us in even if they did notice you were staying here. Most people mind their own business. They might even approve of your presence. Who couldn’t approve of you?”
A game, she thought, and finished her breakfast.
More like a romantic movie. The Phantom Tenant.
Like a movie. And I’m the star.
David wouldn’t know that was how she saw it, she thought, so why not give herself top billing?
It worked so well. David was right: no one in the building paid much attention to anyone else. If the tenants passed in the halls or found themselves with one another at the elevator, they usually merely nodded, sometimes smiled. On the elevator itself, they followed elevator etiquette and stood stone-faced staring at the ascending or descending number above the sliding door.
Entering or leaving the building was the same way; often there wasn’t even an exchange of glances. A few times someone held open the heavy street door for Shellie. She’d thanked them perfunctorily and hurried along. She acted the way they did, the way most New Yorkers acted—preoccupied. They passed or had brief contact with thousands of people every day and within a few days forgot all but a few.
Shellie was happy. And the apartment was spacious by New York standards, and with a nice view from a high floor. The furnishings were traditional, with a pale tan leather sofa and matching armchair, a TV behind the doors of a wooden wall unit that also had shelves holding knickknacks and a lineup of books that seemed chosen more for color than content. The furniture, the complementing drapes and carpet, the framed art prints on the wall gave the apartment a composed, decorator look. It was a look she liked, and it took only a few weeks for Shellie to regard it as home.
She would have been even happier if David spent more time in town, but they made the most of it when he was home.
And the most of it was quite a lot.
9
The present
Renz had shot off his mouth about a profiler, so he figured he’d better have a profile. He was with Quinn and his team in the Seventy-ninth Street office he’d gotten for them at city expense. It was a ground-floor apartment, really, in a building that was being renovated. This unit hadn’t been touched yet, but it wasn’t in bad condition, with cream-colored walls and blinds still on the windows. There were light rectangles where wall hangings had been removed, and an outline on the hardwood floor where the carpet had been taken up. But the paint was clean. Renz had ordered three desks and four chairs, a four-drawer steel file cabinet, a printer and fax machine, and a used desk computer. He knew they all had laptops, except maybe Fedderman. As far as a coffee machine or other niceties, the detectives were on their own.
Pearl had bought a Braun brewer and dragged in an old table the workmen upstairs were going to throw away. An NYPD computer whiz had set up a broadband wireless system for their computers, with a router ove
r near the coffee machine. The door had a good lock, the workmen upstairs usually didn’t make too much noise, and there was an old air conditioner that no one would bother stealing in one of the windows.
Quinn was within walking distance of the place but would sometimes drive his old Lincoln, and Renz had gotten them an unmarked city Chevy.
They had a home. They had wheels. It was an efficient setup.
Quinn and Fedderman sat in the identical wood swivel chairs behind their identical gray steel desks, while Pearl perched on her desk’s front edge. Renz had pulled her desk chair out and was seated on it. So there was a chair for the profiler when she arrived, as long as Pearl was content without one. Quinn made a mental note to scare up another extra chair. He’d have asked Pearl to do it, but she’d let him know she’d done enough, donating the coffeemaker.
There was a knock on the door. Then it opened and the profiler, Helen Iman, cautiously stuck her head in. “Morning, all,” she said, smiling as she entered all the way. She was a very tall woman with a bony but not unattractive face and carelessly styled red hair, as if she cut it herself with dull scissors. Seeing her, Quinn thought, as he often did, that with her long, muscular frame, she’d make a hell of a basketball or volleyball player. But Helen wasn’t into sports. She was into killers. A few years ago she’d quit the NYPD to go into private practice as a corporate psychologist in New Jersey, but she’d soon returned. For her it was no contest between the corporate and the criminal mind. They weren’t exactly the same, and the criminal mind was so much more interesting.
Renz had requested her presence here so Quinn and his team could hear what she had to say.
Pearl offered her coffee, but she declined and sat in the uncomfortable extra chair. It was stained oak with a straight back and had a sturdy but crude look about it, as if it might have been made by one of those religious sects that thrived on discomfort. She was wearing a green business suit and white blouse with a man’s green and black tie. She placed the large brown purse she was carrying on the floor so it leaned against a chair leg.
“Did you read the material I gave you?” Renz asked her.
Helen nodded. “It wasn’t very enlightening.”
Renz looked disappointed.
Helen calmly gave each of them a look, her eyes lingering on Pearl. “There really isn’t much to surmise, since we know nothing about the victims.”
“I need something to feed the media,” Renz said. “Something for my people”—he nodded toward Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman—“in case they get cornered by some smart-ass journalist.”
Helen crossed her long legs. It was quite a show. “I understand, and I can give you the usual, even though I’m sure you already know most of it. Our killer’s probably between twenty and forty and had a horrible childhood during which he developed a hatred for women. He might be married—”
“Married?” Renz interrupted.
“I said might. And he probably has a history of sadistic behavior.”
“The thing with the sharpened stake,” Quinn said.
Helen nodded. “Not to mention the dismemberment. Usually people don’t unaccountably start doing such things all at once.” She reached into the big purse and pulled out a buff file folder, took a few moments to check its contents. “The insertion of the stake occurred after death. That’s interesting. Necrophilia with a substitute penis.”
“You think?” Pearl asked, glancing at Fedderman.
“Looks that way,” Helen said. “The dismemberments were neatly done, but apparently not by someone with a medical background. He might have practiced on animals. Possibly on family pets.”
“Jesus!” Fedderman said. He swiped his shirtsleeve across his mouth. “Will I never get used to these assholes?”
Helen smiled at him. “It’s good that you don’t.” She sat back as best she could in the rigid chair.
“That’s all you can give us?” Renz asked.
“I’m afraid so, at this point. It would be good to have entire bodies, maybe a witness or two. Oh, there is one other thing. He wants you to know both women were killed by him—that’s why he used the same gun.”
“And the stake?”
“I don’t know about the stake. Especially after death. Some of this doesn’t yet add up. There’s something especially creepy about this killer.”
“They’re all sickos,” Pearl said.
“That’s not the medical term I’d use, but it’s fairly accurate,” Helen said. “This guy, though—and we all know the killer’s almost certainly a guy—promises to be particularly interesting. His mental processes might be unfathomable, even after he’s caught and studied. For instance, he hides the torsos, but not so well that he doesn’t want them found.”
“Trophies,” Fedderman said.
“No. More like his calling card. But trophies aren’t uncommon. Maybe he’s keeping the heads as his trophies.”
Pearl took a noisy gulp of her coffee, burning her tongue.
“This guy” Helen crossed her legs tighter—“one thing’s for sure about him, he’s a very special case.”
Tonight he’d just arrived home after a weekend of doing business in London. Whenever Shellie asked David about his business, she got the same vague answers, but she was less and less concerned. She was convinced now that David was a good man. Whatever he was involved in was sure to be benign and legal. He was simply one of those men who wanted a firewall between home life and business. Between love and the real and ugly world outside of love. Shellie understood that. She felt the same way herself.
Her wardrobe had grown and improved since she had moved in with David. She had on the navy blue dress she knew he liked, bone high-heeled pumps, a double strand of pearls around her neck. Her hair was artfully mussed, the way he liked it. The top button of her dress was undone to reveal a glimpse of cleavage, the way he liked it. Later they would make love, the way he liked it. She was the way he liked her, and she was happy. She was sure David was happy, too. They each had an interest in the other’s happiness. It had kind of surprised Shellie, the way she’d come to feel. Nothing in life pleased her more than pleasing David.
“Italian tonight?” he asked. Her favorite dishes were Italian. “I thought maybe Randisi’s.”
Randisi’s was a five-star restaurant on the East Side. Some thought it was the best Italian restaurant in the city.
“Sounds wonderful.”
He smiled. “Good. I made a reservation.”
At the restaurant Shellie heard David tell the maitre d’ there was an eight o’clock reservation for Clyde. Shellie smiled. David always used the name Mr. Clyde when he made reservations, or simply the first name Clyde when asked to leave a name on a waiting list. It wasn’t a bad name, but it certainly didn’t fit his handsome, assured, and debonair presence. She looked at him, so well tailored in a dark blue suit, white-on-white shirt, gray silk tie. Not your usual Clyde. She felt a swell of pride. Her David.
“Mr. and Mrs. Clyde” were almost immediately shown to a good table near a wide window with a view of the East River.
They had martinis, then ordered antipasto and cannelloni. David asked for a good red wine. “To celebrate,” he said.
“What are we celebrating?” Shellie asked.
“My arrival home.”
“You’ve only been gone a weekend.”
“It’s always a cause for celebration when I return to you.”
“Am I not worth champagne?”
He grinned. “Shellie, Shellie. You must know you have me in your spell.” He leaned over the table, looking serious. “Do you want champagne?”
She shook her head no, feeling ashamed. “No, darling. I was only testing you.”
“Do I pass?”
“A-plus,” she said. They were talking like two people in a sophisticated play, she thought. This amused her and made her feel slightly silly simultaneously. The swank surroundings must be affecting them. Role playing again. Well, so what? That was all everyone actually did
, when you came right down to it. She didn’t see what was wrong with that when she could see so much of what was right with it.
The food, as usual at Randisi’s, was wonderful. As was the wine. David knew how to choose.
Outside the restaurant, they were both a bit tipsy. Shellie leaned against David for support.
He was about to hail a cab when a gleaming dark car pulled to the curb near them. It was a big car, a Chrysler. They were on a one-way street, and the driver’s side was only a few feet away from the sidewalk. The window glided down.
Shellie assumed the driver would be with a service and he’d try to talk them into taking the car instead of climbing into a cab. She was surprised to see an attractive, hard-faced woman about forty with a gray buzz cut and no makeup. She wore a black pullover shirt with the collar turned up. Her arms were slim but muscular, and Shellie saw that the hand resting on the steering wheel was gloved. Driving gloves, she assumed. Maybe this was a professional driver and the big Chrysler was a car for hire.
“Need a ride, bro?” the woman asked, looking at David.
“I’ll be damned,” David said. “What are you doing here, Gloria?”
“I was on my way home and happened to see you. New York’s not so big that coincidences don’t sometimes occur.”
“Obviously not,” David said.
“Anyway, this is my neighborhood. Or at least I regularly drive through it.”
Now the woman looked at Shellie. She had dark eyes, deeply set and intense. “You must be Shellie.”
David squeezed Shellie’s arm. “This is my sister, Gloria, Shellie. The only person in New York I’ve told about us.”
“David and I always share the good things,” Gloria said. Her dark eyes took on a glitter in the reflected red light of the restaurant’s illuminated sign. “That’s the way it’s been since we were children. I know my brother well, and I haven’t seen him fall so hard for a woman in years. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
“Same here,” Shellie said. She moved forward, one foot off the curb, and shook the leather-gloved hand proffered through the open window. Gloria smiled at her, an unexpectedly beautiful smile that caused Shellie to smile back.