Twist

by John Lutz

  Here came Carlie now from Bold Designs, not knowing that he had bold designs on her.

  What was this? She’d had her hair dyed a much lighter blond, and it was hanging straight and curtain-like, partially concealing one side of her face or the other as she moved. A beautiful woman, presented simply to the world as such. There was almost a spirituality to her earth-mother blond beauty. Peter and Paul had to be around here someplace with a couple of guitars.

  She was dressed more boldly, too. A blue summer matching outfit with a short skirt, navy blue, very high heels that added inches to her height and flashed in the sunlight as she strode along the sidewalk toward her subway stop. She appeared tall, statuesque, and was carrying a small black attaché case this evening. Homework?

  Or homicide?

  At least there was no sign of the idiot Jesse Trummel. He was an amateur who could throw all sorts of unexpected shit into the game. At least the police seemed to have done their job and kept Trummel away from Carlie, and alive for a while longer. Trummel might thank the police in the future, if he ever gained sense enough to understand what had happened.

  The one called Sal was Carlie’s guardian angel today. He was short, which made him slightly more difficult to keep track of in a crowd. The killer was almost certain of where Carlie was going, anyway. Home to her apartment. Maybe she’d stop at a deli down the street from where she lived and get some takeout. She didn’t look dressed for the kitchen.

  He decided to cross the street and hurry ahead of Carlie and Sal. The subway trains ran closer together in the early evening, when people were headed home from their jobs. He could train ahead and wait for Carlie, and Sal, near the deli.

  Or he could simply go directly to stand across the street from her apartment and observe her. She’d be approximately twenty minutes later if she stopped in at the deli. He’d been tracking her carefully, noting times and places, letting his plan fall into place on its own. It worked best that way, letting fate determine his method, his unconscious seeing possible chinks in whatever protective armor Carlie was supposed to have. An overarching plan, but with adjustments on the run.

  Eventually opportunity would present itself in its entirety—the best way for him to spend quality time with Carlie.

  That was because fate was on his side.

  Not luck, mind you, but fate.

  52

  Dred Gant knew that lately he was drinking more, but not too much more. He had control of booze rather than vice versa, and it helped to relax him.

  He sometimes wondered what he’d do if his drinking became a problem. A membership in Alcoholics Anonymous? My name’s Dred Gant and I’m a serial killer. I also have this problem with alcohol.

  He sat in his favorite piece of furniture, a Victorian wing chair that would have been valuable if some clod hadn’t “restored” it by replacing its nineteenth-century frame with pine lumber from Home Depot. The one thing about the chair that hadn’t been ruined was its comfort.

  Jack Daniel’s, Queen Victoria, and high-definition television. Not a bad combination.

  Usually.

  Dred couldn’t believe it when Carlie appeared on the evening airing (were news programs still aired?) of Minnie Miner ASAP. It was only a brief appearance. Carlie, dressed as she had been when she’d left Bold Designs, was one of half a dozen women briefly interviewed on the street by Minnie Miner.

  Minnie asked them the predictable questions: “Are you aware of the Lady Liberty Killer? Have you taken extra precautions to be safe with a serial killer on the loose? Are you more likely to stay in at night? Do you go places in groups for safety’s sake?”

  Then the killer’s favorite: “Are you afraid?”

  All of the women gave the expected answers. They kept up on the news and were aware of what was happening. They took precautions, sure. But they still went out at night, and lived their normal lives. None of the women admitted to being afraid. The city was no more dangerous a place than usual, as long as you behaved sensibly.

  The killer liked that slant on things. His quarry didn’t realize that sensibly was another word for predictably.

  Prey animals, he thought. Women were prey animals. But dangerous ones if given the upper hand. He considered phoning in to the show. He was important to them and they would put him on the air instantly. Minnie Miner would be happy to have him chat while seconds ticked away.

  Then he decided he was better off as he was, relaxed in his favorite chair, sipping good bourbon, and viewing his TV as if it were a window looking out on a city he had mastered. He could watch terror growing from the fearsome seeds he’d sown.

  He didn’t really feel like talking with Minnie Miner, anyway.

  It was actually the made-over and statuesque blonde, Carlie, that he longed to communicate with, in his own special way. More and more often, at unexpected times, he found himself thinking about her. He did wonder, had there actually been a change in Carlie, or was he simply seeing her that way because she was becoming more desirable the more he looked at her? Was her increased desirability only in his mind?

  He mentally shook his finger at himself. He knew the answers to those questions.

  She was enhanced bait, of course. Nothing more. Made more vulnerable and especially tempting.

  A Frank Quinn creation.

  For days the killer ignored the bait. Carlie Clark had become something of a regular guest on Minnie Miner ASAP. She was getting good at being interviewed, and demonstrating a kind of casual disdain for the killer. Helen the profiler was pleased.

  Quinn wasn’t as sanguine about the plan as Helen. Last night someone pretending to be the Lady Liberty Killer had phoned in to the show and scared the hell out of him. A man’s voice, cold enough to have icicles.

  The caller stayed on the phone too long, and was surprised when an army of cops descended on his lower Manhattan apartment and made a wreck of it, and almost of him.

  He turned out to be a seventy-year-old former light-heavyweight boxer who had fought too long. He seemed to think he was the killer, but he was a serious alcoholic confined to a wheelchair. For him to leave his loft apartment in a four-story walkup was impossible without someone’s help.

  This turned out to be the most recent of many crimes he’d confessed to, possibly because he wanted to be in prison where the food was doubtless better and there was no rent.

  “Is this really going to work?” Quinn asked Helen, hanging up the phone after Renz had told him about the latest confessor. Time was wasting here.

  “It will work,” Helen assured him.

  “Poor Carlie’s nerves are going to snap.”

  Helen raised an eyebrow. “Not before yours, I’d bet.”

  “We’re asking a hell of a lot of her.”

  “She wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “And Jody’s starting to bug the hell out of Pearl and me.”

  “Explain to her that police work requires patience.”

  “Is there a way we can make this become police work?” Quinn asked. “Some way to make something happen sooner?”

  “Maybe,” Helen said, looking at him in a way he didn’t like.

  Saturday morning, on her walk to Q&A, Pearl was enjoying the sunlight and the smell of exhaust fumes. Her cell phone began chiming the four opening notes of the old Dragnet TV series, over and over.

  Without breaking stride, Pearl pulled the phone from her purse and answered the call before thinking about it. Nothing much could interfere with so bright and promising a day.

  The caller was Pearl’s mother.

  “Jody and I have been talking,” she said, without a hello.

  Pearl continued walking, but slower. “Is this Mom?”

  “You know that it is, dear. Your phone has that little thingamajig screen.”

  “I thought it might be the serial killer we’re trying to apprehend.”

  “Don’t joke about such things, dear. You should be so lucky, that you could meet him on the phone rather than in person.
However, your choice of subject is eerily accurate as to the reason for my call. We—that is Jody and I—feel that you have a certain imperative to disengage from the menial job you hold and that might kill you.”

  “Menial?”

  “Due to its danger, dear. Like working in a coal mine.”

  “Mom—”

  “What you do for a living is, at this point, particularly dangerous because of the monster who walks our streets, and who might, in his fevered mind, see you as an essential element of his gruesome plans.”

  “I thought you were going to warn me about black lung disease.”

  “That would, at least, be gradual.”

  Pearl was getting irritated. “Someone has to do this job, so why not me?”

  “Why not you? Because you have family, as do Jody and I. And that is the same family, when last I looked.”

  “Almost everyone has family.”

  “That is a big almost, dear. And they don’t have your family.”

  “I’m on my way to work now, Mom. This isn’t a good time to discuss these matters.”

  “Discussion? I am simply stating a position of eminent sense. We—Jody and I—feel that, all things considered in ways nonjudgmental, you and she, instead of working at times like this fine Saturday morning, could be with family here, in New Jersey. Or—and here I cross fingers and toes until the dreaded cramps develop—I should be back in my own place in New York.”

  “It’s been leased by a taxidermist.” Pearl didn’t know this; she thought that if the conversation became more unpleasant it might end.

  “He might not notice, then, that I moved back in, accustomed as I am to sitting for endless stretches of time, as I do sometimes here in purgatory. Jody and I—”

  “I’m tired of hearing that, Mom. ‘Jody and I.’ ”

  “We are jealous, are we?”

  “We are busy. We don’t need to waste time talking about you and Jody planning my life behind my back.”

  “Not your life, dear. Only some essential parts of it that you seem unable to recognize as instrumental to your happiness as opposed to simple cheap thrills you might receive through the perilous nature of your present employment. Nothing need be permanent. There are choices to be made even as the clock continues its inevitable—”

  “I’m quite content as I am, Mom. I like my job. I like my life. It took me a while to get over things, but I’m happy.”

  “Some of the deadliest poisons are some of the sweetest. You need to learn the truth of that in order to discern the barely discernible—and very often temporary—paths to true happiness. Doctor Milton—”

  Pearl switched off her phone. She’d had enough.

  She had simply had enough.

  She stopped at an intersection to wait for a traffic light to change to walk. A knot of other pedestrians gathered around her. The Dragnet theme wafted again from her purse. She at first was going to ignore it; then she yanked the cell phone out and answered the call: “I’m not interested in Doctor Milton Kahn!”

  “Neither am I,” Quinn said.

  The traffic signal changed, and the people surrounding Pearl surged forward, jostling her. Pearl got herself in gear.

  “Sorry,” she said into the phone.

  “Not as sorry as Dr. Milton Kahn, I bet.”

  “Don’t you forget that.”

  “I called to tell you we’ve got a plan,” Quinn said. “Helen has a plan, really. Helen and Minnie Miner, actually.”

  “More planning behind my back.”

  “Happens all the time,” Quinn said. “You almost to the office?”

  “Another five minutes.”

  “Then I’ll fill you in when you get here, instead of over the phone.”

  “When is this plan going to be put into effect?”

  “Soon as you get here. You bringing doughnuts?”

  “No.”

  “Come anyway.”

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad I answered the phone.”

  53

  Helen leaned her lanky body against the doorframe leading to the small alcove where Q&A’s Mr. Coffee sat. There was a drip or a run from somewhere onto the electric burner, because every half minute or so there was a hiss and a strong smell of burned coffee.

  Today Helen was wearing beige knee-length shorts, a matching silky armless pullover that looked as if it should have a number on its back, and worn down jogging shoes. Muscles rippled in her upper arms and shoulders. She looked more than ever as if she should be coaching a girls’ basketball team.

  Pearl looked at her, wondering.

  Helen looked back at her and winked.

  She waited until Quinn, Pearl, and Jody were comfortable before she began to talk. Fedderman wandered over to where he could hear. Sal and Harold were in the field and would be filled in later.

  “We’ve got some interesting elements going that might enable us to lure the killer into a trap,” Helen began. “One of them is Minnie Miner.”

  “Not to be trusted,” Pearl said.

  “True,” Helen agreed, “but then neither can the killer trust her. And he does seem to, at least to some extent, put his trust in her. She’s his chosen link to the media and the public.”

  “That’s important to him,” Quinn said.

  “Not only that, we can pretty much predict that while Minnie Miner ASAP is on the tube, he’s somewhere watching it instead of committing a murder.”

  “Or maybe he’s calling in,” Fedderman said.

  “Yes,” Helen said. “The show is in a sense his public voice.”

  “So how is that useful to us?” Jody asked. “I thought he was supposed to be stalking Carlie.”

  “We can be sure that he is stalking her. That is, obviously, another useful element that helps to make this killer more predictable.” Helen pushed away from the wall and stood hipshot with her long arms crossed. “Carlie, with her dye job and new hairdo, looks like the archetypal Lady Liberty Killer victim. With her help, with Minnie Miner’s, and with what we already know, we should be able to put ourselves in the same place at the same time as the killer. This is especially true if we use someone else’s help.”

  “And who might that someone be?” Pearl asked.

  “Lady Liberty. She’s been at every crime scene. If she could speak, we’d have our killer’s motive, name, and whereabouts.”

  “Too bad she happens to be a plastic figure,” Quinn said.

  “I’m talking about the real Lady Liberty. For some twisted reason she holds some significance for the killer. Therefore she holds some significance for us. We need to find out what. But we do know a very valuable fact about the real Lady Liberty. She lives on an island.”

  “And a small one at that,” Quinn said. “Not a lot of places to hide.”

  “Not for a three-hundred-and-five-foot tall woman, or a killer she draws like a magnet.” Helen smiled. “I know kind of how she might feel.”

  Pearl wondered if she was referring to her height or her magnetism. It occurred to her that the Statue of Liberty was made of copper and wasn’t magnetic, but she decided to keep that one to herself.

  “So we need to get the killer onto the island,” Quinn said.

  “For that we need someone else’s help,” Helen said. “Minnie Miner’s.”

  “I’m uneasy with her involved,” Quinn said.

  Pearl glanced over at him. “Give it a chance.”

  “Anyway,” Fedderman said, “she’s already involved, whether we like it or not.”

  Helen nodded gratefully to him. “I propose we let it slip that Minnie will be taping part of one of her shows near the Statue of Liberty, and she might be interviewing some potential victims there, asking about their fears and what they’re doing to allay them.”

  “One of those potential victims will be Carlie,” Jody said.

  Helen nodded.

  Quinn leaned back in his desk chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “He might not be ab
le to resist.”

  “And as you noted,” Helen said, “it’s a small island.”

  No one noticed until she spoke that Carlie had come in and was standing just inside the door.

  She said, “I think I can improve on that idea.”

  “I’m not sure I like it,” Quinn said, when Carlie finished talking.

  Carlie looked him in the eye. “It has a better chance of working.”

  “But it doesn’t give you a better chance of coming out alive.”

  “If we do it Carlie’s way, the killer is much more likely to select her as a victim,” Helen said. “It narrows down his choices.”

  Quinn looked over at Fedderman.

  “I think we should go for it,” Fedderman said. “But my vote in this doesn’t count as much as if I were family.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Quinn said.

  Pearl and Jody looked at him as if he’d just shot Fedderman. But Fedderman understood. He smiled sadly but triumphantly, knowing Quinn was trapped.

  “I think it’s a brilliant idea,” Jody said. And Quinn knew he was lost.

  Brilliant idea or not, there was something about the strategy the others might not have considered. Something Quinn knew would work to their advantage.

  Commissioner Harley Renz, who could translate publicity into political glory as skillfully as anyone Quinn had seen, would be in position to do exactly that, if Carlie’s modified version of Helen’s idea worked. For that reason alone Renz would get behind this plan. Also, if it failed, Renz would suffer only minimal damage. He’d go for this, all right, but leave no fingerprints on it unless it was successful. The enthusiastically corrupt commissioner was careful about his political prospects.

  Quinn decided to wait and tell Renz about the plan only when it was too late for Renz to stop it. Deniability was the object of the game here. Deniability was important in Renz’s life. If things didn’t work out, Renz could huff and puff and pass the blame.

  To Quinn.

  “Renz is a force that will wear itself out,” Helen said, seeming to know what Quinn was thinking.

  “Like a storm,” Quinn said. “Complete with wind and lightning bolts.”