by John Lutz
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. Not in the way Quinn expected. Not with the desired result.
He was calmer now that he had an understanding, or at least a hypothesis, as to what such a breathtakingly absurd accusation was about. And it was in some ways an effective stratagem. What could he do about it? Sue for defamation of character. No, Your Honor, I did not consume the tongues of those women! Would the court break out in laughter or in violence?
He felt himself smile. Good. He had a handle on this now.
This was a demeaning and devious move by Quinn, its aim no doubt to infuriate him and make him careless. But it wouldn’t work. Let the papers print what they wanted. Let the bubble heads on televised news babble. The Skinner knew the truth. Quinn knew the truth. The two of them were locked in a deadly game, and the game board was the city.
So far, the Skinner was way ahead.
He intended to stay ahead.
Now that he had something of a grip on what had happened, he was breathing less raggedly. His rage had turned cold.
So had his latte.
He carried the mug inside and told the acne-scarred kid behind the counter that the latte had been cool when he’d given it to him. The kid listened to his voice, took a look at his face, and promptly made a fresh latte, very hot.
The Skinner returned with it to his table and sat and read newspapers for a while longer. The Times and Post, the Daily News, the real newspapers, hadn’t yet picked up on the cannibalism angle. But the Skinner knew they would. It would be irresistible. Then it would be on televised news (if it wasn’t already), and people would be talking about it. Tongues would wag.
The Skinner laughed out loud at his unintentional play on words.
Laughter! Is that what you expected, Quinn?
“Is this true?” Jerry Lido asked Quinn.
They were in the office. The air conditioner hadn’t caught up with the heat. Vitali and Mishkin had just left to interview two more of the thirty-two prospective killers. Quinn was behind his desk. Lido had just come in. He looked neat this morning—for Jerry Lido. He had on a navy blazer, white shirt, and a red, blue, and gray diagonally striped tie that made him appear to have attended some kind of posh British school. Even his pants were pressed.
“That thing about the tongues and the Skinner,” Lido persisted. “Cannibalism. I saw it on TV news.”
Already? “It might be true,” Quinn said.
“We don’t deal in mights, do we?”
“We try not to.”
“So?”
Quinn gave him a look. “There you are.”
Lido understood. “Hush-hush,” he said, winking. “Shouldn’t have asked.”
“Never hurts to ask,” Quinn said.
“I believed that before I got married.”
“Yeah. Well . . .”
Lido moved over and sat on the edge of Pearl’s desk. He’d become more and more at home in his position as part of the investigative team. “What about you and Pearl?”
“In what way?” Quinn asked.
“Ever think about marriage?”
“Pearl’s not hot on the idea.”
“How about you?”
Quinn winked as Lido had. “It’s hush-hush.”
“Ah.” Lido glanced around him, as if suddenly surprised to find himself where he was. Quinn knew the look. He knew the sensation, for that matter.
“You had breakfast, Quinn?”
“Sure have.”
“Then it’s not too early to pop around the corner and have a drink.”
“Ten o’clock, Jerry.”
“In this time zone.”
Quinn thought about it. Pearl would arrive soon. It might be a good idea if they were gone when she breezed in. That is, if they were going to ignore time zones.
Pearl would disapprove of morning cocktails at ten. She still didn’t like what Quinn was doing with Jerry Lido. To Jerry Lido. She had a point, Quinn knew, but not a good enough one. Women had died. More were almost certainly going to die. They wouldn’t be pleasant deaths. Quinn and his team were supposed to stop them from occurring.
Simple as that.
“Why not?” he said. “A drink wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Or two.”
Quinn left a note for Pearl saying they’d be back soon. He didn’t mention where they’d gone.
Fedderman sneaked up and surprised Penny in Biographies. She seemed pleased to see him. She was wearing a mauve summer dress today that clung to her figure, white pumps with low heels, a thin silver necklace. Fedderman was wearing the suit.
Penny smelled like cinnamon and old books and perfumed shampoo. Fedderman drew a deep breath of that potpourri and committed it to memory.
He kissed her on her forehead. Her flesh was damp with perspiration though it wasn’t all that warm in the library. “I thought the research room was your department.”
“I’m versatile,” Penny said. “We librarians have to be, in the face of technology run rampant.”
“Complaining again?”
“I shouldn’t. I’m employed.” She lightly touched the back of his hand. “And I’ve got a lot to live for. I think we both do.”
“Which is why I came to see you,” Fedderman said.
“Oh?” She looked at him curiously, waiting.
“That’s it,” Fedderman said. “It’s why I’m here.”
Penny laughed. “Well, it seems to me you should have arrived at work a few hours ago.”
“Our hours are flexible.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “I’m flexible, too.”
Penny shook her head. “I keep seeing new sides of you, Feds. Sides I like. That doesn’t mean I like your jokes.” She glanced up and down the aisle and picked up a book from a cart and slid it into its assigned space on a shelf, between Truffaut and Truman. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask this, but is our relationship diverting too much of your attention away from the investigation?”
“The Skinner? I think you’re more important, Penny.”
“I don’t.”
That brought him up short.
“Remember he murdered my sister, Feds.”
Fedderman felt a rush of shame. Of course she was right. So elated was he over their affair that he’d forgotten it had come at the expense of Nora Noon’s life.
“You’re right, Pen. Damn! I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. It’s just that while I care about you, I don’t want to distract you from your work. Especially since it involves stopping the animal that killed Nora.”
“Do you think about it a lot?” Fedderman asked.
“Only every other minute. And I don’t like knowing the killer is out there walking around free, maybe stalking some other woman. Maybe even me.”
Fedderman gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You can’t believe that, Pen.”
“Why not? He killed my sister.”
“We understand serial killers. They murder compulsively. Their urges are triggered in ways they themselves don’t understand. It would be highly unusual for a serial killer to claim two siblings in two separate murders.”
“You said he acted out of compulsion. If he saw something in Nora that triggered him to kill, maybe he’d see the same thing in me.”
“Pen, tell me you don’t stay awake nights worrying about that.”
“Sometimes I do worry,” Penny said. “I know it might sound crazy. . . .”
He bent over and let his lips brush hers. “No, it doesn’t sound crazy. Only human. Notions like that can get a grip on you. But believe me, Pen, it isn’t likely.”
But Fedderman had to admit she had a point. It was something he’d never considered. He understood how, in her position, grieving for a dead sister, she might consider it.
“It only seems possible late at night, in the dark,” she said.
“Like a lot of things,” Fedderman said, thinking about his own nighttime world between wakefulness and sleep, the violence he’d seen, the blood and the faces of the dead. They came unbi
dden to him more and more often as the years passed.
Penny gave him a smile that looked as if it wanted to fly from her face. “I don’t want you worrying about me.”
“In a strange kind of way, I want to worry about you.”
She sighed. “Yes, that’s how it works. And I want to worry about you. Love and worry are close companions.”
He tried to kiss her again, but she turned away, grinning.
“I think it’s time for you to go to work, Feds.”
“Do you insist?”
“Common sense insists.”
“That’s been getting in the way all my life.” He looked into her eyes. “I don’t want you walking around scared.”
“I’m not. I’m walking around trying to stay employed.”
He nodded, glad she was joking about it now.
Someone had entered the aisle down near the opposite end of the library, so they didn’t kiss good-bye, merely touched hands.
As Fedderman walked past the front desk toward the exit, Ms. Culver gave him a disapproving look over the rims of her glasses, as she always did on his arrival or departure. He wondered if she meant it. If Ms. Culver really felt that way about him. It kind of bothered Fedderman to have somebody like that so strongly disapprove of him when they’d only recently met.
It suggested that she knew more about him than he did.
51
Weaver was wearing a cheap plastic raincoat, but it would have to do. It didn’t bother her that she had no umbrella to fend off the steady light rain falling from a dark evening sky. An umbrella would make her more noticeable.
Though the evening was still warm, the careless breeze blowing along the city’s stone canyons sometimes carried a chill. At least Weaver had found a temporarily dry spot, huddled deep in the doorway of an unoccupied building across the street from Jock Sanderson’s walk-up in a bleak brick structure that looked as if it should have been demolished decades ago.
Weaver had read Pearl’s notes and report. She was disgusted by Pearl’s account of her interview with Sanderson.
Jock Sanderson had every reason in the world to kill Judith Blaney. She’d even had a restraining order issued against him. Sure, he had a seemingly ironclad alibi for the time of Blaney’s death, but so what? It was obvious to Weaver that Pearl had been too easy on him.
It was easy to read between the lines. Instead of seeing a wino in a cheap-ass apartment, Pearl had seen an underdog in its pathetic lair. In Weaver’s judgment, this asshole had played Pearl like a piano, made her feel pity so he could little by little ease her over to his side.
And that’s how the interview had ended. With Pearl almost apologizing for disturbing this good citizen in his meager shelter from a heartless society.
Maybe Pearl was right in assuming Sanderson’s innocence so readily. But Weaver thought there was a chance she was wrong, and that he had killed Judith Blaney. Whether he was the Skinner was another question. He might have somehow found out about the severed tongues and used the Skinner as the basis for a copycat crime, made Blaney’s death simply look like another in the string of Skinner murders.
As terrified of Sanderson as Judith Blaney must have been, Weaver figured she deserved more than Pearl’s halfassed conversation with him, and then a perfunctory dismissal of him as a suspect.
Of course it was also true that Weaver saw this as an opportunity to show initiative and make her fellow officers—especially Pearl—seem incompetent. If she went out on her own, secretly, and nailed the Skinner, her career would be made. Renz would see to that.
Pearl had screwed up. There was opportunity here, and Weaver was going to seize it.
She straightened her posture and then stayed still as she saw a dark figure emerge from the apartment building. A man. Wearing a black or dark blue raincoat and a beret or beret-like dark cap. He stutter-stepped down from the apartment to the sidewalk in a quick, easy maneuver that suggested he was familiar with the wet concrete steps.
When he turned and passed beneath a streetlight, Weaver was sure the man was Jock Sanderson.
He picked up his pace, and Weaver had to hurry to keep up. She barely felt the rainwater finding its way beneath her coat collar and trickling down the back of her neck.
Sanderson went down the steps of a subway stop, used a MetroCard, and passed through the turnstiles. Weaver followed.
The platform was crowded, and a train was roaring and screeching in, still traveling fast as its cars winked past waiting passengers. Weaver knew it would slow down and stop in a hurry.
With a loud, protracted squeal, the train did just that. Its sliding doors opened, and passengers streamed out. Some of the people on the platform waited patiently out of the way, while others began easing in through the sides of the doors.
There was a lot of milling about. Weaver looked around and saw that Sanderson was boarding the car behind the one she was about to get on. She turned away as casually as she could and joined the knot of people waiting to board Sanderson’s car.
More passengers than usual streamed from that car, and there was a great deal of pushing and shoving. When Weaver finally fought her way to the door, the car was almost too crowded to get on. She boarded anyway, pressing into the mass of passengers standing and gripping support poles. Several people glared at her. One woman, hugging a cluster of shopping bags to her breast, blithely gave Weaver the finger.
Weaver didn’t mind. What bothered her was that she couldn’t see Sanderson. The train lurched forward, and the mass of pressed humanity shifted in unison. Weaver didn’t like all the bad breath, the body odors mixed with the smells of damp coats and wet hair. She wished to hell that Sanderson had taken a cab. She might be following in a second dry and warm cab. Like in books and movies.
The subway swayed and jiggled though a turn, causing a man to shift position and step on Weaver’s toe. Another man almost lost his footing, leaning against Weaver. He didn’t seem in a rush to straighten up. She decided he was the source of the bad breath.
The train stopped and took on even more passengers. Weaver watched the sliding doors as best she could and didn’t see Sanderson get off. To be sure he was still in the subway car, she leaned sideways and studied the platform through a window as the train pulled away.
There was no Sanderson among the teeming, hurrying riders who had just left the train.
The next stop was Forty-second Street, a busy one. Only a few passengers got off, but many more piled into the cars. Not Weaver’s car, though—it was already crowded to maximum. She watched several people begin to board and then change their minds and drift back and away.
So it went stop after stop. Slowly, the passengers leaving the car began to outnumber those getting on. Weaver caught a reassuring glimpse of Sanderson seated toward the rear of the car.
She lost him at the Thirty-fourth Street stop. He rose from his seat and pushed his way out of the car almost immediately when the doors opened. It took Weaver several seconds to struggle to the nearest door and ease her way out onto the platform.
There were simply too many people massed on the platform for her to keep sight of him. She walked toward the steps leading up to the street, thinking this was as good an exit as any.
There was no sign of Sanderson in the stairwell or on the street.
Weaver glanced again in every direction and then stood there, the cool drizzle on her face, and wondered what to do next.
Then she saw Sanderson across Thirty-fourth Street. He was walking into the breeze, holding an umbrella in front of him as a windbreak as well as protection from the slanting drizzle.
Sanderson had slowed down. Despite the rain, he didn’t seem to be in a rush. He strolled with seeming aimlessness, from time to time stopping to look into shop windows.
Weaver followed, pretending to look into those same windows.
They walked that way for blocks, with Weaver keeping her distance to avoid being noticed. She was good at tailing, and she was sure Sanderson didn’t know
he was being followed. He wasn’t exactly being evasive, yet his behavior wasn’t quite normal. There was something about the way he was walking, slightly bent forward, with his umbrella always at precisely the same angle, concentrating intently on something ahead of him.
Sanderson was following someone with single-minded determination not to lose them. He was focused on his purpose as if his life depended on it. Or someone else’s life.
She understood it then. He was stalking someone.
Weaver moved up slightly and observed him more closely, her heartbeat quickening. Sanderson was stalking, all right. Not simply following, but stalking. Everything about his pace and attitude suggested it. Weaver strained to see through the darkness and relentless rain, but couldn’t make out anyone up ahead of Sanderson.
That didn’t mean there was no one there, considering the weather.
They had turned several corners. There were no shop windows now. The neighborhood was downscale. The block they were on featured a closed dry cleaner, a boarded-up restaurant, a political headquarters now for rent. The peeling poster of the smiling candidate in the window reminded Weaver that things weren’t always as hopeful as they seemed. He’d lost big in the last election.
There were only a few people on the street.
And then Weaver noticed that she was alone.
No. Not alone!
She heard a faint rustle and sensed movement behind her and to her left. She began to spin away. Only began. Something slammed into the base of her neck and she was on the wet pavement.
She looked up and saw a man in a dark coat, a balaclava concealing everything of his face but his eyes and mouth. He was holding some kind of club or cudgel in his right hand.
As Weaver scrambled to get up, he jabbed hard with the club beneath her ribs. Pain shot through her right side, but she didn’t go down. Instead she clawed at her attacker’s face. She missed his eyes but felt her fingernails gouge flesh.
Again he was on her with the club—maybe a nightstick!
Is this guy a cop?
Whatever he was swinging was plenty hard. He slammed it across the width of Weaver’s back, making a sound that sickened her. Down again, on her hands and knees, she tried to catch her breath. She caught pain instead.