by John Lutz
Brannigan’s intense features were bunched, but his eyes were huge and unbelieving. He was trying to comprehend what he’d just heard.
“What do you mean, attacked?” he said again.
“We’ll get her to a hospital, Roy,” Westerley said. “Then we’ll know more. We gotta find out how bad she’s hurt.”
Brannigan stared at his wife, who lay gazing at nothing as if she were alone on a distant island. Her teeth were chattering.
“I told her and told her not to take that shortcut at night,” Brannigan said. His anger was growing, simmering right now, but it might boil over. “They don’t listen. They don’t damn listen!”
Gravel crunched outside in the lot as another vehicle pulled in and parked. Westerley thought it might be the ambulance and paramedics, but instead his deputy, Billy Noth, appeared in the storeroom doorway. Westerley had told him what happened, so he wasn’t surprised to see Beth in her condition. Billy looked at Brannigan, then at Westerley.
“She okay?” he asked.
“We’ll find out soon,” Westerley said.
“Who did this?” Brannigan asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Westerley said.
“We’ll find the son of a bitch,” Billy said.
“God had best find him before I do,” Brannigan said.
“We’ll do the looking,” Westerley said, remembering Willis’s shotgun. He knew Brannigan owned several guns. Too many damned guns around here.
More gravel crunched out in the parking lot. This time it was the ambulance. Tight metal doors thunked shut almost in unison, and shortly thereafter came the sound of somebody entering the store.
“Back here!” Westerley yelled.
Two burly paramedics in white outfits came into the storeroom, making it suddenly seem small and cramped and very warm. Westerley was perspiring heavily and could feel the taut material of his tan uniform shirt sticking to his back.
He told the paramedics briefly what had happened, and they hurriedly set about bringing in a gurney and transferring Beth onto it. As they shifted her weight, the towel came half off her. There were leaves and dirt sticking to her nude body. One of the paramedics got a blanket over her in a hurry and kicked the towel to the side. Elvis’s eyes showed, somewhat rumpled, and seemed to be observing everything with mild interest.
“Lord, Lord . . .” Brannigan said in a choked voice. “I’m goin’ with her to the hospital.”
The paramedics looked at Westerley.
“He’s her husband,” Westerley said. For a moment he wondered how it would have felt to say he was Beth’s husband. Westerley’s own wife had left him three years ago, unable to stay married to a cop.
“You can ride in back, sir,” one of the paramedics said to Brannigan.
“Make absolutely sure they do a rape kit on her,” Westerley said softly to the other paramedic.
The paramedics rolled the gurney through the store and outside, handling it gently. Everyone followed. The night was dark but for the island of light where the convenience store stood. The ambulance’s flashing red and blue roof lights seemed inadequate, surrounded by all that vast darkness and silence. Moths flitted like stunned spirits before its headlights.
As the gurney’s wheels were raised and Beth was loaded into the ambulance, Brannigan walked about ten feet away and stood staring up at the sky. He suddenly howled, startling everyone. His jaws spread even wider and the tendons in his neck tightened like cables as he howled again, louder.
Then he calmly walked to the rear of the ambulance.
“The Lord doth have his reasons,” he said, and climbed into the vehicle after Beth.
One of the paramedics shut the ambulance’s rear doors. As he walked around to get in the passenger’s seat, he looked over at Westerley and rolled his eyes.
Westerley didn’t respond, thinking about Beth.
The three men stood and watched the ambulance spray gravel, then break from the lot. A couple of hundred feet down the road, its siren cut in.
“I’d like to know what those reasons are,” Billy Noth said. He turned his head off to the side and spat.
When the ambulance was out of sight and could no longer be heard, Westerley laid a hand on Willis’s bony shoulder.
“Take us to where this thing happened,” he said.
21
New York, the present
“I figured that sooner or later I’d see my good buddy Detective Quinn again,” William Turner said.
Quinn was back in the brownstone vestibule that smelled faintly of cat urine. Turner, the former manager and part owner of Socrates’s Cavern, had opened the door and was staring out at him, grinning. He didn’t look so much like Einstein today. With his meaty lips and gapped teeth, he had what could only be called a lascivious grin. It went so well with his former business that Quinn wondered if it might be practiced.
Turner wasn’t wearing a blazer and ascot today. He had on a shimmering purple silk kimono and the same fleecelined leather house slippers he’d worn during Quinn’s last visit. His curly gray hair still looked as if it would overwhelm any comb. His blue eyes were alight with amusement, as if Quinn had just told a joke. Or maybe Turner regarded Quinn simply being there as a joke.
“I heard on the news you found another Skinner victim,” Turner said, “so I suppose you’re here to ask me about Simon Luttrell.” The New York media had already tagged the killer the Skinner. He was going to be valuable to them. Turner opened the door wider and moved aside so Quinn could enter. “Ask away, Detective.”
“Do you have a cat?” Quinn asked.
Turner grinned wider and appeared quizzical. “Pardon me?”
“A ca—”
“No, no. I don’t much care for them.”
Quinn didn’t tell him why he’d asked. The acrid scent in the vestibule that seemed to clog the bridge of the nose. Well, maybe it was some kind of antiseptic cleaning fluid.
He sat down as he had before on the flowered beige sofa, facing Turner’s pottery collection. “It didn’t take long for the news media to pick up the name Simon Luttrell.”
Turner stayed with his grin, but it became knowing as well as lewd. “Prompt coverage is what you might expect, considering the name was scrawled in blood on the bathroom mirror, like with the last victim. And we both know how the NYPD leaks information.”
“Not every compartment is watertight,” Quinn admitted, “but the ship sails on.”
“Poetic and true.”
“Do you remember Simon Luttrell?”
“Never laid eyes on the man, that I can recall. No surprise. Our membership numbered well into the hundreds.”
“He had a gold key.”
“Ah, you’ve been doing your research.”
“Do you recall him now?”
“No. Sorry. Gold-key membership also numbered in the hundreds. It wasn’t as exclusive a club within a club that the members assumed.” Turner strode to a chair and sat down, causing the kimono to work up and reveal thin, bluish ankles. The reflective purple material was so full of static electricity that it actually struck sparks. “Look, Detective Quinn, all Simon Luttrell is to me is ancient history that I’m not particularly interested in and don’t even remember. And as far as I know, he isn’t part of the New York S and M world now.” The gap-toothed, nasty grin again. It came and went so easily on his fleshy face. “What I think,” he said, “is that someone clever is playing with your mind.”
“We’ve considered that,” Quinn said.
“And we both know it isn’t me.” Turner shrugged his narrow, rounded shoulders beneath the kimono. “But, when you’ve got dead tortured women, one after the other, and sexually adventurous men like Philip Wharkin and Simon Luttrell, or someone pretending to be their ghosts, who you gonna call? An old porn king, that’s who.” He sighed. “Hell, I guess it’s only natural. But it’s misguided.”
“How did you know Simon Luttrell was dead?”
“That leaky boat we talked about.”
Quinn decided not to comment. He stood up, not really surprised that he’d drawn a blank here.
Turner also stood. It took him a while, as a man grown old and slow. “You know the one part of me that doesn’t get stiff these days?” he asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to guess,” Quinn said as he moved toward the door.
His dismissiveness prompted Turner to further proclaim his innocence.
“I’ve got nothing to do with those killings, Detective Quinn, and I don’t know anyone who’d do such a thing. Hell, I’ve got a daughter myself.” He motioned with his head toward a photo in front of his pottery in the bookshelf. A bright-eyed young girl with springy dark hair grinned crookedly at Quinn from a tilted wooden frame.
Quinn wondered if she knew about her father’s earlier life. He almost asked, then decided it wasn’t relevant. If it ever became relevant, he’d ask.
“We in the porn industry dislike it more than anyone else if some animal’s out there stalking and killing women,” Turner continued. “It brings heat. Like this visit. And all when you should be directing your efforts toward finding the killer.” The silk kimono swished and sparked rhythmically as he escorted Quinn to the door. It made a faint sound like cellophane crackling. “You believe me, I hope.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Quinn said. “It’s more that I’m not sure you speak for everyone in the porn industry. To them, women are product and profit.”
“Not dead women,” Turner said, opening the door to the vestibule. “They’re trouble.”
He offered his hand for Quinn to shake, but Quinn ignored it, fearing electrocution.
Outside on the sidewalk, Quinn wondered if he could believe anything Turner had told him.
22
Hogart, 1991
Westerley and Billy used their flashlights and were helped by whatever moonlight filtered through the leaves. Willis stood off to the side, as instructed. Now that they’d reached their destination, he switched off the flashlight he’d brought from the store. He had no idea where to shine it, anyway.
Obviously Beth had put up a struggle. The brown carpet of last year’s half-decayed leaves had been violently stirred so that here and there bare earth was exposed. The leaves were thick enough that they prevented footprints, and there were none in the bare spots. Westerley noticed a small strip of torn fabric that looked as if it had come from Beth’s T-shirt. He kept the beam of his flashlight trained on it while Billy stooped and used a tweezers to lift the fragment and bag it.
Off to the side of where the main struggle seemed to have taken place was a ripped paper sack. Next to it was a six-pack of Wild Colt beer, also ripped open. Westerley went to it and saw that it contained three cans. There were no empty beer cans lying about. Westerley guessed the rapist had punched Beth in the eye in an attempt to quiet her screams. When that didn’t work, he hurriedly grabbed three beer cans for the road and tucked them wherever they’d fit in his pockets or on his motorcycle before fleeing the scene.
“This the brand of beer Beth bought at the Quick Pick?” Westerley asked Willis.
“Yeah. That’s all Roy will drink.”
“The guy you saw speeding outta here on a motorcycle, he look like he was carrying anything?”
“Nope. Had both hands on the grips. I’m sure of that. Coulda had something tucked in his saddlebags, though.”
“I’m figuring that,” Westerley said, knowing he was making a lot of suppositions without much evidence.
“I’m sure it was a Harley he was riding,” Willis said. “I used to own one and I know how they sound, ’specially when they’re idling. Potato, potato, potato.”
“Huh?”
“You say potato over and over fast and that’s what a Harley sounds like.”
“Uh-huh.”
Westerley told Billy to cordon off the scene with yellow tape so he could come back tomorrow and examine it in daylight. Nobody was likely to come along and disturb it anyway, until the rape found its way into the newspapers and on TV, and that would take a while. This wasn’t St. Louis or Kansas City.
When Billy was finished cordoning off a rough square by winding crime-scene tape around four trees, the three men trudged from the woods, following the wavering flashlight beams. Willis walked out ahead, leading the way as if he were guiding an expedition.
When the convenience store lights were visible through the trees, Billy leaned close to Westerley and said, “Potato, potato, potato.”
Early the next morning Westerley returned to the crime scene alone. He surveyed the area of the struggle carefully. About ten feet from where the rape must have taken place, he found marks where a motorcycle had been parked. There was a clear indentation from the cycle’s kickstand. He searched for tire tread marks but couldn’t find any.
When he was about to leave, he saw what looked like a dark stain on a dry brown leaf. He stooped low and examined it carefully. It was no more than half an inch across, but he thought he could detect a splatter pattern. He was pretty sure it was blood.
Beth hadn’t bled much, if any, so it might not be her blood, but that of her assailant.
He carefully lifted the entire delicate leaf with tweezers and managed to slide it into one of the plastic sandwich bags the sheriff’s department used for evidence bags. He sealed the top of the bag carefully.
The hospital had been unable to obtain any blood from beneath Beth’s fingernails, though she’d said she’d scratched her attacker, so this blood could be valuable evidence if it was the same type as the suspect’s.
If they had a suspect.
Westerley recalled the words of a former Missouri politician about a wordy but ineffective bill that had passed the legislature. Now if we had some bread and we had some mustard, we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some ham.
23
New York, the present
On Quinn’s instructions, Vitali and Mishkin revisited the apartments of both Millie Graff and Nora Noon. Something might have been overlooked. Something that linked one or both women to the New York underworld of seamy sex, or to each other.
The two detectives were in Nora’s apartment. It was bright and warm from sunlight beaming through the windows.
Vitali was sorting through the stifling second bedroom, stuffed with hangered garments and bolts of fabric. Mishkin, in the other bedroom, was carefully removing, then replacing, intimate wear in the dresser drawers. He handled the dead woman’s silk and lacy items with his fingertips, a faintly disturbed and embarrassed look above his bushy gray mustache. Sal, glancing in now and then from the room across the hall, reflected as he had many times that his partner shouldn’t have become a cop. The tedious and often repugnant part of the job too often got to Mishkin.
The results were in from the NYPD nerds who’d explored the victims’ computers. Millie Graff’s hard drive was mostly full of dancing and dancers. Restaurant hostess though she might have been, her dream of professional dancing was still strong. There was a site about “the art” of pole dancing, but it actually did seem to concentrate more on the techniques of dancing with a pole than on eroticism. Her e-mail account was mostly about business matters, and discussions of dancers’ progress or lack of same. Her personal account suggested she didn’t have a lot of friends in the city, and at the time of her death no romantic involvement. While online, Millie visited the Drudge Report almost daily and read the digital version of the New York Times. Fair and balanced.
Nora Noon also had visited the Times online. In fact, it was her home page. Illustrations from several fashion magazines were on her computer, along with a downloaded book by Susan Isaacs. She had visited an online dating service a few times but hadn’t signed up. Like Millie, she had a business e-mail address as well as a personal account. The business account was completely about business. The personal account revealed nothing helpful. Nora had also been on Facebook, but most of her input was a thinly disguised ploy to establish business contacts.
“It’s a wonder they found the time to get killed,” Vitali rasped. Lint or something in the air of the crowded little room kept making him almost sneeze.
“They were career women,” Mishkin said. “A dancer and a designer.”
“Wannabe dancer.”
“Same thing. Just a matter of timing.” Harold the optimist.
“Everybody’s got a career, Harold. Even if they just call them jobs.”
“I mean more than a job, Sal. More like a calling. That’s why both victims led such busy lives.”
Sal shoved his way out of Nora N.’s storage room. Or oversized closet. He wasn’t sure what to call it. Whatever, it was sure full of lint. He sneezed as he entered the other bedroom, where Mishkin toiled.
“God bless,” Mishkin said. He was holding up a black thong. “This isn’t part of a swimming suit, Sal. It’s too fragile.”
“Those thong things are popular as underwear, too, Harold. Which is what that one is. Probably most women under seventy have got at least one in their wardrobe.”
“How do you know that, Sal?”
“I just do. Like I know red buttons often turn things on.”
Mishkin found something else interesting in Nora’s dresser drawer. “What are these things that look like halves of hollowed-out cantaloupes with foam in them.”
“That’s a bra, Harold. It’s used when women wear a gown that doesn’t have straps.”
Mishkin held the attached shallow foam cups out at arm’s length and studied them. “They don’t look as if they’d support anything.”
“They do, though, Harold. And they make it possible to have bare chest, back, and shoulders above the dress without a brassiere strap showing.”
“Got it,” Mishkin said. “They work on the principle of the cantilever. Like those houses on the hills in California, where half the place hangs out over a long drop to the valley below.”