by John Lutz
“Would you throw them Vitali and Mishkin?”
“I can promise you they’ll go before you do.”
“You’re an honest evil man, Harley. That’s so rare in this world.”
“I’m working on the honest part.”
“And making progress. I’ll fax you that report.”
“You do that, the whole shebang. Whenever you find time in your frenetic schedule.”
That sounded like an exit line to Quinn. He broke the connection and stuck the phone back in his pocket.
The NYPD must have been getting the “Free Berty” demonstration under control. Traffic was creeping ahead steadily now, without the nerve-racking stop and go.
The city had caught its breath and was moving on.
Lavern removed the sheet from over her face and found a lance of sunlight aimed at her head, illuminating her pillow and igniting the pain in her ear where Hobbs had struck her last night. She moaned and glanced at the clock near the bed. Almost nine o’clock.
She recalled last night and shrank within herself. The apartment was quiet. Hobbs had left for work over an hour ago. At least there was that. She had some peace for a while. Some freedom from fear and fists.
And knives. Something new from Hobbs.
As she sat up in bed the pain in her ribs flared, and she drew a sharp breath. Her injured ear began to ring. She got both bare feet on the floor and stood up, dizzy at first so that she had to stoop slightly and touch the edge of the mattress to keep her balance. Then she worked her sleep shirt over her head and removed her panties. Every move hurt. It was as if she’d been in a terrible auto accident the day before and the pain and stiffness had caught up with her overnight. Knowing she was stooped like an old woman, she made her way toward the bathroom.
In the full-length mirror on the bathroom door she was shocked by how relatively unmarked her body was. Though her ear and the side of her head ached, there was only a slight discoloration at her temple and around the corner of her eye. Her sides were red and turning purplish and would be colorfully bruised, but not for a while. The bruising would be vivid but limited, and not visible when she was dressed. But if she looked as bad as she felt, someone would rush her to a hospital.
She was still proud of her body and thought that, considering what she’d been through, she looked all right, even sexy, though it was obvious something had happened to her ribs. As long as they were covered, she could pass for one of the world’s uninjured. Hobbs had it down to an art.
Lavern sometimes wondered how many other bruised but seemingly uninjured women she passed every day on the street, concealing their pain, holding it inside.
As she turned on the shower, she heard the rasp of the intercom. After hesitating a few seconds, she swiveled the white porcelain faucet handles to off. She dried her hands on a towel and put on a robe. Her hair looked like a birds’ nest from sleeping on it, but it would have to do.
Yanking the robe’s sash tight about her waist, she hurried from the bathroom and answered another, longer intercom buzz.
A metallic male voice from the lobby said there was a delivery for Lavern Neeson in 5C. She told the deliveryman she was the recipient and buzzed him in.
A few minutes later he was at the door, a young, acne-cursed man wearing dirt-crusted jeans and a gray T-shirt. The shirt had FLORA DORA lettered on it. Lavern knew it was the name of a small florist shop in the next block.
She accepted the narrow white box from the man, told him to wait a minute, and then dug a few dollars from her purse to tip him.
When he was gone, she carried the box to the coffee table and sat down before it on the sofa. Her ear began to ring louder, and her headache was pulsing. When she was finished here she’d take two Aleves with a glass of water, see if that helped.
She leaned forward in the quiet apartment and opened the box.
It was full of pink and red roses. There was a small white card affixed with a delicate pink ribbon to one of the stems. Lavern opened the card so she could read the blue-ink scrawling inside it and recognized the handwriting.
The roses were from Hobbs. The writing on the card proclaimed that he loved her.
The sad part about it, Lavern thought, was that he really did.
Martin Hawk sat back, sipped his espresso, and idly watched the pigeons scratching out their brief existence on the sidewalk outside the restaurant where he’d just enjoyed a delicious breakfast. He mused on how his life had changed for the better. Had it been luck? Fate? He preferred to credit it to design, but he was a realist.
At sixteen his intelligence had been obvious, especially in his knowledge of the outdoors and in the scores he accumulated on various tests meant to measure scholarly potential. Yet he’d been a hopeless student. His father had become concerned, and when Alma’s widowed and childless sister, Adriella, offered to take the boy into her home in Little Rock and see that he was enrolled in a better school and tutored, Carl thanked her for her generosity and told Marty it was time for him to become a scholar. Education was important, and he’d be a neglectful father if he didn’t see that Marty obtained some.
Marty didn’t like leaving Black Lake, but to disobey his father was unthinkable. So he lived with Adriella and struggled along in Little Rock, not exactly a top scholar, but getting by.
Three weeks before his high school graduation, fate intervened. Adriella, who was much more attractive and personable than her late sister, met and married Lloyd Barkweather.
Barkweather was a large, bluff man with shrewd gray eyes. He was moderately wealthy. And he was British. He’d been spending a month in Little Rock to consider Arkansas as a contending state in a search for the site of a new Rolls-Royce jet engine plant. Barkweather had said no to Arkansas, and a love-struck Adriella had said yes to Barkweather.
An ardent big game hunter, Barkweather had soon taken a shine to Marty. When he and Adriella moved, Marty went with them to London, where he continued his education, doing only marginally better as a scholar.
But he did marvelously well as an outdoorsman, going with Barkweather on hunting expeditions in faraway countries whose names Marty could barely pronounce.
When Barkweather and Adriella were killed in a motorcar pileup on the M23, Marty was surprised to find himself the sole heir to a modest investment portfolio.
Still without his degree, Marty left school at the age of twenty-one. He placed the portfolio in the stewardship of the investment department of Barclays Bank and traveled to Africa, where he went to work as a guide for a British company offering safaris. Mostly they were photography safaris, but Marty did hunt on his own with a rifle that had been a gift from Barkweather.
His reputation as a hunter grew, as did his reputation with women. The first had been the lonely wife of a Canadian client. Then local wives and daughters of civil servants fell one after another as victims of his charm.
Marty found courting and bedding women much like stalking and bagging game.
But not quite. There was some trouble about an unwanted pregnancy that became a miscarriage, then a suicide, and he left Africa to hunt in India.
He thought less and less about the disconsolate African woman who’d leaped to her death from a bridge out of love and remorse.
When a tiger in the Sunderbans became a man-eater, it was Marty who was hired to track and kill it. Within the week the tiger was dead, and Martin Hawk was something of a hero.
After that kill, he returned to Africa.
A month later he was sitting in a camp chair outside his tent when he noticed a slow whirl of vultures circling a distant creature almost dead. Martin Hawk raised his binoculars and saw that the doomed animal was a male lion that had perhaps been fatally injured in a fight for dominance of the pride.
He leaned back in his chair, still with the binoculars pressed to his eyes, and became fascinated not by the lion, but by the huge birds gliding and soaring on the warm air currents off the veldt, patiently waiting for the lion to die.
It was then, for a reason he didn’t understand or try to analyze, that he felt the need to return to his home country and his father.
The time Martin Hawk had chosen to return was fortunate. His modest portfolio in euros had, due to the rate of exchange, become considerably more valuable in dollars.
After his plane landed at Kennedy in New York, he canceled his connecting flight and took a cab into the city.
New York City. He wanted to see it.
It might be the perfect place for a unique and profitable business he’d long considered while enjoying the hunt.
So far it had been exactly that.
Martin Hawk had never gotten beyond New York.
He raised his hand to get the waiter’s attention and ordered another espresso.
64
Dr. Beeker knew how to play the role. He looked like a high-priced psychiatrist this morning. He was wearing a brown suede sport jacket with a yellow and black tie, darker brown slacks, and brown loafers. His glasses were dangling from a cord around his neck, nestled against his chest next to a gold tie clasp. His damp, thinning hair seemed longer and was curled above his ears and at the nape of his neck, reminding Quinn of a nest of snakes.
When he entered and saw Quinn in his office anteroom his features tightened and his intense dark eyes darted to his receptionist, then back to Quinn.
“Detective Quinn insisted on waiting,” Beatrice, the middle-aged, attractive blond woman behind the desk, said in her defense.
Without smiling, Beeker nodded to her.
Quinn stood up from the black leather sofa that seemed to have grown to him. “We need to talk.”
“I have appointments soon,” Beeker said.
He strode into his office and left the door open. Quinn took it as an invitation and went in, noticing that the doctor had left in his wake a lemony scent of cologne or shaving lotion. He closed the door behind him.
Beeker was sitting behind his desk, doing the tent thing with his fingers.
Quinn remained standing. “I visited your Web site,” he said.
Beeker smiled slightly. He had a slow way of smiling that seemed to give his expression added meaning. “I’m sure you enjoyed it.”
“The photos of Zoe—”
“Aren’t bad, are they?” Beeker shifted his weight slightly in his chair so it tilted backward, but not so far that he had to remove his elbows from his desk. “Zoe’s a beautiful woman. But you knew that.”
“I’d like you to delete the photos of Zoe,” Quinn said.
“If Zoe makes that request, I’ll consider it.”
“I’m making the request for her.”
“I don’t accept that.” Beeker leaned forward again. “You might not like it, Detective, but Zoe enjoyed posing for those photos. She’s proud of her body and doesn’t mind revealing it. The shots I’m sure you’d find the most disturbing aren’t on the Internet. She enjoyed posing for those, too.”
“It was another time, another place,” Quinn said.
“But not another Zoe. She doesn’t necessarily fit your concept of her, Detective Quinn. You don’t really know her at all. I’m not sure I do. Like each of us, she’s many different people wrapped in the same skin.”
“I didn’t come here for psychobabble,” Quinn said, and moved closer to the desk.
Beeker didn’t react. “You don’t intimidate me, Detective Quinn.”
“I’m not interested in intimidating you. I’m simply telling you to delete the photos.”
“If Zoe calls me, I’ll do that. It’s a part of our former relationship that’s between the two of us.”
“If I don’t intimidate you, why are you agreeing to delete the photos?”
“I’ll delete them if Zoe requests it. Not you.”
“I’ll let you keep that distinction,” Quinn said.
“Our Zoe has sides to her you’ve never seen. As you have sides she’s unaware of. Wouldn’t you say that’s so, detective?”
“Not everyone goes around pretending to be what they aren’t,” Quinn said.
“You mean like a sexual deviant pretending to be a respectable Park Avenue psychiatrist? Overcompensating behavior used as a disguise? I’m not putting up any kind of defensive subterfuge, and neither is Zoe. The idea of either of us living secret lives is all in your mind. She posed for photographs often and willingly and knew what I was going to do with them. What we’ve done and photographed is all legal, Detective Quinn. You can check with the vice squad. Zoe and I were part of a club whose members share certain modes of impulse and behavior. It’s the other photographs that might worry you. The ones with the interesting props. They’re the real Zoe, too.”
Quinn was fighting to keep his temper, but at the same time was somewhat surprised. Beeker was taunting him now, daring him.
“The most outwardly respectable people are the most likely to have diametrically opposite components to their personalities, Detective. Surely you’ve noticed that. The reformers who consort with prostitutes, the Bible-thumpers who steal from the church, the gay-bashers who are latent homosexuals, the upright family men who are serial killers.” Beeker gave his slow smile again. “Then there is the healer of the mind, Zoe, who accepts and lives with her own various facets of self-identity. Her other sides, but not her secret sides.”
“I get it, already,” Quinn said. “We’re all two people.”
“No, no, no. We’re all many people. We simply have to accept and integrate our various selves. I help people to do that.” Beeker stood up behind his desk. “But if someone does have a secret self, Detective Quinn, you might do well to look for it as the opposite of their public self.” He walked out from behind the desk. “A zealous cop crusader, for instance, might also be a serial killer. Hasn’t that happened in our fair city?”
It had. And Quinn had been fooled by it too long and people had died. Beeker must know that.
“You seem to have researched me,” Quinn said.
“Somewhat. I’m interested in whoever’s interested in Zoe. As you are. Why pretend otherwise?”
“I do believe you’re practicing your dark art on me, Doctor.”
“I specialize in dialectical behavior therapy, Detective Quinn. It requires the cooperation of the patient. I don’t believe you’re capable of that.”
Quinn knew it was time to go. He hadn’t come here to physically assault Beeker, but things were moving in that direction.
He moved toward the door. “Delete the photos, Dr. Beeker.”
“Have Zoe call me.”
“You’re a stubborn one.”
“Notice I’m not the type,” Beeker said.
The slow smile was forming as Quinn turned away.
Quinn was perspiring when he left Beeker’s office. He knew he’d lost a round, and he didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it that there were more, and more explicit, photographs of Zoe. He didn’t like what Dr. Beeker had told him, which was, in effect, the same thing Helen Iman had told him about contradictory behavior.
If they were right about reformers, Bible-thumpers, and gay-bashers, were they right about serial killers?
And weren’t serial killers supposed to be his area of expertise?
65
Renz had Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, and Helen the profiler in his office. The door was locked, and Renz had left word not to be disturbed unless it was urgent.
When everyone was more or less settled, Renz sat down behind his waxed and uncluttered desk. “I have an idea,” he said.
Quinn was seated in one of the chairs facing the desk. He could think of several things to say to Renz’s statement, but he chose the relatively safe, “And you want to try it out on us.”
“Exactly,” Renz said. “I will say before I go into it that Helen approves.”
“I think it might work,” Helen said.
“Helen thinks, and I think,” Renz said to Quinn, “that the killer sees you, even wants you, as his opponent. The bond that sometimes forms between serial k
illers and the lead detectives who pursue them is strong here. We think we can take advantage of it. We want to place a letter from you to the killer in the newspapers—City Beat first, of course—in which you taunt the killer. I think we know how he’ll react.” Renz glanced at Helen, as if they’d rehearsed this and she’d missed her cue.
“We think he’ll challenge you,” Helen said. “And in some manner give himself away.”
“And if he doesn’t give anything away?” Pearl asked.
“Then it’s up to Quinn whether to accept the challenge.”
“If the killer’s smart,” Quinn said, “he’ll simply ignore the letter.”
“He’s smart and mentally ill,” Helen said.
“When do you want this letter?” Quinn asked.
Renz leaned over his desk, a folded slip of paper extended in his right hand. “With Helen’s help, I’ve already written it.”
Quinn accepted the paper and looked at it.
To the one who kills from shadows and secrecy:
It is time for honorable men to stop the wave of murder that is washing over the city. But there is only one man who—if honorable and a man—can stop it. The .25-Caliber Killer must come forward. The fact that he cooperated will be considered in his sentencing. If he ignores this opportunity, when my hunt for him ends as it must, he will feel the full weight of the law.
Captain Frank Quinn
“It’s not so much a taunt,” Quinn said, “as an offer of a deal.”
“Believe me,” Helen said, “he’ll consider it a taunt, and he’ll respond as he must. There’s always the chance that unforeseen circumstances might interfere with this plan, but the psychology of it is sound.”
“And if he doesn’t respond,” Renz said, “we’ve lost nothing. Those are the kind of odds I like.”
“You’re not the one taunting a maniac with a gun,” Pearl said.
Quinn gave her a look that was obviously meant as a caution signal, but Pearl saw green lights where others saw red.
“The letter doesn’t mention the Slicer,” Quinn said.