by John Lutz
“How do you know it’s a she?”
“You and your other two monkeys have talked to people, and we’ve talked to the same people. Didn’t it occur to you some of those victims’ families might contact us after you stomped all over their peace and well-being and reminded them of their grief?”
It had occurred to Quinn, only he doubted that Pearl or Fedderman had mentioned the identity of their client. And he was sure he hadn’t. It was possible that Renz was keeping a loose tail on Quinn and his detectives, even possible that a search without a warrant had been done at the office. Quinn made a mental note to be more careful locking up, and to make sure the office computers hadn’t been violated.
“It’s the twin sister,” Renz said. “Full of all that psychic bullshit about twins being so close they can read each other’s thoughts even if one of them’s dead.” Renz made a mock shivering sound. “Spooky, spooky. Take my advice and return the bitch’s retainer, tell her it’s no use. Once this shit gets into the news it’ll be too late. The River Styx’ll be crossed.”
“I think you mean the Rubicon,” Quinn said. “That’s the river you cross when you can’t turn back. The Styx is the river you cross when you’re dead.”
“Never mind that. Can I be sure you got my message?”
“Sure, Harley. I’ll sleep on it.”
“That’ll have to be good enough for now,” Renz said. “But let me know early tomorrow morning so I can be sure. Not that you got a choice, but you’re a stubborn bastard.”
“I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be waiting. And Quinn, I know my rivers.”
13
Mary attempted to scream, but the sight of the man from the subway right there, in her apartment, turned her throat to stone. She couldn’t breathe, much less scream.
And he was the subway man. The same wrinkled, soiled clothing. The same baseball cap with its bill worn low so he seemed to be staring at her with half eyes. The same bristly beard stubble. The same horrible, frightening stench of stale sweat and urine. Of the street. Of everything about New York that was raw and dangerous.
He seemed as shocked as Mary for a moment; as if he could hardly comprehend finding her in her own apartment. It was as if she’d surprised and frightened him. As if she didn’t belong.
He actually smiled. His teeth were crooked and yellow, one of the upper incisors broken half off. As he stared at her, he ran his tongue over his lower lip.
He bent low at the waist and removed something from just inside his pants cuff. When he straightened up, Mary saw that he was holding a knife with a long, thin blade. A boning knife, she knew. She had one something like it in her own kitchen drawer.
Was it her knife?
No. Hers had a wooden handle. The handle on this knife—what she could see of it inside the man’s hand—was steel, like the blade.
Mary inhaled again to scream, and the man moved quickly toward her. It was all so fast, as if film frames had been skipped. Suddenly his forearm was pressed vertically against her upper body, between her breasts. It was the arm that held the knife, and she could feel the cold steel of the blade against her throat. The knife point probed eagerly beneath her jaw, not quite breaking through flesh. If he pushed upward the knife would go into her mouth, through her tongue and the roof of her mouth, into her brain. She could imagine it. Could almost feel it.
Mary was still too paralyzed with fear to scream. She felt her bladder release and the warmth of her urine trickling down her legs.
The man with the knife became aware of her mixture of terror and humiliation, and his smile broadened. She was his entertainment, and she was performing well, his smile said. He wasn’t tall and didn’t seem particularly muscular, but Mary could feel his strength like a current as he moved her a step backward with a shifting of his slender but powerful arm.
Any second he might use the knife.
She managed to make a few gasping, hoarse noises, almost like a bagpipe bellowing, but muted. She had never known such fear was possible.
Leaning his body weight into her, he walked her backward, through the living room, down the short hall to her bedroom. Her entire body was trembling as if electric shocks were running through it.
The bed! Once I’m on the bed I’m lost!
Without warning he shoved her hard, and she staggered backward, catching her heel on the carpet, losing her balance.
She was on her back on the hard wood floor before she knew what had happened, and the back of her head ached as if her skull had fractured in a thousand fragments.
He straddled her, seated on her stomach, waving the knife before her eyes so she’d be sure to see it.
He clutched the front of her blouse and ripped it away, sending buttons flying. She wasn’t wearing a bra. With his free hand he clamped her nipple between thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard.
Then his weight was lifted from her, and she could breathe easier.
Through her pain and dizziness Mary realized she was looking up at the man’s back, at the dark crescents of perspiration stains on his shirt beneath his armpits. She watched him move quickly toward her bedroom window, knowing as she did so that the air was different in the room. Warmer and more humid.
The window’s open. I left it unlocked, and now it’s open.
She shifted her gaze and saw that she was right. He’d left the window open where he’d gained entrance from the fire escape.
He looked back at her, and their gazes locked. His unblinking eyes were hypnotic. Snake to mongoose.
With a surprising grace and confidence he let himself out through the window, moving backward and not taking his sullen, greedy eyes from her. Beneath the half-moon eyes was the broken-toothed grin, as if he had her completely in his power and knew every evil thing about her, all the secrets of her body.
She was his for the taking, that grin said. And when he was ready, he would take.
Mary understood that and knew she was helpless to do anything about it.
Still lying on her back, she managed to prop herself up on her elbows and watch the man outside the window. He turned away from her, and began his descent on the black iron fire escape. She could barely hear the leather-on-metal scraping of his shoes as he scrambled down and away from her. She was safer with each of his hurried steps.
She dropped so she was flat on her back again and lay silently for a while, then rolled onto her side. When she tried to stand up her headache exploded behind her eyes, and she sat down on the floor near the bed.
Using the mattress to lean against, she finally managed to pull herself up to where she was sitting hunched over on the bed. She stretched out her hand and without looking found the phone on the nightstand, dragged the receiver from its cradle, and held it in her lap. She pressed it between her thighs so it wouldn’t drop to the floor. Her head flared with pain again as she turned slightly and focused her bleary vision on the base unit. She pecked out nine-one-one on the keypad.
Her voice was strangled, but she was sure she’d included her address in her rambling, choking conversation with the 911 operator.
Mary heard herself begin to sob. Her body shuddered, and she leaned back into deeper and deeper darkness.
There was a clock by the phone. Though it had seemed like seconds, she knew that fifteen minutes had passed and the police were pounding on her door.
14
He’d dropped silently from the iron fire escape into the courtyard and made his way through the narrow passageway on the side of the building to the street. No one had seen him, he was sure. And even if someone had noticed him, they’d never be able to recognize him. He was away clean. Things hadn’t worked out as he’d planned, but he was safe.
He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Not at this point. He’d only wanted to learn more about her.
Her name was Mary. Mary Bakehouse. He knew that much from riffling through the contents of her desk. He knew where she banked, how much she owed, where she left her laundry, that she had family
in godforsaken South Dakota. He’d seen photographs of her and her country relatives, the Bakehouse clan, and a close-up of lovely Mary wearing a white blouse buttoned to her throat and grinning with every tooth. Desk drawers could be so revealing.
He’d been about to switch on her computer and learn even more about her when he heard her out in the hall, fumbling for her door key.
He’d barely had time to sweep everything back into the drawers and push them shut, then conceal himself before she’d entered.
She’d diligently searched the rest of the apartment before returning to the living room, where he’d decided to reveal himself.
He’d known she’d be frightened but not so exquisitely. She was his, and she knew it immediately. The knowledge had stopped her throat and silenced her with its terrible truth.
That was why he’d taken his time. He wasn’t going to harm her, but she didn’t know that. He was in control. He could manage an orderly exit. She wouldn’t have much of a description to give to the police. Probably not enough to pick him out of a lineup and certainly not enough to make a positive identification. He’d be well away and in the clear.
Dressed in clothes from his respectable wardrobe and clean shaven, his artificial dentures removed, he was reasonably confident he could pass her in the street or sit opposite her on the subway, and she might suspect he was the same man but she couldn’t be sure.
From now on, uncertainty would be her constant companion. Even in her dreams she would doubt.
Thoughts. She would be the victim of her thoughts, just as he was of his. Thoughts couldn’t hurt anyone, but she wouldn’t know that. Not in her heart. Not for sure.
Walking swiftly toward the corner where he could hail a cab, he smiled. Mary Bakehouse might never be sure of anything else in her life.
That he could do such a thing to her, and so easily, the special power that he had, gave him a partial erection. He bent slightly forward as he walked so no one would notice. And if they did, so what?
The power and control…
His erection persisted. Mary would find the mess in her desk drawers and know he’d examined their contents, but that was okay. He wanted her to know. Ultimately, that would work for him.
She’d probably report their encounter to the authorities, but she’d soon find out they really couldn’t do anything about it, and they certainly couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
That would make her feel even more powerless.
Within a few minutes he was seated comfortably in the back of a cab, the incident with Mary Bakehouse fading behind him.
Thoughts were all they’d dealt with tonight, not blood. Later might come the blood. He knew that. He could deny it. He could fight it. But he couldn’t be sure of the outcome.
Maybe he’d pay Mary Bakehouse another visit, and maybe he wouldn’t. She knew that he might, and that made the night a triumph.
He hadn’t set out to hurt her, and he hadn’t. Still, in a way, their encounter had been a success for him. Ask Mary Bakehouse, and if she could bring herself to be honest, she’d admit that.
Whether she lived or died depended entirely upon his whim. He remembered her complete loss of control, the warm urine escaping her body. They both recognized at that moment her fetid, trickling surrender.
She belonged to him. She understood that in the very depths of her soul, in the dark recesses of her brain where the demons played.
That was enough for now.
It wouldn’t look like much in the morning Times or Post, if it even made the papers. And it wouldn’t be mentioned on TV news. After all, there was no tape. There’d been no chance for some techie geek with a phone camera to be standing nearby creating a video stream.
Mary had been treated well by the police and the hospital staff. At the hospital she’d been given a thorough examination, and what they referred to as a rape kit had been used on her to confirm that she hadn’t been penetrated.
After the ordeal at the hospital she had given a carefully detailed and recorded statement. Through it all she could sense a genuine concern, but also a workaday disinterest. Hers wasn’t the first story like this they’d heard. No one had actually told her that, but it showed.
The incident would be merely another apartment break-in in New York. The intruder had been surprised by the occupant and frightened away. Nothing had been taken. No one had been seriously hurt. Mary’s encounter with a man who might have killed her would be barely worth a mention in the media. In the grand and sweeping maelstrom of the city, it wasn’t at all important.
Except to Mary.
Quinn sat up late at the desk in his den and let his thoughts roam. A cigar in a glass ashtray was playing up a thread of smoke that dissipated before it reached the ceiling. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat on a round cork coaster. The cup was Spode and a survivor of his time with his former wife, May, who was married now to a real estate attorney in California. Their daughter Lauri was in California, too, but in a different part of the state. Quinn figured May and Lauri seldom, if ever, saw each other, but he couldn’t be sure. Lauri had ditched her musician boyfriend Wormy, and as far as Quinn knew was concentrating on her studies at Muir College in the northern part of the state. When last he heard Lauri was studying journalism.
He drew on the cigar, exhaled, and concentrated less on his personal life and more on the case. On the desk was a yellow legal pad, as yet unmarked. Quinn picked up a ballpoint pen and began to make notes as he went over the case in his mind. Sometimes seeing things in some kind of order, in print, made them clearer.
Tiffany Keller had years ago been the last victim of the Carver.
Her twin, Chrissie, won the Triple Monkey whatever slot-machine jackpot and found herself suddenly moderately wealthy. She decided to use the money to find her sister’s killer. Or, more accurately, to avenge her sister’s death.
The NYPD had demonstrated no interest in reopening the case.
Chrissie, after pretending to be Tiffany’s ghost to get Quinn’s attention, had finally admitted who she was and hired Quinn and Associates to find the Carver.
After paying a handsome retainer, Chrissie had then disappeared.
Chrissie had deleted any and all photographs of Tiffany from news items in the folder she’d left with Quinn.
Photographs on the Internet revealed that Chrissie and Tiffany looked nothing alike.
Renz had phoned and tried to warn Quinn off the case.
Quinn jotted on the legal pad that Chrissie was not to be trusted. There was no need to write a reminder about Renz.
Quinn placed his cigar back in the ashtray and leaned back in his desk chair to look over what he’d written on the legal pad.
None of it aided him in any kind of understanding.
Too early, he assured himself. But that didn’t alleviate the uneasy feeling deep in his stomach.
He placed the legal pad in the shallow center drawer of the desk, then slid the drawer closed. His cigar was smoked down to a nub, so he took a final pull on it, then snuffed it out in the ashtray. A sample sip of his coffee revealed it to be too cool to drink.
He was weary, but not tired in a way conducive to sleep. Maybe he should walk over to the Lotus Diner, drink a hot chocolate, and trade insults with Thel, if she was working late.
Better, he decided, to lock up the apartment and call it a night. That way he could sleep on what he’d written on his legal pad. Maybe something would occur to him in his dreams, and he’d remember it tomorrow morning and everything would make sense.
Then he remembered that nothing ever entirely made sense and went to bed.
15
The first thing Quinn saw when he entered the Lotus Diner the next morning was Thel. She was in her usual acerbic mood, which was somehow reassuring.
After a breakfast of biscuits, a three-egg cheese omelet, bacon, and two cups of coffee, Quinn walked from the Lotus Diner to the office on West Seventy-ninth Street. Dr. Gregory, whom Quinn infrequently saw at the do
ctor’s medical service over on Columbus, would hardly have approved of the meal, but he’d endorse the walk.
The morning hadn’t yet heated up and was beautiful. Sun glinted off the buildings and made vivid the canvas canopies over entrances and outdoor restaurants. Produce and fresh-cut flowers in outside stands sweetened the air. The bustle and rumble of the city was background music for millions of dramas. The city in its entirety was a bold and brassy Broadway musical and didn’t know it.
Even the exhaust fumes smelled good to Quinn. It was the kind of morning that promised hope, at least for a while, though he realized it could be a con, like the rest of the city. New York liked to trick people. Even astound them.
Pearl and Fedderman were already in the office. Pearl was hunched over her computer, dark eyes fixed on the monitor, her outstretched right hand deftly moving her mouse on its pad as if playing on a Ouija board. The low-tech Fedderman was slouched at his desk reading a newspaper. The trespass and assault at Mary Bakehouse’s apartment was mentioned in the Post police blotter section, but it hadn’t made the Times. Not that it would have meant anything to Fedderman, who was reading the Times anyway. He’d probably be too busy today to read any other newspaper.
Nor would it have meant much of anything to Quinn, who had other things on his mind.
“No phone messages,” Pearl said, glancing over at him.
Quinn grunted and went over to the table where the occasionally gurgling brewer sat. He poured himself his third coffee of the morning.
“We thought maybe our missing client Chrissie might have called,” Fedderman said.
Quinn wandered back to stand between their desks, sipping coffee that would never be as good as the stuff at the Lotus Diner.