Twist

by John Lutz

  A nice kid, Fedderman thought. He imagined her as his daughter. He considered what young women in the city had to cope with these days.

  He was glad he didn’t have a daughter.

  Fedderman had been there about an hour, his knees locked the way he’d seen cattle do it in the field, when Carlie came out of the building. She glanced around, and walked toward him. She had on blue shorts and jogging shoes, and a T-shirt with a big yellow arrow on it pointing to her chin above the message Not Stupid.

  She thought Fedderman was staring at her breasts until she remembered what shirt she was wearing.

  “This is kind of silly,” she said. “I’m hungry. Let’s go down the street to a good Chinese restaurant and I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Fedderman wondered what Quinn would think about that. He’d probably approve. Carlie couldn’t be much safer than sitting across from her protector in a restaurant.

  “Let’s do that,” Fedderman said. “But dinner’s on me. I’ve got an expense account.”

  “All the better,” Carlie said, and led the way.

  She walked fast. Fedderman had a long, loping stride but had to hurry to keep up.

  As he walked, he used his cell phone to let Quinn know where they were going.

  They stayed at the restaurant, drinking green tea and talking. It struck Fedderman that while he contemplated how it would be having Carlie as a daughter, her contemplations might be altogether different.

  Come back to earth, he told himself. Besides, he was married and she knew that. Probably.

  While she sat across from him, perhaps trying to imagine what he was thinking, he found himself comparing her to Penny.

  Penny, he decided.

  For me, Penny.

  With a certain smugness, he silently congratulated himself on his fidelity. Carlie continued wondering what it was the restaurant put in the sauce that made it taste so good.

  A few minutes after ten o’clock, Fedderman saw Sal and Harold enter the restaurant. They remained just inside the door and studied the menu on an easel for a minute, then turned and walked out. Not once had they looked at Fedderman and Carlie.

  Fedderman knew that if he left her now, she’d be safe.

  And he’d be safe, too.

  At that same moment, both of them laughing and still with the taste of wine in their mouths, Brad carried Connie Mason across the threshold of her apartment, and another kind of threshold altogether.

  Quinn was lying in bed wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, feeling the cool air from the window unit play across his body. Pearl had wanted to go to bed early. That was fine with Quinn. They were both exhausted from a hard and hot day. He was surprised when she came into the bedroom in a diaphanous gown he hadn’t seen in months.

  She slid into bed alongside him. The gown, short to begin with, seemed to follow reluctantly. Somehow one of the straps had come loose, and Pearl’s right breast was lodged firmly against his ribs. She scooted this way and that, changing position enough so she could kiss him on the cheek.

  “An occasion?” he asked.

  “Does it have to be?”

  “Never.”

  “I just feel like it,” Pearl said.

  “Usually . . .”

  “What?”

  “I get signals.”

  “You mean like dots and dashes?”

  “You know what I mean”

  Her nude breast burrowed more firmly against his side. “You think I’m getting old?” she asked.

  “If you are, I am. And I don’t feel so old right now.” He strained a neck muscle tilting his head forward and to the side so he could kiss her surprisingly cool forehead.

  “It’s Jody,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I wouldn’t give up having her around. But there’s no denying she ages me.”

  “Bullshit,” Quinn said.

  “Older every day,” Pearl said. “That’s not bullshit. It’s simple fact.”

  “Better every day,” Quinn said. “Like fine wine, babe.” He kissed her again. “Anyway, Carlie’s a year or two older than Jody.”

  “But she’s your niece, not your daughter.”

  “So?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  And he did. He scooted himself lower on the mattress, turning toward her. A single bead of perspiration was tracking slowly down the breast that had worked out of her night gown, moving toward the nipple. Before it got there, he licked it off with the very tip of his tongue, then kissed her nipple. Her arms snaked around him and he moved a hand between her thighs, feeling her dampness. They kissed with a violence and passion he’d thought they’d lost.

  She helped him work the nightgown all the way off. Then she was gripping him with her hands, helping him mount her, guiding him in.

  Within a few minutes they rolled on the bed, changing position. Pearl wasn’t acting like a woman dreading her advancing age. Or one who placed much value on foreplay.

  Another few minutes and she was on top, rocking back and forth in a frenzy. Riding him.

  Her muscles clenched and she threw back her head so she was staring at the ceiling. He raised his hips so all of him was in her, and she took full advantage.

  She began a lilting moaning that was almost musical, the tendons in her neck standing out in stark relief. Tension tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  The old Pearl, he felt like saying, but knew better, certain he’d be misunderstood.

  Jody, Carlie, both young and with long lives stretching before them. He’d known what Pearl meant, and it had more to do with time than with anything else.

  Women—men, too—had to establish their own personal relationships with time.

  Pearl moaned again, lost in her consuming passion, safe from all her fears if not her desperation. For now, anyway.

  Another trailing moan.

  Pearl.

  Afterward, he held her to him as she slept.

  18

  Connie was awakened by the light from the bedside reading lamp.

  She screwed up her eyes and turned her face into her pillow. The pleasures of last night—Brad with his hands on her, all over her, Brad entering her body, pushing into her, ramming her, flooded into her memory. The evening hadn’t gone at all as she’d planned. Then, within minutes after entering her apartment, it had gone exactly as she’d planned.

  Plan B, she thought. She realized there had always been a plan B.

  Thank God he wore a condom.

  It seemed to her that the kind of deep and penetrating sex they had might lead to pregnancy almost every time. She knew it was foolish to think that way, but thinking had nothing to do with it. Feeling. That’s what it was about. It had not been like sex with other men. Not in its intensity. For a while he had turned her into a creature that lived only in a world of sensation. Consideration and caution, morality and logic, none of it meant a thing because none of it existed when he so thoroughly possessed her.

  Pregnancy.

  She derived some solace from the knowledge of the condom. Still, she couldn’t be sure. Condoms breaking or failing in other ways had led to entire industries of alternative means of protection.

  She told herself not to be an idiot. She wasn’t in such a terrible situation. They’d had sex. He’d used protection. So be a big girl and don’t start to worry ’til you miss a period. Right now, all over the city, there were plenty of women in more danger of an unwanted pregnancy than she was.

  But what if she did become pregnant? What would be her reaction? His reaction?

  All the while she pondered, a part of her knew that it was something else about last night that was bothering her. What he’d done to her, what he now could do to her because of the power he held over her, seemed very much like prologue.

  Or foreplay?

  The possibility frightened and thrilled her.

  She burrowed her forehead and eyes deeper into the pillow to escape the light.

  “When you gonna turn the lamp off?”
she asked, and for the first time wondered why he’d turned it on. There had been enough ambient light in the bedroom for him to make his way to the bathroom. She shifted slightly so one eye was exposed and could see the clock radio by the bed. Its green numerals indicated that it was 2:17 AM.

  “Sweetheart? The lamp?”

  No answer.

  She felt with an exploratory foot and decided that she was alone in the bed. Maybe Brad was in the bathroom. She scanned the dark rectangle of the doorway and saw that the light in the bathroom was still off.

  Connie sighed. Now she was completely awake. With her mind even more awhirl.

  “Brad? Honey?”

  No answer. But she could hear him—someone—moving around.

  She sat up in bed and the room spun.

  Really spun. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. She placed both hands on the mattress and clutched at the sheet so she wouldn’t fall off the bed.

  What the hell?

  “Brad?”

  “Here, Connie.”

  She couldn’t see him; the room was revolving around her so crazily it was as if a powerful strobe light were making everything lurch with irregular but increasing speed.

  “What’s going on?” she asked breathlessly. “I’m so . . . It’s like a carnival ride.”

  “Must have been something in that last drink you had,” Brad said. She had a fix on him now, saw him in the strobe light as he went spinning past again and again. Nude, the way he slept. But his hands were different. A different color. Pale. White. Gloves. He was wearing white rubber gloves.

  And he was closer.

  “Drink?” she asked, knowing she’d been drugged.

  He laughed. “You want another?”

  “No. I . . .”

  Closer.

  “It will wear off soon,” he assured her. “Then you’ll know everything that’s happening. You’ll understand.”

  He rolled her onto her stomach and she felt his hand encircle her right wrist. Her arm was forced upward. She tried to resist but possessed no strength at all. There was a ripping sound. Something—tape?—was wrapped around her wrist, fastening it to a spindle of the heavy brass headboard. She started to object, but heard an identical ripping sound, what she knew now was a length of tape being torn from the roll. The tape was pressed painfully over her mouth. Her lower lip was bleeding. She was sure of that.

  She closed her eyes. She had to. She didn’t want to become nauseated and choke on her vomit behind the tape. She tried to reach for the tape with her free left hand, peel it off her mouth. Only she couldn’t find her mouth. Her arm and hand felt as if they were detached from her body. Her legs felt the same way, waving about with the elasticity of noodles. Her left wrist was quickly taped to another brass spindle. Then her ankles were taped to the footboard.

  Material ripped, sounding almost like the tape. Connie felt her torn nightgown sliding from beneath her body. She knew she was lying nude now, face down and spread-eagle on the bed.

  Connie closed her eyes. This—everything—was out of her control now. She could only wait to see what was going to happen, and endure it. Whatever, it would end....

  She snapped alert and her body jerked as something acidic and powerful was waved beneath her nose. Her eyes bulged as she attempted to scream and heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears.

  She was completely aware now, no longer dizzy. The room was now stationary. It was so sudden it amazed her.

  And her mind. Her thinking. Her thinking was now clear.

  Brad—or whatever his name was—appeared as he had earlier when the room had been spinning. Naked except for almost transparent white rubber gloves. He was staring at her with unblinking interest, his intention clear.

  Connie watched the news, read the papers. She understood what was going on. Her eyes bulged even wider as she tried a louder scream. All she managed to do was strain something in her neck.

  Brad pulled the dresser out from the wall and angled it toward the bed. Then he carefully tilted the mirror so Connie could see herself in it. She tried not to look but stared fascinated at the nude, spread-eagle woman on the bed. The woman who looked like nothing so much as a sacrifice to ancient gods.

  Brad had his scuffed leather briefcase. He held it up so she could see it. Then he laid it on the floor and bent over it. When he straightened she was surprised to see that he had a small replica of the Statue of Liberty. He placed it on the dresser so it faced the bed.

  He knelt to reach into the briefcase again. This time when he stood up he was holding a coiled whip. It was braided leather and glittered with inserted splinters of steel. He loosened his grip on it and it uncoiled snake-like to the floor.

  Connie almost levitated off the bed in terror. She saw the woman in the mirror do the same. They exchanged a glance of horrible knowledge.

  Seconds became minutes.

  Her tormentor controlled even time.

  Later, he turned her onto her flayed and burning back and buttocks, and went to his briefcase for his knife. She caught a glimpse in the mirror of its sharp point and long, serrated blade.

  And a glimpse of him staring at her.

  He would leave her eyelids intact. Bonnie Anderson’s eyes had bled and interfered with her vision, he was sure.

  Live and learn.

  He bent over her.

  She didn’t believe her pain could be greater without loss of consciousness.

  She was wrong.

  Her screams were constant and silent.

  In the morning Fedderman returned to the street outside Carlie’s apartment. Sal and Harold were in their unmarked Ford, parked at the opposite corner.

  Harold, on the passenger side, spotted Fedderman and pointed up toward Carlie’s apartment. Then he gave a thumbs-up sign.

  Fedderman nodded, then took up position in the doorway across from Carlie’s building.

  Fifteen minutes later, Carlie emerged from the building, took the few steps down to the sidewalk, and strode toward her subway stop.

  Fedderman considered catching up with her, then changed his mind. He was sure she knew he was behind her anyway.

  He should do his job. Do it right.

  That was okay with Fedderman. Carlie was safe, at least for the time being. She’d made it through the night.

  She hadn’t been chosen.

  19

  “In the bedroom,” the uniformed cop said to Quinn, when he stepped through the open door into Constance Mason’s apartment.

  There had been no need to tell Quinn. CSU personnel were swarming the living room and what he could see of the kitchen, plucking and tweezering and spraying and collecting. What Quinn often thought of as the dance of the white gloves.

  Renz had phoned half an hour ago to tell Quinn that a woman named Constance Mason had been found dead in her apartment this morning. Judging by what was left of her, she’d been the same type as the killer’s previous victim, Bonnie Anderson. Blond, firm chin and broad forehead, and curvaceous.

  Quinn made his way past the kitchen and bath, to a bedroom at the end of the hall. When he stepped inside he saw a white-gloved tech who’d somehow separated himself from the swarm and was dusting for prints. He nodded to Quinn, and dusted his way out.

  It took Quinn a few seconds to take in Renz, and Nift the medical examiner, standing over the bed. On the bed was something Quinn had to force himself to look at.

  “Meet Connie Mason,” Renz said. He’d mentioned the victim’s name to Quinn on the phone.

  “She’d get up, smile, and shake hands with you,” Nift said, “but I don’t think you’d like that.”

  “Not ‘Constance’?” Quinn asked Renz.

  “Nobody named Constance isn’t called Connie,” Renz said. “Even dead.”

  Nift said, “By the way, Quinn, where’s Pearl?”

  “She sends her regrets.”

  “Tell her I said hey.”

  Quinn ignored him and moved closer to the bed.

  A rectangl
e of silver duct tape had been removed from Connie’s mouth but still clung by a corner. Her pale lips were slightly parted. Her eyes were wide and staring, making Quinn momentarily wish there was something to that old notion that killers’ images were emblazoned on the eyes of their victims at the time of death.

  “At least she still has her eyelids,” Quinn said.

  “A quality of mercy?” Renz wondered aloud.

  “More like throwing shit into the game to confuse us,” Quinn said.

  Renz shrugged. “You’re the one who knows these sleazebags.”

  Her stomach had been sliced open in a wide U shape just over her pubis, the flap of raggedly cut skin carefully laid back to reveal whatever of her internal organs hadn’t been removed and slung all over the bed.

  “I took a peek,” Nift said, “and her back and ass look pretty much like hamburger. Scourged. I think they did that during the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “But back then it was the cops,” Quinn said.

  Quinn noticed something familiar jutting from the carnage of the victim’s stomach cavity. Covered with blood was a familiar statuette of the Statue of Liberty.

  “Not much doubt who did this,” Renz said.

  Quinn nodded. “No doubts now, if there ever were any. You’ve got your serial killer, Harley.”

  “Not that I wanted one,” Renz said.

  Quinn believed him. There was no political gain to be had from what was happening, only pitfalls.

  Quinn looked up at Renz. “What do we know so far?”

  “The victim was some kind of accountant,” Renz said. “She had an eight o’clock meeting with a client and didn’t show. They were supposed to have coffee at a place not far from here. At quarter to nine the guy she was supposed to meet came here. He found the door unlocked. Opened it part way and called in, but got no reply. He started inside; then he smelled something. He wasn’t sure what, but it scared him. That’s when he went downstairs and got the super. They came in together, got sick together. The super, guy name of Ike, called nine-eleven. Like that thing on the bed needed medical attention.”