Urge to Kill fq-4

by John Lutz

  “I am in trouble?” she asked, alarmed by his thoughtful silence.

  Fedderman smiled at her. “Not as long as you’ve told the truth.”

  “That’s what I’ve done, I swear.” She crossed herself. Fedderman wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have done it backward.

  40

  Wow. Something’s not right.

  She knew she was beginning to slouch on the sofa, but she couldn’t seem to make herself sit up straight.

  The food, the wine, the walk from the subway stop to her apartment had made Terri Gaddis exhausted. After the third glass of wine, her eyes began involuntarily closing. It felt as if invisible fingers were pushing them shut.

  She didn’t want to feel this way. Richard expected some of that wild sex she’d mentioned at lunch. She’d almost promised him. He’d certainly be willing, but the wine was having its effect and she was fast losing her desire.

  What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so…

  Struggling not to fall asleep, she heard him rise from beside her on the sofa and cross the room, go into the kitchen.

  When he returned, he lifted her head and gently placed the rim of a glass against her lips.

  “Drink this, sweetheart. It’ll fix you up.”

  His voice sounded far, far away. She sipped and was mildly surprised. She tasted the same wine she’d been drinking, one of the reasons she felt so tired.

  “S’more chardonnay,” she muttered.

  “You say you want more?” he asked, amused.

  He’s deliberately misunderstanding.

  “Same…” she murmured. She tried to say the word chardonnay again, but it was too difficult. Her tongue was getting numb, and there was no feeling in her cheeks. If she tried to touch them, they might not be there. They might be made of wood. She tried again. “Chardonnay.” She heard something slurred and incomprehensible and realized it was her own voice.

  Richard answered, she was sure, but she couldn’t understand him as she dropped into a comforting warm darkness.

  As she was keying the dead bolt on the door, Pearl heard the phone ringing inside her apartment. Which of course made her hurry and fumble and drop the key on the hall carpet.

  By the time she’d opened the door and reached the phone, it had rung at least nine times. Maybe something important.

  Too exhausted to be cautious and check caller ID, she took several long steps across the living room and scooped up the receiver.

  “Pearl? Is that you, dear?”

  Her mother, calling from Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Pearl’s heart took a dive.

  “Pearl?”

  “Me.”

  “It’s your mother, Pearl, calling from Hades.”

  Pearl tried at least to keep a civil tone in her voice. “Assisted living isn’t Hades, Mom.”

  “So purgatory then. A stop on the way down, just to torture. I’ve been calling and calling, and not even your machine answers anymore.”

  Pearl saw that the LED display on her answering machine was signaling that there was no more room for messages. It also indicated that she’d received fifteen messages. She stretched the phone cord so she could sit on the end of the sofa.

  “Is something wrong, Mom?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. Yes, wrong. I’m concerned, as a good mother should be, about my daughter, which is only natural and is why I’m calling, to find out some pertinent information about it.”

  Pearl didn’t like this at all. She was worn down by the gauntlet of conversations she’d run all day with people who couldn’t remember, didn’t recall, didn’t care, might be lying anyway. “What would it be, Mom?”

  “The thing just behind your ear, dear. That’s what it is, and it’s more important than you, in your hectic and solitary life, seem to think.”

  “It’s only a mole, Mom.”

  “You know this?”

  “I’m sure enough of it that I’m not worried.”

  “So now you have medical opinions? Are you an actual medical doctor, like Dr. Milton Kahn? No, Pearl, you are not. It’s not your place to examine a mole and just make up a diagnosis, not to mention a prognosis. This is a worry to me and to all who love you, and you should consider that and them.”

  “It’s my mole,” Pearl said, feeling at that moment the hopelessness of her position.

  “So have you recently checked your mole?” her mother asked.

  “Recently enough.”

  “And is it the same in shape, color, and size? Has it moved at all?”

  Moved? “Everything looks the same, Mom.” Pearl slipped her shoes off her aching feet and wriggled her toes. She wished she could hang up the phone, go into the bedroom, get naked, take a shower, and scrub off the lousy day that she’d spent in the hole in the world left by violent untimely death. If people only knew, if they understood…

  “Pearl,” said her mother’s voice on the phone, calling from purgatory, “have you ever looked at a mole under a microscope?”

  “No.”

  “They are not a pretty sight. And, I might add, it is the consensus of medical experts that you might think you’re looking at a mole and be looking at something else very much more dangerous.”

  “I’m not dying of mole poisoning, Mom.”

  “This is not a venue for humor, Pearl. A doctor, like Dr. Milton Kahn, who would examine you free and avoid all the expense and insurance nightmare, should be the one to make that critical interpretation.”

  “Dr. Milton Kahn has pretty much examined all of me already,” Pearl said, getting angrier by the second.

  “Pearl!”

  “I’m only trying to make a point, Mom. If Milton Kahn thought the mole behind my ear was dangerous, he would have mentioned it to me long ago.”

  “So you think he was concentrating on an out-of-the-way spot behind your right ear while you two were-”

  “Mom! Damn it!” The plastic receiver was getting slippery in Pearl’s sweaty hand, as if it might slip from her grasp like a watermelon seed and go zipping across the room. She’d had about enough of this.

  “So now impertinence and curse words are the answer? Let me tell you, dear, they are the answer to nothing. When your own mother calls and points out that you are in denial-”

  “I don’t deny that I have a mole, Mom!”

  “One you should regularly examine. If it is a mole.”

  “I have to turn my head to the side and bend my ear forward even to see it. It hurts to do that.”

  “Which is why you should have a doctor do the examining.”

  “I have an appointment with a doctor,” Pearl lied. She’d had to call and cancel the appointment she’d made with the dermatologist who was not Milton Kahn. A murder investigation had gotten in the way.

  There was surprise in Pearl’s mother’s voice. “Mrs. Kahn didn’t say her nephew, Dr. Milton-”

  “He’s not the only dermatologist in New York!”

  “For you, the only free one, dear. And one who cares for you already and will-”

  Pearl cupped her hand over the earpiece, got up from the sofa, and placed the receiver in its cradle.

  In the blessed silence she stood for a few minutes, waiting for the phone to ring. If her mother called back, as she sometimes did after such conversations, Pearl might apologize. Or she might not. Her mother was sticky and clever. She might trick Pearl into simply taking up the conversation where it had left off and getting angry all over again.

  But her mother didn’t call and apparently wasn’t going to. Not this evening, anyway.

  Pearl reverted to her plan to undress and shower before putting a Lean Cuisine in the microwave for dinner.

  In the bathroom, while she was running the shower and waiting for the water to warm up, she stood before the medicine cabinet mirror, craned her neck painfully, and bent her right ear forward to examine the mole.

  It appeared to be the same size as the last time she’d looked at it. Maybe a quarter of an inch in diameter. M
aybe more.

  She let her ear flop back in place and smiled. The mole wasn’t any larger. Seemed to be the same shape and color. She was sure.

  Reasonably sure.

  In the shower she realized she hadn’t checked to see if it had moved and had to laugh.

  Briefly.

  Terrible headache!

  That was what woke Terri Gaddis.

  Something was horribly wrong. Her head felt as if it were splitting wide open.

  She attempted to swallow but couldn’t. And she was breathing with difficulty, through her nose. She explored with her tongue and found that her mouth was stuck firmly closed, as if her lips were taped.

  Her consciousness was quickly returning. She became aware of another pain.

  My ankles! My ankles are on fire!

  Only then did she realize her eyes were still closed. They seemed dry. Stuck firm. She tried to wipe them with her hands, but couldn’t raise her arms. Couldn’t move them.

  Then she realized they were taped or tied to her waist and thighs, in tight to her body.

  Fear gave her strength. She forced her eyes wide open in alarm, and through her pain realized what was causing such agony in her head and ankles.

  She was mystified and horrified to find that she was hanging upside down.

  The hook in the ceiling!

  Terri knew she was in her bathroom, dangling head down over her bathtub, hanging from the hook.

  She glanced about frantically. The plastic shower curtain was closed, and though the light was on in the bathroom, she couldn’t see anything but her immediate porcelain, tile, and plastic surroundings. In a burst of panic she worked every muscle in her body, but nothing happened. Nothing!

  Her struggles did cause her body to rotate slightly, and there were the stainless-steel faucet handles and spigot. The drain. Viewed so closely, she could see that the drain was starting to corrode and that a few of her hairs were caught on its cross braces from showers past.

  How odd to notice something like that now.

  Or is it? Is any of this real?

  There was a slight sound on the other side of the plastic shower curtain, and she strained to see in that direction. Through the curtain she could make out the upside-down, shadowy shape of a man, growing larger, approaching.

  Coming to help me, not to hurt me! Please!

  When he was very near, the shadowy form on the curtain took on a paler, flesh-colored hue, and she realized the man was nude.

  Kinky sex! That’s all this is! Kinky sex!

  “Richard!”

  She was aware that she’d made only a soft humming sound.

  She tried again, screaming his name in her mind. Something warm was trickling along her body, tickling her armpits. She could smell it. Urine. Hers. The ammonia stench of her mindless fear.

  Oh, Richard! Please!

  The curtain rattled open on its rod, and all she could look at was the knife.

  41

  Cindy Sellers sat on a bench near the Seventy-second Street entrance to Central Park and had what for her was a crisis of conscience.

  Certainly she’d promised Harley Renz she wouldn’t make public that the. 25-Caliber Killer’s latest victim had been shot inside his hotel and then dragged outside, to where the body was discovered. It was made clear to her that the police had settled on that detail being known only to them and the killer, so they could sort out the inevitable false confessions that were sure to interfere with the investigation.

  But from Cindy’s point of view, that curious fact was what gave the story its appeal. A question posed to her readers was always good for additional circulation. In this instance the question was simple and easy for her readers to understand: why was the body of this particular victim moved?

  Only the killer knew the answer, and, as of now, the police were the only ones aware of the question. So like a game, Cindy thought, and the police have an extra card in their hand.

  Of course, if she revealed that card the NYPD wanted to keep close to its vest, she’d lose Renz’s trust. She had to smile. She and Renz didn’t really trust each other anyway. That was part of the game they played. Wolves on the prowl, both of them. And if she did include that inside-outside angle in her story, Renz would be angry, but he’d get over it. They were both forced to live with the fact that they were useful to each other.

  Cindy was aware of the warm sun on her shoulders as she slumped forward and began tossing popcorn to the pigeons from a greasy bag she’d bought from a street vendor. The pigeons waddled cautiously toward the kernels at first, then rushed at them, nudging competitors out of the way. Like people, Cindy thought. Like newspaper readers elbowing each other aside to get to the next edition of City Beat before the rack was empty.

  Fighting each other to be able to read her story.

  If our situations were reversed, would Renz run the story with all the facts, including the one about how the body had been moved?

  She knew the answer to that one.

  Her fingers reached the bottom of the popcorn bag and found nothing but the grit of salt. She crumpled up the bag and tossed it to the pigeons. They began to peck at it and fight each other over it.

  Cindy watched them. Bird nature. Human nature. Maybe it’s why I really don’t like people.

  She brushed her hands together to rid them of most of the salt on her fingers, and then fished her cell phone out of her purse.

  Her decision had been made. Already her conscience no longer bothered her.

  How could she have even considered not running the entire story? It was strange how sometimes she questioned herself, when she knew her job and her purpose. She had enough on Renz to sink him anytime, if she so chose. At least, he thought she did.

  The idea of leverage is when you have it, use it.

  No more self-doubts, she vowed, as she pecked out the number that was a direct line to her editor. I’m a professional practicing my profession. A gray and white pigeon standing off from the others and watching her seemed to be bobbing its head in approval.

  Zoe lifted her head from Quinn’s bare chest and squinted at the clock by her bed. Almost nine o’clock. She had a ten o’clock appointment with a schizophrenic patient who was beginning to show distinct symptoms of paranoia.

  Deciding to let Quinn sleep, she laid back the sheet that was covering her to the waist and gently lifted his arm, which lay heavily across her. As she moved the arm she could feel the strength in it, but it didn’t resist her, as if it knew even as Quinn slept that she was something to be protected rather than harmed.

  While Quinn was gentle in bed, he was the most physically powerful man she’d ever slept with, and a man who knew violence. A far cry from the postgraduates and professional intellectual types Zoe was used to. She wondered if it was the sense of danger, of potential violence, that intrigued her. No, she didn’t wonder. She knew. She also knew she was safe with Quinn. The best of both worlds.

  Smiling as a coconspirator with her own devilish self, she began sliding out of bed.

  His big hand found her shoulder and closed on it, stopping her. Had he even been asleep?

  “Gotta get up,” she said, removing his hand. “Appointment.”

  “Some troubled soul like me?”

  She laughed. “I don’t see you as troubled. Not really.”

  “It troubles me that you’re leaving,” he said.

  “That’s just the sort of thing I mean.” She managed to avoid his other hand that was snaking around her, and moved back out of reach. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “You might consider joining me.”

  “Why? Are you coming apart?”

  “For God’s sake, Quinn!”

  “Old joke,” he said. He sat up in bed. “I’ll join you, but I can’t put you back together and make you any closer to perfect than you were. Are.”

  He’d just planted both bare feet on the floor when the phone rang. Instead of standing up, he watched Zoe walk to pick up the receiver, liking the way
her breasts swayed with each hurried step. She had, he decided, the body of a much younger woman.

  A shower. Not a bad idea…

  “It’s for you,” she said, holding out the receiver for him as if it were a gift she regretted having to present. “Larry Fedderman.”

  “I gave him this number,” Quinn said. His cell phone had been cutting out last night, and he knew there’d be no way to charge it in Zoe’s apartment.

  Zoe didn’t seem to mind that Fedderman knew where to call. In fact, she seemed pleased that Quinn had told someone about them. She handed him the phone and then sat nude on the bed, watching him, understanding from his face that what he was hearing wasn’t good.

  “On my way,” was all he said before hanging up.

  He looked over at her. “There’s been another Slicer murder. Our shower had better be a fast one.”

  She nodded. His job again. His guiding star. “You go first. I’ll stay out of the way.”

  He smiled at her. “I’m sorry about this. It seems when we sleep together in your bed, I’m destined to get a phone call about a murder.”

  “That’s right. It’s just like last time…”

  He’d only made a casual remark, but something changed in her eyes. He came to her, leaned down, and kissed the top of her head. He brushed his knuckles lightly across her cheek, studying her thoughtful expression.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure. Go take your shower.”

  But he knew something had occurred to her, disturbed her, and he didn’t know what.

  He didn’t have time now to find out, but later he’d find the time.

  42

  A small, terrified-looking woman in her early twenties sat perched on a wrought-iron bench just down the hall from Terri Gaddis’s apartment, where a stolid uniformed cop was standing guard. With her pinched features and pointed nose, she very much resembled a tiny, nervous bird. She’d obviously been crying, and barely glanced up at Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman as they passed. There was fear in the glance, as well as sorrow. Quinn thought somebody should be looking after her.