by John Lutz
Pearl, lounging on the sofa, paused in leafing through the contents of the Lady Liberty Killer murder book and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Spenser. The famous tough guy P.I.”
“I know who he is—the guy you are on your best days.”
“Maybe your daughter’s like Spenser.”
They were in the office. Jody had been gone about ten minutes. Her energy field still seemed to electrify the place.
Quinn filled Pearl in on what Jody had told him.
Pearl looked nonplussed. That was the only word Quinn could think of that fit.
“She has this thing about running the bad guys to ground,” Pearl said.
“Like her mother.”
“More likely it’s because of your dubious influence. Do you think we should stop her?”
“Kind of like trying to stop the tide,” Quinn said. “Was her father like that?”
“About his music, yeah.” Pearl’s eyes took on a distant expression, as if she were looking inward, and back. She seemed ambivalent about what she was remembering.
“Obsession can be a good thing,” Quinn said.
“If it isn’t fatal.”
“I didn’t tell her about the Lady Liberty Killer’s ‘Freedom to Kill’ message on the last victim’s mirror.”
“Good,” Pearl said.
“Our psycho is in the game-playing phase,” Quinn said.
“Because?”
“He’s feeling the pressure and thinks he can handle it if he reduces it to a game.”
“Maybe the most dangerous phase,” Pearl said.
Quinn said, “Maybe you oughta tell your daughter that.”
“What I think,” Pearl said, “is that my daughter and your niece need to know the facts of death.”
She returned to her foraging and reading, then looked over at him. “Doesn’t Spenser have a dog?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Quinn said.
27
“We making progress?” Renz asked Quinn.
Quinn decided not to tell Renz that Jody was now also on the case.
“By inches,” he said.
“Anything more on Dora?”
“Not unless you count that everyone who knew her even slightly thought she was angelic, even though she was a cutthroat real estate agent.”
“There’s nothing like dying young and violently to attain instant sainthood,” Renz said.
“What about Carlie?”
“You mean Carlie as bait?”
“If you want to be so crass as to be truthful,” Quinn said.
“I have nothing against the truth if it’s useful.”
“I think someone really is stalking her. It might be our killer, playing games. Or it might be Jesse Trummel.”
“The guy she works with? How do you figure that?”
“He’s kind of acting like her wingman,” Quinn said, “ready to swoop in and save her if anyone actually does go for her. Which will probably result in two dead instead of one.”
“Try telling the Jesse Trummels of the world that.”
“Useless,” Quinn said. “We’re looking out for him. He really does seem ready to lay down his life for his fair maiden. You ever been in love like that?”
“I was always more interested in sex.”
“I don’t think Trummel has made it to that particular base.” Quinn knew that Renz would have a hard time understanding that. But he was wrong.
“The Madonna-whore view of women,” Renz said. “He respects her too much to screw her. My feeling is, find a whore who’s a true believer.”
“You would know where to look.”
“If you’re going to be pejorative I’m going to hang up.”
“I was just starting to be pejora—”
Renz broke the connection. He loved to do that, demonstrate that he and technology were the alpha couple.
As Quinn was replacing the receiver on his desk phone, Jody walked in. It was hot outside. Her hair was a springy jungle and her nose glistened with perspiration. Her blue eyes were red rimmed and swollen, as if she’d been rubbing them, and her freckles were vivid. She was wearing jeans cut off just below the knees, and a faded red T-shirt that proclaimed she was a virgin and wearing a very old shirt.
She plopped down the murder book on Quinn’s desk.
“You could have kept that,” Quinn said.
Jody slumped into one of the chairs angled toward the desk. “I read it thoroughly, then copied everything in it.”
“That should have made it evident that you’ve become involved in something dangerous.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You saw the photographs,” Quinn said.
“And I read everything in the file you gave me.”
“And?”
“It’s always possible what Helen the profiler says about gamesmanship is true. The killer, like so many of them, likes to play games with whoever he sees as leading the pack that’s trying to hunt him down.”
“And I’m the leader of the pack,” Quinn said.
Jody smiled with what looked like tolerance. “If you say so. But it sounds like a teenage song.”
“It should.”
He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. “And I’m smart enough to listen to your mother,” he added.
“What about my mother’s daughter?”
“She has my respect.”
“And you have hers,” Jody said.
“Have you come to some conclusion after sifting through all the material on the Lady Liberty Killer?”
“It isn’t patriotism that motivates him,” Jody said.
“We’d already decided that,” Quinn said.
“And I don’t believe Carlie—or I—are in as much danger as you seem to think. Unless, of course, Helen the profiler is right and he’s playing mind games with you, personally.”
Quinn hadn’t been kidding about respecting Jody’s intelligence. Not to mention her intuitive powers. “Helen might be right,” he said. “But I suspect it’s still too early for him to force some kind of end game.”
“Is that how he’d see it?” Jody asked. “An end game?”
“He knows he’s going to be caught. In some ways, he wants it to happen.”
“But on his terms,” Jody said, “so he can claim a kind of victory.”
“Yes.” Quinn had to smile. “Very astute of you.”
“Then you assign some credence to my suggestion that Carlie and I might not be in such grave danger.”
“Some,” Quinn said. “Not enough to be unafraid for you. This kind of killer isn’t predictable. He knows all the rules, too. And he enjoys breaking them. Sometimes making new ones.”
“Still,” Jody said, “compulsion trumps game playing.”
“Usually.”
“What’s even better,” Jody said, “is if the killer can combine the two.”
“True. But compulsion still trumps. That, in the end, is how he gets caught.”
“Then Carlie’s safe because Dora Lane has been murdered. And I’m not slated to be murdered until sometime in the intermediate future.”
Before she’d finished her sentence, Quinn understood what she meant.
“The victims were taken in alphabetical order,” he said.
“Starting with B, for Bonnie.” Her eyes bore into Quinn’s. “There must be an A out there we don’t yet know about.”
Quinn felt like saying, That’s my girl! But he didn’t. After all, he had another daughter, out in California. And a niece, or whatever the hell she was, here in New York with Jody.
Jody was beaming at him. She said, “I understand.”
Jesus! She does understand!
“It’s time to talk to Jerry Lido,” Quinn said, sounding a little throaty.
“The alcoholic computer genius?”
“He’s all of that,” Quinn said. “And he has an intimate relationship with Google, not to mention Lexis-Nexis and every search engine on the Net.”
“He’s one up on me, then,” Jody said. “I don’t seek around.”
28
They sat in comfortable padded chairs with red cushions so brilliant they hurt the eye. They were in the all-purpose room at Golden Sunset Assisted Living. It was a large room, with a chocolate-brown carpet and strategically placed groupings of chairs and tables where various factions and family of the tenants could meet and visit.
Where Jody and her grandmother sat, no one could overhear their conversation. The nearest human ear was forty feet away, where half a dozen gray-haired men sat at a table before a large window. They seemed to be playing an odd kind of game with dollar bills while they enjoyed various non-alcoholic beverages.
Jody’s grandmother, Pearl’s mother, had known Jody was coming and was wearing a satiny blue dress that, with all the jewelry, might have looked more suitable on a younger woman. Her hair was recently done, and had been dyed an entirely different hue of blue, with undertones of the entire color spectrum. She was wearing moderately high-heeled shoes that had brass buckles and looked as if they must be causing distorting injuries to her feet.
She smiled at Jody, seated attentively across from her, and said, “Pearl.” Pronouncing her daughter’s name as if it were an answer on a quiz show.
“You mean Mom?” Jody asked. As if they had other Pearls in common.
“Yes, our own and dearest Pearl who—and I do keep fastidious and accurate count—hasn’t been here in almost a month. I can’t tell you how, being my flesh and blood and not with a tendency to avoid one’s elders, you bring such comfort with your visits.”
Jody, genuinely pleased, smiled wider and said, “Good!”
“Family is God’s way of binding human beings so they are not alone, placed like game pieces put away too early in the closet, in places like, I am sorry to say, this.”
“It seems okay here,” Jody said, glancing around.
“It is my own opinion—and I must say, in most respects, also that of the other inmates—that we here find ourselves with no escape in a way station on the road to hell.”
“Mom says she checked the place out and it was the best available.”
“If the choice is between arsenic and strychnine, the best is hardly a matter of consequence.”
“Well, if you put it that way . . .”
“Your mother has lost her perspective, in part due to holding so closely and dearly a job rather than a husband and children. Her choices, I am afraid, were not of the wisest and—if I may venture to express my opinion—she had her chances. A blessing such as yourself, for instance—”
“There’s no need to go into that,” Jody interrupted.
“Of course not, dear.” Jody’s grandmother leaned far forward to grip and squeeze her hand. “Often fate steps in and forces people to make the only choice they seem able to make. But I wonder sometimes that, if Pearl had listened to me about a certain Doctor Milton Kahn, things might even now be different for her, and perhaps different for you.”
“I think she’s with the right person in Quinn,” Jody said.
Her grandmother threw up her hands. At first Jody thought it was a gesture of protest.
But she was wrong. Her grandmother was rolling her eyes heavenward. “Thank all the powers that be for that man, a mensch to the rescue when your poor mother most needed one. I won’t say she was drowning in her troubles and going down for the third time, but sharks were circling. You tell Pearl her mother said, whatever else happens, not to get into one of her uppity moods and walk out on that good man.”
Jody said. “Don’t worry about that, Grandma. But you said—”
“It’s vocation and—let’s be realistic—salary that is the problem. The income of an established and respected dermatologist like Doctor Milton Kahn, compared to the meager earnings of a retired policeman and private detective, no matter how much of a mensch he is, determine quite different lifestyles, dear. No one shoots at a dermatologist.”
“You have a point, Grandma.”
Jody’s grandmother smiled. “It’s so nice to hear that word.”
“Point?”
“No, the other. ‘Grandma.’ And it’s so good to have you here with us, where, after tossing on the stormy oceans of life, we have found each other.”
“See?” Jody said, feeling somewhat like driftwood. “None of this would have happened if Mom had married Dr. Whoever. If she’d never met Quinn. Life just works that way sometimes, Grandma. So many things we have no control over simply happen to us.”
“So wise you are beyond your years, dear. Please remind your mother that fate plays its mysterious—not to say it doesn’t now and then need a nudge—role in bringing us together. We are like moths seeking heat and light and then one day finding flame, or one of those loud zapping devices suburbanites place on their patios.”
“I promise to remind Mom,” Jody said. She squirmed in her chair, getting antsy.
“You might want to stay for lunch, dear. It’s Italian wedding soup, and we don’t know what that’s going to be.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t,” Jody said. “I’m working on an important case.”
“Like Perry Mason.”
“I remember him,” Jody said.
“Of course you do, dear.”
The group of gray men playing the game with paper money let out hoots and hollers at the table over near the large window.
Sunset Assisted Living wasn’t so bad, Jody decided. Boredom punctuated by periods of elation. And occasionally by tragedy.
Like life in the outside world.
29
The beautiful TV newscaster, Minnie Miner, was on the TV above the shelves of assorted gourmet coffees in the Underwater Brew, an establishment that had nothing to do with water, or with beer. The killer had heard people talking about the owner calling his coffeehouse “Underwater” in reference to his real estate mortgage. The killer doubted the story. People didn’t have a sense of humor about losing money.
“This killer,” Minnie Miner said on the flat-screen TV, “is becoming increasingly vicious.” Her big dark eyes widened beneath her bangs. Her astonished look. “Police say the details of this latest murder are too awful to describe.” Astonishment became anger. “I say we deserve all the facts. We the people are strong enough to endure anything—even a monster in our midst.”
The killer, seated at the coffee bar, thought about being referred to as a monster and decided he didn’t mind. He’d heard great athletes referred to as monsters. Sometimes the word was used to describe people of great talent, with daring and abilities so far beyond those of most mortal beings they were . . . monstrous.
“You’ve got a nice smile,” a woman’s voice said.
He turned and saw an attractive—attractive enough, anyway—woman who’d been sitting at a nearby table. She’d moved to sit next to him while he was absorbed in Minnie Miner ASAP. She had a slightly overweight but sexy figure, the top button of her blouse undone to reveal the cleavage of generous breasts. Her eyes were the proper blue, her hair adequately blond, her jaw firm. She was still in her twenties, maybe.
The killer sipped his latte and decided this meeting was fated to occur.
“I wondered what you were smiling about,” she said, her voice revealing a little uncertainty as to how he was going to react to her.
He smiled back. “I was thinking about baseball,” he said, “so I wouldn’t have to listen to any more on the news about that serial killer. I’ve seen and heard so much about him that I’m sick of it. He’s awfully famous.”
“Which team?”
“Huh? Oh. The Yankees.”
Both of them looked again at the TV above the coffee display. Minnie Miner was still discussing the Lady Liberty Killer’s latest victim, the horrible things that had been done to her. Minnie looked slightly ill, but that was probably an act.
“What do you suppose ASAP stands for?” the woman asked, as an SUV commercial came on the screen.
The ki
ller thought. “A sudden appearance of a phenomenal person,” he said. “In the Underwater coffeehouse.”
She laughed. “Did somebody come in I don’t know about?”
“I think we both know I’m talking about you.”
She frowned, surprising him, and moved closer. “But see, I know I’m okay, but not phenomenal. So you’re . . . exaggerating. And that means you might exaggerate about other things.”
“I will out and out lie if it means making any progress in getting you to like me,” he said.
“See, there it is again.”
“No. You’re an exceptional beauty. I’m right about that because I’m the beholder. That’s all there is to it. If you and millions of other women wouldn’t finish first in the Miss USA pageant, so what? To the guy here sipping coffee—that’s me—with the speeded-up metabolism and discerning eye—me again—you’re phenomenally beautiful and should have been first in any beauty pageant you ever entered.”
Not quite sure whether she’d been insulted or complimented, she chose, “Phenomenally beautiful?”
“Yes!” he proclaimed, as if he were Professor Higgins and at last she’d gotten it right.
The pimply kid behind the coffee bar might have overheard them. He moved father away, shaking his head. A coffee bean grinder began to growl, but not loud enough to impede their conversation.
“Quite a charmer, you are,” she said. “Like magic coming into my life. You can see why I don’t think any of it is true.”
He made a face, as if she’d injured his feelings. “I wouldn’t say such a thing unless I thought it was all true.”
“But if you would,” she said, “that would be quite dangerous.”
“To you or to me?”
“Me.”
“Then raise your right hand.”
She did. So did he.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Let’s call me Scarlet.”
He looked at her as if trying to read something on her forehead.
“Doesn’t fit,” he said.
She laughed. “Okay, you choose a name.”
“I’ll tell you your real name.”
“You mean the one on my birth certificate?”
“No. Your real name.” He placed his forefingers against his temples as if waiting for inspiration. “You’re Eva,” he said.