by John Lutz
“In a letter I got last week,” Beth said, “he seemed like he’d given up all hope of getting out, and he blamed me for what he called his predicament. Then he got nasty, Sheriff. Threatening. I didn’t open any letters after that. After a while, when he kept writing, I called your office.”
“You did right,” Westerley said. “He’s got no business harassing you like this. I’m gonna take care of it. As for any more letters that might already be in the mail, you just ignore them. Don’t open the envelopes. I’ll talk to the warden in Jeff City and see that Salas stops writing you.”
He didn’t tell her he intended to talk to Salas personally. Scare the holy bejesus out of him. As if Salas could make good on any threat.
“I wasn’t gonna call you,” Beth said. Again she touched her stomach lightly, as if it might be about to burst. “But I figured I didn’t need any more stress in the form of letters. Not at a time like this.”
“No reason for you to feel stressed. Salas can’t harm you in any way from where he is.” Westerley rebanded the letters and tapped them hard with his forefinger. “This kinda thing isn’t unusual. Losers like Salas find themselves where they need to be and don’t like it. They got nothing to do and nothing to lose, so they write letters. Might be he’s trying to gain your cooperation, through lies or fear, and get you to write back and say something his lawyer might be able to use to impress an appeals court or parole board. It’s an act played by many a guilty prisoner. You were right to call me.” He picked up the banded envelopes and waved them. “You forget about these. They’ll stop coming. They’re not your problem anymore. Far as you’re concerned, Vincent Salas is as gone as yesterday.”
She was looking at him as if he’d just preached a sermon and pronounced her saved.
He smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a speech.”
“It was a speech I needed to hear,” Beth said.
Westerley finished his tea, then picked up his cap and stood up out of the creaking sofa.
“I do thank you, Sheriff.”
He held his cap in both hands, grinned, and motioned with his head toward her bulging belly. “I don’t doubt we’ll see each other soon. And if I’m not on duty, my deputy Billy Noth will drive out and transport you to the clinic.”
“That’s awful kind of you. You and Billy both.”
“You’re a taxpayer,” Westerley said. Instantly he realized it had been a stupid thing to say. Beth had no doubt been on welfare since Roy cut out after learning of her pregnancy. Westerley doubted if Roy had picked up any of the medical bills. It was more like him to preach about charity than to practice it.
Westerley moved toward the door, putting on his cap and tugging it low so the visor almost concealed his eyes. Beth hadn’t moved. With his hand on the doorknob, Westerley looked back at her. He nodded again toward her advanced pregnancy. “Everything . . . in there all right?”
She smiled the way she used to. Before what had happened to her. The tiny dark fleck in her left eye caught the light. “Couldn’t be better,” she said. “And I thank you for asking.”
“Speaking of asking, do you know . . .”
“The baby will be a boy,” she said.
Westerley didn’t know quite what to say to that. He gave her a lingering last look before leaving, as if fixing her in his mind so she’d stay as long as possible in his imagination, like an image burned into a TV screen. Then he went out the door.
It was snowing again. Much harder. The kind of snow that coated everything and made it pure and cold, but not forever.
38
New York, the present
Harley Renz had nicked himself with his razor this morning. Quinn was glad.
Plastered to Renz’s bulging pink jowls were two small tan adhesive squares that were supposed to be invisible and might have worked if Renz had been Hispanic. The nicks could have been what put him in a bad mood.
The office had a window that looked out on a potted tree. Its leaves were as still as an oil painting. Morning sun blasted golden glory through the tilted blinds and warmed Quinn’s bare forearm resting on the chair facing Renz’s desk.
Renz inhaled deeply before speaking, puffing out his jowls and looking for a moment like a bullfrog about to croak. “I’ve got enough to be pissed off about without you coming in here all worked up because Millie Graff’s rapist was questioned without you knowing about it.”
If Quinn was pissed off, he didn’t appear so. He seemed to choose those rare times when he displayed anger, so that in retrospect it was difficult to know if it had been real. That was one of the things about Quinn that infuriated Renz. This morning Quinn’s voice was flat and carefully modulated. The way it sounded, come to think of it, when he was pissed off.
“Exonerated alleged rapist,” Quinn corrected.
“Yeah, yeah. Who else might he have raped?”
Quinn shrugged. He didn’t want to get into that conversation with Renz. Harley wasn’t the only cop with the “everybody’s guilty of something” philosophy. Often it was used as a rationalization to bust someone’s skull.
“I feel as bad about Millie Graff’s shitty luck as you do,” Renz said.
Quinn knew that wasn’t true. “What about the other Skinner victims’ released alleged rapists?”
“I don’t feel bad about them.”
“You know what I mean.”
Renz drummed the fingertips of both hands briefly on his desk. He wanted this office visit to be over. “Weaver just finished interviewing them, too.”
Quinn sat forward. “Nancy Weaver?”
“The same.” Renz blinked and swallowed. He obviously regretted mentioning Weaver’s name.
“Jesus, Harley! You think Weaver’s gonna keep these interviews away from the media? The way she sleeps around, she’s probably trading pillow talk with half the journalists in town.”
“Best you remember she’s Lieutenant Weaver now, an aide to the commissioner.”
“Harley—”
“She’s earned the position, Quinn. And not in the way you might think in your dirty mind.”
“My dirty mind? You’re the one who’s gotten down and shamelessly rolled in shit in order to get ahead.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
“I grant you Weaver’s good at her job, and I don’t care about her sexual adventures. What I do care about is you sending her around to interfere in the investigation you gave me to run.”
Renz thought it might be a good time to pretend to be angry. “Listen, Quinn, I’m the goddamned police commissioner. If I want to monitor an investigation, I will.”
“As long as I know about it, Harley. If I’m gonna run an investigation, I want one hand to know what the other’s doing, and whether there’s a third hand.”
“That sounds reasonable, Quinn, but you gotta understand there are political ramifications here. I got everybody on my ass about this case. You might insist on doing everything your way, but this is happening on my watch, and if things go crappy and slippery, I take the fall.”
“I wouldn’t think political ramifications would matter, considering the nature of this killer.”
“Political ramifications always matter.”
“Would Millie and the others understand that?”
“You bet they would. To make a go of it in this city, you have to step on some toes, and you have to avoid the toes of the people you got no choice but to dance with.”
“No denying that,” Quinn said.
“I can tell you that Millie and those other women wouldn’t want me slapped down by some dimwitted, deal-making sleazeball with mayoral ambitions, just because of what happened to them.”
“You’re not a dimwit,” Quinn said.
Renz leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “Listen, Quinn. Two of the released rapists—”
“Wrongly convicted men.”
“Okay. Two of them have solid alibis for the times of death of at least one of the Skinner victims,
if not the victim they were wrongly convicted of raping. One of them is back in prison on a burglary rap. Another hanged himself last year in a barn in Iowa. Left a hearts-and-flowers note in his pocket. Claimed he couldn’t find work, couldn’t adjust to society after prison, and the woman he was seeing jilted him.”
“Poor bastard.”
“Friggin’ loser,” Renz said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. If you read Weaver’s notes and listen to her interviews, it starts you to thinking that maybe this Socrates’s Cavern thing is nothing but a diversion. The killer wanting to off some victims safely before he nails his primary target.”
“We’re thinking that’s the game,” Quinn said. “He’s one of the convicted rapists who were freed on DNA evidence, and he wants his particular finger-pointer and the object of his revenge to be simply one of many Skinner victims.”
“So he’d be just another face in the crowd,” Renz said. “And one who’s already been wronged and would have a dumb-ass jury’s sympathy if he did happen to get marched into court.”
“Weaver tell you this?”
“Weaver tells me facts. I pass them on. You’re the lead detective. You draw the conclusions.”
“I think Weaver is right,” Quinn said. “It’s the same conclusion we reached. And the killer is intelligent. He knows that by now we’ve figured out the DNA prisoner-release connection between the victims. That won’t stop him. The Socrates’s Cavern thing was probably just a stalling tactic anyway. He’ll continue to kill until he’s accomplished what he set out to do. Each victim will have a singular likely killer. One of them will be the Skinner, but we might never be able to separate him from his fellow suspects. Not if he plays it smart.”
“I don’t like that kind of defeatist talk,” Renz said.
“You’re the one in love with facts, and the fact is, we’ve got a new starting point because we let ourselves be led down a dead-end path by the killer.”
“You let yourself be led.”
“It’s on your watch, Harley.”
Renz pursed his lips and nodded several times, causing his jowls to quiver. One of the little adhesive patches rubbed on his white collar and dropped from his neck to reveal a nasty razor nick. Quinn hoped it stung.
Quinn sat silently, waiting for Renz’s reaction to this new direction in the investigation.
“Science,” Renz said at last. “Goddamned science has caused all this trouble.”
Quinn didn’t want to hear any more of Renz’s lies or rationalizations. He stood up and left.
Behind him he heard Renz say, “I got a new cell phone, and I don’t even know how the damned thing works!”
Join the club.
39
When Quinn got back to the office, Weaver was waiting for him.
Pearl had banished her to a chair over by the coffee brewer.
“You got an emissary from Renz wants to talk to you,” Pearl said.
Weaver had seen Quinn and stood up. She’d helped herself to coffee and walked toward him, the steaming mug held in front of her in one hand, with her thumb on top of the rim to help hold it steady. Quinn smiled inwardly when he saw that Weaver was using Pearl’s personalized cup with Pearl’s initials. Weaver was holding the cup so the initials were plainly visible.
Deftly, Quinn moved into Pearl’s line of vision so she might not notice the mug, and motioned for Weaver to take one of the chairs angled toward his desk.
She swiveled neatly on a high heel and settled into the chair. She was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt, a blue blazer. It was an outfit Pearl often wore. Not today, though, thank God.
Weaver wasn’t a classic beauty, but she was attractive. Compactly built (something like Pearl only not as busty) and easy to look at, with a twinkle in her brown eyes that suggested she was up for anything. As Quinn sat down behind his desk to face her, he noticed a cinnamon scent of perfume.
“I understand you’ve been doing things behind my back,” Quinn said.
“Sex is sex,” Weaver said. There went that twinkle.
“Don’t smart-mouth me. I’ve got Pearl to deal with, and that’s enough.”
“Okay, you made your point and I’m sorry. What I’ve been doing is obeying the orders of my superior.”
“Meaning?”
“I had no choice. But that part of my assignment is over. I came here to tell you that from now on I’m acting as a liaison officer reporting to Commissioner Renz.”
“Isn’t that another way of saying informer?”
“Not in this case. Now all our dealings will be aboveboard, and I’m to be an integral part of the investigation. The commissioner figured you needed help.”
“We met this morning,” Quinn said, “and he didn’t mention anything along that line.”
“I know. He briefed me on this morning’s meeting.” Weaver took a sip of coffee, then leaned to the side and set the mug on the floor so it wouldn’t leave a ring on the desk. “Listen, Quinn, I don’t want to cause you grief. I like you. You were one of the few friends I had on the force. I’d like for us to stay friends. You always understood me. I’ve got an active libido, but so what? Other people have red hair or are left-handed. There are plenty of male cops who lead active love lives and it doesn’t seem to harm them or hurt their chances for advancement. There’s a double standard.”
“Sure there is. I thought you’d learned to live with it.”
“I have. That’s how I made lieutenant.”
Quinn didn’t want to know the details. “So Renz understands you?”
“He understands my ambition.”
“Because he’s ambitious?”
“Because we’re ambitious in the same way.”
Quinn leaned back and looked her in the eye. “Can I trust you, Nancy?”
“Of course you can’t. We both know I’m working for Renz and I’m always going to have to come down on his side of the fence. But I can promise I’ll walk that fence carefully and try to do you as little harm as possible.” She gave him a wan, helpless smile. “Those are the positions we find ourselves in.”
Meaning you can’t trust me completely, either.
“I understand,” Quinn said. He gave her a smile much like hers in return. “We can learn to coexist.”
“I would like one condition,” Weaver said. “I don’t want you to use me to feed misinformation to the commissioner.”
“We’ve got a deal,” Quinn said.
“And I do have a question right off,” Weaver said.
Quinn waited.
“Fedderman over there. Why’s he dressed like he’s graduating from primary school?”
Quinn smiled. Weaver didn’t miss much.
“His old suits finally wore out,” he said.
Part of the truth.
That was what made the world go round. Partial truths.
Quinn and Weaver talked with their heads close together at Quinn’s desk and then left for an early lunch. They asked if Pearl wanted to join them. She said only if she could bring her own knife.
Quinn gave her the look, as if he was headmaster and she was twelve years old and had been caught reading porno with the school janitor.
After deciding to dine alone, Pearl left the office and walked toward the Eighty-first Street entrance to the park, where she could get a hot dog and Diet Coke from a street vendor and sit on a bench and brood while she ate. Mostly because of Nancy Weaver’s arrival at the office, she was in a dark mood. Moody. She felt a twinge. Her mother had always described her that way when she was a child. Pearl would overhear her talking to some of her lady friends: She’s such a smart child, but so moody. Some days she’s so prickly she shoots quills.
The man she loved (most of the time) and lived with (part of the time) was having lunch with a professional sex machine, and here was Pearl thinking about her mother.
And, as so often happened—or seemed to happen—when she thought about her mother, her mother called her on the phone.
When P
earl heard the first four notes of the old Dragnet TV show theme and fished her cell phone from her purse, she wasn’t at all surprised to see that the caller was Golden Sunset Assisted Living.
She sighed, or maybe it was a growl. She flipped the phone open and pressed it to her ear so hard that the side of her head hurt.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Pearl, I’ve been calling and calling here from the wilds of New Jersey and your message machine is making that shrill sound like it does when it’s stuffed too full of messages and I was worried sick about you. For all I knew you were lying dead on the floor.”
“You should have called my cell phone number, Mom.” Before jamming up my answering machine.
“Which at this time I am doing, Pearl. I saw on TV here at the nursing home—”
“Assisted living,” Pearl corrected.
“Way station on the road to death. What I saw on the TV was a doctor explaining how, when a woman gets into her forties, it becomes more and more complicated, which is to say dangerous, for her to have a child.”
“You mean grandchild,” Pearl said, driving to the point. “Your grandchild.”
“Yes. Little Rebecca, waiting in the wings, in a manner of speaking.”
“My wings,” Pearl said, wondering how many other women were walking around not even pregnant with the child they weren’t going to conceive who was already named. Already Pearl was sick of Rebecca, and the kid hadn’t even been born.
“Not that you aren’t my own darling angel, Pearl. A mother’s love encompasses and forgives.”
“Forgives what?”
“So many things.”
Pearl squeezed the phone, causing the built-in camera to activate and snap a picture of her hair.
“As for Captain Quinn—”
“He’s no longer a captain, Mom.”
“He’s not getting any younger, either.”