Night Kills

by John Lutz

  Tony extended his hand and she shook it with a light, dry touch that somehow suggested considerable strength. She played sports, he figured, or worked out.

  “Wouldn’t want you to be stood up,” Tony said amiably, motioning for Jewel to sit down. She sat on the opposite side of the table, leaving the chair directly across from Tony for Jill. Tony waited until they were both seated before settling down again in his chair and replacing the red napkin in his lap.

  A waiter, wearing a tux with a red cummerbund, promptly came over and they ordered drinks. Tony stayed with the scotch and water he’d been sipping; Jill and Jewel both ordered sour apple martinis. Tony tried not to wince.

  “So where’d you two meet?” he asked when the waiter had left.

  “Would you believe the laundry room in my building?” Jill said.

  “If you say it, I believe it.”

  “It’s a creepy place,” Jewel said. “Down in that dim basement. It wouldn’t hurt if the super put some brighter bulbs down there.”

  “It would make it safer,” Tony said.

  Jewel gave a mock shiver and Tony couldn’t help but glance at her breasts. “We were both down there at the same time doing a load of wash, so we were glad for each other’s company. Jill—or maybe it was me—struck up a conversation, and we found out we have a lot in common.”

  “What would that be?” Tony asked. “Other than the obvious.”

  “Obvious?”

  “That you’re both beautiful.”

  Jill laughed a few seconds before Jewel. Tony didn’t think Jewel seemed to feel as complimented. With her looks, she probably heard a lot of bullshit from a lot of men. She gave the impression she could handle it.

  “Beauty aside,” Jewel said, “we both came from the Midwest. And we haven’t been very long in New York, so we don’t know many people. Jill’s promised to show me around, and maybe I’ll sign up with Files and More so I can earn some money while I’m trying to land something permanent.”

  “It’s a tough town at first,” Tony said. “Then you learn to like it.”

  “Especially if you meet someone like Tony,” Jill said.

  Pearl had to admire that, especially the sincerity in Jill’s voice. But she hoped Jill wouldn’t do too much improvisation. This guy Tony didn’t strike Pearl as dumb in the slightest.

  The waiter came back carrying their drinks on a round silver tray. Talking was suspended while he placed the drinks around the table, as if talk might upset some delicate balance and liquid might slosh over a rim.

  Tony knew the addition of Jewel as a new friend had considerably upset the replacement process. Jewel would have to be dealt with in some way. Apparently she’d already become a close friend and confidante, so she’d certainly realize any replacement Jill was a phony. Tony was sure Jewel was the only person in the building who’d had more than passing contact with Jill. Without Jewel, the game was on. Jewel was an obstacle.

  Of course, something could happen to Jewel.

  But wouldn’t that put Jill’s apartment building under police scrutiny? Either way, if the police suspected foul play they’d question Jill. Who might mention Tony.

  It was a problem, all right.

  Tony raised his scotch and water and suggested a toast.

  “To the three of us,” he said.

  Their glasses clinked. They smiled at each other and drank.

  Tony thinking something would have to be done to take Jewel out of the game.

  Pearl settled into her new identity smoothly. It was made easier because she actually liked Jill Clark. Tony Lake, so far, hadn’t proved difficult. He seemed obviously resentful of the women’s close friendship, but no more so than any man whose lover had suddenly acquired a new best bud. One who was a rival for his time and turned up as an obstacle whenever he planned on getting intimate with the object of his love. Or with his target.

  Jill, mostly running on instincts, also sometimes seemed actually resentful of Pearl’s presence. Tony was good at his job; Pearl had to give him that. Jill knew who he was and what he was, but it was impossible sometimes to feel what he was. The Tony she saw on the surface could be disarming and deadly charming.

  It seemed increasingly obvious to Pearl that Tony was not only wickedly intelligent but also had no scruples whatsoever. She wondered if, for strategic reasons, he might go behind Jill’s back and make a pass at Jewel. Pearl, being Jewel, saw that as a potential problem.

  Since she and Jill were spending so much time together, Pearl liked to keep Jill talking, thinking maybe some new piece of information might be mentioned that would aid in the investigation. Most of the time, when Tony wasn’t around, Jill wound up talking about Madeline Scott. She was obviously still haunted by Madeline’s death and maybe felt guilty that she hadn’t believed Madeline’s story at first. If she had, she might have been able to help in some way that would have prevented Madeline’s death.

  Pearl didn’t think that was true, and whenever Jill began blaming herself, she talked her out of her depression. Madeline died because she knew too much. Nothing would have saved her. But something could still be done to save Jill, and a lot of women who’d follow, if E-Bliss.org could be shut down—and in a way that would prevent it from opening somewhere else under another name and resuming its chain of murders and ultimate identity thefts.

  Maybe it was all the talk about Madeline that gave Pearl the idea of visiting Madeline’s apartment. Jill had supposedly seen the new Madeline in the elevator, but in Jill’s state of mind, that might not have been true. Pearl knew how the imagination could work. It could make you see what you expected to see. That was the problem with eyewitness accounts.

  Like Jill’s.

  Jill had just gotten a temporary work assignment as a receptionist for a dental clinic, filling in for a vacation, so for at least a week she’d be away working every day. Jill would be protected there by the undercovers Renz had managed to get assigned to the investigation.

  That would leave Pearl with not much to do other than hang around her apartment as Jewel. She had instructions not to go near Jill’s apartment when Jill was out. Quinn wanted to make sure it was available for E-Bliss.org. It wouldn’t do for its imposter to find Pearl there doing her Jewel act, and making up an implausible reason for her presence.

  Pearl was going crazy with all the inaction, so why not make use of her time?

  Wednesday morning, she left the apartment to hail a cab. A light summer drizzle was falling. It wasn’t much of a rain, but enough to make the cabs go into hiding. Pearl walked in the direction she wanted to ride and soon ran across a sidewalk vendor selling umbrellas for five dollars. She paid up and stayed reasonably dry while she walked another two blocks and finally managed to flag down a cab. She felt things going her way; less then ten minutes and she’d scored a double, obtaining the two most precious items when it rained in Manhattan: an umbrella and a cab.

  Maybe she’d stay lucky. Though Madeline had moved out, there still might be something to be gained from looking over the vacant apartment again, and talking to the neighbors again.

  She told the cabbie to drive her to an intersection that was within a block of Madeline’s apartment.

  “You think this Jewel is a cop?” Palmer Stone asked, staring out his office window at the light rain.

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it,” Victor said. He was leaning back in the chair in front of Stone’s desk, his legs straight out in front of him with his ankles crossed. “I think she’s just a meddling bitch who turned up at the wrong time. She needed a friend, there was Jill Clark, and she attached herself to Jill like a leech.”

  “Sounds kind of intense. You get the idea it might be wearing off? That Jill doesn’t really like her around?”

  “Sometimes. Especially when we want to screw. Jewel’s timing seems to be perfect when it comes to preventing Jill and me from being alone together at a time or place where we might be intimate.”

  “Hmm. Some kind of lesbian thing, do you
think?”

  “That’s the most likely explanation,” Victor said. He prided himself on understanding women and he’d thought about this situation. “I’m sure Jill doesn’t suspect it. Hell, maybe even Jewel doesn’t realize it. You know how it works, Palmer. Latent sexual attraction neither woman wants to admit. I don’t think it’d ever get to the point where they’d get it on together. The two of them might be shocked if they figured it out.”

  “You might tell Jill about it. Suggest that this Jewel has intimate plans for her.”

  “Not a good idea, Palmer. She probably wouldn’t believe it, and we’d be risking turning both of them against me.”

  Stone sighed, dug his heels into the office carpet, and maneuvered his wheeled swivel chair away from the gloom outside the window. “Well, you’re the expert on that part of the business.”

  As he had often lately, Victor found himself thinking about what he could do with Jewel if he had her like Charlotte. How she’d struggle against the tape that bound and silenced her, how she’d try to scream, how her dark eyes would widen when she saw the stake, how she’d—

  “We might simply have to make Jewel expendable,” Stone said, as if reading his thoughts. “If she might swing both ways, maybe we should introduce her to Gloria.”

  “No, not that,” Victor said. “It’d be bad business. Anything that happens to Jewel might lead the police to Jill. Maybe even, later on, to the new Jill.”

  Stone turned his swivel chair back toward the gray rain. The usually silent rotating mechanism squealed softly, maybe because of the humidity. “I see the problem, but we’re running out of time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Victor said. “I’ll think of something.

  Palmer Stone smiled at his business partner’s blurred reflection in the window.

  “You always do, Victor. You have imagination.”

  42

  Renz was pacing his office grinning. Quinn wasn’t sure he liked seeing the commissioner so pleased. It usually meant trouble. A steady drizzle from a leaden sky obviously wasn’t the reason for Renz’s good humor. The diffused light from the wet window, along with the pale glow of the desk lamp, gave Renz’s sagging features a grayish cast. Now and then the long shadows from the raindrops crawling down the glass pane made him appear to be crying, his grin a grimace.

  Quinn sat casually in one of the upholstered chairs near the desk and watched and waited.

  “The media sure as hell bought into it,” Renz was saying. “Every time you turn on the TV news, every time you pick up a newspaper, you see that shit-heel Coulter. He’s on CNN, FOX News, everywhere.”

  “He oughta be getting nervous,” Quinn said.

  “It’s bought us some time, just like you said.” Renz suddenly looking serious, stopped pacing, and turned to face Quinn. “Now we’ve gotta make use of that time. What are our alternatives?”

  So Renz is in his officious mood this gray morning.

  Quinn knew how to deal with that. “Alternatives are several,” he said. “My belief is that our best bet is to continue with Pearl playing Jill Clark’s new friend Jewel, maybe force E-Bliss’s hand.”

  “It’s a damned dangerous game,” Renz said.

  Quinn wondered whether Renz remembered that he, Renz, had approved the strategy. “Everything about this case is dangerous.”

  Renz crossed his arms and nodded, as if approving of Quinn’s answer. Then he said, “It could backfire. If either Pearl or Jill is killed.”

  “Or both of them,” Quinn said.

  “Christ! If that happened the media’d blame us for their deaths. They’d bury us. Don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  Quinn didn’t. “The way it works,” he reminded Renz, “is it would be too dangerous for E-Bliss to kill both of them, and too dangerous to kill Jill with Pearl still around as Jewel. And it would be senseless to kill Jewel first, because it might draw suspicion if they later killed Jill.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Renz said.

  Quinn couldn’t deny it. “It’s like bombers flying in formation so enemy fighters can’t attack one without drawing fire from the others.”

  Renz stood still and thought about that one. Quinn knew he watched hours and hours of old World War Two documentaries on the History Channel.

  “I guess it makes sense, when you put it that way, but I still get the feeling we oughta move while we can nail some of these jokers.”

  “We still don’t have much in the way of hard evidence,” Quinn reminded him. “No identifiable victims, no solid connections between E-Bliss and their clients who’ve been killed—mainly because we don’t know the identities that have been stolen. Surely E-Bliss has washed their files of any hint that they did business with the murdered women. Madeline Scott’s the only name we’ve got, but now she’s disappeared.”

  “‘She being the new Madeline Scott?”

  Quinn nodded, wishing Renz would stop playing the executive cop.

  “All that client information’s gotta be in their computers,” Renz said. “They’re a high-tech outfit.”

  “If everything incriminating hasn’t been deleted yet, it will be at the first sign of trouble. And like you said, they’re a high-tech outfit. They’d know how to actually destroy the evidence.”

  “What if we busted in there fast and confiscated everything?”

  “Even if we could get a warrant, which I doubt, the computers might be set up to delete on seizure. There are lots of possibilities for built-in safeguards: destruction of files if the wrong password is used or the wrong fingerprint ID, or if the location of the computer is changed, or if a code number has to be fed in every so many hours so the files won’t automatically be destroyed, or Stone might be able to send a signal some way we haven’t thought of.”

  “Who knows what we’d find if we were successful, though,” Renz said, undeterred by mention of all the potential tech catastrophes.

  “I’m more afraid of what we wouldn’t find. If nothing incriminating turned up, they’d know we were after them and every piece of potential evidence and everyone involved with E-Bliss would disappear. Then we’d be left with Jill Clark’s unlikely story that she heard from a woman now dead, some unidentifiable torsos, and suspects who are on the wind. Nothing times three.” Quinn said. Then he added, “Jill’s all we have that could turn into something solid. They’re not suspicious yet. They’ll make some kind of play, some kind of mistake. Jill and Pearl put us in position to take advantage of it.”

  “You forgot to mention the new Madeline. She could be the key to this.”

  “If we could find her,” Quinn said.

  It had stopped raining by the time Pearl climbed out of the cab less than a block away from Madeline’s apartment. This was the same unit the new Madeline had taken over after the death of the real Madeline Scott, and then recently abandoned.

  Pearl watched the cab drive away down West Seventy-second Street, then stop near the next corner and pick up a man waving his half-closed umbrella like a signal flag. She stood for a moment getting her bearings and setting straight in her mind what she planned to do.

  She decided to have the super let her into the vacant apartment. After looking it over, she’d talk to some of the neighbors. Since the new Madeline was gone from the building, she could identify herself as NYPD and maybe open some minds.

  Quinn and Fedderman had gone over the place, as well as a CSU team, but Pearl knew it wouldn’t hurt to look again. If nothing else, it might make this whole thing seem more real. The truth was, sometimes when she saw Jill and Tony Lake together, how devoted and seemingly enchanted Tony seemed, the horror that was behind it all was damned hard to accept.

  But isn’t that the way confidence artists work? Haven’t I seen it over and over again?

  It’s real, all right, and doubting it can cost Jill Clark her life. Can cost me my life.

  She breathed in warm, humid air that smelled fresh after the rain; held the still-folded umbrella in her right hand; and strode down Sev
enty-second toward the apartment building.

  As she walked, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called Jill at her temporary job. Since going undercover as Jewel, Pearl had a different cell phone and number, registered to a Jewel Karsdan. Lies within lies. Like life itself.

  Seeing Pearl’s number on her cell phone display, Jill answered immediately. “Jewel? Is everything okay?”

  “That’s what I called to ask you,” Pearl said.

  “Yes, everything’s normal here. Other than the job’s boring as hell.”

  “Boredom we like,” Pearl said.

  “If you say so.”

  “Let me know if you leave early.”

  “I will, but it doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Remember, your guardian angels are around, even if you don’t see them.”

  “I appreciate that, really.” A beat. “It’s so hard to believe all this. I feel like a character in some kind of mystery novel.”

  “Tell me about it,” Pearl said and broke the connection.

  She was almost to the building entrance when she saw a blond woman wearing a lightweight white raincoat emerge and trot gracefully down the shallow steps to the street. She was clutching a large black leather purse tight to her side. There was something familiar about her, but only vaguely.

  She turned and walked toward Pearl.

  As the woman drew closer, Pearl’s flesh began to crawl. She’d seen the sketches and the morgue photos of Madeline Scott.

  When they were twenty feet apart, Pearl knew.

  This woman was Madeline Scott.

  Pearl put on her poker face and hoped her heart wouldn’t hammer its way out of her chest. She and the woman exchanged the briefest of glances as they passed each other. Pearl didn’t break stride as she listened to the receding tap, tap of the new Madeline’s high heels on the damp pavement.

  The sound faded.

  One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…