by John Lutz
Slowly she drew her knees up as far as she could, then kicked straight out with her legs and dug her heels and elbows into the carpet.
Her sudden, spasmodic effort had some effect. She heard the man’s grunt of surprise and felt his weight shift inches forward so his crotch was almost in her face. His weight had lifted slightly, and she thought she might be able to free one arm.
She clenched her eyes shut with the effort of trying to work her arm free, kicking out again with her legs. The killer’s weight rose from her almost completely, as if he might be positioning his body and seeking balance, maybe getting ready to hit or kick her.
She opened her eyes and looked up into the perspiring, determined face of Yancy Taggart.
Yancy’s eyes were wide with surprise and anger, but not fear. He was gripping the Carver’s sweatshirt with both hands, pulling him off Pearl.
“Got the bastard!” Pearl heard him say.
Then she saw the flash of the knife as the killer writhed and twisted his body to gain leverage. The blade winked through the air, and Yancy made a sound like a harsh intake of breath. Pearl felt something warm on her face, and saw what the CSU techs called a slash pattern of blood on the wall.
The killer was standing completely upright. He kicked Pearl hard in the side of the head, and she went blank for a few seconds with pain. She saw in slow motion the killer conceal the knife again in his sweatshirt pocket and then pirouette like a ballet dancer toward the door.
Then he was out the door and into the hall.
Pearl crawled over to where Yancy lay on his back. His throat was sliced almost ear to ear. He was staring at the ceiling, making soft gurgling sounds and desperately feeling with his fingers the edges of the gash in his throat, as if trying to piece himself back together.
Pearl was sure he saw her and that he tried to say something, but he went silent, and the life in his eyes dimmed.
She heard herself whimpering. Her limbs wouldn’t move as directed. She managed to stand up and take a few steps before stumbling. The room lurched, and she fell hard on the carpet, bumping an elbow. Fighting dizziness and nausea, she crawled the rest of the way toward her purse on the table. Like an infant who could walk some but still found crawling the easiest and most direct way to a destination.
She wanted her cell phone now, not her gun.
63
Quinn sat on the floor with her, holding her so close and tight that it hurt her ribs.
Pearl was infuriated because she couldn’t control her sobbing. Each breath she drew caught in her throat and turned into a deep, wretched moan. Tears tracked down her cheeks so freely she could feel them spatter on her forearm. Grief was so real, like a horrid creature that had taken up residence inside her.
She couldn’t help it; she dug her forehead into Quinn’s shoulder and sobbed. Fedderman was somewhere nearby. The CSU techs were bustling around, and a couple of paramedics were waiting to remove the body. Remove Yancy. For now, everyone was giving Pearl and Quinn a wide berth.
“It’ll be all right,” Quinn crooned to her, his huge right hand patting her back ever so gently. “All right…all right…all right…”
“It won’t be!” Pearl managed to blurt. “Goddamn it, it’ll never be all right!”
“Better, then,” Quinn said, not breaking the rhythm of his patting. “It’ll be better in a while. Better, Pearl…”
I’d settle for tolerable! Oh, God, just tolerable!
She sobbed for a while longer, as Quinn patted and crooned.
Finally, when she’d managed to calm down enough not to completely lose control if she attempted to speak, she told him what had happened. So much more than she’d said over the phone.
“That’s all for now,” Quinn said softly when she was finished. “You don’t have to say anything more, Pearl.”
But the words, suddenly freed from her constricted throat, kept spilling out of her. “Yancy came home early,” she said in someone else’s voice. Grief was pulling her strings. “Came home early and didn’t know what he was walking into. Didn’t know…”
Is this the new me? Forever?
“He came home early and saved your life,” Quinn said. “He was a good man, Yancy. Worthy of you.”
“Oh, Quinn, damn it! Will you stop with the Hemingway bullshit? Yancy’s dead. I want him alive!”
“We all do, dear, but that’s impossible.”
God! Oh, Jesus!
She heard and felt Quinn sigh. The heft and heat of his body shifted. “There’s nothing I can say that will help enough, Pearl. We both know that.”
Pearl nodded and pushed away from him. He leaned toward her, and she felt him kiss her forehead, the furnace heat of his breath.
“But you helped,” she said. “I’m grateful.”
She was speaking in her own, familiar voice now.
Quinn noticed the change, too. Her voice was so calm it was jarring. But it didn’t surprise him.
He understood Pearl. She was in hell. She wouldn’t burn for an eternity, but the embers would never really die.
Quinn looked at her seated next to him, so small, so crushed, and yet somehow more vivid than ever. It was as if she were lighted in some ghastly way from within.
He felt a chill and thought about pulling her close to him again, but he didn’t. He knew what she was thinking. Knew the world she was in. In some ways they were like twins. He knew her reactions by blood and by brain. Knew her passions and obsessions.
If the Carver didn’t have something from hell after him before, he did now.
The killer sat on the end of a bench in Washington Square Park, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed. His hands seemed to be steady enough except for the tips of his fingers, which were trembling.
It had been so close. All his planning, his reading of fate, and then a door opened and everything had spun out of control. It was frightening that this sort of thing could happen to him.
Of course, he knew that it happened to other people who made no mistakes.
They cross with the light and are struck and killed by a car. They get on a plane, and it reaches the end of the runway and rams into the ground. They take a bite of food they anticipate enjoying, and a heart attack kills them before they taste it.
That was the sort of thing that had almost happened to him. That, in fact had happened to the man whose throat he’d cut.
You open a door and step inside and you die.
Not that he could complain about his reaction to the intruder. He’d identified the new and unexpected threat immediately. Body obeyed mind. Blade obeyed body. So fast had he been moving that not a drop of blood had gotten on him.
He rocked back and forth for a moment on the bench.
Pearl. He’d so wanted Pearl.
She’d been concerned about her lover. So concerned with him that she hadn’t given chase.
He knew that for a while, anyway, he’d have to leave Pearl alone. She and his other pursuers would be on their guard. Continuing to stalk Pearl wouldn’t be smart. Besides, his failure to claim her as one of his victims would dull the pleasure of having her.
He found solace in the knowledge that the assault on Pearl hadn’t been a complete failure.
If his pursuers’ time and anxiety would now be wasted protecting Pearl instead of hunting him, that was fine. The attack on her had at least served a purpose.
The bench bounced slightly, jouncing him out of his thoughts. Its iron legs weren’t resting on level ground, and someone had sat down on the opposite end and created the seesaw jolt.
He looked over and saw a small woman with dark hair and eyes. Her hands were working to open a white paper sack that was tightly wadded at the top. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless pink T-shirt. Her arms were smooth and tan and strong looking. Her breasts were ample.
She got the sack open, dipped in a hand, and, with an arm motion as if she were sowing seeds, tossed an arc of popcorn out in front of the bench. Pigeons appeared immediately and began
flapping and strutting about, pecking at the unexpected feast. The woman tossed out more popcorn, causing more pigeons to materialize. Feeding them seemed to please her immensely, judging by her smile.
Then she glanced over, and the smile was for him.
Something in his heart moved. The woman was not unlike Pearl.
Not unlike her at all.
He smiled back and introduced himself with the name he was now using. “I’m Gerald Lone.”
She seemed a bit surprised by his impulsive introduction. After all, this was New York. He could see her appraising him. He might have been jogging in the park and was resting on the bench. He looked respectable enough. A handsome man (or so he saw himself) in a big and lonely city. This was the way lives casually intersected. This was the way things began.
Would she take a chance and acknowledge that he existed? Would she be polite and reply?
How could she be cool to him while proffering her heart to pigeons?
“I’m Elana Dare,” she said.
“As in take a chance?”
“It’s spelled that way.”
Her voice was like Pearl’s.
64
Quinn told Pearl she should take some time off and pull herself together. He wanted her to wait until Yancy was buried before even thinking about returning to work. Of course she ignored his advice. She was at her desk the next morning.
Pearl was locked on.
Even the afternoon after Yancy’s funeral in New Jersey—paid for partly by Pearl but mostly by the Wind Power Coalition, as Yancy had no living relatives—Pearl came in to the office.
Quinn walked in and found her there, alone. They’d all attended the service and funeral. Afterward Vitali and Mishkin had left to tend to NYPD business for Renz. Probably they were filling Renz in on every detail of the attempt on Pearl’s life, up to and including Yancy’s funeral. Fedderman was reinterviewing Pearl’s neighbors to see if anyone had recalled some minor detail that might have major significance.
Fresh news, much of it inaccurate, would be in tomorrow’s City Beat as well as in the major papers. Cindy Sellers had been at the funeral, wearing a tight black dress accessorized with a small black digital camera. There had been no gathering after the funeral. Some of the mourners had gone on their own to an upscale Manhattan bar near Grand Central Station to drink and reminisce about Yancy. They were mostly men, expensively dressed, neatly groomed and with styled haircuts. If they weren’t staying in Manhattan they had trains to catch to upscale communities back in New Jersey or in Connecticut. Quinn didn’t know who they were. Neither did Pearl. Brother lobbyists, maybe.
The office was hot and damp, but Pearl didn’t seem to notice. Her world was internal. Quinn walked over and switched on the air conditioner. The metallic hammering began, and he slapped the side of the unit. The hammering noise remained, but it was softer, as if in respect for Pearl’s grief.
Quinn’s shirt stuck to his perspiring back as he settled into the warm leather upholstery of his desk chair.
Sitting slouched behind his desk, he looked over at Pearl. There was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead and above her upper lip. She’d stopped at her apartment, or brought clothes, and had changed from her funereal black dress into tan slacks and a white tunic gathered at the waist with a maroon sash. Her eyes were slightly puffy, but other than that there was no sign that she’d been crying disconsolately only hours ago in New Jersey. The funeral, Yancy, were part of the past now, on the continent. Manhattan was another place altogether, an island. A hunting ground more sophisticated than veldt or jungle, and every bit as deadly.
On a corner of Pearl’s desk was a lush floral arrangement Quinn remembered from the funeral home, though it hadn’t been transported to the gravesite. The mortuary must have given the cut flowers to Pearl, and she brought them here, where they should last about a week if she kept them watered in their pressed glass vase. Quinn wondered what Pearl thought when she looked at them. Was she fondly remembering Yancy, or using the sight of the flowers to stoke the fire in her heart so she could find his killer?
Quinn said, “You all right, Pearl?”
“Um.”
Apparently she didn’t want to talk.
The phone rang, and Quinn punched the glowing line button and picked up before Pearl had a chance to answer. He saw by caller ID that the call’s origin was Roosevelt Hospital.
“Quinn and Associates Investi—”
“It’s Fedderman, Quinn. How’s Pearl doing?”
Quinn glanced over at Pearl and caught her lowering her eyelids. She’d been staring over at him, curious.
“Okay,” he said.
“What I called for,” Fedderman said, “is Lisa Bolt is conscious.”
“Is she—”
“She’s slightly addled, but the doc says that’s natural and there’s no apparent brain damage. You know head injuries, how they bleed. It was bad, but not as bad as it looked. The rest of her’s about healed up, too. She’s in pretty good shape, Quinn, considering.”
“What about her tongue?” Quinn saw Pearl glance over again.
“It can wag at us this afternoon, if we don’t push her too hard.”
Quinn looked at his watch. “It’s afternoon now.”
“So it is.”
“See you shortly.”
Quinn replaced the receiver and stood up behind his desk.
“Want to go for a drive?” he asked.
Pearl looked at him with her puffy eyes. “Where to?”
“The hospital. Lisa Bolt is awake.”
A change came over Pearl’s features. Within seconds, grief had given way to a hardness and determination. “Let’s go.”
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“You sure you can stop me?”
“Actually,” Quinn said, “I’m not.”
As they were leaving, she turned back and lifted the vase of mortuary flowers. She deftly removed the tag and black ribbon without damaging a flower.
“For Lisa Bolt,” she said. “They might help make her more talkative.”
Quinn grinned at her with a kind of sadness. “Pearl, Pearl…”
“I can’t think of a better use for them,” Pearl said.
“Nor can I.”
Quinn put up the BACK SOON sign and locked the door behind them.
They got in the Lincoln, Quinn at the wheel. On the drive to the hospital Pearl was quiet, but he could feel the energy coming off her damp flesh like waves of high-tension electricity. It reminded him of the way you could put your fingers up close to a TV screen and see the individual hairs on the back of your hand rise.
Lightning stitched the gray summer sky, bright enough to hurt the eye even in daylight. Quinn wondered if it was a coincidence.
He lay in agony, the edge of the knife blade resting lightly on his chest. He’d thought he was in control, but it hadn’t turned out that way. The need had always been there, and now it was alive.
Unknown forces, driven by shame and guilt, were in control. He could see his fate moving like clouds across the ceiling.
This must not happen.
He should have known, should have been more careful, should have planned better.
Didn’t he think he’d someday reach this point?
“Should have” is in the past.
The past that he’d thought was dead. That he feared so that it ruled his dreams. The past.
It must not happen again. It must not!
He had said the words aloud the first time to gather courage. Now he said them again, this time only in his mind.
I am a fool.
He applied the knife.
I must wash the sheets carefully.
65
Lisa Bolt’s hospital room smelled like Lysol and spearmint, as if it had just been disinfected by a cleaning lady chewing gum. Lisa was sitting almost completely erect in her cranked-up bed, her back propped against a pillow. She looked thin but surprisingly well. There was a flesh-colored stri
p of adhesive tape on the side of her neck. A beige turban was wound around her head, obviously to conceal a bandage. She was wearing light makeup but had her eyebrows penciled in as dark slash marks.
The nurse, who was middle-aged and looked like a gaunt, predatory bird, informed them that only two visitors would be allowed in the room. Quinn settled on himself and Pearl.
“Please keep in mind that she’s still weak,” the nurse cautioned Quinn.
“Of course we will.”
The nurse glanced at him from the corner of her eye and seemed dubious.
“These are for you, Lisa,” Pearl said with a smile. She placed the vase of flowers on an otherwise bare windowsill and deftly and lovingly adjusted the arrangement.
“Do you want some water?” Quinn asked Lisa, motioning with his head at the plastic glass and pitcher on the tray table rolled close to the bed.
Lisa kept her head on the pillow as she moved it slowly back and forth once to decline. Her head didn’t move at all as she looked at Pearl and then at Quinn.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. Her voice was raspy from disuse, or perhaps from the feeding tube that had been recently removed.
“We’re glad you’re alive,” Quinn told her.
“You owe us the truth,” Pearl said, pushing too hard too fast.
Quinn gave her a look, signaling her to ease up and listen for a while without butting in. She understood it perfectly, and he knew it. Both of them thought it was scary sometimes, the way they could almost read each other’s thoughts.
Pearl moved a step back from the bed as Quinn continued. “It is time for the truth, Lisa.” His tone was not at all threatening.
“I know,” Lisa said. She took a deep breath and swallowed, wincing as if it hurt.
“You’re sure about the water?” Quinn asked.
She nodded and then closed her eyes. “I’m trying to organize my thoughts before I tell you about this.”
“Of course…of course…we understand.”
“It’s as if I’ve been away on a trip.”