by John Lutz
Then greater pain exploded at the back of her head.
Everything became dim, as if streetlights were going out one by one.
She smelled something like ammonia and felt someone holding her hand. For a second she thought she was being rescued, pulled up away from the darkness that dragged at her. Then she realized what she felt was her assailant cleaning beneath her fingernails that had gouged him. He didn’t want his DNA scraped from beneath her nails in the morgue.
Oh, God! In the morgue!
As she dropped into a dark world, her last awareness was of the slushy patter of soles on wet concrete, the faint and rhythmic splash of rainwater. She’d heard the sound often and could recognize it. Someone running away.
Years ago a hospice worker had warned Weaver to be careful about what she said when her mother lay dying in a hospital bed. The sense of hearing was often the last thing to go.
Am I dying?
52
The Skinner sat at a table in the atrium of the Citigroup Building, sipping an egg cream. There were no actual eggs in egg creams, which was one of the things the Skinner liked about them. They were tricky and misleading. Possibly most people who drank them, especially out-of-towners, assumed they’d consumed an egg. He smiled grimly. There were a lot of misconceptions about what people ate in this town.
He sipped and savored. Yes, egg creams were misleading. They symbolized the misleading and mislabeled world people were supposed to live in. But he’d learned long ago there were as many worlds as there were people. Anyone who was smart enough soon figured out it was possible to create and live in a world of your own, and it was just as valid as the one projected by so-called reality. It was the individual world of the spirit and the mind. It wasn’t mystical at all, but simply another chosen reality. Not buying into the common delusion; that’s what it was all about. The real rules, the ancient, few ones, were the only rules that mattered. The only actual reality, deeply buried in the human psyche, as it was in that of every living being.
He sucked on the plastic straw and it made a gurgling sound that signified the end of the egg cream.
Best to stop thinking bullshit, he decided. Not the place or time for hypothesizing. Concentrate on creating Quinn’s reality, keeping the wily cop in a world controlled by the Skinner. Different worlds for different folks. If his and Quinn’s worlds met only now and then, and tangentially, everything would work out fine.
He wondered if the lady cop he’d beaten was dead. And if she was alive, had she learned her lesson? Would she be able to go back to her job and be part of the game? Had Quinn lost one of his pieces?
The Skinner had beaten her with a tire thumper, a clublike instrument used by truckers to whap the tires of eighteen-wheelers to make sure they were inflated. He’d bought it in the shop of a highway gas station and restaurant frequented by truck drivers (a sure sign of good food) after noticing how much it resembled an old-fashioned wooden nightstick. It was even weighted at the end like a nightstick and had a leather strap to wind around your wrist so you wouldn’t drop it. A crude weapon, but effective. Ask the lady cop.
He gathered his napkin, cup, and crumpled straw wrapper from the table and stood up to leave. Maybe he’d stop in at the bookstore in the building and buy something to read. A thriller of some sort. Escape literature.
As he made his way toward a trash receptacle, he noticed two men seated facing each other at one of the tiny tables, their heads bowed. Their brows were furrowed and their gazes fixed, as they concentrated on a chess board between them.
Lost in a world of their own.
Quinn loomed watchfully, like a rough-hewn and wingless angel, over Nancy Weaver’s hospital bed. His shoulders drooped and his massive hands dangled useless at his sides. Right now he felt useless. Helpless. Before him was a problem for surgeons’ hands and scalpels, not cops’ hands and guns.
Weaver was unconscious but coming out of it. As Quinn watched, her bruised face contorted in pain and her body twitched in a reflex action to change position, which she couldn’t do because she was belted to the bed faceup so she couldn’t put a strain on her injured back. She moaned and tried to but couldn’t quite open her eyes.
Quinn examined her IV bottles, then adjusted a plastic valve slightly. He waited a few minutes and then stepped out into the hall and hailed a passing nurse.
“I think she’s regained consciousness,” he said.
The nurse, a portly, middle-aged woman with puffy cheeks and diamond-bright blue eyes, gave him a suspicious look. Her plastic name tag identified her as Rose. “The patient in two-oh-five?”
“Right. Officer Nancy Weaver.”
“Ah, the policewoman.” Rose shuffled several clipboards she was carrying, found the proper one, and gazed at it. “Hmm . . . you’re sure she’s regaining consciousness?”
“She asked if she could talk to me,” Quinn said. “Mumbled it, but she asked.”
“And who might you be?”
Quinn showed her his ID.
Rose looked him in the eye. “You’re positive she’s conscious? She’s receiving a sedative along with her glucose. We’re trying to hydrate her. She has several serious injuries.”
Quinn moved nearer to Rose. “I’ve got to confide in you, dear, that it’s vitally important that she and I speak. Lives do depend on it.”
Rose had heard that one. She shook her head no. “We’ll get Officer Weaver well on her way to survival, then you can question her and catch whoever did that terrible thing to her.”
Quinn laid a huge hand on her shoulder with a feather touch. “No, no, dear, you don’t understand. Her interest and mine, and I hope yours, are to make sure she’s not soon joined by another patient with similar, or perhaps even worse, injuries at the hands of the animal that beat poor Nancy. There is a time-urgent aspect to this matter.”
Rose shook her head adamantly. “I can’t be responsible for—”
“But you will be, Rose. Responsible for another woman suffering as Officer Weaver now suffers. That is, if you don’t let her and I simply exchange a few words. Then she can rest all the better knowing she’s done her duty and we know who did this heinous thing to her. I beg you, Rose, to let her finish what she set out tonight to accomplish.”
Rose gave Quinn a long, hopeless sigh. He wasn’t sure if it meant surrender or exasperation. Rose was hard to read.
Quinn moved closer and lowered his voice even more. “Young as you are, my impression is you’ve been a nurse for some time. You must know your real responsibilities in gray areas such as this, dear. Vital gray areas. We all know there are rules that must in special times be circumvented to prevent tragedy.”
“You are so full of bullshit,” Rose said.
Quinn’s earnest smile was undaunted.
“You can be in the room with us,” Quinn said.
“You’re damned right I can,” Rose told him, and led the way.
As soon as they were in the room, Rose examined the IV bottles hooked up to the tube leading to Weaver’s arm.
Weaver’s eyes flickered open. “Quinn . . . ?” she managed to groan from her bed.
He touched her lightly on the forehead. “Don’t try to talk, Nancy, unless I ask you something.”
“I’m in goddamned pain. The bastard hit me with something that looked like a nightstick.”
“Who was it, Nancy?”
“I was following Sanderson.”
“Jock Sanderson? Why?”
“I read Pearl’s notes from her interview with him. They didn’t look right. The guy got to her, gave her a load of crap instead of straight answers.”
Quinn had read the interview and didn’t see it that way. And not too many people got to Pearl. “You really think so?”
“Yeah. So I decided to tail Sanderson and see what there was to learn. I got the feeling he was tailing someone. Stalking her.”
“Her?”
“I’m guessing there,” Weaver admitted. She took a deep breath. “Damn, that hurts!�
��
“Sanderson did this to you?”
“Must have. I was tailing him one second, and the next he was pounding away on me with that club of his.”
“You saw his face?”
“No. It was dark and he was wearing a balaclava. I could just see his eyes and mouth.”
“So you couldn’t identify him for sure.”
“No. Guess not . . .”
Weaver’s voice was wavering. She was obviously getting weaker.
“We’re done here,” Rose said.
“No,” Weaver said. She tried to grasp Quinn’s arm but couldn’t move her own. “I scratched his face hard under the balaclava. I remember that for sure. I did damage. Then I smelled ammonia—”
“Ammonia . . .”
“That’s it,” Rose said, and reached for the valve on the IV tube.
“He cleaned under my fingernails,” Weaver said. “I could feel the scraping. . . .”
Rose readjusted the plastic valve.
“He might be our Skinner,” Weaver said.
“Skinner?” Rose asked. “The animal who’s killing those women?”
Quinn nodded. “The very same.” He looked down at Weaver, whose eyes were closed again. “Nancy?”
Weaver’s breath evened out and her features relaxed.
“She’s resting,” Rose said, “as she should be. And if I ever find again that you’ve tampered with medical equipment in a patient’s room, I’ll sic the authorities on you like a pack of mad dogs. There’ll be no more asking me to break the law for you. And you a policeman yourself.”
“I—”
“Don’t bother to deny it, please. I’ve heard enough lies.” She sighed loudly again. It seemed to be her signature way of expressing herself. “Have you got a card, Quinn?”
He looked at her.
“A business card, man!” Another trailing sigh.
Quinn dug his wallet from his pocket and handed her one of his Q and A business cards.
Rose tucked it in a pocket of her nurse’s uniform. “When the patient comes around again and you can count on her actually making sense, I’ll straightaway give you a call.”
“Thanks, Rose. I’ll have someone standing guard on Weaver here at the hospital. If you notify him, it’ll be the same as notifying me.”
“I hope you catch the murdering psychopath,” Rose said.
“We will,” Quinn assured her. He moved toward the elevator, and Rose walked alongside him. At the elevator doors, they paused. Quinn smiled his surprisingly beatific smile and gave Rose’s elbow a gentle squeeze. “You did the right thing, dear.”
“I was told those very words once after extramarital sex. It was a lie then and it is now.”
53
Edmundsville, Missouri, 2006
“You almost fell on your you-know-what,” May Ann said.
Beth had stumbled during an underarm turn on the crowded dance floor. May Ann had been the last of the group to arrive, and was still playing the chaste Catholic schoolgirl all grown up. Beth knew that was going to change in a big way after a few more drinks. Already May Ann was beginning to laugh too loud and bat her eyelashes.
The place was the 66 Road House, though it wasn’t anywhere near the new or old Route 66. The music was Hank Williams. There was sawdust on the dance floor, and the garage band that played the 66 was loud and almost on the beat. Beth was dancing with her friend May Ann Plunkert. The two women’s other friends, Gloria Trish and Sami Toyner, were at the table near the Stag Beer sign, sipping bourbon and water on the rocks. That and scotch and beer were pretty much what the 66 served. A drink with a parasol would probably result in a fight.
In the time she’d worked at Arch Manufacturing, Beth had made some good friends. Lots of single women were employed there, and there were plenty of cliques and enough ways to spend time if you weren’t too tired after work. Beth had fallen in with a group of about a dozen who called themselves the Sole Sisters. They weren’t particularly wild, but they had their fun.
Beth hadn’t made any close male friends, but she’d gone out on the occasional date. Nothing worked for her romantically, or for the men passing through her life. It was difficult for her to become involved with someone. The men she’d dated who were interested in more than sex broke off the relationship after learning she had a fourteen-year-old son. Baggage. People Beth’s age had baggage, and that was the way some of these jerks saw Eddie.
Beth truly loved Eddie. Tonight he was on a camping trip with his best friend Les and Les’s father. Eddie was turning into quite the outdoorsman. He especially loved fishing.
Since she’d left Hogart, things had worked out well. She had a job, a house, a life. Most important of all, Beth had her son to raise. She had all that, and she liked her work well enough at Arch, but now and then she found herself thinking there had to be more in life.
Like Wayne Westerley. Had she been an idiot to break off her affair with Wayne? A part of her didn’t want to leave him, but she knew that if she was going to find any happiness and get Eddie away from the fallout of what had happened to her, she had to leave Hogart.
The town wasn’t much to leave, anyway, a blink-of-the eye business loop off the Interstate and a dozen tree-lined side streets featuring houses that would have been historic but for the fact they were cracker-box shacks on the day they were built.
From time to time she did miss Wayne, not only their sexual involvement but the quiet times on her front porch, the leisurely walks along Trout Lake. He’d helped her to heal, and it wasn’t his fault that the healing could never be complete.
Westerley had driven to Edmundsville to see her several times after she’d moved, but she’d stopped that, too. It was as if he brought a part of the past with him, and it was a past Beth needed to escape. Eddie was the finest and only part of her earlier life she wanted to carry into the future.
Beth spent her hours at Arch working on the line, helping to manufacture orthopedic blanks for shoe inserts. Some of the blanks would be packaged as is, in three sizes, for distribution to retail outlets. Others would be custom-shaped to the prescription orders of orthopedic doctors. Those were the jobs that took expertise, and of course they paid better. Beth looked forward to making that transition one of these days, when she’d obtained enough seniority. Of course there were the more physically demanding warehouse jobs, which paid well, but Beth saw the physical toll those took on women and wanted no part of any of them except maybe forklift operator. But that was a high seniority position and would be years away even if she had a chance at it.
She almost slipped and fell again, and heard May Ann giggle. Too much sawdust on the floor.
The music stopped, which was fine with Beth. She was winded and perspiring, and a lock of hair dangled down on her forehead and kept getting into her eye. She and May Ann started back across the dance floor toward the table, which required picking their way among two-steppers waiting for the next song and was almost a dance in itself. A guy in a white Stetson sat down on stage in front of the band and began strumming a regular acoustic guitar and singing. He sounded something like Hank Williams. Beth caught a glimpse of him and he even looked like Hank Williams.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around.
The man smiling at her also was wearing a white cowboy hat. He was average height, handsome, and built wiry like Hank Williams, and damned if he didn’t resemble Williams in the face even more than the guy onstage. The same sort of dark-eyed sweetness in his lean features. He had a slender, slightly long nose and a sharp chin with thin lips. Dark eyebrows that were sort of angled up at the bridge of his nose to give him a puppy-dog inquisitive look. Not the greatest features, she thought, but they did hang together well.
“I like that,” he said.
Beth wasn’t sure she wanted to flirt after only one drink. “And what would that be?”
“The way you’re sizing me up. Shows you’re interested.”
“I was thinking you look a little l
ike Hank Williams.”
“I been told that. ’Fraid I can’t sing like him.” He grinned. Good teeth. “I could maybe sound better than that guy onstage, though.”
Beth smiled. “I just bet you could,” she said sarcastically. There was something about this guy. She felt comfortable with him, but maybe in a sisterly way. Of course, that could change. Maybe . . .
No. He’ll be just like the others.
“Now, that’s a tone of voice I don’t like,” he said, touching her arm and guiding them away from May Ann and over to the edge of the dance floor, which was getting crowded, what with all the fellas taking advantage of a slow dance. “I don’t like that little frown of yours while you’re looking at me. I ain’t that bad a singer. I cross my heart.”
He moved in close to her. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, they were dancing. Barely moving, but dancing.
“I’m Lincoln Evans,” he said. “Friends call me Link, so I’m ‘Link’ to you.”
“Beth Colson.”
“Now we know each other,” he said, and his embrace tightened.
Link wanted Beth to leave the 66 with him that night, but she explained to him that she was there with friends. She even led him over by the hand and introduced him to the others.
“We work out at the plant,” she said, a little embarrassed but also pleased by the envious glances from her friends.
He touched the brim of his hat and smiled down at them all, as if his next move would be to sit at the table and regale them with tales of the rodeo. Instead he guided Beth back onto the dance floor. He was holding her even closer now.
“You all work at some plant?” he asked.
“Arch Manufacturing. We make insoles.”
“No kidding?” Like it was the most interesting job in the world.
“Shoes,” Beth said.
“What? Did I step on yours?”
She laughed. “Insoles for shoes.”
“Oh. Yeah, I figured that.”
Was he being sarcastic? Beth didn’t know how to reply. They had struck the wall of first-date awkward conversation.