by John Lutz
“So what do we do?” Quinn asked.
“I’m not certain we’re correct. But if we are, at this point I’m not in any position to do anything.”
“You could risk your job and professional reputation by backing me up,” Quinn said.
He’d thought Helen would laugh or at least smile, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Bring me something, and I’ll back you.”
Then she smiled. “If there is something.”
78
Quinn knew that if he went to his apartment or to the office there’d be media types there. The Manhattan paparazzi.
He drove the Lincoln to First Avenue and found a parking space near East Fifty-fifth Street. He got out of the car and fed the meter, then began walking south on the sunny, crowded sidewalk, cloaking himself in the anonymity of the city.
As he walked, he thought about the way the Slicer victims were killed. Displaying the victims was almost like a desecration of the hunt, and the hunt had been Martin Hawk’s quasi-religion. It seemed impossible, at least in Quinn’s mind, that the .25-Caliber Killer and the Slicer were the same man.
Then who was the Slicer?
Alfred Beeker? Could he kill in such a grisly manner? Perhaps. His was a profession that delved into sadistic and tortured souls. Maybe some of what he’d encountered had rubbed off.
Or maybe limiting the suspects to men might be where things had gone wrong. It wasn’t only men who sometimes hated women. Plenty of women still had enough pent-up rage at their mothers or sisters to compel them to kill.
And what about Dwayne Avis, prime suspect alphabetically but not in any other way? Quinn realized with a jolt that identification with the prominent rental car agency had diverted his attention from the fact that avis was Latin for bird.
Apropos of nothing. But still…
On the other hand, Avis was unlikely. He was in his late fifties, in the outer range of age for serial killers.
Still, it was possible. While the psychologists might be right and it was a long leap from torturing and killing animals to torturing and killing women, maybe it worked in the other direction. The dogs might not have been first. They might have been used as some kind of stopgap between human victims. Grisly offerings to relieve the compulsion to kill.
Quinn had to do something, and he needed his computer and directories, the files on the women’s murders.
He got back into the car and drove toward the office on West Seventy-ninth Street. The hell with the media.
There were only about a dozen of them outside the office, perhaps because they thought the main narrative of the story they were simultaneously following and creating was over. Quinn brushed past them with relative ease, smiling and no-commenting every third step.
When he was inside, he ignored frantic, loud knocking and locked and chained the street door. This wasn’t a regular precinct house; there was no reason to keep it open when most of the neighborhood didn’t even know it existed.
He switched on the office lights and sat down at his desk, then booted up his computer. He ignored it while it was activating its underlying software, and instead turned his attention to his phone directories and the Dwayne Avis file.
There was plenty to be found on the arrest and conviction of Avis in Browne County in upstate New York for cruelty to animals.
It took Quinn about fifteen minutes to contact the Browne County Sheriff’s Office that had apprehended Avis. The officers who’d been involved in the case were no longer with the department, but the undersheriff (which Quinn figured was some kind of deputy) Quinn talked to had, like Quinn, a voluminous file on Dwayne Avis.
The undersheriff’s name was Tom Hazelhoff, and he held a dim view of Avis. “Guy’s quite an asshole,” Hazelhoff said, “but he don’t give us much trouble anymore. Keeps to himself, and the neighbors don’t call in about some poor dog yowling all night. Guy who’d do that to dogs…” Hazelhoff ’s voice trailed off in disgust.
“I hear you,” Quinn said. “I’m a dog man myself. Your files’d be more extensive than ours, since he was in your system and went to trial there. What I want to know about Dwayne Avis is whether that’s his real name. ”
“Hold on,” Hazelhoff said. “Lemme look.”
He was gone more than ten minutes. Quinn almost hung up.
Then his patience was rewarded. Hazelhoff came back on the line.
“It’s his real name, all right,” Hazelhoff said.
Quinn’s heart became a weight in his chest.
“He had it legally changed to Dwayne Avis twelve years ago when he came here from Missouri,” Hazelhoff continued, “from his Native American name, Wild Sky Hawk. It says here for reasons of convenience.”
That was when the building collapsed on Quinn. Or was it the truth and full understanding?
Dwayne Avis was Martin Hawk’s father.
It was the son who procured victims for his father, repaying old debts, or perhaps even out of twisted familial love or obligation. The son, Martin, had nothing to do with the actual slaughter. Martin Hawk had personally killed no one.
Suddenly it occurred to Quinn that Dwayne Avis must be aware of the barrage of media attention being given to the .25-Caliber Killer case and the death of Martin Hawk, his son. Avis was isolated on his remote farm, but he surely had a generator, electricity, a radio or television.
“Quinn? You still there?”
“I am. Thanks, deputy.”
“Undersheriff. I hope I was of help.”
“Oh, you were. Can I ask another favor?”
“Sure can.”
“Get someone to Dwayne Avis’s farm soon as you can and hold him for questioning.”
“In regards to what?”
“Murder,” Quinn said. “Not dogs this time.”
“I’ll go myself,” Hazelhoff said.
“I were you, I’d take backup.”
But Hazelhoff had broken the connection and was gone.
79
An hour later, Hazelhoff called back.
“Avis wasn’t there,” he said. “There are indications that he’s fled. Couple of long guns are still in his farmhouse, and there’s a box, opened, with half a dozen twenty-five-caliber Springbok revolvers and ammunition. Ain’t that the kind of revolver was used—”
“It is,” Quinn said.
“Well, my guess is he mighta taken one or more of those guns with him. He’s probably headed someplace where you can’t walk around with a rifle or shotgun, but he’d still wanna be armed.”
“Agreed,” Quinn said. “You sure he’s fled, not just out somewhere and he might come back?”
“His dresser drawers are hangin’ open an’ there’s signs he’s grabbed some clothes from his closet. Half a carton of milk’s settin’ on the kitchen table, like he took a drink an’ didn’t bother to put the carton back ’cause he knew he wasn’t comin’ back. Didn’t even put the cap back on. The milk’s still cool, so he couldn’t have left very long ago. Also, you can see where he musta dragged somethin’ large an’ heavy off the closet shelf, left a big space an’ knocked a few things onto the floor. There’s an indentation on the mattress where it looks like a suitcase sat. Top of all that, that old truck of his is gone from behind the house. He’s fled, all right. No sign of where, though.”
Quinn thought he might know where. To New York City, to avenge his son’s death by killing the woman who’d caused it.
He hung up on Hazelhoff and called Pearl.
“Quinn,” she said, when she answered. “What’s up?”
“I don’t want to take time to explain, Pearl, but I want you to leave your apartment right now. Don’t take anything with you, just hang up the phone and go.”
“Go where, Quinn?”
“To the corner deli down the street from your apartment. Stay there till I show up.”
“I don’t understand this, Quinn.”
“Do you have to? Right now?”
“Damned right I do.”
“Can’t you
trust me, Pearl?”
“Do I have to answer that?”
“Damn it, Pearl!” He surprised himself by how anguished he sounded.
“I can trust you,” she said, hearing the same thing in his voice. “Quinn—”
“Go, Pearl. Please! Go now!” Quinn broke the connection.
Quinn immediately phoned Renz and explained the situation, then asked Renz to send radio cars to intercept Avis if he happened to show up.
On the way outside to climb into the Lincoln, Quinn phoned Fedderman on his cell and told him what was happening.
Then he drove fast toward Pearl’s apartment.
It had been damned hard work. Must’ve been, or Hobbs wouldn’t be so winded. And his right arm was sore, as if he might have messed up his rotator cuff again.
He’d been drinking a while and figured he must have a snoot full, the way the room was tilting this way and that, making it difficult not to bump into things as he made his way toward the bed. It was like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
Hard work, but worth it. Teach the bitch a lesson.
After beating Lavern harder than he ever had, Hobbs staggered across the bedroom and fell onto the bed. He snorted a couple of times and then let out a long sigh. He lay there in peaceful drunken slumber as she crawled from the bedroom, certain that this time he’d broken one of her ribs completely. More than one. He had to have, the way he’d hit and kicked her.
As she crawled, one of her elbows felt wobbly and kept giving, and she dragged one knee.
Damn him, damn him, damn him…
She crawled off the bedroom carpet, onto the hardwood floor of the hall, then onto the softer hall runner. Every inch she crawled brought pain. Lavern had been warned that Hobbs would go too far and kill her some day. Maybe this was the day. Maybe he had killed her. Maybe this was an exercise in revenge and not prevention.
If that’s what it is, so be it!
Damn him, damn him, damn him…
When she reached the closet, she opened the door, felt around behind the coats, and closed her hand around the shotgun.
She used the gun as a cane to aid her in struggling to her feet, where she could reach the box of shells on the closet shelf.
Leaning against the wooden door frame, breathing hard and hurting with every breath, she slipped a shell into the breech.
80
As soon as he turned the Lincoln onto Pearl’s block, Quinn knew he was too late. Police cars were angled in at the curb in front of her building. Several uniformed cops were standing outside the building but up close to it. Quinn could guess why. They didn’t want to be visible from an upstairs window and become targets. They were talking with a man in a brown suit. Quinn recognized the blocky form and head of tousled black hair. Sal Vitali.
Quinn parked the Lincoln fifty feet away from the nearest police car, then climbed out, stayed inside the protective angle of vision, and jogged toward the knot of cops and Vitali.
“What’ve we got?” Quinn asked when he’d joined the group. He glanced over. Fedderman had arrived out of nowhere, shirt cuff flapping like a signal flag.
Vitali pointed to a uniformed cop, a skinny guy in his forties with a long, pointed nose. “Everson here was first on the scene,” he said. “Officer Cullen, who’s inside helping clear the building’s tenants out the back fire stairs, showed up a few minutes later. Cullen used the elevator, and Everson took the stairs. Everson won the race and got to Pearl’s floor just in time to see the suspect back up with her into her apartment and close the door. He had an arm around her neck and a gun held to her head.”
Quinn looked at Everson. “What kinda gun?”
“Small handgun of some kind,” Everson said. He had dead-looking brown eyes.
“Revolver?”
“Coulda been. Blue steel, I think. He was jamming the thing in her ear, and her hair kinda blocked my view.”
“He display any other weapon?”
“None that I could see.”
“Got a ’scrip of the suspect?”
“Medium height, black hair, muscular build, maybe fifty.”
Quinn nodded. “Nice work.”
“’Nother thing, Captain. He didn’t look scared at all. A real calm one.”
“Drugged up?”
“No, not that kinda drowsy calm. He’s plenty alert.”
“Hostage team’s on the way here,” Vitali said.
Quinn knew what that meant. SWAT sharpshooters, a hostage negotiator. Somebody else in charge.
Fedderman was thinking the same thing. “Let’s go in and get her,” he said.
“Get her shot, maybe,” Vitali said in his gravel-pit voice.
Fedderman looked from Vitali to Quinn. “If what you say’s true,” he said to Quinn, “he’s got nothing to lose. He won’t negotiate. He’s just playing out the string.”
Quinn knew Fedderman was right.
Mishkin came out of the building, staying in tight to the brick and stone front. When he knew he was safe, he straightened up out of his protective hunch and walked over to them. He was wearing a tie and a white shirt with the sleeves neatly folded up to reveal thin wrists. He was sweating and looking like a harried accountant.
“We got everybody but Pearl and the suspect outta the building,” he said.
“I think we oughta go in fast,” Quinn said.
“Not ‘we,’” Mishkin said. “You.”
Quinn looked at him.
“You alone, or he swears he’ll shoot her and then himself.”
“Why me alone?” Quinn asked. But he knew why.
“He says you killed his son,” Mishkin said.
The other men stared at Quinn, saying nothing. Sirens sounded, blocks away but getting closer.
Quinn said, “Make sure nobody interferes, Feds.” He set off toward the building’s entrance.
“Like Pearl did,” Fedderman said when Quinn was out of earshot.
Lavern Neeson made herself crawl.
She made it into the bedroom with great difficulty and a lot of pain, dragging the shotgun by its long barrel. At some point the sleeping Hobbs must have awakened enough to use the remote to switch on the TV. It was flickering without sound beyond the foot of the bed. Closed-caption yellow letters crawled along the bottom of the screen, the words of a man and woman arguing in dead silence about where the stock market was going.
She waited a few minutes until she’d caught her breath, then reached out and gripped a chair leg and dragged the chair closer to her and to the bed.
Using the shotgun and chair for support, Lavern made it to her knees. When she thought she was steady enough, she leaned the shotgun against the mattress. It wouldn’t do to pull herself up onto the chair and then not be able to reach the shotgun where it lay on the floor.
It took her about five minutes, but she did manage to reach an awkward sitting position on the chair. She stretched out her right arm and pulled the shotgun to her. She sat very still because even the slightest movement of her body brought pain.
Lavern was proud of herself. She’d made it here, to her chair by the bed, with the shotgun. She was well on the way to what she’d decided to do. Hobbs continued snoring lightly, unaware of the monumental struggle so near him. One that would change his and Lavern’s world forever.
Lavern moved the shotgun’s safety to the off position. It was ready to fire. This close to her target, she wouldn’t even have to aim it.
But she would aim the gun. She wanted to be responsible for her decision and what would happen in the future. In the meantime, she’d endure the present with at least a modicum of comfort and a certain nostalgia. A sad glance over her shoulder before turning a corner. She knew she was second by second living out what remained of her old life.
The room seemed to block all sound from outside and become very small. Automatically, her breathing found the tempo of her husband’s as she sat and watched him sleep. They were both on the edge of an abyss. One difference between them was that she
knew it. Another was that he had put them there.
It would be easy for Hobbs, Lavern thought. She’d squeeze the trigger and he’d simply slip from one dream to another. She’d be the one left with the blood and the mess and every kind of horror.
The reality.
It wasn’t fair, but it never had been.
81
Quinn nodded to the uniformed cop in the lobby, who tried to look blankly at him, then gave it up and nodded back, wishing him luck. He was still watching as the elevator door closed, and then Quinn was on the way up.
He drew his old .38 revolver and held it tight against his thigh as he stepped from the quiet elevator into the silent hall. The building even felt empty.
Quinn advanced along the carpeted hall that smelled of time and dust and saw that the door to Pearl’s apartment was standing open.
Feeling fear that was on the edge of nausea, he moved closer to the doorway so he had a narrow view of the apartment’s interior. He saw a corner of the sofa, part of a lamp table, half of Pearl’s framed museum print of Munch’s The Scream.
He swallowed to make sure his throat wasn’t dry. “Dwayne Avis?”
“I’m here with your lady love,” Avis said in a calm voice. “I ain’t so sure she’s a lady, though. Why don’t you come on into the apartment, Captain Quinn, so we can see each other?”
Quinn took a deep breath and willed his legs to move. He tasted bile at the back of his throat.
There was Avis, standing near the opposite end of the sofa, holding Pearl in front of him with one arm tight around her neck. The other arm was crooked so the .25-caliber Springbok revolver in his right hand pointed straight into Pearl’s right ear. Pearl’s eyes met Quinn’s. She looked afraid but calculating. She hadn’t given up and was trusting him to figure out something. To try, anyway. They both knew that the only way Dwayne Avis was going to leave the building was dead or in custody.
Avis seemed almost unconcerned by his predicament. He was simply using what leverage he had and was prepared to cope with whatever came of it.