by John Lutz
“Sadly, before,” Renz lied.
Quinn saw Pearl and Fedderman exchange glances. They looked at him and he nodded. They approved of Renz’s lie. This was something that only the killer and police would know was untrue, and it could infuriate the killer so that he might make a mistake. He might even contact the police or media to try to set the record straight.
“Good man,” Fedderman said of Renz’s deception.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Pearl said.
“Do the police have any clues as to the whereabouts of the rest of these poor dismembered women?” DeRavenelle asked. “I mean, their body parts.”
“I can only say at this point in time that we’re cautiously optimistic.”
“Anything more you’d like to add, Commissioner?” DeRavenelle was wearing her somber but inquisitive expression. Had one of the best in the business. She was short on time and knew this was a final rhetorical trolling for a juicy sound bite.
Renz knew it, too, and tried to oblige. “Only that I’m sure the Torso Murders will soon be part of this great city’s past. We have the best people possible working around the clock to find the pieces and put them together.”
Quinn winced.
“That would be a good start,” Pearl said.
DeRavenelle didn’t change expression as she looked somberly into the camera and returned coverage to the studio.
Deputy Chief Wes Nobbler sat behind his desk and watched the end of the Renz interview, then aimed the remote like a gun and switched off the TV just as the weatherman came on smiling.
Nobbler wasn’t smiling. His pink jowls spilled over his tight collar and exaggerated the downward arc of his thin lips. “Plenty of people wouldn’t mind seeing Renz’s investigation fall flat on its face,” he said. The bright morning sunlight searched his fleshy cheeks and couldn’t find a single beard stubble.
Detective Sergeant Ed Greeve nodded, knowing when not to speak. He was one of those average-height men who seem taller because of their gauntness and slight forward lean. His long, chiseled features, and his serious brown eyes with lids that angled down at the corners, added to the illusion of height. He was wearing an unremarkable gray suit that seemed to match his mood. His nickname was “The Ghost” because of his skill at tailing people or remaining unnoticed at observation posts. Greeve was a man going through life hiding in plain sight, making a career out of it.
He was also a man Nobbler had used before, in ways that skirted the law but advanced the cause of justice, not to mention Nobbler’s career. And Greeve was using his boss, Nobbler. What they knew about each other made them fellow travelers on the treacherous road up the ranks in the bureaucracy that was the NYPD.
“We need to monitor this situation,” Nobbler said.
Again Greeve merely nodded. A wooden toothpick protruded from the left corner of his mouth. It waggled slightly as he maneuvered it with his tongue.
“Renz has found his rent-a-cops office space to work out of over on West Seventy-ninth Street. That should make it easier to keep tabs on them.”
“We gonna need more people?” Greeve asked around the toothpick.
“Not yet, but when we do, it won’t be a problem. A loose tail should be enough for now. If they split up, choose the one who looks most interesting and follow. It shouldn’t take you long to figure out what they might know that we don’t.”
“They’ll probably lock that office when they’re out in the field, sir.”
“Most likely,” Nobbler said. “Most doors have locks.”
That was all he said or had to say. He knew locks were seldom a problem for Greeve, who had been an officer in the old Safe and Loft division investigating burglaries. In fact, locks were something of a challenge to Greeve, who would probably pay a late-night visit to the office on Seventy-ninth. Late night was his time, and darkness his good friend. He could see like a cat in the dark, which was another reason for his nickname. Greeve was viewed by his fellow officers as being a little spooky.
“What about my caseload?” Greeve asked. He removed the toothpick and reinserted it, this time in the right corner of his mouth.
“I’ve reassigned it. You’ll be on this more or less full-time. Report to me daily, or if anything notable needs to be shared.”
“Understood,” Greeve said.
“Needless to say, for now this is just between the two of us.”
“Needless,” Greeve agreed.
Nobbler felt a slight twinge. He couldn’t be sure sometimes if Greeve was taking him seriously or secretly making fun of him. Well, that was simply Greeve’s personality, or lack of same. One way or another, the man was useful and reliable.
Nobbler picked up a blue ballpoint pen and started playing with it using both hands, his elbows on the desk. He stared at the pen as if he’d never seen any kind of writing instrument before. He often did that with common objects. It gave the impression he was thinking of something other than what he was talking about, and was speaking in the abstract. “To be something like frank,” he said, “I’m not sure a police commissioner should run his own team of detectives, brought in and controlled by him as temporary employees of the NYPD.”
“I know others in the department who feel the same way, sir.”
Nobbler held the pen vertically and studied it, as if gauging it for angle. “Damned shame, but there it is.”
“Yes, sir. And splashed all over the media for everyone to see. There’s not much you can say, though. As a politician and media darling, Renz is golden.”
“There might be plenty we can do without saying anything,” Nobbler said. “It’s just a matter of deciding what, how, and when. There’s not much question about why.” He pressed the top of the pen and the point clicked out. Here was magic, his expression seemed to say. “I guess we’d both better get busy, Sergeant. The bad guys never take time off.” He dragged over some papers from the corner of his desk so he could sign them.
The conversation was over. A conversation that would never be referred to, because it hadn’t taken place. Like the tree that had fallen in the woods without anyone there to hear it. Anyone who mattered.
Greeve had experienced several such conversations with Deputy Chief Nobbler. The toothpick did a little dance and he almost smiled as he moved toward the door. “We’re on the same page, sir.”
Which didn’t mean they were going by the book.
8
Two weeks earlier
What the hell?
Shellie Marston stood before her open closet door and stared at her meager wardrobe. The black dress with the gray polka dots was still in its plastic bag from the dry cleaners, but she was sure she’d hung it yesterday on the opposite side of the closet rod.
In fact, some of her other clothes seemed to be out of place. The white blouse with the lace collar—she wouldn’t have jammed it between the two business blazers she seldom wore these days. And look, one of the lapels was bent.
This was damned odd. In fact, it made her flesh creep.
She recalled now the morning a few days ago when her cosmetics seemed to have been rearranged. Not drastically. Maybe a jar or bottle transposed or otherwise out of place. A can of hairspray she recalled as still useful had been dead when she picked it up, without the usual sputtering and irregular spray that could go on for several more uses.
She looked at herself in the vanity mirror. What? Was she getting paranoid? No one was getting in here. No one had the key, except for the super, a man in his sixties. She had to smile. Mr. Mercurio would hardly be wearing her clothes and using her cosmetics. He’d split all the seams if he tried to wriggle into the polka-dot dress. A vision of the dignified, mustached, and paunchy Mercurio struggling with her wardrobe almost made her laugh out loud. No, he was definitely not a suspect.
Of course, you never knew about people.
Yeah, she thought. Some people suspect things that never happened.
She had to admit it was possible that she’d hung her clothes in the close
t exactly as they were. Same way with the cosmetics. The mind could play tricks. Memory was a joker.
The phone jangled, jarring her out of her thoughts. Not her cell phone. She ran to the table near the sofa, where the land line phone rested.
It was David.
The receiver pasted to her ear, she dropped onto the sofa and sat slumped in a cushioned corner. “The oddest thing just happened,” she said. “When I opened my closet it struck me that some of the clothes weren’t where I’d hung them.”
“Never mind that,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
She smiled. “I should hope so.”
Their journey from acquaintances to lovers had been smooth and natural, and Shellie couldn’t imagine being happier. Their personalities meshed perfectly, which added to the sexual sparks. He left nothing to wish for, in any respect. David was a gentleman who knew his way around, both in and out of bed.
Especially in bed.
“I want you to move in with me,” he said.
She was pleased but surprised. This was so fast. “I don’t know….”
“I didn’t think you’d hesitate.” He sounded disappointed.
“I mean, this is so sudden. I’ve been stuck in a routine: my apartment, my job—whenever I work.”
“You won’t have to worry about a job, darling. I’ll support you. I can afford it easily. I’d say I won’t even notice you’re around, only I’ll notice you all the time, even when I’m not home.”
“I don’t know, David….” But she did know. She’d already made up her mind.
“Two apartments,” he said. “All that money unnecessarily spent on rent.”
She laughed. Didn’t he know she was already convinced? “We’ve left the subject of love and we’re talking about money now.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m only kidding, David. Of course I’ll move in with you. It makes perfect sense. Why should we rotate where we spend our nights?”
“I don’t care where they’re spent as long as we’re together. I thought about giving up my apartment and moving in with you, taking over the rent payments.”
“This place is a broom closet compared to your apartment.”
“That’s what I decided. You deserve better, darling.”
“David, I’ve got better. You.”
“You know I love you.”
“I do know that. It’s more important than my address.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Nobody makes up their mind and then moves tomorrow, David. I need time to pack, decide what I want to keep, put things in boxes.”
“Get busy. I’ll come over and help you.”
“Why so fast?”
“I don’t want you to change your mind.”
Within four days, Shellie was totally moved into David’s apartment. He’d paid the remaining time on her lease, making the real estate agency that managed the building happy. A small moving company transferred the things Shellie wanted to keep. What was left was bought and moved out of her old apartment by an estate liquidation company. Most of it would probably turn up in flea markets, where Shellie had bought it. Life could certainly change in a hurry, sometimes for the better.
There was only one hitch.
David explained it to her over their first breakfast at home. They were almost like a married couple talking over…the things Shellie imagined married people discussed.
“I sublease the place,” David said, after swallowing a bite of buttered toast. He took a sip of the coffee he’d assured her was just right. “Part of the deal is that I can’t have a roommate.”
Shellie paused in raising a bite of egg on her fork. “You mean my living here has to be a secret?”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t put it so melodramatically. I mean, you don’t have to hide or skulk around. A big apartment building like this, hardly anybody knows or even notices their neighbors. Once you close the door to the hall behind you, they don’t know which apartment you’ve just exited. In the elevator, they don’t know which floor you’ve come from. What’s more, they don’t care. There’s a rapid tenant turnover here.”
“Am I supposed to look both ways in the hall before I go out the door?”
He smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt. What I mean, though, darling, is just don’t make it a point to get to know the neighbors. You don’t have to run and hide if anybody sees you.”
“You make it sound like a game.”
“It is one,” he said. “The way subleases and rental agreements work, lots of New Yorkers play it. If we lose, they’ll throw you out. Which means they’ll throw us both out, because I’ll go with you.” He shrugged. “Getting evicted wouldn’t be the end of the world. It happens somewhere in the city every day.”
“Not to us,” she said, then chewed and swallowed her bite of egg. “Not here. I promise to be careful.”
“Probably,” he said, “no one would turn us in even if they did notice you were staying here. Most people mind their own business. They might even approve of your presence. Who couldn’t approve of you?”
A game, she thought, and finished her breakfast.
More like a romantic movie. The Phantom Tenant.
Like a movie. And I’m the star.
David wouldn’t know that was how she saw it, she thought, so why not give herself top billing?
It worked so well. David was right: no one in the building paid much attention to anyone else. If the tenants passed in the halls or found themselves with one another at the elevator, they usually merely nodded, sometimes smiled. On the elevator itself, they followed elevator etiquette and stood stone-faced staring at the ascending or descending number above the sliding door.
Entering or leaving the building was the same way; often there wasn’t even an exchange of glances. A few times someone held open the heavy street door for Shellie. She’d thanked them perfunctorily and hurried along. She acted the way they did, the way most New Yorkers acted—preoccupied. They passed or had brief contact with thousands of people every day and within a few days forgot all but a few.
Shellie was happy. And the apartment was spacious by New York standards, and with a nice view from a high floor. The furnishings were traditional, with a pale tan leather sofa and matching armchair, a TV behind the doors of a wooden wall unit that also had shelves holding knickknacks and a lineup of books that seemed chosen more for color than content. The furniture, the complementing drapes and carpet, the framed art prints on the wall gave the apartment a composed, decorator look. It was a look she liked, and it took only a few weeks for Shellie to regard it as home.
She would have been even happier if David spent more time in town, but they made the most of it when he was home.
And the most of it was quite a lot.
9
The present
Renz had shot off his mouth about a profiler, so he figured he’d better have a profile. He was with Quinn and his team in the Seventy-ninth Street office he’d gotten for them at city expense. It was a ground-floor apartment, really, in a building that was being renovated. This unit hadn’t been touched yet, but it wasn’t in bad condition, with cream-colored walls and blinds still on the windows. There were light rectangles where wall hangings had been removed, and an outline on the hardwood floor where the carpet had been taken up. But the paint was clean. Renz had ordered three desks and four chairs, a four-drawer steel file cabinet, a printer and fax machine, and a used desk computer. He knew they all had laptops, except maybe Fedderman. As far as a coffee machine or other niceties, the detectives were on their own.
Pearl had bought a Braun brewer and dragged in an old table the workmen upstairs were going to throw away. An NYPD computer whiz had set up a broadband wireless system for their computers, with a router over near the coffee machine. The door had a good lock, the workmen upstairs usually didn’t make too much noise, and there was an old air conditioner that no one would bother stealing in one of the windows.
Quinn was withi
n walking distance of the place but would sometimes drive his old Lincoln, and Renz had gotten them an unmarked city Chevy.
They had a home. They had wheels. It was an efficient setup.
Quinn and Fedderman sat in the identical wood swivel chairs behind their identical gray steel desks, while Pearl perched on her desk’s front edge. Renz had pulled her desk chair out and was seated on it. So there was a chair for the profiler when she arrived, as long as Pearl was content without one. Quinn made a mental note to scare up another extra chair. He’d have asked Pearl to do it, but she’d let him know she’d done enough, donating the coffeemaker.
There was a knock on the door. Then it opened and the profiler, Helen Iman, cautiously stuck her head in. “Morning, all,” she said, smiling as she entered all the way. She was a very tall woman with a bony but not unattractive face and carelessly styled red hair, as if she cut it herself with dull scissors. Seeing her, Quinn thought, as he often did, that with her long, muscular frame, she’d make a hell of a basketball or volleyball player. But Helen wasn’t into sports. She was into killers. A few years ago she’d quit the NYPD to go into private practice as a corporate psychologist in New Jersey, but she’d soon returned. For her it was no contest between the corporate and the criminal mind. They weren’t exactly the same, and the criminal mind was so much more interesting.
Renz had requested her presence here so Quinn and his team could hear what she had to say.
Pearl offered her coffee, but she declined and sat in the uncomfortable extra chair. It was stained oak with a straight back and had a sturdy but crude look about it, as if it might have been made by one of those religious sects that thrived on discomfort. She was wearing a green business suit and white blouse with a man’s green and black tie. She placed the large brown purse she was carrying on the floor so it leaned against a chair leg.
“Did you read the material I gave you?” Renz asked her.