by John Lutz
Cowardly? The killer’s hands balled into fists.
“Unless he moves on,” Quinn continued, “we’ll catch him. Killers like this are doomed to be apprehended. Experience has taught us that they’re not overly bright.”
You’re lying!
“So entangled in their compulsion that they’re not capable of logical reasoning.”
You’re lying!
“There’s nothing much in them but evil.”
Lying! If God doesn’t want me to do this, why is He letting me? Why is He urging me? Why is He my accomplice?
The camera moved to the handsome newscaster, who absently lifted a hand and smoothed back his hair. “So except for the victim and her family—and our hearts go out to them—would you say there is nothing special about this murder?”
Tell him about the gutting, the disassembly of her parts!
“No,” Quinn said, “it’s just another squalid homicide, probably done on impulse by a maniac.”
Lying! Lying!
Tad the newsman shook his head. “So sad . . .”
Lying!
Quinn was back on camera, looking straight into the lens. “It’s a kind of sickness that can overcome even the best of us.”
“So this kind of killer is a mental case, silently screaming for help?”
“Usually.”
Lie on.
Quinn imagined the killer someplace comfortable, with his feet propped up, watching television.
You’ll be sorry.
6
The trees blocked their view. Or the dusk was dark enough that there were reflections in the windows and the glass had turned to mirrors. Windows of the buildings across the street from the park, overlooking the crime scene, didn’t yield much help. None of the potential witnesses happened to be looking outside at the time of the murder.
That was their story, anyway.
Fedderman, Sal, and Harold knocked on doors much of the day and were dismayed by how no one would claim to have seen Lois Graham’s murder. All three detectives knew that some of them might be withholding evidence. They didn’t want to get involved; it might somehow taint them, lead to some crime they’d committed without knowing, suck them into the system and rightly or wrongly list their names forever
These days more than ever, people didn’t want their names on a list. Any kind of list.
After lunch, Sal and Harold continued canvassing the neighborhood, while Quinn and Fedderman made a second examination of the victim’s apartment. They looked again at a stack of blank paper near the printer. Wouldn’t it be nice if her laptop or pad turned up, full of information that could identify her killer?
They poked and peered but found nothing of use in the apartment. It was fashionably but not lavishly furnished. Eclectic would describe it.
“One thing,” Quinn said. “Wasn’t there a carpet in the bedroom?”
Fedderman cupped his chin in his hand and thought. “Yes,” he said with certainty. “Not very large, though. More like a throw rug.”
They tried to think what else had been here but was now gone. They couldn’t identify anything for sure. It was possible some dishes or glasses were missing from a kitchen cabinet.
“Weren’t there three chairs instead of two at the kitchen table?” Fedderman asked, pointing to the small drop-leaf table and two wooden chairs that looked as if they’d spent years in classrooms.
“Could have been,” Quinn said.
“I remember now because the missing chair didn’t look like the others. It was a little larger and had some guy’s name carved in it.”
“Our killer?” Quinn asked, knowing it wouldn’t be so.
“If his name is Hinkley,” Fedderman said.
They continued their search. Like last time, they found no evidence that the victim had been under duress, or was being stalked, during the time leading up to her murder. Her purse, found near her body, had held the usual items found in women’s purses—wadded tissue, a comb, lipstick, an oversized key ring holding a plastic four-leaf clover that if squeezed became a tiny flashlight, a pair of very dark made-in-Taiwan sunglasses, some old theater and movie ticket stubs. There was a wallet containing two twenty-dollar bills and the usual charge, debit, and ID cards. No driver’s license (no surprise, in New York City). A plasticized card proclaimed her membership in a gym. (They all belong to gyms, Quinn thought.) Her keys were missing. The supposition was that after killing Lois, the murderer let himself into her apartment and stole her computer. Obviously, he was afraid something on it might lead to him.
Maybe, Quinn thought, he’d also stolen a throw rug and a wooden chair.
A phone call to a local antique dealer shed some light. The dealer said on the phone he’d have to see the rug in order to give an estimate of its worth. The missing wooden chair, he said, after hearing Quinn’s description, if genuine and in good condition, might be worth several thousand dollars.
So the killer had taken the victim’s computer and then come back later to move what was valuable and more noticeable. Quinn assumed the killer would have dressed like some sort of workman and simply walked out of the building and to his car or truck with the chair and rolled rug.
But what amazed and angered the detectives was the strong possibility that he had returned and taken away what was valuable in the apartment while they were eating lunch.
After work at Coaxly and Simms, writing ad copy, Rose Darling entered her apartment, closed the door behind her, and fastened all her locks. Since finding that girl the way she was in Central Park, Rose hadn’t felt safe. She read everything she could find on the murder. Watched the news.
How could something have happened so close to her? She had passed right by where and when that poor woman was murdered. The fear had pushed her into a run.
She recalled the curious sense of dread she’d felt while jogging there. Some part of her mind must have realized something. Her anxiety had been so real!
She decided she wasn’t going to run this evening in the unrelenting heat. And certainly not in the park. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel comfortable again while jogging. The thing to do, she decided, was wait until the sicko killer was caught. And killed. (She hoped.) Then she could run again, but on the sidewalks, where people were walking. Then she realized that might be unwise, being the fastest one and drawing everyone’s stares.
Everyone’s.
She cranked up the air-conditioning, sat down on the sofa, and, using one foot, then the other, worked off her high heels. She could recall her father’s cautioning voice from her youth: Don’t stick your neck out. Don’t make it easier for the bastards.
Never had she believed more in her father’s simple wisdom.
She let herself sink back into fatherly philosophy and the welcoming embrace of the sofa cushions.
7
“Lennon was shot there,” Sal Vitali said to Harold Mishkin, as they walked along Central Park West toward where they’d parked the unmarked car.
Before them loomed the ornate stone building that occupied an entire block.
“The Russian or the singer?” Harold asked.
Not sure whether Harold was playing dumb, Sal growled simply, “The singer.”
Harold’s expression of detached mildness didn’t change as he made a slight sound that might have meant anything.
They’d finished interviewing Lois Graham’s pertinent neighbors, catching some of them after work hours but before dinner. People didn’t like to have their meals delayed or interrupted.
The two detectives thought it might be worth talking to the victim’s upstairs neighbor again, a guy named Masterson, who had seemed more than a little nervous the first time. But maybe that was because his apartment smelled strongly of weed. He and a busty twenty-three-year-old girl named Mitzy, who’d spent the night with him, swore they’d been in bed all evening the night of the murder. They’d been listening to CDs of Harry Connick Jr. songs. Harold thought that was unlikely, though he himself liked Connick Jr.
<
br /> Tonight when Masterson (“call me Bat—everyone does”) opened his door to them, Mitzy was nowhere to be found.
Bat motioned for Sal and Harold to sit on the sofa, and sat down across from them in a ratty old recliner that creaked beneath his weight. Harold noted that Masterson was a larger man than he’d first thought. Broad and muscular.
“Where’s Mitzy this evening?” Sal asked.
Masterson shrugged. Not easy to do in a recliner, but he managed. “At her quilting bee. She belongs to this gang of women who sit around and gossip and make quilts. Give them to people they like or love. I’ve got so many I don’t know what to do with the damned things.” He shrugged again, exactly like the first time. “I’d be happy to see a Christmas tie this year.”
“You mean between two of the women in the quilting bee?” Harold said.
Masterson looked at Harold the way Sal had. Harold seemed not to notice.
Sal thought Masterson was going to shrug a third time, but he just sat there, as if the brief conversation and two sitting shrugs had been enough to exhaust him. Harold could do that to people.
“Would you like to amend your account of last night in any way?” Harold asked.
Masterson raised his eyebrows in a practiced way, as if he’d had enough of shrugs. “You mean have I thought of anything else?”
Sal and Harold sat still, waiting.
“I remember riding down in the elevator with Lois Graham. She had a bag of popcorn with her. She is—was—an attractive lady. The sort anybody would remember.”
“She and you were alone in the elevator?” Sal asked.
“Yes, just the two of us. We both got out at lobby level. I went to pick up my mail at the boxes. She started walking off as soon as she stepped on the sidewalk.”
“Did she know Mitzy?” Sal asked, not knowing quite why.
Masterson wasn’t thrown by the question. “The two never met that I can remember. I mean, Lois Graham and I didn’t really know each other. We were what you’d call nodding acquaintances.”
“Then the two of you never dated?”
“Never anything like that. I mean, you saw Mitzy.”
“She has a certain glint in her eye,” Harold said.
“Well,” Sal said, closing his notepad, “we won’t arrest her just now as a suspect, but she should see a doctor about that glint.”
Bat Masterson and Harold both looked momentarily startled, then relaxed, realizing Sal was joking. Fedderman wandered in from his interview in another unit, saw the smiles and joined in.
The detectives thanked Masterson for his cooperation, then left the building and walked toward their unmarked car, finished after a long day.
As they passed where John Lennon had been shot, two young girls were standing and gawking. One kept snapping photos with her cell phone. The other stared at the sidewalk approximately where Lennon had fallen and seemed about to cry.
“Where the Russian was shot,” Sal said dryly.
Harold said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
A ragged figure stepped out from the narrow dark space between two buildings and limped toward them. Fedderman moved his unbuttoned white shirt cuff and rested the heel of his hand on his gun in its belt holster.
The man was one of the homeless, in a stained and ripped ancient gray sport coat and incredibly wrinkled baggy jeans. He had a lean face with a long, oft-broken nose, and a deep scar on the side of his jaw. He might have been forty or ninety. The street did that to people. Once they gave up, the street was in charge of time.
He stopped a yard in front of Sal and Harold, so that they had to stop.
“I seen what happened,” he said in a voice almost as gravel pan as Sal’s. “All of it. Whole thing started with the popcorn.”
The two detectives looked at each other.
“What’s your name?” Harold asked.
Sal rolled his eyes. He was tired and his feet hurt. He didn’t feel like dealing with a nutcase.
“I just go by Spud.”
Harold made a show of writing the name in his leather-covered notepad as if it were vitally important. “You understand we’re with the police?”
“I knew he was a cop,” Spud said, pointing at Sal. “I wasn’t so sure about you.” Spud used the back of his hand to wipe his nose. “You look like the kind that never played sports as a kid.”
“Looks can fool you,” Harold said, obviously hurt by Spud’s analysis.
“He was a star quarterback at Notre Dame,” Sal lied.
Spud looked dubiously at Harold. “That true?”
“I don’t give away the plays,” Harold said. He hitched his thumbs in his belt so his holstered gun was visible. With his bushy gray mustache and hipshot, slender frame, he was magically changed into an old West gunslinger. “Now what’s all this about popcorn?” he asked.
Spud seemed unimpressed. “The woman was sitting on a bench, and for some reason the pigeons didn’t like the popcorn she was trying to feed them.”
“Maybe it was stale,” Harold said. “Some pigeons are particular.”
Spud rubbed his bristly chin. It made a lot of noise. “Now, that’s how I see it, too. You and me, we think alike.”
“Who was the woman feeding popcorn to the pigeons?” Sal asked.
“Don’t know her name. Never seen her before. Then this guy came along, and they started talking.”
“The girl and the new arrival?”
“The girl and the pigeons,” Sal said. Harold could be excruciating.
“Describe him.”
“Kinda little guy, wearing faded designer jeans, a pullover shirt with the collar turned up in back. Had on a Mets baseball cap, had one ear inside it, another outside it. That ear stuck straight out and was kinda funny looking.”
“Funny looking how?”
“Pointed, it was.” He looked thoughtful. “I was drunk once and seen a leprechaun had ears like that.”
“Right ear? Left ear?”
“Right one, I’d say. Maybe both of ’em. Hard to know, the way he had his cap tilted.”
“Where did the popcorn come from?” Harold asked.
“Hell, I don’t know. Woman had it but the pigeons wouldn’t touch the popcorn till she stood up to leave. Then a couple of them got close and pecked at it.”
“The man?” Sal asked.
Spud wiped his jutting chin again. Harold couldn’t decide whether Spud smelled like gin or diesel fuel. “Oh, they musta known each other, or else he was an awful good talker, ’cause they left together. He picked up his bag and off they went.”
“Bag?” Sal asked.
“Sure. Big blue bag with a lotta straps.”
“Did it look heavy?”
“Not at all.”
“Where did they go? Did they leave the park?”
“No. I’m sure of that. I kinda followed them, for some reason.”
Sal could guess the reason. If the opportunity arose, Spud could throw a sucker punch, snatch the man’s wallet, and run. The man might not be in any position to follow.
“This woman,” Sal said. “Do you think you could identify her?”
Spud went into his chin rub again. Smiled the ugliest smile Sal and Harold had ever seen. “You mean her head?”
Spud objected, but Sal and Harold drove him to Q&A and he signed a statement. He wasn’t too worried, because he didn’t see Sal or Harold or any of these people as real cops. If they were, they wouldn’t have been so nice to him. He might even be up on a vagrancy charge.
To Spud, these were play cops, but not cops playing games.
Sal and Harold wrote their own reports, while Quinn and Fedderman drove Spud to the morgue in Quinn’s old black Lincoln.
Quinn figured maybe they had something here, but probably not.
“I feel like the mayor,” Spud said, leaning back in his plush seat and crossing his arms. “My kingdom’s right on the other side of this window.”
Quinn wondered what the real mayor would think of that. He dro
ve faster.
Fedderman figured the entire car might have to be fumigated. Quinn didn’t seem to mind. The man could prioritize.
Spud, it turned out, was an ex-marine who’d seen the worst of it in Desert Storm. He didn’t react when they showed him the morgue photos of Lois Graham. Simply said, “Uh-huh. Same woman. Damned shame.”
Quinn said, “You might have seen her with her killer.”
Spud raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “Mr. Popcorn?”
“The same.”
“Maybe. Didn’t get a clear look at him, though. Told you he looked like a gremlin.”
“Leprechaun.”
“Did I say that? Shoulda said gremlin. Leprechauns ain’t always bad. Gremlins are the worst. Too curious and up to mischief all the time. No pot of gold involved.”
“Some mischief,” Quinn said.
“There a reward?”
Quinn stared at his raggedy witness in the backseat where Feds could keep an eye on him. “If you throw a net over him, I’ll pay you something out of my own pocket.”
“How much?”
“Negotiable. And remember, your testimony wouldn’t be much good if we paid you for it.”
“Wouldn’t make me no difference what brand it was.”
Quinn realized they were talking about bottles, not dollars. He gave a half smile. Spud didn’t have the ambition and balls to be mayor of what was outside the car. Good for him. “You net this gremlin and we’ll talk.” He handed Spud his card. “Give me a call and let me know if you learn anything important.”
Spud accepted the card and gave a sloppy salute.
They left the morgue and drove him back to the park where he’d first been accosted by Sal and Harold. A street vendor was set up near the 81st Street entrance. Quinn treated Spud to a knish and orange soda. He noticed that the vendor also sold popcorn.
Quinn thought of warning Spud to be careful, especially where he slept.
Then he figured Spud was careful all the time anyway. On the streets, being careful was his life.
The package Quinn found in the mail at Q&A hadn’t been delivered by the post office. There was no stamp on it, and Quinn’s name and address were printed neatly in black felt tip pen. Oddly, there was a return address, also neatly printed, in the package’s upper left hand corner: Return to Jack Kerouac. There was no actual address.