by John Lutz
The man in the bed sighed. He was going to unload. Quinn had pulled it off. Pearl felt a guilty elation.
“Galin was dirty,” Lake said. “I paid him once a month to lay off my dealin’s an’ to let me know if somethin’ heavy was movin’ my direction. I do gotta say, he kep’ to the deal.”
“How much did you pay him?” Quinn asked.
“Ten thousand a month, then later on he wanted fifteen.”
“He get it?”
Lake snorted a kind of laugh that hurt him and made him wince. “I paid. He be worth it.”
“This go on till he retired?”
“No. Till six, seven years ago, when I went in for a short stretch. Nothin’ to do with Galin, though. Got stopped for a traffic violation, had a trunk fulla product. Shitty luck, was all it was. What it usually is. When I got out, I knew Galin was gonna retire soon.” He smiled. “An’ of course I wasn’t dealin’ then anyways.”
“No need to get into that,” Quinn said.
“I wasn’t surprised when I heard Galin was shot,” Lake said.
“Why’s that?”
“I always had the feelin’ I wasn’t the only one payin’ him. I’d give you the other names if I knew ’em.”
Quinn thought Lake might be lying, but he didn’t want to push it. “You’ve told us what we wanted to know.”
“I gotta ask again,” the doomed Lake said, “you bein’ straight with me? I can count on less’n eighteen months behind walls?”
Quinn took the Bible from Pearl, then gripped it tightly and held it out toward Lake, above the bed.
Pearl thought he looked like a faith healer ready to cast his spell. Was Lake going to rise up from the bed and walk, his handcuffs miraculously opened and dangling from his wrists?
“If you’ve been truthful to me,” Quinn said, “I promise that you’ll be free, Vernon. Within eighteen months, you’ll be free.”
“I been truthful. I swear to God I have.”
“I believe you, son.”
When they left the room, Quinn returned the Bible to Butterfield, who carried it back toward the nurse’s station.
In the elevator going down, the three of them were alone.
Pearl said, “Sometimes you frighten me, Quinn.”
“Vernon Lake’s an asshole who killed his share of people,” Fedderman said. “He knew something that could help us save lives. Quinn didn’t actually lie to the man.”
“That’s what frightens me. And makes me a little queasy.”
“Grow up, Pearl.” Fedderman said.
“Yeah. Grow up, grow old, then die. Makes being born not seem worthwhile.”
“Every right thing you do,” Quinn said, “you don’t feel good about it afterward.”
26
Black Lake, Missouri, 1985
The bitter November air was sharp and full of scent. It froze the hair in Marty’s nostrils and caught like a blade in his throat.
Eleven-year-old Marty Hawk stayed well to the side and slightly behind his father as they trudged up the snow-crusted rise toward the ridge of trees lined like silhouetted Halloween shapes against the gray sky. When the wind blew, it rattled the ice in the branches. Marty’s breath fogged out ahead of him.
He held his rifle cradled in his arm, pointed at the ground as instructed. Marty had shot the rifle before, but not with the high-velocity rounds that were in its breach and magazine now.
The rifle was a Mossberg bolt-action 30–06 with Marty’s name artfully carved into its wooden stock. It had been his birthday present last year. He’d practiced with it for months.
Now, finally, his father had decided he was ready.
As they approached the frozen ridge, his father shifted his ancient Winchester rifle to his left hand, extended his right arm to the side, and made a downward motion with the flat of his palm. Man and boy slowed their pace and moved as silently as possible through the snow to the top of the ridge.
The trees and some bent and frozen underbrush lent them cover as they surveyed the lay of lightly wooded land beyond them. Through the trees they could see the wide flatness of the lake, not quite frozen but with sheets of ice in its dark water.
There was movement ahead, and Marty and his father hunkered lower. Marty almost slipped and slid back down the rise, but his father reached over to grab his wrist and steady him. His father raised his gloved hand to his face and held a forefinger in front of his mouth, in a signal for Marty to be silent. Marty watched the steam of his father’s hot breath swirl around the raised finger and nodded. The rifle was getting heavy. He hefted it slightly higher so the tip of its barrel wouldn’t touch the snow.
Marty’s father pointed toward a doe and a large buck with a fine stand of antlers less than a hundred yards away. The two animals had their heads down, feeding on some grass they’d managed to find beneath the layer of snow. The buck raised his head, as if to show off his antlers, sniffed the air, then resumed feeding.
Marty felt his father’s hand squeeze his shoulder, and his father pointed to him, then to the buck.
Marty’s head swam. He didn’t want to kill this beautiful animal, but he knew his father saw it as food as well as prey.
It was food.
And it was prey. And Marty was a hunter. At least he would be. He knew what his father expected of him. Marty would do almost anything not to disappoint his father.
His father squeezed his shoulder again, brushing his back as he removed his hand.
Marty raised the rifle and sighted down its barrel at the peacefully grazing buck. He centered the sights on the deer’s large chest, just above the left leg. A heart shot.
The steam of Marty’s own breath rose in the icy air, for a second obscuring his vision. His heart slammed against his ribs and his blood rushed hotly through his veins. The blackened gun sight before him trembled.
He drew a deep breath, as he’d been taught, then slowly and quietly exhaled. They were downwind of the deer, and he knew he could take his time. The animals couldn’t pick up their scent. If he and his father simply were still enough, the deer wouldn’t bolt.
The end of the barrel was now steady. Marty adjusted his aim ever so slightly to the left, allowing for the winter breeze, and ever so gently squeezed the trigger.
The rifle’s sharp report cracked through the still morning, and the stock kicked back hard against Marty’s shoulder. He had to catch himself again to keep from sliding downhill.
When he looked for the deer he saw it beginning to run and was sure he’d missed. He didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.
Then the deer stumbled, struggled up again, took a few more leggy strides on limbs that refused to work, and collapsed.
“We won’t have to track after that one,” Marty’s father said beside him. Then he laughed and hugged Marty, who found himself laughing and crying simultaneously, and hugging back.
He saw that the Mossberg was lying in the snow and dutifully stooped to pick it up, brushing snow off its bolt action. Should he have worked the rifle’s bolt and readied it for a second or even third shot?
“You did good!” his father said beside him. “How do you feel?”
Marty thought about the question and decided. “Good.”
He looked about and saw that the doe was nowhere in sight. There were tracks in the snow, leading off toward the lake.
His father noticed that Marty had seen the doe’s tracks. He didn’t smile, but he nodded his approval.
Marty and his father topped the ridge and trudged downhill through the snow toward the dead deer, their weight back on their heels. There was no breeze now, and the air was like still crystal that shattered each time their boots broke through the crust of snow. Marty had forgotten to put his gloves back on and his hands were cold. Through the trees, he caught glimpses of brilliant red near the dead buck, like scattered jewels in the snow.
The buck lay on its side, its neck twisted so that its head was at a sharp angle. Its eyes were open and blank. When they were c
lose enough, Marty stooped low and reached toward the animal and petted it.
“A fine shot,” his father said proudly. “Damned fine!”
Marty would never forget that morning. Not so much because of what had happened, but because of what was to follow.
27
New York, the present
Quinn reminded himself that June Galin had a bad heart. She stood squarely in the doorway of her house in Queens, as if braced to defend her home against invaders. A bee droned close by, abruptly changed direction, and passed within inches of her face. She ignored it.
“We need to look around the place,” Quinn told her.
“You mean search it,” she said.
“Yes. That’s what we’re asking you to let us do.”
“What do you think you’ll find?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we want to search.”
June’s gaze darted to Pearl and Fedderman, standing just behind Quinn, then to the radio car parked behind Quinn’s big Lincoln at the curb.
“You have a warrant,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have brought people with you to help search.”
“We do have a warrant, dear. We thought we’d ask and might not have to use it. We were hoping for your cooperation, considering it was your husband who was murdered.”
She flinched when she heard it so bluntly stated.
“You won’t have to serve the warrant,” she said, stepping back. “Come on in. Just try not to mess things up too much.”
Quinn waved for the two uniforms waiting in the radio car to join them, then led the way past June Galin into the house. Though she’d made room for them to enter, they still had to edge past her. It was as if she was putting up a token defense for her dead husband.
“We’ll try to be neat,” Pearl assured her as she squeezed past, the two uniforms at her heels. They were officers Nancy Weaver and Vern Shults. Shults was near retirement and could be sitting behind a desk, but he preferred to be out in the field. Weaver had worked her way up to detective rank, but had screwed up again somehow and was back in uniform. She was a talented detective, but she liked to sleep around, especially with other cops. It had been good for her libido, but bad for her career.
June Galin walked to the sofa and sat down squarely on the middle cushion. She picked up a throw pillow and held it in her lap, hugging it, as the five invaders began what, in her mind, must be a vandalizing of her home.
“Possibly we can find something that tells us who your husband met the night of his death,” Quinn said.
“I’ve already searched for that,” June said, not looking at him.
“Then you understand why we must.”
She didn’t answer. Almost certainly Joe Galin hadn’t confided in his wife. She didn’t know she was defending honor already lost.
Quinn began opening drawers. The warrant specified that the object of their search was evidence that might shed light on who’d been with Galin the night of his death. But out in the street, before they’d approached the house, Quinn had made it clear to everyone what they were searching for once they got inside. It was the same thing police auditors and bank examiners were trying to find, only they were searching in paper form or on the Internet, or for a safety deposit box. Everyone was looking for Joe Galin’s secret cache.
Looking for money.
Across the bridge, in Manhattan, something else had been found.
“Go on in and take a look,” the uniform in the hall said. He was a young man with old eyes. His uniform was a size too large for him. He was pale, slender, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Acne scars pitted both cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He could have passed for seventeen if it weren’t for those eyes. “I’ll go back in there if I have to, but I gotta say it ain’t high on my want list.”
Detective Sergeant Sal Vitali and his partner Harold Mishkin exchanged a glance.
“You say the super found her?” Mishkin asked. He was a small man in his fifties, with a receding chin and a sprout of gray mustache. He had arched gray eyebrows that gave him a perpetual expression of mild surprise. Vitali thought Mishkin always looked like a befuddled accountant interrupted at his work.
The uniform nodded, swallowing. “Yeah. In the bathroom. Said a neighbor complained about the smell and the flies.”
“Flies?”
“Yeah. So many of them. Like thousands. They got into the ductwork, and some of them made it into the apartment upstairs.”
“Where’s the super now?” Vitali asked. He had a voice like gravel in a can, and a head of unruly curly black hair. He might have played Columbo if Peter Falk hadn’t beaten him to it. Vitali traded on that in cold weather, wearing a wrinkled trench coat and squinting a lot. Mishkin let it pass without comment. Anyway, Sal wasn’t nearly as subtle or polite as Columbo.
“The super?” the young cop asked, almost as if he was in a daze. “He’s down in his basement apartment. He ain’t feeling so well.”
“What’s your name?” Vitali asked.
“Henderson, sir. Ron Henderson.”
“You ride with a partner?”
“No, but there’s another of us here. Gary Mumford, he was nearby and did a follow-up on the squeal.”
Vitali remembered two radio cars parked outside.
“Where’s Mumford?”
“Went out to get some air. He ain’t feeling so good, either.” Henderson glanced at his watch, as if events were on some kind of schedule. “He oughta be back soon.”
“You stay here in the hall,” Vitali said. “Don’t let anyone else in this apartment till we give you the go-ahead. Understood?”
Henderson nodded and swallowed. Vitali thought the young cop had the most prominent and hyperactive Adam’s apple he’d ever seen.
Vitali looked at Mishkin. “You ready, Harold?”
“Almost,” Mishkin said. He drew a small tube of mentholated cream from a pocket, squeezed a little on his finger, and applied it beneath his nose. “You want some?”
Vitali did, and followed suit. Usually he didn’t bother, and it was only Mishkin, with his famously weak stomach, who used the menthol fumes to keep from upchucking. But after listening to young Henderson, Vitali figured this time should be an exception.
Mishkin held the tube out to the young cop. “This’ll help,” he said. “Used to be we lit up cigars at times like this, before they declared open season on smokers.”
Henderson dabbed some of the cream beneath his nose and nodded his thanks to Mishkin. Another swallow, this time followed by a feeble smile.
Vitali was a little surprised by Henderson’s reaction to this crime scene. Cops saw a lot, even young ones like this. And what about the other one, Mumford? What had so badly shaken up these guys?
Time to find out.
“Let’s do it, Harold,” Vitali growled, and led the way inside.
Mishkin drew a deep breath and followed.
Their first impression was that the apartment was quiet.
No, not quiet.
As they moved farther into the living room they could hear a faint but persistent buzzing.
Both Vitali and Mishkin had heard the sound before and knew instantly what it was. The flies Henderson had mentioned. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of flies.
The mentholated cream was making Vitali’s eyes water as they made their way toward the short hall that must lead to the bathroom. With each step the buzzing got louder.
As they approached the open doorway they began to notice flies in the hall, all around them. Mishkin slapped one away from his face. Another threatened to fly into Vitali’s right nostril. He brushed at it and saw it circle away.
Where have you been, you little bastard?
The buzzing coming from the bathroom was very loud now, filling every chamber of Vitali’s brain with noise.
Just outside the bathroom’s open door, he and Mishkin looked at each other. Then Vitali stepped closer to the doorway and leaned forward so he could see into the bathroom.
&
nbsp; No, no, no, no, no…
“Sweet Jesus!” he muttered.
He felt Mishkin move up to stand alongside him.
“Awww,” was all Mishkin said, as if he was terribly disappointed in someone or something.
The plastic shower curtain had been flung aside, maybe by the super, to reveal what was left of the woman. She was hanging upside down from some kind of metal contraption set up over the tub, covered with flies. They swarmed over her like a moving blue-black carpet, and their buzzing roared through Vitali’s consciousness. There was something fierce and frightening in the sheer volume of their collective, constant drone. They were in charge now. It was their turn.
The woman had been slit open wide from pubis to throat. Her internal organs had been removed. Through the undulating carpet of flies Vitali could see her spine and the backside of her rib cage.
Bile rose in his throat. He made himself move closer on numbed legs and peer into the bathtub.
Her entrails were there in a bloody pile. More flies, so many the mass of them flexed and shifted like one huge creature intent on its feast.
Vitali jerked back away from the tub, bumping into Mishkin, who stared at him in surprise. Fear glittered in Mishkin’s mild blue eyes.
“You don’t have to look at that, Harold.”
But Mishkin did, edging closer to the tub. When he turned back toward Vitali there was an expression of horror on his pasty face that Vitali would remember on his deathbed.
A fly bounced against Vitali’s cheek, found its way back, and crawled into his ear. He slapped at it and felt it fall out. He was sure he felt it fall out.
“Let’s get outta here, Sal,” Mishkin said calmly.
Vitali backed out first, then turned and almost ran toward the living room and the door to the hall. Mishkin was behind him at a fast walk.
Back out in the hall, they closed the door tightly so none of the flies, none of the horror, would follow them out.
Young Henderson was leaning against the opposite wall, looking somberly at them with his old eyes. You’ve seen it, too, the eyes said. Welcome to the club. There’s no way to resign. There went the Adam’s apple.