by John Lutz
“I think you’re right,” Pearl said, “but the monster doesn’t necessarily seem like one when he’s not being…himself. It’s possible you knew him at the time, or at least had met him.”
“Rhonda had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Charles Correnwell. It would be difficult to see Charles as a killer. Anyway, he moved to live with his mother in California weeks before Rhonda was killed, and has an alibi.”
Pearl knew that to be true. Charles Correnwell, on the other side of a continent, had attended a college lecture and was later drinking with friends at the approximate time of Rhonda’s murder.
“Your husband…” Pearl began.
Edith stared at her sharply. “He’s dead.”
“I know, ma’am. I know the circumstances.”
“We were both shattered by the loss of our daughter,” Edith said, “but I’m sure Aaron’s death was an accident. He wouldn’t leave me, leave the world, that way.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Pearl said. “I was wondering if there might have been someone with an irrational motive to get at your husband by murdering his daughter.”
“I’m sure there was no one that sick among our social or business acquaintances.”
Pearl said nothing, and she and Edith exchanged glances. They’d established that monsters didn’t always seem like monsters.
“Someone with protective coloring, you mean?” Edith said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Edith shrugged beneath the blue robe. “I’d have no way of knowing, would I?”
“Not unless a way came to you. Sometime when you were doing something else, or just before falling asleep, or waking up. The human mind works that way, catches us by surprise.”
“I’ve fallen asleep and awakened thinking about Rhonda almost every night and morning since she died,” Edith said. “The horror always plays out the same way, and I always wish I could have done something—anything—to prevent it. That’s the worst thing about the past, that it can’t be changed.”
Pearl felt stymied for a moment. “Mrs. Nathan—Edith. There’s so much about a person that never makes it into a police report.” She leaned forward. “What was your daughter’s favorite food? Did she smoke? What sort of music did she listen to? Might she have met someone online? Did she have a lot of male friends? Did she like movies?”
Edith sat more rigidly and stared hard at her, then seemed to relax. “She liked junk food—hamburgers, French fries, anything greasy and bad for her health. She didn’t smoke. Drank some, but not much. Music? She liked to listen to that little girl from Brooklyn.”
“Cyndi Lauper?”
Edith seemed to brighten. “That’s the one.”
“So happens I’m also a fan,” Pearl said.
“Rhonda used her computer, the Internet, but she didn’t go to chat rooms or that sort of thing. She had mostly female friends but some boys. They’d talk a lot on their cell phones. She had her cell phone pressed to her ear too much, like they all do, like it was growing there. I told her she might get brain cancer, but she didn’t listen.”
“None of them do,” Pearl said.
Neither woman said anything. Neither wanted to hear that it hadn’t mattered whether Rhonda’s cell phone would have given her cancer.
“These don’t sound like the kind of questions that solve murder cases,” Edith said.
“Oh, but they are,” Pearl told her. “Almost always it’s something that didn’t seem important at the time that turns out to be the key.”
“Rhonda had just gotten her degree in psychology and was spending most of her time waiting tables at Sporter’s, the restaurant in the next block, while she was looking for a better job. She didn’t have a lot of spare time.” Edith rubbed her palms on her temples, her fingers rigid. She looked exhausted. “I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s where she met the monster, at the restaurant.”
“It’s possible.”
“The police looked into it and found nothing.”
“That doesn’t mean there was nothing,” Pearl said.
Seeing that Edith was almost too tired to remain awake, Pearl stood up and thanked her for her time.
“Do you really think there’s a chance, after all these years?” Edith asked. Her eyes were bloodshot, swollen, and without hope.
“A chance,” Pearl said. “A slight chance.”
“I saw when you showed me your identification that you weren’t a real detective,” Edith said. “I mean, with the police.”
Pearl smiled. “I’m a real detective.”
“Private,” Edith said. “Who hired you? Who’s paying for this?”
“Twin sister of one of the Carver victims,” Pearl said.
Edith flinched slightly, as if assailed by a bright and sudden light. “Twins…my God, how she must have suffered.” She stared directly at Pearl. “She’s still suffering, isn’t she?”
“She is.” Pearl reached into a pocket, drew out one of her cards, and handed it to Edith. “If you do think of something…”
Edith accepted the card and studied it. “Quinn and Associates. Is that Captain Frank Quinn?”
“It is,” Pearl said. “You know him?”
“By reputation. I’m glad he’s one of the people looking for Rhonda’s killer.”
Pearl was reminded, as she often was, of Quinn’s high standing with the public because of his success in apprehending serial killers. He was halfway famous.
What next? Pearl thought. A book contract?
“I’ll call you,” Edith said.
Her voice brought Pearl back from her thoughts.
“If I think of something,” Edith reminded her.
“Yes,” Pearl said. “Please. Anything, however trivial. It might make all the difference.”
“Reopening the investigation can’t be cheap,” Edith said. “The surviving twin, is she rich?”
“Not usually,” Pearl said, “but she recently came into some money.”
“She must feel she has to do this.”
“She feels that way right now,” Pearl said.
“She won’t change her mind,” Edith said.
6
“Her check will clear,” Quinn said. “I called her bank to make sure there were sufficient funds.”
They were in the office, wondering why they couldn’t get in touch with Chrissie Keller at either of the phone numbers she’d given them. A message machine answered at one number, but the messages didn’t seem to get through. The other number was to a cell phone and elicited nothing but a high-pitched squeal.
“What about the check for the Sammy’s job?” Pearl asked.
“It’s good, too. I made sure.”
“We’re rich,” Fedderman said.
“Solvent,” Quinn said.
“So why can’t we get in touch with Chrissie?” Pearl asked.
“Maybe she’s one of those clients who figures she’ll be the one to decide when we report,” Fedderman said.
“Control freak,” Pearl said.
“I hate those,” Quinn said.
Pot, kettle, Pearl thought, and congratulated herself for staying quiet.
“If she doesn’t contact us in a day or two, we can start to wonder,” Quinn said. “Until then, we stay on the case. More interviews with victims’ friends and family.” He glanced from Pearl to Fedderman. “You two have any luck?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Pearl said.
Even as she spoke, she realized there was something about the case that she hadn’t yet noticed. It played like a bashful shadow just beyond the borders of her consciousness.
Pearl and Fedderman handed Quinn copies of their interview notes for the files, then in matter-of-fact tones told him about their reinterviewing of people close to the Carver victims. Other than the usual contradictions that could be put down to the passage of time and erosion of memory, there didn’t seem to be many discernable differences between these interviews and those done years ago. Nothing that might be construed as
a lead.
Quinn considered lighting a cigar but didn’t. Pearl would raise hell. She hated it when he or anyone else smoked in the office.
He thought about Chrissie Keller, the way she’d come into the office. Something about her. He was getting a bad feeling about what they’d gotten into, where it might be heading. A deep sensation in his stomach that was seldom off the mark.
“Some of the friends and family didn’t like being taken back to that time,” Fedderman said. “You could see it in their faces, and it made your heart sad.”
“That’s what these assholes start,” Quinn said. “It goes on for years. Sometimes for generations.”
“There’s still a lot of breakage there,” Pearl said. “A lot of hatred.” But that was what she’d expected to find. She knew Quinn was right: Untimely, violent death resonated for decades.
“Let’s check these statements in detail with the earlier ones,” Quinn said. “Then we can do some more reinterviewing.”
“Revive some more pain,” Fedderman said sadly.
“Blame the aforementioned asshole,” Quinn said.
It was when Pearl was integrating the new statements into the files that she realized what had been nagging at the edges of her mind. She reached for her folder containing the copies of the newspaper clippings that had been left by Chrissie Keller.
She leafed through the clippings and stopped at those concerning Chrissie’s twin, Tiffany.
Pearl was right in what had occurred to her. She felt the flush of satisfaction that was what she loved most about this work.
“There are photos of all the victims until we get to victim number five, the Carver’s last victim,” she said. “Tiffany Keller. Lots of clippings, but none with a photograph.”
Quinn and Fedderman checked their own copies.
No photos of Tiffany.
“Coincidence?” Fedderman asked. Thinking, Yeah, sure. Like most cops, he wasn’t much of a believer in coincidence.
“It doesn’t seem likely that Tiffany’s murder would generate all those news items without a photo,” Pearl said.
Quinn did his backward tilt in his desk chair and went into his casual balancing act, damn near tipping. “A young, attractive victim, sexually mutilated. There’d be plenty of photographs.”
He watched Pearl go at it, like a hound on the scent, though she wouldn’t like the comparison. She already had her computer booted up and was online, feeding Tiffany Keller’s name into her browser.
It took only a few moments to search the New York papers’ archives for related items.
Unsurprisingly, Tiffany’s mutilation and death at the hands of the Carver had been a major news story. And as Quinn had thought, the gory details of the crime were accompanied by plenty of vivid photographs of the young, attractive victim.
“I’ll be damned,” Pearl said.
“Photos?” Quinn asked.
“Lots of them.”
“Chrissie must have culled out the news clippings accompanied by photos,” Fedderman said.
Pearl shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”
Quinn and Fedderman moved closer so they could see her computer’s monitor without glare.
Quinn felt the sensation in his stomach gain in intensity.
The screen showed what looked like a high school yearbook photo of a pretty, dark-haired girl with a broad grin and slightly uptilted brown eyes that suggested potential mischief. It was a potential never realized in a life cut short by the Carver.
The caption beneath the photo was simply the subject’s name: Tiffany Keller.
Tiffany looked nothing like her twin who had hired Quinn and Associates to find her killer.
7
“This is crazy,” Pearl said, as they crossed West Forty-fourth Street toward the Sherman Hotel.
Quinn silently agreed with her. But sometimes it was a crazy world with its own kind of whatever passed for logic.
“We’re interrupting looking for a killer so we can search for our client,” Pearl said.
“I told you, her check cleared,” Quinn said. He hastened his pace to get across the heated concrete street before a white pickup truck leading a convoy of yellow cabs reached them. “That means we’re still working for her.” The line of vehicles hummed and rattled past behind them, stirring a warm breeze around their ankles.
“A cashier’s check,” Pearl said, when they were safely up on the sidewalk. “Which means we have no way to trace her through her checking account.”
“If you’re suggesting we should have been suspicious of her from the get-go,” Quinn said, “you’re right. I don’t know how it happened, Pearl, but we’ve both become too trusting.”
Pearl knew sarcasm when she heard it, so she bit her lip and held her silence.
It wasn’t smart to cross Quinn when he was being sarcastic. It could mean he was getting angry with himself, which was when he was his most difficult with other people. So Pearl simply followed him silently through a heavily tinted glass revolving door into the welcome coolness of the Sherman Hotel’s marble and oak lobby.
The Sherman was an old hotel in a difficult phase of renovation while remaining open. That brought the rates down, so there was no dearth of business despite the cordoned-off areas of the lobby where the floor was torn up, or the closed restaurant necessitating eating at the diner on the corner. The Sherman was small but had a shabby elegance about it that was being resurrected to something like its original state. Besides all the oak wainscoting and the veined marble floor and columns, there was a lot of fancy crown molding, and what looked like the original long, curved oak registration desk. Some of the black leather furniture and the potted palms placed about the lobby appeared to be new. Pearl couldn’t help looking for price tags on the plants.
When Quinn and Pearl approached the desk they were greeted by a tall, elderly man in a gray sport jacket with what must be the Sherman’s crest over its left breast pocket. He had thick white hair and a long, lean face with a patrician nose that was made for him to look down over. The sort of chap who would have seemed right at home in a venerable British men’s club.
“Yous got a reservation?” he inquired in a Brooklyn accent.
“Wees don’t,” Pearl said.
Quinn gave her a warning look. Sometimes that had an effect on Pearl. Usually not.
“We’re inquiring about one of your guests,” he said to the clerk, and showed him identification.
The clerk gazed at the ID, then made good use of his nose. “A private detective service? Not the real cops?”
“Not yet,” Quinn said. “We were hoping you’d be cooperative.”
The man gazed down his long nose at Quinn for another few seconds and then shrugged. “So who’s the guest?”
“Chrissie Keller,” Pearl said. “I phoned about her earlier.”
“Ah, yeah. You don’t look nuttin’ like you sounded on the phone. You sounded taller. I told you, didn’t I, that she’d checked out?”
“What we were wondering,” Quinn said, “is if the maid’s gotten around to cleaning her room.”
The desk clerk turned his back on them and punched some keys on a computer keyboard. “Keller, Chrissie. She was in room five-twelve, checked out at ten-thirty a.m. yesterday. Maid service woulda taken care of five-twelve by now.”
“Do you recall if she had a lot of luggage?” Quinn asked.
“Couldn’t say. But Buddy the bellhop could. He’s got a photographic mind. He remembers everything.”
Quinn and Pearl looked around the otherwise deserted lobby. “Do you remember where Buddy is?” Quinn asked.
The desk clerk gave him a Brooklyn-British kind of look and then went to a phone at the other end of the registration desk.
Buddy the bellhop appeared within seconds, as if he’d been waiting for his cue. He was a short, middle-aged man with a stomach paunch that ruined the effect of a blue and red uniform that made him look like an officer in Napoleon’s army. It even had epaulets. He
glanced from Quinn to Pearl and smiled broadly. When he reached them, he looked about in mild confusion for suitcases to be carried.
The desk clerk explained to Buddy that only information was wanted. Quinn described Chrissie Keller.
“I remember her,” Buddy said. “Nice lady, tipped okay.”
“Luggage?” Quinn asked.
“Big red Samsonite hard shell with wheels. Also a black nylon carry-on, looked like the kinda thing that might hold a notebook computer. She was wearin’ jeans and a yellow silk blouse.”
“What color eyes?” Pearl asked.
“One brown, one blue.” Buddy grinned hugely. “Naw, I’m funnin’ you there. I don’t remember her eyes. The rest of it, though, you can count on it bein’ right. I got a—”
“Yeah, we know.”
“The suitcase was heavy. She was plannin’ on bein’ around for a while.”
“You help her with the suitcase when she checked out?” Quinn asked.
“Naw, she just wheeled the thing out to the curb an’ piled into a cab. The carry-on was slung over her arm with her purse. The purse was brown leather. Kinda scuffed. That was the last I seen of her.”
Quinn thanked Buddy and turned back to the desk clerk. “Anybody been in five-twelve since Chrissie Keller?”
“Only the maid.”
“Mind if we have a look?”
“At the maid?”
Pearl dead-eyed the desk clerk, which seemed to scare him.
“Don’t mind at all,” he said. “Yous see our rooms, you’ll maybe wanna stay here sometime. But yous won’t find nuttin’—not the way our maids clean up after a guest.”
“Still,” Quinn said with a smile, “you never know.”
“I guess not,” the desk clerk said. “Yous might find lint or a hair or somethin’.”
“You’d be surprised,” Quinn said.
“No, I wouldn’t. I watch all those forensic crime-scene shows on TV, read mysteries about how crimes are solved.” He appeared thoughtful. “There a crime been committed here?”
“We’re trying to find out,” Quinn said.