by John Lutz
“Grab the other end of this plastic sheet and let’s move her so we can get busy.”
“For everything there is a purpose under the heavens,” Gloria said, still staring at the protruding section of broomstick. “Sometimes more than one purpose.”
“Aside from your cynicism, this is no time to go biblical on me.”
“It’s exactly the time,” she said, grinning. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
11
“Only an arm,” medical examiner Dr. Julius Nift said, kneeling alongside the pale object before him on the wet bricks. “Yet look at the attention it’s attracted. Some show. I wish somebody would give us a hand.”
Pearl despised Nift and his callous sense of humor, but she said nothing, because, sick jokes aside, she agreed with him. A hand would mean fingerprints. She wasn’t sure how much this arm that had been fished from the East River would be able to help them.
Nift continued to probe and examine the arm. He was a short, chesty man inflated by self-importance who dressed more like a banker than a doctor who spent a lot of time with corpses. He wore his black hair combed forward, resulting in sparse bangs that made him look Napoleonic. That was how Pearl thought of him, as a crude, cynical Napoleon. It was lucky the little bastard didn’t have an army.
Quinn, standing a few feet away with Fedderman, gnawed his lower lip as he stared down at the handless severed arm. It had obviously been in the water a long time. He glanced around, squinting in the early afternoon sunlight. They were near Sutton Place, home of some of the most expensive real estate in New York. It wasn’t likely the arm belonged to any of the neighbors. A missing arm in Sutton Place wasn’t the sort of thing to go unreported.
The arm had been spotted by a Mrs. Grace Oliphant, while walking her Yorkshire terrier, Clipper. She’d noticed something pale snagged on some deadwood that had drifted up against the bank and thought at first it was a large, dead fish. She skirted a black iron fence and moved closer. Clipper began barking frantically, and she wasn’t so sure she was looking at a dead fish. It was the forty-five-degree crook in the blanched object that made her peer more intensely and with fearful curiosity. There was something about the thing, something that reminded her of…an elbow.
Mrs. Oliphant straightened up immediately and backed away, nauseated, tugging at the leash to get Clipper away from the dreadful thing. The arm. It was no wonder the dog had been barking so frantically. He must have picked up the terrible scent, realized before she did what they were looking at. Yorkies were so smart.
She gave the leash a firm yank, momentarily choking off Clipper’s shrill barking, then looked him in the eye and shushed him so he’d stay quiet while she used her cell phone to call the police.
The uniforms who’d arrived first knew immediately they were looking at a human arm that had been severed at the elbow. Its hand had been cut off at the wrist. One of the cops picked up a branch and edged the arm closer to the concrete wall where the water lapped, then gingerly inched it up and over and onto the bricks. He didn’t like touching it, even with a branch, but he knew he had to move it before it broke free from where it was snagged and floated away, or maybe sank.
The water had blanched away most of the color, leaving the arm a dull white. The uniforms could see how the woman who’d called thought at first she’d been looking at a dead fish. There was some obvious damage from what lived in the river nibbling at the arm. Gleaming white bone showed beneath flaps of skin at both ends.
Both cops knew about the Torso Murders and recognized the possible significance of the arm. The police investigated weird things found in New York rivers almost every week, and those were only the ones that were reported. Still, human remains…and with the sicko on the loose killing and cutting up his victims…it was a situation that called for diligence.
One of the uniforms had listened to Grace Oliphant’s story and taken notes, while his partner called their lieutenant. Up the bureaucratic chain the information went, but in a way tightly controlled. Within fifteen minutes, Renz had called Quinn.
“Right or left arm?” Quinn asked Nift.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters because I asked you,” Quinn said in a flat voice that had unnerved hundreds if not thousands of suspects.
It didn’t seem to unnerve Nift, armored as he was by ego. Still, he decided it was time to be businesslike. He pressed a forefinger to the side of his chin, striking a thoughtful pose, as he shifted slightly to peer at both ends of the arm. “I’d guess left, but I can’t tell you for sure till we get this to the morgue and examine it more closely.”
“How long’s it been in the water?”
“I can only guess, but I’d say about a month.”
Quinn figured it would belong to the first victim, if it was an arm from one of the mystery torsos. It almost had to be, he figured. Even in New York, it wasn’t every day that the odd severed limb turned up. “Can you match it with either of the torsos we found?”
Nift glanced up at him with a confident, nasty smile. “With my skill, if it matches, I’ll know. There’ll be distinctive marks on the bone from the cleaver or hatchet. And comparable patterns in the way the flesh was cut away. Also, we should be able to match it by age to one of the torsos, if that’s where it came from. And of course there’s always DNA. Takes a while for a full report, but we might be able to hurry through a preliminary yes or no on a simple match.”
A siren grew louder, then yodeled to silence, causing Clipper, held by Mrs. Oliphant, over by a small grouping of ornamental trees with orange berries, to fill the vacuum by emitting an earsplitting series of barks. A boxy vehicle with flashing lights had braked to a halt on the rise beyond steps leading to one of the pocket parks bordering the river at that point. Quinn could see a swing set and monkey bars and was glad some kid hadn’t wandered down to the river and found the arm.
A white-uniformed paramedic jogged effortlessly down the concrete steps, then stepped over the low brick wall bordering the park and came toward them. While he was nimble, he was a chubby guy, holding a black rubberized zip case that looked like a portfolio an artist would carry samples in. Quinn figured there was no need for a stretcher here. The arm would fit in the case diagonally with room to spare.
The paramedic had dark hair combed severely sideways and a name patch that said JEFF.
He glanced around, noticed the black leather medical bag, and aimed an expectant smile at Nift. “Ready to remove?” He motioned with his head toward the pale arm on the bricks.
“I’m finished with it for now,” Nift said.
Quinn nodded and stepped back, along with Pearl and Fedderman, and Jeff set to work.
“Careful with that,” Nift told him as Jeff eased the arm into the case and worked the zipper. “It’s part of a set.”
Jeff didn’t crack a smile.
12
Nobody was laughing in the office on Seventy-ninth Street. Quinn and Fedderman were seated at their desks, facing each other across the room. Pearl was perched on the edge of her desk with her legs crossed, sipping coffee. The office smelled strongly of overbrewed coffee, which was an improvement over the usual smell of sawdust and powdered plaster. The workmen doing the rehabbing on the floors above were sawing and hammering, destroying so they could create. The noise wasn’t loud enough to be a bother, but it was almost constant.
Quinn had just hung up his desk phone. He sat staring at it for a long moment before speaking, as if it was a memory aid.
“The M.E. says the arm belonged to a woman in her early thirties, maybe five feet nine or ten. She was average weight. The swelling and loose flesh we saw was from exposure to the water. No distinguishing marks or jewelry.” He leaned backward in his chair and crossed his arms. “Nift says the arm doesn’t match either of the bodies.”
“He sure?” Fedderman asked in a surprised voice.
“The little twit’s always sure,” Pearl said.
Quinn ignored her, as well as a burst
of violent hammering. “Bones and flesh patterns don’t match up, Feds. Also, we got a rush preliminary on DNA analysis. Enough info to know it doesn’t match that of either of the two victims whose torsos we have. Even the blood type is different.”
“We might still be able to find out who she was. The woman whose arm we found. What about a DNA database match?”
“The FBI’s running it through its computers, but I don’t think we can hold out much hope there.”
Quinn knew the already vast database was still in its initial stages. The severed arm would have to belong to a woman who was a recently convicted felon and also had her DNA in the database. Those were long odds.
All three detectives sat silently and listened to the muffled hammering that punctuated the shrill cry of a power saw.
It was Pearl who finally said it. “We’ve got a third victim.”
“Or else another killer who’s dismembering bodies,” Quinn said.
Fedderman noticed his shirt cuff was unbuttoned and fastened it. “Maybe the arm was cut off accidentally. By a boat propeller or something.”
Quinn smiled wryly. “River patrol’s got no reports of any such accident, and nobody’s reported their arm missing.”
“Third victim,” Pearl said again.
Nobody disagreed with her.
“The killer chopped off her hand, too,” Fedderman said.
“To be on the safe side and not risk fingerprints being lifted and compared someplace,” Pearl said, “even if they’re not on file. His cautious nature worked in this case.”
Quinn sighed and stood up. “The rest of her might still be in the river. The rest of all of the victims might be there, or in some lake or tributary somewhere. I’ll call Renz and see if we can get a search going, check bodies of water in or around New York.”
“Grappling hooks,” Pearl said. “That’s how they drag a lake, with grappling hooks.” Though she’d seen several such operations, the thought of this one, for some reason, chilled her. Hard steel seeking soft flesh in the dark.
“They use underwater cameras now, too,” Quinn said.
“Divers,” Fedderman said. “Eventually somebody’s gotta swim down there in murky water and look for weighted-down arms, legs, and heads.” He made a face and ran a hand over his almost nonexistent hair. “I’m glad I’m too old for that kinda stuff.”
“They might drain some of the smaller lakes,” Pearl told him.
He shook his head. “Yeah, but try draining the river. That’s where we found the arm.”
“He’s got a point,” Pearl said to Quinn.
“Global warming,” Fedderman said. “Eventually it’ll dry up all the rivers. That’s when we’ll find the missing body parts.”
Pearl sipped her coffee.
“Global warming,” Fedderman said again. “A cop’s best friend.”
“Severed arm?” Cindy Sellers asked into the phone. She was at her desk at City Beat. She kept her voice low so Howie Baker, at the next desk, wouldn’t overhear. “Just an arm? How do we know it has anything to do with either of the two torso victims?”
“We know for sure it doesn’t,” Nift said nervously. He was calling with his cell phone a few blocks from the morgue. You never knew about phones. Just about any phone might not be secure these days. Not to mention cameras. They were getting to be all over the place in New York City. He wanted to get the call over with as soon as possible. “I can guarantee you that arm’s not connected to either of the other victims’ torsos.”
“Obviously,” Cindy said.
She was used to her informer’s gruesome sense of humor and assumed that was what she was hearing. She thought Nift was a jerk, but he was reliable. And she’d been kind enough not to mention him in her exposé of unlikely pornographic video rental customers. She had mentioned to him that she had photographs of some of the customers arriving at and leaving the video rental stores. She hadn’t mentioned that, though Nift was observed renting a DVD about drunken coeds on a horse farm, he wasn’t in any of the photos. Let him assume.
“So what else do we know?” she asked.
Nift told her what they’d discerned from examination of the arm.
“A third victim,” Cindy said when he was finished. “And the killer’s probably weighting down the body parts and hiding them underwater. The arm must have somehow broken loose from whatever was holding it down and floated to the surface.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Nift said.
“Hey, it’s my job.” She was grinning. “Be sure to keep me posted.”
“I will,” Nift said and broke the connection.
Cindy knew he would.
Gloria turned off the narrow secondary road onto a mostly overgrown dirt road and drove until she came to a rickety wooden swing gate with a faded NO TRESPASSING sign nailed crookedly on it.
David climbed out of the big Chrysler and opened the gate, then waited until Gloria had driven through. He glanced around in the fading light, thinking they had about an hour until sundown, then closed the gate, fastened its rusty latch, and got back in the car.
They were on a farm in New Jersey, an hour’s drive from the city. The farm was deserted and had been in the legal limbo of estate law for several years. There had once been a frame house with a detached garage, a barn, and another outbuilding for equipment and tools. The house and garage were deserted wrecks. Two walls of the outbuilding had collapsed, allowing the elements to lay rust over an old Ford tractor without an engine, and some shovels and other implements leaning against a remaining wall.
Gloria drove the car around behind the garage, popped the trunk lid, and sat for a few minutes watching tall, shadowed grass dance rhythmically in the breeze.
“Place is as deserted as the moon,” she said.
“Time for the astronauts to get to work,” David said beside her, then unclipped his seat belt and opened the door. (He would continue to think of himself as David until they were finished with their work here.)
He was always in a good enough mood if not downright cheerful, Gloria thought. Always optimistic, no matter the situation. No doubt that was part of his appeal to women.
They walked around to the open trunk.
The two of them carried four bulky black plastic trash bags down a grassy slope and about twenty feet into the woods. The bags contained the clothing and remains of Shellie Marston, except for her heart-shot torso, which they’d left next to a construction Dumpster on the Upper West Side.
They chose a spot in the darkening woods and laid down the bags. David returned to the car to get the shovels.
While he was gone, Gloria used the side of her foot to clear away last year’s leaves. It took her four or five minutes. Satisfied, she scraped mud off her shoe, then tapped her back pocket to make sure her small leather-bound Bible was still there.
She heard a sound and looked over to see that, besides the shovels, David was coming back with a rusty, long-handled pickax he’d found somewhere. That would make digging a lot easier, as it hadn’t rained in three or four days and the ground was hard. Gloria smiled.
God was easing their task.
13
Pearl exhaled, inhaled, and said, “God, that was good!”
It was apparently what Milton Kahn wanted to hear. He turned back toward her on her perspiration-soaked mattress and nuzzled his head between her breasts. Kissed her precisely there, then kissed both nipples. Pearl wasn’t sure she was in love with this guy, but it wasn’t bad having him around.
Milt was, in a way, a gift from Pearl’s mother and her friend Mrs. Kahn at the Golden Sunset assisted-living apartments in Teaneck, a sort of arranged affair if not marriage. Mrs. Kahn was Milt’s aunt. Under duress, Pearl had agreed to meet the elderly women and Milt for lunch in Golden Sunset’s bleak dining room, and Pearl was surprised to find that she actually liked the guy. He was short, like she was, and good looking in a dark way, with a tiny imperial beard on the tip of his chin that tickled in the right places an
d made him look more like a magician or renowned psychiatrist than a struggling dermatologist.
Pearl discovered that he was a good conversationalist with a sense of humor, a funny guy for a dermatologist. After their second date, he’d removed some bumps from Pearl’s neck. She’d somehow found that very intimate. To Pearl’s mother’s delight, the spark had struck and now there was flame if not a raging inferno. Flame was better than nothing. It was cold out there.
Pearl sat up and used both hands to smooth back her hair so she wouldn’t look insane. She was aware of Milt watching her and smiling as she swiveled on the mattress. She felt his fingertips brush the curve of her right buttock.
“Got someplace to go?” he asked. He had a deep voice for a small man, husky. He wasn’t husky himself, but lean and muscular. Tan, with a lot of dark hair on his chest. Some hair—maybe too much—on his back.
“The shower,” Pearl said. “Gotta get outta here.”
“You live here,” Milt reminded her.
“But I don’t work here.”
He sighed. “Your job. Always your job.”
“You sound like a lot of cops’ wives.”
“Sexist thing to say.”
“And husbands,” Pearl amended. She stood up and padded barefoot across the bedroom toward the bathroom.
“You know you’re beautiful,” Milt said huskily behind her.
“Oh, sure.”
“And your job’s okay with me except for the danger.”
“Well, if I could be chief of police I would be.”
“This Torso Murders case you’re on, how do you know you won’t become one of the killer’s victims?”
She paused at the doorway and turned to face him. “That guy wants to stay as far away from me as possible, Milt.”
He was propped up on his elbows, grinning as he gave her an up-and-down glance. “Hard to believe.”