Serial

by John Lutz

  Nora thought about her father, and her brother Tenn, before Tenn was killed in that auto accident. The car that rammed into Tenn’s had been stolen and driven by a black man who’d had too much to drink.

  A black man.

  Maybe that had been part of the problem, the man’s color. Nora had many black friends. It was wrong to see them all in a different way because of what had happened. It had nothing to do with political correctness. Racism simply didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logical and belonged in the last century. She wasn’t a racist. She knew she wasn’t.

  Or maybe she was. It would explain a few things.

  She suddenly didn’t feel as optimistic as she had a few minutes ago, before Mark had left the restaurant and driven away in his rattletrap panel truck.

  Nora moved her glass aside on the tiny table and stopped staring out the window at the people who were not like her, who did not have her kind of problem. Instead she rested her head in her hands and closed her eyes, almost but not quite crying. She was sure she wouldn’t cry. That, at least, was one thing she could control.

  I really screwed up!

  I was so sure.

  My God, how could it have happened?

  Whether she understood it or not, it had happened. And there was nothing Nora could do to change the past. Nothing she could somehow alter to escape what she’d done.

  The past was like a goddamned trap.

  If only it all happened some other time, before Tenn was killed . . .

  She pulled her hands away from her face and stared at the glistening wetness of her palms.

  Those are tears.

  I am crying.

  I really screwed up.

  Will I ever stop paying the price?

  10

  Pearl and Fedderman searched everywhere in Millie Graff’s apartment for pornographic material or other evidence that she was involved in a deviant lifestyle. Quinn had instructed them not to tell Harley Renz what they were doing, or why, unless they found something. There was no point in unnecessarily stirring up Harley.

  Except for the aftermath of murder, the apartment was neat. Millie had been a tidy housekeeper. The sink held no dirty dishes. The small, stacked washer-dryer combination in the bathroom held no wadded clothes. The furniture was arranged with symmetrical precision. On the kitchen windowsill was a ceramic planter with bright red geraniums that appeared healthy even without recent care. Pearl thought briefly about watering them, then decided that wasn’t the thing to do at a crime scene.

  “Something . . .” Fedderman said, holding up rumpled black net panty hose. “Sexy, I’d say.”

  “Remember Millie was more than just a hostess in a hot new restaurant,” Pearl said. “She was also a dancer. We need to keep that in mind. Look in her closet and you’ll find highheeled shoes that look like implements of torture, maybe with steel taps on them.”

  Maybe they were instruments of torture. Quinn hadn’t known Millie at all as a grown woman.

  “Here’s some kind of tight elastic thing,” Fedderman said.

  “A leotard,” Pearl said. “Also worn to shuffle off to Buffalo.” She had a feeling she should be the one searching through Millie’s dresser.

  “Buffalo?”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Whoa!” Fedderman said, after a few minutes. “How about this?” He sounded like a kid who’d found a trinket in a treasure hunt.

  He was holding up a vibrator dildo. He’d found it in a padded brown envelope taped to the back of a dresser drawer, a favorite hiding place of many an amateur. In addition to being blue and having buttons at its base, the vibrator wasn’t at all lifelike but had ridges in it and a small protuberance near the bottom, obviously meant for clitoral stimulation. Obviously to Pearl, anyway.

  “This what I think it is?” Fedderman asked, grasping the object between finger and thumb and handing it over to Pearl.

  “It’s not to let you know your table’s ready,” Pearl said.

  “So Millie had her fun.”

  “Yeah, like millions of other women in New York.”

  “Pearl . . . ?”

  “Don’t ask,” Pearl said.

  Fedderman wisely took her advice. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “We’ve tossed the place pretty thoroughly.” He knew tossed wasn’t quite the word; they’d be leaving the apartment almost exactly as they’d found it. As if Millie Graff might do an inspection and approve of their work. “So we searched everywhere and this is all we came up with, this—It kinda looks like some weird electrical bird with a long neck.”

  “Millie was what cable TV would call normal,” Pearl said.

  Pointing to the vibrator, Fedderman said. “Quinn isn’t gonna like that we found it.”

  “Let’s put it back where we got it,” Pearl said. “Quinn won’t be shocked to know about it. Hell, it isn’t whips or chains. It’s a woman’s private accessory.”

  “When I think accessory,” Fedderman said, “I think purse or maybe scarf.”

  “Right now,” Pearl said, “I’m thinking testicle clamp.”

  Fedderman winced and then motioned with his head toward the vibrator. “One thing we oughta know about that . . .”

  “Yeah,” Pearl said, and pressed one of the buttons. The vibrator began to quiver and jumped so violently she almost dropped it. At the same time, it flickered with a dazzling blue light.

  “That’s really something,” Fedderman said in admiration. “I mean, how the hell can we fellas compete with that?”

  Pearl switched off the vibrator and handed it to him. “We found out what we wanted to know. The batteries are up and the . . . accessory is in good working condition. Now put the damned thing back where you found it.”

  “There’s no writing of any kind on the envelope it was in,” Fedderman said. “So it wasn’t mailed to her.”

  “Not in that envelope, anyway. That one is probably just for storage.”

  “It might help if we knew where she bought it.”

  “I imagine the first thing she did when she got it was remove the price tag,” Pearl said.

  “Or instructions,” Fedderman said. He brightened. “Maybe I should look for instructions.”

  “Put the goddamned thing back,” Pearl said. “We’ll tell Quinn about it, and tell him we didn’t find any handcuffs or leather restraints or masks or what have you. Millie was a good girl. Let’s let her stay that way.”

  “You know a lot about this stuff, Pearl.”

  “I spent a lot of time with Vice.”

  “Well, all of us—”

  “It’s time to get out of here, Feds.”

  He silently agreed. Pearl watched as he replaced the vibrator in its padded envelope. He slid the dresser drawer back onto its tracks and made sure it was closed all the way. They took a long last look around the apartment. Both of them could feel the strange silence and sadness that lingered at scenes of violent death.

  They left the apartment, with its neatness and geometric arrangement of Millie Graff’s life, for the landlord and movers to disassemble. Soon every memory or touch of her personality would be gone. Her refrigerator would contain different brands of food. Someone else would be sleeping in her bedroom, soaking in her bath, hurrying to answer the buzz of her intercom. She would be totally gone from the still point and center of her existence. Her home would belong to another.

  Pearl thought that if Millie Graff could somehow know about it she’d be horrified.

  Quinn rang the bell of the rehabbed brownstone not far from where he lived on the Upper West Side and waited. An intercom crackled and a male voice asked who was at the door. Quinn found the talk button and identified himself.

  The same crackly voice told him to come in, and a raspy buzzer sounded. He opened the heavy door with its built-in iron grille and stepped into a small, carpeted vestibule that smelled faintly of cat urine.

  A door beside him opened, and a small, stooped man with a wild sprout of curly gray hair stared out at him
. Quinn immediately thought of Albert Einstein, but he said, “William Turner?”

  “Bill will be fine,” the man told him in a high, phlegmy voice. “You said you were a detective?”

  “Yes. Name’s Quinn.”

  Watery blue eyes brightened. “Ah, the renowned serial-killer hunter.”

  “I’m flattered,” Quinn said.

  “I admire your work. Your entire career, in fact.” The hallway’s odor—cat urine—seemed to waft also from the man’s clothing. “You see, I’m kind of a cop groupie. I’ve always admired the police.” He emitted a high, peculiar laugh. If birds could laugh, this was how they’d sound. “Listen, I had a good working relationship with the police in my day.” Suddenly, as if on a whim, he moved back and motioned for Quinn to step inside. “I won’t ask for identification,” he said. “I know you from your many newspaper photographs.”

  “You keep a scrapbook?”

  The high laugh again, not quite a giggle. “No, I don’t go that far in my idolatry.”

  Quinn stepped into what could only be called a parlor, and suddenly it was 1885, about the time the brownstone was built. And the year when Quinnn’s own brownstone was constructed. The ceilings were at least twelve feet high, with intricate crown molding. Long red velvet drapes puddled on the patterned hardwood floor. The walls were a soft cream color, and a large brick and tile fireplace was flanked by floor-to-ceiling shelves full of ceramic pottery.

  “I collect the stuff,” Turner said, observing Quinn’s interest. “Nineteenth-century American.”

  “Impressive,” Quinn said. He noticed that Turner’s clothes were expensive but threadbare, and one of his shirt buttons was missing. Around his scrawny neck was a red paisley ascot.

  “Sit down, please,” Turner said. He motioned toward a flowered beige sofa with wooden inserts in its upholstered arms.

  Quinn sat and looked around again. “Nice place. I’ve got an old brownstone myself, trying to bring it back.”

  “Great ladies, worth preserving,” Turner said.

  Quinn’s gaze fell on an antique Victrola record player with a crank and louvered mahogany doors. “You collect old records, too?”

  “Not really. Mostly furniture, when I’m not buying pottery. That’s what the Victrola is to me—quality antique furniture, wood with a patina you can’t find on anything new. But she still plays.” Turner did a little old man’s shuffle in leather moccasins, as if dancing to the musical strains of the Victrola. Quinn saw that the moccasins were actually house slippers with fleece linings. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Nope,” Quinn said, “just some answers.”

  Turner smiled with yellowed teeth, but his eyes grew brighter. Not Einstein, maybe, but there was an active intelligence behind those eyes.

  “Back in the sixties and seventies, you managed Socrates’s Cavern on the West Side,” Quinn said.

  “Sure did. I was manager and part owner.” Turner sat down on the edge of a brown wing chair that looked as if it might engulf him if he leaned back. “Listen, the kind of business we were in, I saw a lot of the cops. But we never stepped over the line. Nothing illegal. Consenting adults only. That was something we diligently checked.”

  “Ever see any of your old friends from those days?”

  “Naw. We were just in business together. Then the business kind of ran its course. Our business, anyway, not the S and M business.” He gave a hapless shrug with narrow shoulders. “Hell, the way it is now, with the Internet and all, everything’s changed.” Caught in another of his sudden mood swings, he waved his arms exuberantly. “S and M’s gone international!”

  “Like the House of Pancakes,” Quinn said. “Anything like your club still operating in the city?”

  “Oh, you know how it is. Sex clubs are here and there. Always will be. But nothing as big as we were. In some ways, society was lots more open back then.” He squinted at Quinn. “You look old enough to remember.”

  “I do remember. Especially that place over on East Fiftyninth that was doing snuff films.”

  Turner raised both hands palms out. “None of that in my end of the business. Not for real, anyway.” He shook his head in disgust. “Jesus!” He sat even farther out on the chair’s large cushion so that it looked as if it might flip up and hit him in the back. “Listen, most of this stuff is with, for, and about grown-ups. You follow me? Alternative lifestyles. We Americans like to exercise our freedom to pursue happiness however we want. Long as we don’t get in the way of somebody else’s parade and there’s no kids or animals involved. Free country, thank God!”

  “Amen,” Quinn said.

  Turner stared at him to see if he might be joking and seemed to decide he wasn’t.

  “I’m here to investigate a murder,” Quinn said, “not find out who was whacking who on the ass in your club back when people were wearing Mao jackets.”

  “Yet you ask me about the club.”

  “Yet I do. The name Philip Wharkin mean anything to you?”

  “No . . . can’t say it does.”

  “He was a registered member of Socrates’s Cavern.”

  “So were lots of people. Folks you’d never imagine.”

  “Somebody—maybe another Philip Wharkin—wrote his name in blood on the bathroom mirror in Millie Graff’s apartment after he killed her.”

  “You don’t say? I never read that in the paper.”

  “It hasn’t been released to the press.”

  “Well, if you want, I’ll keep mum. I was always ready to work with the cops. Hell, you’d be surprised the off-duty cops that came into the club.”

  “I doubt that I would,” Quinn said. “But don’t spread the name Philip Wharkin around. What I would like is for you to contact some of the old friends you told me you didn’t have, and ask if they know anything about Millie Graff.”

  “If I can locate them, I’ll sure do that. Was Millie a bad girl?”

  “Straight as Central Park West, far as we can tell.”

  “That don’t mean anything,” Turner said. “People outside the S and M world don’t have a clue.”

  “That’s why I want you to ask around inside,” Quinn said. “Find me a clue.”

  He stood up from the sofa with some difficulty, understanding why Turner didn’t scoot all the way back in his chair. He gave Turner one of his cards. “Leave a message if I’m not in, okay, Bill?”

  “Sure, I will. Cops and me, we were always tight. Fun was what it was all about in those days. A certain kinda fun, anyway.” The frail-looking little man stood up with surprising nimbleness and escorted Quinn to the door. “Listen,” he said, when Quinn’s hand was on the knob. “You’re on this case because of the police commissioner, right?”

  “That’s so.”

  Turner adjusted his brightly colored ascot as if it might be tightening like a noose. “I mean, he ain’t gonna have my ass if he finds out I’m asking around about this Millie Graff, is he?”

  “Not a chance,” Quinn said. “He’s very understanding.” And in a lower yet harder voice: “So am I.”

  11

  Hogart, Missouri, 1991

  Wham! Milt Thompson hit a home run into the left-field upper deck of Busch Stadium in St. Louis and the crowd stood and roared.

  So did Roy Brannigan.

  Beth Brannigan watched her husband sit back down and guzzle the last of his can of beer as he watched the Cardinals–Pirates ball game on their old console TV. He was slouched on the sagging gray sofa. On the wall behind him was a huge, roughly hewn wooden crucifix that had been created with a chain saw. He’d bought it at a flea market for ten dollars. Beth had seen him pray before it for the Cardinals to win. Jokingly, he pretended, but he didn’t fool her. In Roy Brannigan’s mind, it wasn’t the cardinals in Rome who counted. They couldn’t hit a curve ball.

  Beth was a sweet-looking woman with a heart-shaped face and guileless blue eyes. She had a brown fleck in one eye that gave her a kind of intense look that somehow added to h
er appeal. Her figure was trim and shown to advantage in a red tank top and short Levi’s cutoffs. She was barefoot. Beth had once overheard a man describe her as fetching. She thought that was fitting, the way she fetched for Roy.

  Roy’s idea of marriage was based on the Old Testament, and he spun it with his own interpretation. He insisted they attend church every Sunday, as they had this morning. After church they’d have a big meal at home, and Beth would clean up afterward. If the Cardinals were playing a day game, which they seemed to do most Sundays during the season, she’d make sure the kitchen was cleaned up before Roy finished smoking his after-meal cigar out on the porch. She’d have a cold beer waiting when he came back inside to watch the game. Religious though he might be, he had no qualms about Beth working on the Lord’s day.

  Nor did religion keep Roy from accumulating a large cache of pornography, of which he thoroughly disapproved. He fancied himself a student and critic of erotica. He would from time to time write reproachful letters to the publishers, excoriating them for publishing such filth. But he bought most of his collection by mail, and often an order form and the letter to the publisher would be posted simultaneously.

  This televised contest was a night game, part of a twilight double-header to make up for a rainout earlier in the season. Beth had been busy most of the day, and they’d had snacks as well as their usual midday meal.

  She was used to tending to Roy’s needs. Beth didn’t really mind the hard work, when he treated her well. When he was gentle with her.

  Which wasn’t all the time.

  Her mom and dad over in Hawk Point had suspected Roy might be abusing Beth. But her dad had lung cancer, and her mother was too afraid of Roy and the bleak future to interfere other than to warn Beth not to let things go too far. They never had come right out and said what “things” were. But then, neither had Beth.

  Even the impotent support of her mother and father disappeared last October when both Beth’s parents were killed in an auto accident on Interstate 70. Their car had run headon into a pickup truck speeding the wrong way. The driver of that vehicle had been killed, too. The autopsy showed he’d been legally drunk.