by John Lutz
“Dixie?”
A man’s voice.
Dixie stopped walking and gave Charlotte a brief squeeze, letting her know there was nothing to fear.
“What are you doing here?” Dixie asked the driver, sounding surprised but not particularly afraid. The sure tone of her voice made Charlotte feel better. There wasn’t much Dixie couldn’t handle.
The driver was smiling. A nice-looking guy. “I just dropped a friend off at his apartment and was on my way home. Didn’t expect to bump into anyone I knew, much less you.” Still smiling, he looked at Charlotte, then back at Dixie.
“This is my friend Charlotte,” Dixie said. Her arm stayed reassuringly firm around Charlotte and contracted again in a gentle squeeze. “Charlotte, this is my brother, Don.”
“On your way someplace?” Don asked.
“Just left someplace,” Dixie said.
“We haven’t seen each other for quite a while.”
“That’s for sure,” Dixie said.
“I’ve got an idea,” Don said. “Why don’t we go to my place for drinks? The three of us. I can drive us there, then afterward take you wherever you want to be dropped off.”
Dixie felt Charlotte draw back. But then, she knew what Charlotte wanted. She kept her arm tight around Charlotte at the shoulder and looked down at her, smiling encouragingly. “Charlotte?”
“I don’t think so, Dixie. Not tonight. I’m feeling pretty dragged down.”
“You sure?”
“Certain.” She gave Don a tentative smile, asking for help.
The two guys who’d passed on the other side of the street appeared again, walking the other way.
Don seemed to think about it. “Don’t force her,” he said to Dixie. He grinned up at Charlotte. “There’s always another time.”
“Okay,” Dixie said. “We’ll give you a call.”
Don was still looking at Charlotte, still smiling warmly at her. He winked. “It’s a date.”
He drew back into the shadowed confines of the car and the window glided up. Charlotte and Dixie watched as the big Chrysler pulled away from the curb and turned the corner at the next intersection.
“Your brother,” Charlotte said, as if still digesting this new piece of information about Dixie.
Dixie took her arm and they began walking again. “My brother. We don’t see each other often, but we get along. I think you’ll like him.”
Charlotte kept pace and leaned into Dixie again so that they were almost thigh to thigh. “He seems nice.”
“Everyone says that,” Dixie said.
26
It was moments like this when Pearl emitted a kind of energy that anyone near her could feel. Quinn felt it now. Something was up with Pearl.
They were riding along in Quinn’s big Lincoln on a fine New York morning. The slanted sunlight cast stark, sharply angled shadows of tall buildings so that light and dimness danced over the vast expanse of metal that was the car’s gleaming black hood. Pearl had shown up at the Seventy-ninth Street office early in the unmarked car, and now they were driving to pick up Fedderman so the three of them could meet with Renz in his office at One Police Plaza. Quinn felt his hands tighten on the steering wheel as Pearl spoke.
“I understand you’re seeing that M.E. who smells like formaldehyde.”
Quinn braked to avoid rear-ending a dusty white delivery van and let the Lincoln edge forward in the blocked traffic. “I never noticed a formaldehyde scent.” He felt his jaw setting. Who was Pearl, anyhow, to worry about whom he was seeing or sleeping with? Pearl and that asshole Milton Kahn. Quinn cautioned himself about his anger. After all, he’d never even met Kahn, only heard about him.
“I didn’t say scent,” Pearl told him. “I said smell. More like stench.”
Quinn shrugged, which seemed to infuriate Pearl. He could sense her seething beside him. They drove along. The motor hummed. Pearl seemed to hum, though she wasn’t uttering a sound.
She was trying to start something, Quinn knew. Always trying to start something. Born with a burr up her ass.
Finally she said, “Goddamned car stinks, too. Like you’ve been smoking cigars in it.”
Screw this! Quinn had wanted a peaceful morning, but if she was determined to make trouble, he was going after her. She’d brought it on herself. “That might be you burning, Pearl.”
“Why should it be?”
“You seem upset about me seeing Linda. Not that you oughta be. You’re the one who’s always harping about the end of our relationship.”
“What’s to harp about?” she asked. “It’s over. There is no relationship.”
“Then why are you—”
“Who said I was?”
“So pissed off about—”
“I’m not in the slightest angry over anything concerning you, Quinn. Who you’re seeing. Who you’re screwing.”
“You brought up the subject.”
“The Linda subject?”
“Doctor Chavesky,” Quinn corrected, still in an unforgiving mood.
Pearl played it cool. She knew him, knew what he was doing, and how he usually refused to engage her in argument unless he was particularly angry about something. She must have pushed the right buttons. This Doctor Chavesky must’ve really gotten to him, for him to react by coming after Pearl so hard and tough. What was she supposed to do, shrink away in fear? Is that what the overgrown Irish thug expected?
“Move the goddamned car,” Pearl said. “Try to keep up with traffic.”
Quinn glanced up. It was true, traffic had begun to move forward. The dusty back of the van he’d almost hit was half a block away and picking up speed. He goosed the big Lincoln so it would keep up. He ignored Pearl.
She wouldn’t let it go.
“So now you’ve got something new to obsess about,” she said.
“You’re the one with the new obsession.”
“Which would be?”
Screwing Milton Kahn. “Disliking Dr. Chavesky.”
She laughed loudly and without a shred of humor. “You talk like I should actually give a shit about you two getting it on.”
“You talk like you care.”
“Why should I care?”
“You shouldn’t. I won’t obsess about you anymore, Pearl. That’s what you always accused me of doing. That’s over. No need for you to get upset about it any longer.”
“Is this me being upset?” she asked, pointing her forefinger at her deadpan expression. “Is it?”
“I’ve gotta keep an eye on the traffic,” Quinn said, not looking at her. God help him, he was beginning to enjoy this. A little.
Pearl seemed to sense it. “You do that,” she said. “You keep an eye on the traffic while you obsess about your doctor friend. You’re not careful, you’re liable to drive right up somebody’s ass. Maybe like you—”
“Pearl!”
They were both silent while he tailed the van along Forty-ninth Street in stop-and-go traffic. About five minutes passed. Quinn thought maybe Pearl had run down. He settled back in the leather upholstery and paid more attention to his driving.
“Know what I think?” Pearl asked.
“Usually not.”
“I think you’re so good at getting inside the minds of serial killers because you’re obsessive just like they are. You’re psychotic. You and the killer are opposite sides of the same coin.”
“That’s important, being on the opposite side.” But Quinn knew exactly what she meant and it bothered him. He’d always been stubborn, tunnel visioned, obsessive…. Or was it persistent, unrelenting, determined…? And what the hell was the difference? These were fine distinctions that had now and then gotten Quinn in trouble. Pearl’s hard head had gotten her into more than a few messes, too, so she had a lot of nerve talking to him that way, comparing him to serial killers.
He took a few deep breaths and swallowed his irritation.
So he was obsessive. So what? He put it to work and did some good in the world with it. If
his obsessive nature helped to nail these assholes who killed women in the worst ways, so be it. That was their problem and he was coming after them hard. And didn’t every coin have its opposite side?
“Whatever’s going on in our personal lives, we have to work together,” he said calmly. “Can you manage that, dear?”
“Don’t give me that sarcastic ‘dear’ bullshit. I’m not one of your gullible suspects or witnesses who fall for it and spill their guts.”
“Can you manage it?” he asked again.
“I’m still in the car, aren’t I?”
He glanced over and was surprised to see that she was smiling.
She was actually smiling.
Pearl enjoyed combat. But Quinn knew that. He didn’t say anything, and within a few blocks he found himself smiling along with her.
At Second Avenue he stopped for a red light, first in line, then suddenly ran the light and went the wrong way up Second while there wasn’t any traffic coming. A uniformed cop was standing by his squad car halfway up the block. As they passed, Quinn slowed the Lincoln and held his shield up tight against the windshield so the cop would see it. The cop recognized the shield, maybe recognized Quinn, and nodded.
As they turned the corner at the next block so they could zigzag uptown and get going in the right direction again, Pearl twisted around in her seat and saw the roof bar lights on the squad car winking and the cop standing alongside a gray Ford sedan lecturing the driver about traveling the wrong way on Second Avenue. She knew the Ford was a press car, one of those that had been staked out near the detectives’ office so media wolves could sneak photos or video footage, and sometimes follow them when they left.
Quinn cut over another block and got back on course, checking his rearview mirror to make sure the press car was nowhere in sight.
“That was nifty,” Pearl said.
Quinn nodded and drove on.
Jill knew she was being obsessive about Madeline. That was the only way to explain it. After all, the police artist sketch that was in all the papers and seemed to pop up every fifteen minutes on TV didn’t really look that much like Madeline.
But Jill had worked her last day for Tucker, Simpson, and King, though they said there was a slight possibility she’d be called back in a week. It all depended on when Mr. Tucker’s hernia operation was going to be scheduled. Things at the office would be hectic while he was off, and they’d need someone extra who could answer the phone and knew the filing system.
I know the filing system but no one there knows me.
On top of the situation at the law firm, Tony was out of town on business and would be for another four days.
For the first time in a while, Jill had time on her hands. That was why she couldn’t stop thinking about Madeline Scott. About what might have happened to poor mad Madeline. About whether she was still alive.
Jill had eaten the other half of her Chinese take-out meal for dinner last night, and this morning she’d walked a few blocks to a deli and gotten orange juice and a toasted bagel for breakfast. Now what was she supposed to do, watch Oprah? Hell, Oprah wasn’t even on.
The apartment was so quiet.
Jill paced a while, then turned on the TV and channel surfed until she was tired of talking heads and SUV commercials and bad drama and unfunny comedies. What she didn’t want to watch was the news. It would make her think about Madeline.
Jill used the remote to switch off the television. She stretched out on the sofa on her back with her forearm over her eyes. She knew she wasn’t going to sleep. She wasn’t tired. Her mind wouldn’t be still.
She removed her arm from across her eyes and sat up, remembering something. Thinking back. Making sure.
There was no reason why she couldn’t do something about Madeline, satisfy her curiosity about the woman. She was certain Madeline had mentioned that her former apartment was on West Seventy-second Street, the apartment where the new Madeline Scott (if by some chance there really was one) would be living.
If the apartment actually existed.
If what she’d heard hadn’t been another of mad Madeline’s flights of imagination.
Jill got up from the sofa and went to where the phone sat, on a table near the door. A stack of borough directories lay on the table legs’ cross braces. She stooped and got the Manhattan directory from the top of the stack and carried it back to the sofa.
She leafed through the pages to the Scott listings. There were quite a few Scotts, but she found it almost immediately: “M. Scott,” with a West Seventy-second Street address.
Jill sat motionless for a few minutes with the open directory on her knees. Seeing the listing had given her a start, even though it was the object of her search. Its existence in the phone book made the rest of Madeline’s story seem much more possible.
Jill shook off that feeling. The listing might be for a different M. Scott, a Mary, Martha, or Margaret Scott. Or maybe a Mathew or Martin Scott. It wasn’t only women who tried to give the impression a man lived in their apartment, by using first initials for their phone number listings and mailboxes.
One way to find out.
Jill gathered her willpower and carried the directory to the phone. She pecked out M. Scott’s number.
And was told the number was no longer in service. It was now unlisted.
Jill hung up the phone and returned to the sofa. She sat down heavily, still clutching the directory.
Great! Now what?
But she knew what.
Her boredom, her curiosity, her fear were driving her.
She tore out the directory page with M. Scott’s listing on it and stuffed it in a back pocket of her jeans, in case she’d forget the address.
She’d seen the weather report three times this morning on TV and knew it was supposed to rain. No matter. She wouldn’t take an umbrella.
She felt lucky.
27
The West Seventy-second Street address listed for M. Scott wasn’t far from Columbus Circle. It was an old building, at least twenty stories tall, with an ornate brick and stone front that was chipped and stained. Maintenance or repair was being done on the building. Blue iron scaffolding nestled tightly against it, across and above the entrance, though at present no one was working. A red plastic cone lettered CAUTION stood to the side of the three shallow stone steps leading to its entrance. Jill thought that was apropos.
It wasn’t the kind of building that featured a doorman. In fact, one of the wide entrance doors was propped open by a crude wooden wedge. Jill stepped inside, where it was a few degrees cooler and dim after the hot brightness of outside.
To her left was a bank of tarnished brass mailboxes. In a card inserted in the narrow slot above the locked box of apartment 16C was the name M. Scott. It was in slightly smeared black ink and appeared to have been there a while. Jill peered through the narrow grille in the box’s door and saw only darkness. There was no mail inside. None that showed, anyway.
Jill moved farther into the lobby. It was large, with mismatched upholstered furniture arranged in two groups around low tables. One of the tables had a left-behind newspaper scattered over it. The other had an arrangement of plastic flowers in a glass vase on its center. Two elevator doors stood at the opposite end of the lobby, across an expanse of gray and white tiled floor. There were ancient stains on the floor that looked like they’d been made by people stepping on cigarettes to put them out. The elevator doors were wood, with fancy brass inserts that were as tarnished as the mailboxes. The lobby obviously hadn’t been redecorated in years, but it looked reasonably clean. A wide wooden stairway to the left of the elevators had rubber treads on the steps and stopped at a landing that turned out of sight.
The lobby was empty, as far as Jill could see. Unless someone was seated in one of the two high-backed upholstered chairs facing away from her. Sounds from outside were faint. The busy sidewalk and street seemed far enough away to be another world, though they were just beyond the propped-open door.
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br /> As she glanced back at the door and mailboxes, Jill noticed an intercom system on the wall opposite the brass boxes. She hadn’t seen it before because it was coated with the same beige enamel as the walls.
She went to it and found 16C, then pressed on an enamel-glutted button, which, to her surprise, actually depressed under the pressure of her finger, and waited.
No buzz. No voice. No answer.
Jill gave the paint-coated button another push, thinking the ancient intercom probably hadn’t worked since the fifties.
She gave it up, stood staring at the elevators for a moment, and then strode toward them. She’d come here to learn something, and so far she’d been shut out. She was frustrated.
At least the elevator buttons hadn’t been painted over. She pressed the “up” button.
Nothing lit up. There was no response until the narrow brass arrow on the floor indicator above one of the elevator doors trembled, then started to descend from the number nine.
Jill waited patiently. Finally there was a grinding, clunking sound, and the elevator door slid open.
No one stepped out.
Inside, the elevator was surprisingly small and paneled in dark wood with a heavy grain. Jill saw that the building had twenty-five floors. She pressed the button for sixteen and stood waiting for what seemed a full minute before the door slid closed. When she was completely surrounded by the oppressive paneling, the elevator lurched and began its ascent.
The walls of the hall on the sixteenth floor were paneled halfway up with the same wood as used in the elevator. The upper half of the walls was a much lighter beige than that in the lobby, and it was pinkish.
Jill left the elevator and turned right, then walked down a dimly lit hall toward a small, dirty window and a sign indicating a fire stairs door. Apartment 16C was about halfway there.
Its ancient, six-paneled varnished door looked like all the other doors except for the apartment number. Just beneath the brass numerals was a round peephole.