Twist

by John Lutz

  SWAT members in body armor advanced on the house first. They cleared it and then one of them came out front and waved a safe signal to the others.

  The yard was full of holes.

  “Looks like a mortar attack went on here,” Milligan said.

  “Treasure hunters with shovels,” Pearl said.

  Milligan wiped his arm across his perspiring forehead. “Looks to me that if there was anything valuable buried out here, somebody must have found it.”

  Quinn looked over at the wooden outhouse, now with its door open after being cleared by the SWAT unit.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Milligan said, “SWAT guy told me that the ground’s been dug out under the outhouse some time ago.”

  “I was wondering,” Quinn said.

  With increasing belief that the killer had failed to show, Quinn walked over to the front porch.

  “Wait up a minute,” a SWAT guy said. He was a beefy man with a drinker’s nose, but Quinn doubted if the man was much of a drinker, judging by the shape he was in, and his career. Quinn heard him called Schweitzer.

  Quinn, Pearl, and Milligan froze.

  “Been somebody here,” Schweitzer said. He pointed. “See that footprint.” He pointed at a number of footprints on the dusty porch floor. They all looked pretty much the same, except for one. No, two! Schweitzer pointed again. The two footprints had been made by someone headed away from the front door. Someone leaving. “Our team’s all wearing the same kind of regulation shoe,” Schweitzer said. “None of us made those two prints.”

  “But they’re recent,” Pearl said.

  “Damn right they are, ma’am.”

  “He beat us here,” Pearl said.

  “That’s doubtful,” Quinn said. “More likely some local’s been here.”

  “Why?” Pearl asked.

  No one had an answer.

  “Pretty remote spot,” Milligan said.

  “Shoes are about the same size and shape as that bloody footprint we got. The one looked like it was made by a surgeon’s OR paper bootie.”

  “Nobody else would wear paper booties around this place,” Pearl said. “It’s almost sure to have been the same guy.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “He wouldn’t have left a footprint.”

  “Unless he did it on purpose,” Pearl said.

  “Coulda been somebody around here with a helluva TV dish,” Milligan said. “One that’d pick up a local New York City news channel.”

  “Pearl’s suggestion is more likely. About him leaving the footprints on purpose.”

  “Maybe he picked up the news somewhere on the Internet,” Milligan suggested.

  “Could be,” Pearl said. “Anything’s possible on the Internet.”

  Quinn let out a loud, trailing breath of frustration. “If he somehow learned about this and got here before we could set the trap, he might not have given a damn about footprints.”

  “This guy sounds like a real shit kicker,” Milligan said. “Shit-kicker ego, anyways.”

  “Let’s see what we got inside the house,” Quinn said.

  They carefully stepped around the footprints on the way in.

  “Somebody’s been here fairly recently,” Milligan said, pointing at a piece of wooden molding that had been broken from the back of a cabinet door. “Looks like a fresh break.”

  Quinn saw that the splintered molding was a lighter color than similar breaks in the wainscoting.

  “Can you tell how fresh?” Pearl asked Milligan.

  “Could if I was a termite.”

  Quinn gave Pearl his straighten-up look. This wasn’t the time or place for desperate questions.

  “No dust on it, neither,” said Milligan, sliding the tip of his finger with the grain of the broken wood and avoiding a splinter. He held up his forefinger to show that it was clean.

  “Looks like something was hidden in the space behind the cabinet,” Pearl said. “Maybe when we had Minnie lie, we were unknowingly telling the truth.”

  “If money was hidden there,” Quinn said, “it wouldn’t be much, even in large denomination bills.”

  “How much you New York people get paid?” Milligan asked.

  The SWAT guy, Schweitzer, stuck his head into the room. “You better come see this.”

  Quinn, Pearl, and Milligan filed into the hall, then moved toward the bedroom door.

  But Schweitzer stopped them and pointed into the tiny bathroom.

  Half the medicine cabinet’s mirrored door was broken. The half that remained was coated with dust. The scrawl made with a fingertip in the dust was familiar: FREEDOM TO KILL.

  “We must have just missed the bastard!” Quinn said.

  “Maybe he didn’t keep that finger moving and left a print,” Schweitzer said.

  “If you want to bet money on that,” Quinn said, “it’s the only way I can think of how this place will show a profit.”

  50

  Harold was surprised when Carlie left work almost an hour early. He hung well back so she wouldn’t spot him, but tailed her with care and caution. Any break in her routine or the rhythm of her surroundings might mean something pertinent.

  Now and then he got this creepy feeling, the notion that as he was following Carlie, he was being watched. Or used sometimes as an indicator of her whereabouts.

  It could have been his imagination, but experience had taught him that it probably wasn’t. And it meant that Carlie might be in real danger, and he’d better keep a close watch on her.

  Be her guardian angel, as the cops sometimes said. But Harold didn’t feel like an angel. He felt more like a hunter who had, to some degree, become prey.

  He stopped without warning, turned, crossed streets he didn’t have to cross, checked reflections in car and show case windows. He saw nothing irregular. If he was being tailed, it was by an expert.

  And he was being tailed.

  His best course, he decided, was to tend to the business in front of him.

  Carlie strode to her usual subway stop, not far from Bold Designs, but this time crossed the street and descended the narrow concrete steps to the uptown side of the platform.

  A train had just pulled in and was screeching to a halt alongside the platform. Harold managed to board the same crowded car, but was standing toward the back, while Carlie had one of the few remaining seats up in front. As the train roared and swayed through darkness, he watched Carlie’s reflection in a window opposite where she sat. She was slouched and seemed tired. Her eyes were half closed. Occasionally she closed them all the way. Like many seated passengers, she might be feigning half sleep to withdraw from the cramped and speeding world of the subway, to discourage drunks or solicitors or the mentally precarious from approaching her. No right-thinking person wanted to deal with some of the people on the subway. So the walls stayed up; the gates stayed closed. Harold, watching carefully, knew Carlie wasn’t anywhere near falling asleep.

  The train slowed slightly, approaching the Seventy-ninth Street station. She jerked to full attention but stayed seated. The train continued to slow, then finally stopped and took a lurch backward as momentum shifted. The doors slid open. Carlie stood quickly and got off quickly onto the platform. Harold got out behind her. He kept his distance as they climbed the steps toward the light and noise of traffic above.

  Carlie stumbled at the top of the steps and almost fell. It was dangerous, the way the concrete slanted up there. She might have fallen right into the traffic on Broadway.

  It was a dangerous city, Harold thought. One full of ways to get hurt.

  Carlie didn’t have far to walk to the offices of Q&A.

  Harold waited until she’d entered, then followed.

  She must have called first, because it appeared that Quinn had been waiting for her. As Harold entered half a minute behind Carlie, he looked over and saw her seated in front of Quinn’s desk. Quinn didn’t so much as glance in his direction. Carlie saw him and nodded. Harold didn’t know what to make of that.

&nb
sp; Something passed between Harold and Quinn without either man even looking at the other.

  Harold went over and poured himself a cup of coffee and pretended Carlie wasn’t there.

  When Carlie was finished describing her phone conversation with Jody’s grandmother, Quinn sat back and absently twirled a pencil through and around his fingers. He’d learned to do that with poker chips as a young man, and it had stayed with him.

  He noticed Carlie watching the pencil and stopped. He rolled his desk chair a few inches toward her.

  “Jody’s a freckle-faced redhead,” he said. “Not at all the killer’s type.”

  “But she is your daughter,” Carlie said, “which makes her a likely target of this killer. I do think Pearl’s mother is right about that.”

  “Right as far as it goes.”

  “What does that mean?” But part of Carlie’s mind suspected what it meant. The icy suspicion trickled down her back.

  “If you were to dye your hair a much blonder color, and wear it differently, you’d be even more the killer’s type. And there’s your middle name.”

  “I never told you my middle name.”

  “For God’s sake, Carlie, you have a Facebook page.” She fidgeted. “I forgot about that.”

  “People tend to, Grace.”

  “All right, so my middle name is Grace. So what are you getting at?”

  “If this were a chess game, you’d be almost as tempting a piece as Jody, even without the fact that in the killer’s mind, you are the way to Helen.”

  Carlie hadn’t thought of that. G before H. “My God! The killer’s twisted alphabetical mind . . .”

  “The alphabet might be the only thing about him that isn’t twisted. His adherence to it is an exercise in orderliness, part of what Helen calls the backbone of his obsession.”

  “So it’s not Jody. It’s me you want to use as a lure.” Carlie wasn’t really that surprised. It only made sense.

  Quinn nodded.

  “Because Helen would be alphabetically premature, and I’m only slightly less valuable a chess piece than Jody.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. Jody simply doesn’t figure into his plans, either by type or alphabet. With you, the alphabet works. And to the killer, you could hardly be a more desirable type.” Quinn smiled, but with only the slightest edge of humor. “He does have good taste.”

  Carlie didn’t smile. “Thanks for that, anyway.”

  “We’re going to continue our protection for Jody, just in case. The thing that would take her, and you, completely out of danger is if the killer were apprehended.”

  “No denying that,” Carlie said. Still, she wondered how Jody would feel about this conversation. About this strategy.

  “Jody could leave the city,” she said.

  “We suggested that. Jody won’t leave. Says her life and her work are here, and she won’t be scared away.”

  “Runs in the family,” Carlie said.

  Quinn knew where Carlie’s musings would eventually take her. He thought he might as well get there first. “Pearl doesn’t like this, either, but she figures it’s the best way to go.”

  “And so do I,” Carlie said.

  “Minnie Miner has said she’ll help to set up the situation,” Quinn said.

  “I’ll bet she will,” Carlie said. “Do you think she can be subtle enough to fool the killer?”

  “No,” Quinn said. “He’ll know what’s going on. He’ll try for you anyway.”

  “The ego thing?”

  “More the id.”

  Carlie felt ice travel down her spine again. It was the id that made her flesh crawl. There was something primal about this killer, in the torture of his victims and in his birth and twisted maternal fixation. How callous and violent the human race must have been in order to persist. How near the surface lurked those primitive but powerful instincts and impulses so necessary for survival. Perhaps that was why serial killers so fascinated the public. We weren’t so far removed from the ancient past as we’d like to think. Or maybe not removed at all. Some of it we dragged along with us.

  The killer knows and is showing us how base and vicious we can be. The reptilian killer in the primal forest is immortal.

  “We can protect you,” Quinn said. “But I wouldn’t lie to you and pretend there isn’t any danger. There’s plenty of that. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “We might have help from an unexpected source. The killer himself. He might have reached the point where he wants to be stopped.”

  “That actually happens outside of books and movies?”

  “Oh, yes. Killing weighs heavier and heavier after a while. It’s a burden that can be gotten out from under only one way.”

  “Don’t killers like this usually choose to go out in a blaze of gunfire, gore, and glory?”

  “They like to see it that way. But sometimes they don’t have the balls. Other times a sniper’s bullet to the head puts an end to them.”

  “But they don’t give up.”

  “No,” Quinn said, “they seldom stop on their own. They have to be stopped.”

  “You and they have that in common.”

  “Yes,” Quinn said.

  “Which is why you’re so good at what you do.”

  “Part of it.”

  “When do I start?”

  “You’ve already started. He’s been watching you.”

  Helen worked to make Carlie as likely a lure as possible to the killer. Carlie’s hair was dyed an even blonder shade, and worn in a style more suited to the eighties. Her clothes, too, were backdated stylistically without it seeming too obvious.

  “I’m not sure what more I can do,” Carlie said, “other than go around whistling outdated Beatle songs.”

  “Weren’t they more the sixties?” Harold said.

  “The Beatles were never outdated,” Sal rasped, obviously annoyed with Harold. “Never will be.”

  “I’ve got some old Beatle T-shirts,” Pearl said.

  Helen looked inquisitively at Quinn.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Quinn said.

  Fedderman said, “Just don’t say ‘Boop, boop, e-doop.’ ”

  This is fun, Carlie thought, dressing up to be murdered .

  51

  The killer made sure the blinds were closed in his second-floor apartment in the East Village.

  The building was a six-story walkup that he’d rehabbed and rented out. There were stairs down to a small courtyard out back, made private by foliage and sections of stockade fencing, and backing to a paving stone walkway to the next block, where one of several abandoned warehouses squatted, deteriorating unused near the river.

  He spent much of his time elsewhere, and barely knew the neighbors, even those who were his tenants. This part of the Village was friendly enough, but privacy was respected, and Dred had long ago politely but firmly made it clear that he valued his privacy.

  He dumped the money he’d taken from his safety deposit box out on his bed and stared at it.

  Fifty thousand dollars.

  He’d kept it as a safety net while he used the rest of what was left of the one-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand-dollar lottery winnings to establish his antique business. The money was in hundred-dollar bills, small enough and negotiable. They were easily safe to spend, especially here in New York, where prices were geared to customers with expense accounts. Hundred-dollar bills were common. A cab ride with a generous tip could cost you more than half that, and the cabbie always had the change in small bills.

  Mildred had accepted the lump sum from the state rather than monthly payments, and had probably simply cashed her check at one of the large banks. There would be no reason to mark the bills, or make any sort of record of their serial numbers. Still, Dred was glad to see that none of the packets of cash he’d held in reserve were made up of bills with sequential serial numbers.

  He would be safe spending this money, as long as he didn’t draw undue attention to himself. For now, th
ough, he would keep it hidden beneath the sink, where he could get it quickly and easily if he had to run on short notice. The adventure at the old house might have turned out much differently were it not for his good luck. It had made him more cautious. No, not more cautious—more meticulous. Certainly not more afraid.

  Meanwhile, it was time that he spent this money.

  Antique trading upper-end merchandise was a loosely taxed business that depended a lot on the honesty of the taxpayer. Payoffs like the one Mildred had enjoyed were taxed even before the money was made available. Dred could leverage it tax free as long as he didn’t buy or sell big-ticket items at exclusive houses like Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Beyond that, he knew plenty of private collectors who would pay cash, ask no questions, and give no answers. Money in whatever form moved easily in a vacuum.

  The private art and collectible market was a healthy, long-running shadow economy, impossible to stamp out. Simple, and sometimes secret, possession was everything to the kinds of buyers Dred knew. More than mere connoisseurs, they were what they owned.

  The wonderful thing was that he wouldn’t have to actively pursue his business for a while, and he could instead pursue prizes much more interesting.

  Like Carlie Clark. Close enough to Quinn to hurt him, but with several prime targets left—like Jody and Pearl.

  Something to think about.

  Always let them believe nothing worse can happen to them—until very near the end.

  The killer had been stalking Carlie with extreme care. One of Quinn’s detectives was always near her. The killer had to be especially alert to the fact that if he made the slightest mistake, he might be seen, identified somehow, and apprehended.

  No. Not apprehended.

  A mistake on either side could exact the ultimate cost.

  That made the exercise enjoyable.