In for the Kill

by John Lutz

  The sudden silence after the brief squeal of the faucet handle seemed to herald her salvation.

  She wasn't going to drown!

  Thank God!

  He straightened up slowly, then abruptly yanked the clear plastic shower curtain from its rod. He'd had the curtain draped outside the tub so it would remain dry, and he was careful to keep it that way. He crouched down and carefully spread it over the tile floor by the tub.

  When he was finished spreading the plastic curtain, down on his knees now, he reached over and lifted the lid of the white cardboard box.

  She only caught a glimpse of what was inside: knives, a cleaver, and something bulky gleaming bright orange with an arc of dull, serrated extension. Her mind flashed back to weekend days in her father's woodworking shop in the garage. A shrill scream of steel violating wood--a cordless power saw!

  Even taped tightly as she was, she created tiny ripples as she trembled in the cold water.

  The man remained on his knees on the shower curtain. He reached toward her feet--no, toward the chromed handles and faucet. She heard him depress the lever that opened the drain, and water began to gurgle softly as it started to swirl from the tub.

  Still trembling with cold and fear, Janice saw the man stand up and was shocked to see for the first time that he had an erection.

  He leaned over her, staring into her eyes in a way that puzzled her.

  And she was puzzled in her terror. What? She screamed the simple question silently through the firmly fixed rectangle of tape.

  What are you going to do to me?

  He bent lower and worked an arm beneath the crook of her bound legs, the backs of her knees. Hope sprang up in her. He was going to work his other arm beneath her back so he could lift her from the tub. Then do what? Carry her into the bedroom? Rape and torture her?

  She glanced again toward the white box and felt a thrill of terror.

  But instead of reaching beneath her shoulders, he placed his hand at the back of her head and forced it forward so she exhaled noisily through her nose. With his other arm he lifted her legs, causing her upper body to slide down so her head was beneath the water.

  Her bound lower legs began pumping up and down, but he held them high enough so that they contacted only air. While they flailed frantically, they were the only part of her moving even in the slightest. The way he had her head, she couldn't breathe out, only in.

  Only in!

  Cold water flooded into her lungs. She could do nothing but welcome it.

  She watched him watching her on the other side of the calm surface as she drowned.

  2

  The day Frank Quinn's life was about to change unexpectedly, he had a breakfast of eggs, crisp bacon, and buttered toast at the Lotus Diner. Afterward, he leisurely read the Times over a second cup of coffee, then strolled through the sunny New York morning back to his apartment on West Seventy-fifth Street.

  He thought, as he often did, that there was no other city like New York, no place like Manhattan, with its sights and sounds and smells. With all its flaws, it had become a part of Quinn.

  He didn't mind at all.

  As soon as he got home, he sat down in his brown leather armchair for a smoke. A guy who called himself Iggy supplied the Cuban cigars Quinn favored. Quinn didn't ask where they were from other than Cuba. A spot of minor misdemeanor wasn't that great a stain on the fabric of justice. Quinn had thought that way as a homicide detective, and now that he was retired at age fifty, after taking a bullet in the right leg during a liquor store holdup, he'd become even more lax. So he smoked his Cuban robustos. And at times, for convenience, he parked his aged and hulking black Lincoln in No Parking zones, propping an old NYPD plaque in the windshield.

  These two infractions were about the only transgressions he'd engaged in after retirement, but then there hadn't been much opportunity to do more.

  He sat now in the worn and comfortable chair that had become formed to his body, feeling lazy and watching pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk outside the ground-floor apartment. The window he was looking through had iron grillwork on the outside, to keep intruders out. But sometimes Quinn saw its black bars as prison bars, to keep him in, and had to smile at the irony. All the people he'd put away, the murderers--several of them serial killers--and here he sat comfortably behind bars smoking Cuban cigars.

  Quinn could afford better digs, after his lawsuit against the NYPD contesting a false child molestation and rape claim had resulted in a six-figure settlement. But he was used to living on a cop's salary and used to his apartment. And it didn't make sense to drive something newer and more stealable than the reliable old Lincoln he'd bought cheap from a friend and fellow ex-cop. He'd even gone back to work as a homicide detective for a while, until the liquor store shooting. He knew then it was time to leave the party.

  He settled back in the oversize chair and watched a man and woman hurry past outside. They were huddled close together, stealing glances at each other. Quinn let himself jump to the conclusion they were in love.

  He drew on the cigar but didn't inhale. Didn't want lung cancer.

  Nobody here to warn him about that now. Berate him. Threaten him. Maybe get so infuriated she'd kick him in the leg. The leg that had been shot.

  It was okay to smoke cigars in the apartment, now that Pearl had moved out. That was about the only thing good about Pearl's absence, as far as Quinn was concerned. He missed her small but vivid presence.

  Not that Pearl couldn't be acerbic, insulting, too intense, hyperactive, even violent.

  Well, he wasn't perfect.

  Some people said they were a good match. Quinn was tall, rawboned, with a battered nose and disconcerting flat green eyes. He had straight and unruly gray-shot brown hair that made him look as if he had a bad haircut even when he had a good haircut. Women liked the package. He was one of those men homely enough to be handsome. A rough-hewn sophisticate. He came across as laconic, when he wasn't laying on phony Irish charm.

  Pearl usually had plenty to say. She was an inch over five feet tall, compactly and sexily built, and so full of energy that if you stood close you might hear her humming like a transformer. She had black, black hair, dark, dark eyes, and a broad and ready white, white smile behind red, red lips. She looked too there to be real.

  But she was real, too real ever to lay on any kind of phony charm.

  That might have been the thing about her that charmed Quinn. No wheels within wheels with Pearl. She was one big wheel that might roll right over you. Maybe even back up, if she really didn't like you.

  She still liked Quinn, he was sure. Trouble was, she no longer seemed to love him.

  Pearl was the one who'd decided to move out.

  She'd quit the NYPD shortly after Quinn retired, before she could be fired for insubordination. Fired ten times over. Pearl had moved in with Quinn, who had a more than adequate income, between his pension and interest and dividends from the settlement. It had taken years to get the settlement and full exoneration. It had been worth it.

  They'd been happy for a while, then Pearl had gotten restless. She missed the action. Now she lived across town and was a bank guard. Some action there. Stand around and look stern for the depositors. But she seemed content enough. Maybe it was the gun on her hip. Quinn wondered.

  He was a great reader of people, but he truly didn't understand Pearl. Another facet of her charm.

  The buzzer over the intercom blasted away like a wasp whirring menacingly nearby.

  Pause, then again.

  No pause.

  Whoever was leaning on the button wouldn't let up.

  Hell with them. Let them get tired and go away.

  Quinn drew on his cigar, exhaled, studied the smoke.

  The buzzing continued unabated. Must be hard on the thumb.

  Who'd be doing this? Trying to aggravate him, if he did happen to be home and not seeing visitors, which was his right. Legal right.

  He glanced at his cigar, then propp
ed it in the ashtray on the table alongside the chair and stood up. He was wearing faded jeans, a wrinkled black T-shirt, worn moccasins, needed a shave, and looked more like a motorcycle gang member than an ex-cop. Lean-waisted, broad-shouldered, and ready to rumble.

  Whoever was outside leaning on the button didn't seem to care what he was stirring up. His mistake. Quinn didn't go to the intercom to answer. Instead he opened his door to the first-floor hall and took a few steps so he could look through the inside glass door and see who was buzzing him.

  The man leaning on the button was big but sagging in the middle, with a dark blue suit that didn't fit well. He was fat through the jowls, balding, had purple bags beneath his eyes, and looked one part unhappy and two parts basset hound.

  Deputy Chief Harley Renz.

  Quinn strode down the hall to the glass door and opened it.

  Renz smiled at him and leaned back away from the buzzer.

  In the abrupt silence, Quinn said, "Get in here."

  Renz's smile didn't waver as he followed Quinn into the apartment.

  Renz looked around, sniffed the air. "You're still smoking those illegal Cuban cigars."

  "Venezuelan." Quinn motioned for Renz to sit in a small, decorative chair that no one found comfortable.

  "If I had a beer," Renz said, "I'd tell you a story."

  "Could it be told by phone?"

  "You'd miss the inflections and facial expressions, and sometimes I use my hands like puppets."

  Quinn went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He found a very old can of beer near the back of the bottom shelf and opened it for Renz. He didn't bother with a glass.

  Back in the living room, Quinn settled again into his armchair, held but didn't smoke his cigar, and watched Renz take a pull on the beer and make a face.

  "That your breakfast?" Quinn asked.

  "Brunch. This beer must be over five years old."

  "Close."

  "You still off the booze?" Renz asked.

  "Down to just the occasional drink. I was never an alcoholic."

  "Sure. Well, I can tell by this brew you aren't chugging it down soon as you buy it. Besides, I know you're off the sauce in any meaningful way. I checked."

  "Must've been disappointed."

  "Yeah. I wanted to be your enabler." Renz glanced about casually. "Pearl around?"

  Another question whose answer you already know.

  "Pearl doesn't live here."

  "Oh. I forgot. Hey, you got another one of those cigars?"

  "Only one. I'm gonna save it for later."

  Renz shrugged. "I don't blame you. What the hell, all the way from Venezuela." Another pull of beer. No face this time. The stale brew was growing on him. "Reason I asked about Pearl is I thought she might be interested in hearing this, too."

  "I'll pass it on, but without the hand puppetry."

  Renz looked around. "Not a bad apartment, but it smells like it could use a good cleaning. And it looks like it was decorated by Rudyard Kipling. Needs a woman's touch." He pointed toward a framed print near the old fireplace that wasn't usable. "Ducks flying in formation in front of a sunset. That one never goes out of style."

  "I hope this is a one-beer story," Quinn said.

  "Ah! Your tactful way of suggesting I get to the point."

  "Get to the point."

  Renz leaned closer in the tiny chair that looked as if it might break under his weight. "Dead women are the point. Two of them." He lowered his voice conspiratorially, as if they might be overheard. "Only you and I know about them now, plus a few trusted allies in the NYPD."

  "And the killer."

  "Did I say they were killed?" Renz shrugged. "Well, I'll let you make up your mind. The first was Janice Queen, here on the West Side. The second Lois Ullman. Both single, attractive, in their thirties, brunettes--what you might call the same type."

  "So you think it was the same killer?"

  "Oh, yes. Both women were drowned in their bathtubs, and there were traces of the tape that was used to bind and gag them beforehand. Then they were dismembered with surgical precision, their body parts stacked in the tubs in the same ascending order: torsos, thighs, calves, arms, and heads. The killer ran the showers, using whatever liquid shampoos or other cleaning agents were available on the body parts, until every visible trace of blood disappeared down the drains, leaving only the pale remains of the victims." Renz leaned back. "I see I have your rapt attention."

  "Rapt," Quinn admitted, and drew thoughtfully on the cigar, feeling like a character in a Kipling story.

  "The killer sent me a brief note, taunting several of our city's homicide detectives, even included your name. I guess he didn't know you retired. He assured me there would be more such victims."

  "If anybody in the NYPD knows this," Quinn said, "it's sure to explode in the media soon like a hand grenade."

  "We need to be ready for that."

  "We?"

  "I've decided you are the man," Renz said. "Serial killers are your specialty. You brought down the Night Prowler, and you can bring down whatever the media decide to call this sick creep."

  "You left out the part about me being retired."

  "I can work it out so you and your team will be doing work for hire. It'll be the way you like it, with all the resources of the NYPD at your disposal, through me, and all the advantages of working outside the department."

  Quinn knew what Renz meant--the advantages of being able, if necessary, to work outside the law.

  "Who's on my team?" Quinn asked.

  "The same people who helped you nail the Night Prowler. Pearl and Fedderman."

  "Pearl's working as a bank guard. Fedderman's living down in Florida, learning how to play golf."

  "They'll say yes to you, Quinn. Just like you'll say yes to me." Renz waved an arm toward the window that looked out on the sidewalk. "Ever notice how much that ironwork resembles prison bars?"

  "Never." Quinn looked at Renz through a haze of cigar smoke. "You thought you'd be chief by now."

  "Instead I was demoted, but I'm back up to deputy chief."

  "I heard. Also heard that's as far as you're going."

  "I'm like you, Quinn. I don't quit. I don't stop climbing. What the hell else is there in life? I think you understand."

  "Sure. We nail this sicko, and you get the credit and promotion. Life's been breathed back into your career."

  "And you save the lives of the killer's future victims."

  "Don't go altruistic on me, Harley."

  "Well, okay. Then your answer is yes."

  "Was that a question? I didn't hear a question."

  "Since we both know the answer, a question isn't necessary."

  "Have you talked to Pearl or Fedderman?"

  Renz smiled. "I thought I'd let you do that. One way or another, you can talk anybody into anything."

  "Not Pearl," Quinn said.

  Renz thought about that and nodded.

  "I'll talk to them," Quinn said. "But no promises."

  "Good!" Renz was careful to place his beer can on the table where it would leave a ring, then stood up. "I'll get the murder books to you, then try to find you some office space near the closest precinct house. Something without dust and mold where you won't feel at home."

  Quinn didn't get up. Far too busy with his cigar.

  At the door, Renz paused. "I'm serious about nailing this asshole, Quinn, or I wouldn't have put a hellhound like you on his track. We've both seen a lot, but mother of God, if you'd seen those two women..."

  "Is this where you cross yourself?" Quinn asked.

  "Oh, I don't blame you for being skeptical, keeping in mind your devious nature and coarse cynicism." Renz bowed his head, closed his eyes, and for a second Quinn thought he actually might cross himself.

  "You do compassion really well."

  Renz gave him a sad and sickly smile. "We're gonna find out how well you do it."

  When Renz was gone, Quinn settled back in his chair to fi
nish his cigar before he phoned Pearl and Fedderman.

  He glanced over at the print of ducks flying in a tight V formation against a vivid sunset and decided he still liked it.

  The cigar was only half gone when he picked up the phone.

  3

  "Something's different," Pearl said.

  "You took a lot of the furniture with you," Quinn said. "I had to move a few things around." He was seated in his leather armchair, not smoking a cigar.

  Pearl was in the chair she used to sit in all the time, but it was on the other side of the room now. She had on jeans and a jacket this morning, Saturday, when the bank was closed. Her hair was blacker than anything Quinn had ever seen. Raven-colored, he guessed they called it. Not much makeup, if any, but still her dark eyes and lips were in sharp contrast to her pale skin. "You redecorated," she said.

  "More like made do."

  "I smell cigar smoke, Quinn."

  "I have one infrequently."

  "Not good for you."

  You not being here isn't good for me. "I stay within limits."

  "Not like you." She sat back and smiled with her large, perfectly aligned, very white teeth. "So what did you want to see me about?"

  "Harley Renz came by yesterday and talked to me."

  Her smile disappeared. "He still such an asshole?"

  "More than ever. I was thinking he should be our boss again."

  Pearl gave him an odd look, as if he'd just spoken in an unfamiliar language.

  "That's not gonna happen," she said. "But go ahead, try to talk me into it."

  He told her what Renz had said, watching her closely as he described what the killer had done to his victims. The odd look never completely left her face.

  "What if I say I want no part of this?" she asked, when he was finished.

  "I forge ahead with Fedderman. He wasn't cut out for golf in Florida. Last time I talked to him on the phone he said the game was driving him crazy."

  "And you think he'll throw away his irons and woods and fly up here and join forces with you and Renz to hunt down a serial killer?"

  "That's his real game," Quinn said, "not bogies and birdies. It's yours, too. Not standing around Fourth National--"