Carnage: Short Story

by John Lutz

“Bomb squad’s on the way here from Fort Lauderdale,” Fedderman said.

  “Too far away,” Quinn said. His throat was dry but he felt like spitting.

  When he looked up, he saw a Del Moray police car pulling into the parking lot. The light strip on its roof was flashing a riot of color. He headed for Pearl’s motel room.

  “Where you going?” Sal rasped in surprise.

  “To Pearl’s room, while I’m still in charge.”

  The door was locked so he kicked it open.

  Quinn knew he might not have much time. He stood in the center of the room and moved in a slow circle, then he checked the closet and bathroom, anyplace a bomb might be hidden.

  The last place he decided to check was beneath the bed, where a blast would be limited by the heavy mattress and bedsprings.

  He bent over, peered into the shadows beneath the bed, and immediately saw a woman’s arm.

  Just as immediately, he knew the arm was dead.

  Quinn stood up and heaved the mattress out of the way, off the box springs. Then he gripped the limp cool arm and pulled.

  The woman wasn’t Pearl. She was Latin and matronly, and in a maid’s uniform. She had obviously been strangled, judging by her bulging eyes clouded with broken capillaries.

  Quinn heard a low moan. Another. And shoved the mattress all the way off the bed frame.

  There was Pearl, wrapped in gray duct tape. Her legs were fastened together, her arms and hands were taped to her hips. A rectangle of duct tape served as a gag. She and the maid must have been lying side by side, immovable and silent as the room was searched. At least Pearl was alive. Her eerily calm brown eyes stayed fixed on Quinn as he worked her out from beneath the bed. He could see and hear her breathing.

  Seething with anger and at the same time relief, he gently picked her up and carried her outside.

  The Del Moray police car he’d seen arrive was parked near the yellow tape. Nearby was another vehicle. An ambulance. Desoto at least was thinking.

  Two white-uniformed paramedics ran toward Quinn, and he carefully handed over Pearl. In short order she was lying on a gurney, then was placed in the back of the ambulance.

  Quinn rode with her to the hospital.

  “We gave the room a quick look, never thought to check under the bed,” Sal said in the hospital waiting room. They’d stayed, even though the doctors said it looked like Pearl was unharmed.

  Quinn could understand Sal’s position. Still, he didn’t like it.

  “You’d been in and out of her room, and you didn’t look under the bed?”

  Fedderman wore a pained expression. “Remember, when we were looking for Pearl, we still thought she was probably okay.”

  “Nobody heard anything?”

  “She couldn’t move or make a sound,” Sal said. “Neither could the maid.”

  “The maid—”

  “She was strangled. The manager assumed she was still making her rounds, or had already finished and left work for the day.”

  Fedderman still couldn’t look Quinn in the eye. “But D.O.A. didn’t kill Pearl . . .”

  “Playing his friggin’ games,” Sal rasped. “Wanted us to know he could have had his way with her.”

  “He killed someone else besides the maid,” Quinn said. “A woman named Audrey Simmons. Lived in a house with a pool.”

  “Asshole’s gotta have his water nearby,” Sal said.

  “She was in the pool. He tortured her before he killed her and carved D.O.A. in her forehead.”

  “Games,” Sal said again. “Even with chess pieces.”

  “What I don’t like,” Quinn told him, “is that he seems to be a couple of moves ahead.”

  By the time Quinn and Fedderman returned to the motel, the desk clerk had left for Quinn a small brown wrapped package. It had been placed in with the regular mail, with Quinn’s name and room number instead of an address.

  Quinn immediately carried the package to the far end of the parking lot, then laid it gently on the ground. Then he phoned Desoto, told him about the package, and asked him to go ahead and send the bomb squad from Fort Lauderdale.

  Less than an hour later Quinn stood with Desoto, his sidekick Beckle, and the Q&A detectives, and watched a robot that looked deceptively like a toy roll to where the brown package addressed to Quinn lay. It slowed and seemed to creep up on the package. Metal arms reached out, clutched the package, shook it. Raised it several times and dropped it.

  Ten minutes later, two guys who looked more like astronauts than bomb disposal experts cautiously approached the package, which was now illuminated by bright lights from several angles to eliminate shadows. They regarded it carefully, then kneeled and bent over it. Soon the package was unwrapped, the box inside opened.

  One of the astronauts waved for Quinn and Desoto to come over. Everyone else was held back, just in case. Bomb disposal experts regularly bet their lives on an abundance of caution, but made sure nobody else’s life was at stake.

  In the glare of artificial light, they looked down at the package’s contents.

  Two plastic chess pawns.

  11

  Back in New York, Quinn and his detectives gathered at the office, along with Helen the profiler and Jerry Lido. Some stood; others sat in client chairs, mostly clumped around Quinn’s desk. Pearl was slouched in one of Quinn’s chairs. Helen was perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk, her long arms crossed and rippling with muscle and sinew. There was a clammy feel to the air, and the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.

  Quinn leaned back in his swivel chair and listened to the brainstorming. He liked this kind of group approach, though it could drip with sarcasm and erupt in violent shows of temper. Every once in a while, something valuable could come of these impromptu confabs.

  “What’s with the two pawns?” Sal asked. “Is the killer telling us he’s gonna start murdering victims in pairs?”

  “Not likely,” Helen said.

  “He didn’t kill Pearl along with the maid,” Sal pointed out.

  “Exactly. It would have been too impromptu. He’s in charge. He wants to decide when, where, and how Pearl dies.”

  “What is likely?” Fedderman asked.

  “Occam’s razor,” Harold said.

  Sal said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Whatever is simplest is most likely the truth.”

  “Who’s Occam?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn really felt like lighting a cigar.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Helen said. “What Harold said is usually true. It’s commonsense reasoning.”

  Harold looked triumphant, but only for a few seconds. “On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes said—”

  “Forget about Sherlock Holmes,” Helen said. “It’s the two pawns that interest me.”

  “The incident of the two pawns,” Harold said, and was ignored.

  “There are six murders that we know about, in this latest string of killings.” Lido said. He was farthest away from the nucleus of the group, at his computer. Usually above the fray.

  “Meaning what?” Fedderman asked.

  “Each player has eight pawns at the beginning of a chess game,” Helen said. “The killer might be telling us we’re out of pawns, and the game is going to get more serious. Bishops, rooks, knights . . . We’re going to be playing with the royalty of chess.”

  “I say the two pawns means he’s going to kill two more women,” Sal said.

  “Occam again,” Helen said.

  “Sherlock Holmes—” Harold began.

  “That’s most likely,” Helen said. “Two more victims. He’s getting anxious, more and more in the grip of his compulsion.”

  “Sherlock—”

  “He’ll want to kill more often,” Fedderman said.

  “He isn’t wrapped up in all that mapping and distance for nothing,” Helen said. “I’d say he’s eager to get to his final destination.”

  “New York,” Sal and Fedderman said simultaneously.

  “Most lik
ely,” Harold said. “He wants to make it here.”

  Sal gave him a look.

  “Where Quinn lives,” Harold added.

  When they were gone, Quinn fired up a cigar, sat at his desk, and tried to figure out what to make of it all.

  12

  He was sitting on a wooden folding chair, alone at a small round table covered with a white cloth. It was one of many in the beige-toned conference room. On each table were a small writing tablet, a cheap ballpoint pen, and a slender glass vase containing a single red rose. The killer’s rose looked as if it needed water.

  Speed dating, the killer thought. What a useful idea.

  Everyone had ten minutes to convince the prospective date at a table to take a chance. Just meet somewhere for a cup of coffee, maybe. Or a drink. An exploratory date. If the suitor (so called) was interested, he or she could arrange a date, or at least exchange phone numbers. If, as happened most of the time, the spark wasn’t struck, tables were changed when a chime sounded, indicating ten minutes had elapsed.

  The starting chime set in motion the dozen or so men clustered at one end of the room. The women sat at the tables.

  Here they come, Alma Fenster thought, wondering if you could actually smell testosterone. They were an unlikely looking bunch, dressed every way from motorcycle gang member to Sunday school teacher. There was one guy wearing a conservative blue blazer and khakis, deck shoes with no socks—like Mr. Suburban who’d lost his way and found himself in the big city.

  Yet there was something about him. A kind of easy sophistication that peeked through no matter what. He wasn’t what you’d call spectacularly handsome, but he was hard to find fault with in a way that Alma liked. He could best be described by the word pleasant.

  But would he like her?

  She dispensed with a guy who seemed to love the rooftop pigeons he kept more than anything else. Next came an elderly man who was obviously drunk. He left before his ten minutes were up, after Alma had declined suggestions encompassing half the Kama Sutra.

  Then the pleasant-looking guy took a seat at Alma’s table.

  “Hi, I’m Corey,” he said. Then he smiled. “It’s my real name, actually. Who are you, really?”

  “Alma Fenster.” God! She felt herself blush. “I wouldn’t make that one up.”

  He seemed to consider the name. “I could learn to like it,” he said.

  She laughed. Some lies you appreciate. And some truths. “And if it was your own name?”

  He gave her a grin that melted her. “Honestly,” he said, “I’d change it to Corey.” He leaned closer. “Have I insulted you?”

  “No. You’ve honored me with the truth.”

  “Ah! A woman with common sense.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “I don’t need ten minutes. I knew before I sat down I wanted to walk out of here with you.”

  Alma was flustered. She had to fight the instinct to jump up and run for the door. She could yell that she’d forgotten to turn off the oven—something like that. She didn’t make friends easily, much less lovers.

  Her voice was halting. “Maybe we should simply exchange phone numbers, then think about this when we get home.”

  “I’ve already thought about it,” he said.

  Alma considered herself to be an average-looking woman, a blonde about ten pounds overweight with a weak chin.

  Of course, lots of men liked a weak chin. Something sexy about the overbite, or so she’d heard.

  “Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said. “So we can talk more than—”

  The ten minute chime interrupted him.

  He stood up and crooked his elbow, offering his arm. “Let’s go, Alma,” he said through that damned smile that sent her into a tizzy.

  Tizzy. Her mother used to use that word a lot.

  Her mother also had told her that the brass ring didn’t come around very often. Corey looked like the brass ring.

  Alma gripped her purse and stood up. “There’s a Starbuck’s on the corner,” she said.

  His smile widened. “On every corner.”

  Alma thought that was reasonably funny, even when you stopped to think about it and realized it was an old joke and almost true.

  She could feel the eyes of other women on her as she and Corey made their way to the door. She was glad now that she’d gotten her hair done at Tina’s this morning, thinking that maybe she’d have something to tell Tina when she saw her next week.

  “I was surprised to find someone like you in a place like that,” he said, as they walked through the hot night toward Starbuck’s.

  “How so?”

  “A looker like you . . . you know the line. In this case, it happens to be accurate. Seriously, what were you doing there?”

  They walked awhile as she thought. “It’s this city,” she said. “New York.”

  “What is?

  “The problem. It’s so heartless here sometimes. And it’s true that being alone in a crowded place can be excruciatingly lonely. Especially if you’re like me.”

  “Which is how?”

  “I find it difficult to make friends.”

  He patted her shoulder. “You made one tonight. I’ll prove it by rescuing you and spiriting you out of the city to somewhere interesting.”

  Spiriting me. At least this guy has a vocabulary.

  “How about somewhere quiet?” she said. “There’s always something making noise here, from jackhammers to horns honking. Even dogs barking.”

  He smiled. “I’ll take you somewhere quiet. Not far, but in another state. We can read and eat bonbons.”

  “That sounds pretty good,” she said, and moved closer to him.

  13

  Three days later a woman’s body was found on a beach in New Jersey. She’d been tortured with a knife and with cigarettes, and the initials D.O.A. were carved in her forehead.

  Her name was Alma Fenster, and it took Jerry Lido only a few hours to determine that, other than their torture and death at the hands of the same killer, she wasn’t connected with any of the other victims.

  “Whatever they had in common is the same as with a lot of women,” Lido said. “They were all in their twenties, all lived alone and were real or bottled blondes. There are no other suspects in their deaths—or at least none more so than the killer who carved his calling card in their foreheads. None of them were fabulously rich or depressingly poor. None of them were in any way famous.”

  “We could say they were all attractive,” Quinn said. “And all were tortured, murdered, and mutilated by the same fanatic. None of them was raped.”

  “This sicko gets off in other ways,” Sal said.

  “No semen was found,” Harold said. “But he might have used a condom to do . . . whatever he does.”

  “Can’t get it up,” Sal said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Quinn cautioned.

  “No,” Helen agreed, “not for sure. He might simply prefer his other kind of sex. The torture and death bring him relief.”

  “He tortures them with cigarettes,” Fedderman said, “but we never find cigarette butts.”

  “He knows about DNA,” Sal said. “Like just about everybody who watches cop TV or goes to the movies to see Godfather Twelve.”

  “Or Rocky Forty.” Helen said.

  “Or The Hobbit and the Obfuscation of Evidence,” Harold said.

  “What does that mean?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn said, “He means we have plenty of evidence, but we don’t know how to read it.”

  “Except for the fact that the killer skipped New York, where we expected him to kill,” Lido said. “And the knight is the only chess piece that can jump over other pieces.”

  “New Jersey is south of New York,” Quinn pointed out.

  “Think time and sequence instead of geography,” Helen said. “New York was the most likely place for him to make his next kill. His kind of big apple. Instead he chose another, safer place.”

 
Quinn rubbed his chin. “Do you really think he’s that devious?”

  “Oh, yes,” Helen said.

  14

  The temperature made it into the nineties the next morning and stayed there. The sky was cloudless. Drought threatened to attack New York along with the heat. The air conditioners at Q&A never stopped running. One of them dripped condensation into a green rubber bucket, placed to protect the bare hardwood floor. Each drop of water into the bucket was louder than the last.

  Like the previous brown package, this latest one contained two chess pieces. But this time they were knights.

  Helen uncrossed her arms and stood up from where she was perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk.

  “Anybody here not know how to play chess?” she asked.

  When no one answered she went on, “Anyone good at it?”

  “Really good?” Quinn asked.

  “Competent would do.”

  “I’m a poker player,” Sal said.

  “I’m really good at chess,” Jerry Lido said, from over by his computer.

  “What to know in this case,” Helen said, “is that the knight has a special ability, and a restriction. While it’s the only chess piece that can move over other pieces, while doing so it has to move either two squares in any direction, and then one square at a right angle, either way. Or one square in any direction, then two squares at a right angle, either way.”

  “I think we all know that much,” Sal growled.

  Lido called up a map on his computer, and they gathered around it.

  “He’s going to skip New York again,” Lido said, “just as you described the last time, Helen.”

  “And the two knights means he might be doubling his distances.”

  “That’s the way he thinks,” Quinn said.

  Lido measured the distances. “If he doubles his distances, then right angles east,” he said, “that puts him out to sea.” He sat back. “He’s got to go left, so he’s going to kill in Maine, on the mainland.”

  “What about water? He always kills on beaches, or somewhere else where he and the victim are near water.”