by John Lutz
“Help you?” he asked, without a smile.
“You can if Scott Trent works here.”
“He does.”
Quinn showed his ID. It didn’t seem to impress the man.
“You the boss?” Quinn asked.
The man nodded.
“I need to talk with Trent, is all. Won’t take more than a few minutes.”
“His minutes belong to the company during working hours.”
Quinn moved closer to the man. “I’m working under the auspices of the NYPD, and I didn’t come here looking for a pissing contest, but I can win one.”
Something in his voice made the Amalgamated boss look closer at Quinn and then blink. He shrugged. “Okay. Makes me no difference. He’s out sitting in that truck cab, checking over his manifest. At least, he damned well better be.”
“I noticed him when I came in,” Quinn said. “Tell me about him.”
“Ain’t got the time.”
“Are you sure you can’t find the time?” Quinn asked, in a way that prompted the boss to think about it.
“Aw, screw it,” the boss said. “There’s not much to tell. Trent’s been working here about a year as an over-the-road trucker. He ain’t got much seniority so he takes the long runs, delivering on Thursdays or Fridays, and has weekends to himself before turnaround. That’s so the company doesn’t have to pay him overtime on weekends. So he has weekends off here in the city, where he lives. Listen, the man’s an ordained minister of some sort. The cops have already been here talking to him. He wouldn’t attack anybody. He’d pray for them instead.”
“Amen,” Quinn said, He nodded to the boss and moved toward the gray steel door.
“Don’t take up too much of his time.”
“Not to worry,” Quinn said. “I know it’s money.”
He walked the length of the trailer that was hooked up to the blue Peterbilt truck, then around to the driver’s side of the cab. He rapped on the metal door with his knuckles. A man about forty, wearing gray work pants and a black T-shirt like the boss’s, only with AMALGAMATED lettered in white on the chest, opened the door and looked down at him.
Quinn flashed his ID as he had with the boss. Trent gave it only a glance.
“Let’s have a talk,” Quinn said. “I cleared it with your boss.”
“I don’t have much time. Gotta be in Georgia tomorrow with this carpet pad.”
“Everybody here is in a rush,” Quinn said.
Trent set aside the clipboard he’d been holding, tucked a pencil in the T-shirt’s saggy pocket, and swung down from the cab.
Quinn saw that he was wearing brown Doc Martens boots. He was slim and muscular, slightly shorter than Quinn.
“This about Jane Nixon?” he asked.
Quinn said that it was.
“I already talked to a police detective,” Trent said. “They accepted my alibi.” He dug into his hip pocket for his wallet and handed Quinn a ticket stub for God Is My Sales Manager . The address on the stub was in Lower Manhattan.
“This is what?” Quinn asked.
“A motivational talk. I was there listening to it the night Jane was attacked,” he said, as if that settled the matter and now he could get back to work.
“Truck drivers do much selling?”
“No. That’s the problem. It’s why I’m thinking about getting into sales.”
“You know the name Lincoln Evans?” Quinn asked.
“Sure. It’s been all over the news.”
Quinn’s cell phone abruptly vibrated in his pocket. He drew it out to silence it, but when he glanced at it and saw Pearl’s name, he thought he’d better take the call. He excused himself and moved a few steps away, half turning his back for privacy but leaving enough angle so he could keep an eye on Trent.
“Whadya got, Pearl?”
“I did more checking on Jane Nixon’s exonerated rapist, like you told me,” Pearl said. “He’s been mixed up in some bad stuff, and used forged papers and different identities, buying and selling stolen goods. The name Scott Trent is an alias he was using at the time of his rape conviction, and he’s been using that name in New York since his release.”
“You don’t say,” Quinn said, trying to sound casual in case Trent was tuned in.
Quinn suddenly remembered Trent’s words: “Gotta be in Georgia tomorrow with this carpet pad.”
“Quinn, he’s also Beth Evans’s former husband, Roy Brannigan.” Pearl gave Quinn a few seconds to absorb what she’d said. “He supposedly raped Jane Nixon not long after he left Beth in Missouri and found his way to New York.”
“And the DNA evidence that sprang him?”
“He was convicted on blood type and Nixon’s identification. Turns out it wasn’t his blood.”
“Then he really was innocent.”
“That time, anyway,” Pearl said. “Like a lot of those other guys who’ve been set free thanks to DNA.”
Quinn kept his voice low and told Pearl where he was. She’d know what to do.
“Be careful,” he heard her say, as he broke the connection.
Trent—or Brannigan—hadn’t moved while Quinn was talking, but there was something different about his stance, a subtle tenseness. How much had he overheard?
Quinn smiled and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. “I do have a few more questions about Jane Nixon,” he said, letting Trent think the conversation wasn’t about anything he had to fear. “The woman you were convicted of raping.”
“I was later exonerated. DNA don’t lie.”
“Far as we know.” Quinn worked his way closer.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brannigan’s eyes were beginning to roam. Quinn knew the signs.
“Listen, Scott—”
Brannigan hit him hard in the stomach with his fist, and then slammed the clipboard into his head.
Quinn shook off the clipboard blow easily enough, but he sank to his knees trying to catch his breath. Brannigan was on the run, and he had a stride like a deer’s.
When Quinn was just beginning to suck in air, the steel door opened at the top of the steps and the big boss peered down at him.
“What the shit’s goin’ on here?” he asked.
Quinn tried to speak but only made a squeaking sound. He raised a forefinger for the boss to give him a few seconds.
The boss came halfway down the steps and leaned so he could get a better look at Quinn.
“The employees park in this lot?” Quinn managed to wheeze.
“No. They park in a lot out front.”
“That the only gate?” Quinn tried to motion with his head, but his head didn’t move.
“That’s it,” the boss said.
“Lock it,” Quinn said.
“Says who?”
“Me,” Quinn said, and drew his police special from its holster. “And when you’re finished, go back inside and lock that door.”
When the boss was headed toward the chain-link gate, Quinn worked his way to his feet. Holding the old revolver at the ready, he began moving cautiously along the line of trailers, now and then pausing to peek beneath them. He tasted blood trickling down from the clipboard cut on his forehead, but it was Roy Brannigan’s blood that he smelled.
90
Roy Brannigan was terrified. If he managed to work his way along the building and get to a section of fence where he thought he could wriggle beneath it, he might be okay.
He’d known who Quinn was the second he’d seen him, and he couldn’t let the big detective catch him. He’d hit Quinn hard and heard the breath rush out of him, but he didn’t know how long he’d be down.
It was amazing, Roy thought, how suddenly everything had turned to crap. Jock Sanderson had been blackmailing him about the ticket stubs, and Roy was increasingly reluctant to pay. Sanderson’s threat to expose Roy and then live large in some country where there was no extradition treaty was losing credibility. It was easier to talk about setting yourself up as a wanted blackmailer and accessory to murder, a
nd taking refuge in a foreign land, than it was to actually take the step.
But it wouldn’t hurt for Roy to have alibis in case the police happened to connect the dots. The stubs would be plausible. Some men let ticket stubs and the like build up in their wallets or on their dresser tops. The stubs would make it difficult if not impossible for him to be convicted of any of the Skinner murders.
At least, Jock Sanderson had convinced him of that.
And after the death of Link Evans, Roy thought he was completely safe.
Roy had latched on to Link Evans’s extramarital adventures while spying on him because he’d taken Roy’s place as Beth’s husband. Never one to ignore opportunity, Roy coordinated his Skinner murders with Link’s clandestine visits to New York to see Julie. Roy knew that Link would draw suspicion away from him, and also deny being in New York at the times of the murders. If push came to shove, Julie would provide Link’s alibis, but Link would do almost anything to avoid that eventuality. Not to mention that women in love make lousy witnesses.
Roy’s boot toe caught on a crack in the asphalt and he stumbled and almost fell. Another reminder that things could go wrong. His heart felt like a bird beating its wings in his chest.
This isn’t supposed to be happening! This isn’t fair!
Roy had wanted only to rid the earth of destroyers of innocent men. Such women gave false witness and were possessed by the devil. Like his own wife Beth, who’d ruined the lives of two men and bore the son of the devil that possessed her. Roy hadn’t anticipated Satan working through a blackmailer to torment and defeat him. Or unleashing on him a cop stubborn enough to follow every lead and learn the answer to every question.
Roy felt a joyous pang of hope. He should never have doubted his special blessing and mission as God’s blade of vengeance. He was almost there. The parked trailers made good cover. He could see the misshapen corner of the fence and the scooped-out area of dirt where kids, or maybe a large dog, had squeezed beneath it. Roy was lean and strong. He knew with certainty that if he made it to the fence, he could escape from the lot, escape Quinn.
He was dashing the final fifty feet toward the break in the fence when the blast of a gunshot temporarily froze him. He spun and saw Quinn about a hundred feet away, trudging around the nose of a parked trailer. His movements were deliberate. His head was down, but his eyes were trained on Roy. He looked like doom itself.
Roy began dancing backward toward the fence corner, watching Quinn, watching the muzzle of the gun. It wasn’t aimed directly at him, but pointed to the right and down.
Quinn fired again. This time Roy didn’t flinch at the shot, but he heard the bullet zing off the chain-link fence. There were buildings outside the fence, on the opposite side of the street. He knew Quinn would have to be careful shooting at him, making sure where his warning shots would go.
His warning shots.
Quinn could safely fire a bullet into him and not worry about collateral damage, but only when he got close enough.
Keep moving! Keep moving!
Roy kept walking backward with the grace of a ballet dancer, almost skipping. He couldn’t look away from Quinn, who was coming at him slowly but relentlessly, angling like a boxer cutting off space in a ring, cornering his prey.
Roy knew now that he’d never have time to squeeze beneath the fence. When he got to within ten feet of the chain-link corner and its sturdy steel post, he wheeled and at the same time slipped his Amalgamated shirt over his head, whipping it inside out. He tossed the shirt up over the razor wire that topped the fence and launched himself after it.
For a few seconds it worked. Then the razor wire came through the thin material of the shirt and sliced into Roy’s arms. He glanced back and saw Quinn still coming, and he panicked, flailing his arms and desperately trying to gain enough grip despite the pain so he could pull himself up and over. It was pure primal reaction now. He had to escape! The razor wire was like fire. He was surprised to see one of his fingers sliced almost all the way through and dangling limply by a flap of skin.
He heard Quinn calmly say his name behind him.
All right! Enough . . .
Roy released his grip on the razor wire. Part of his shirt ripped away and fell with him like a bloody flag as he dropped from the fence and slumped exhausted with his back against the chain link. He cradled the section of ripped shirt wrapped around both bleeding hands.
Quinn holstered his revolver and knelt beside him, as if to administer an act of mercy.
But what Roy saw in Quinn’s eyes wasn’t mercy; it was curiosity.
“Where’d you get the ticket stub?” Quinn asked.
“Same place I got the others,” Roy said.
“You gonna tell me now, or later?”
Roy told him, and then told him everything else, not liking it at all, but not minding what was going to happen to Jock Sanderson, thinking ex-wives, what a pot full of trouble they are.
Quinn thought it was over. He shifted his weight so he was squatted near Roy, reaching out to adjust the bloody strips of shirt wound around his injured hand.
That was when Roy pulled the carpet tucking knife out from the bloody rags with his good hand. The wickedly hooked blade flashed through the narrow space between the two men. Quinn got his arm up right away, or the blade would have severed a carotid artery, and Roy would have had the pleasure of seeing him bleed to death. The gash in Quinn’s arm gushed red as he backed away, drawing his revolver from its holster. He slashed sideways with the gun and knocked the knife out of Roy’s hand and away, on Roy’s second attempt to kill him.
Quinn got up on one knee, laid his gun on the pavement, then removed his shirt and tied it around the gash in his arm. He used his belt to make a tourniquet, which he yanked tight high on his bicep.
Roy had his injured hands together again inside the blood-coagulated mass of material that was his shirt. On his knees and elbows, he was crawling toward the knife lying on the blacktop. Quinn knew what Roy wanted. It was what almost all the sick animals who became serial killers wanted—to exit in a blaze of glory. Fame and finale at last! Quinn would have to kill him, if Quinn himself hoped to survive.
Sirens were sounding blocks away. The NYPD wolves closing in. Roy didn’t have much time. But it was enough to get his wish.
They were across the street from a boarded-up building. Parked trailers blocked vision from the warehouse.
When Roy had almost reached the knife, both his hands still wrapped tightly in the packed layers of his shirt material, Quinn picked up his revolver and aimed carefully. Three bullets ripped through the bloody mass of material, and through Roy’s hands.
Roy stopped crawling, then rolled over on the hot blacktop and stretched his jaws wide in a silent scream of terror and frustration. He drew up his knees and hugged his ruined hands tightly to his body.
“Self defense,” Quinn said. “You came at me again with the knife.”
“Not fair!” Roy yowled. “Not goddamn fair! Shoot me! Shoot me in the heart!”
“You’ve got no heart,” Quinn said. “And you won’t harm another woman with what’s left of those hands, in or out of prison.”
“You’re goin’ to hell!”
“Maybe we’ll do this again there,” Quinn said.
91
“Roy Brannigan all the time,” Renz said from behind his vast, uncluttered desk. “He did his Skinner murders between out-of-state truck runs delivering carpet, and he used Link Evans for a patsy, while Evans was using those same weekends in New York putting it over on his wife with Julie Flack.”
“Jock Sanderson had it worked out almost from the beginning,” Quinn said. “He used Roy to kill Judith Blaney, the woman who’d wrongly sent Sanderson to prison. Sanderson even provided Roy with an alibi. But all the time, he was planning on taking it further with blackmail. The little bastard decided he’d rather be a rich fugitive in South America or someplace else with a favorable exchange rate, living high where there was no extradition t
reaty and he couldn’t be touched by the law, than be an impoverished janitor in this country.”
“He didn’t get to the airport quite fast enough,” Renz said. He opened a desk drawer and withdrew an aluminum tube. He unscrewed the tube and produced a cigar, which he fired up with a lighter from the same drawer, puffing so that his jowls expanded and made him look like a bullfrog working up to a good croak. Instead of croaking, he said, “There’s a certain judge wants to take a bite out of your ass, Quinn. His wife is pretty much out of legal trouble, but she’s embarrassed as hell.”
“I did what I could.”
“He puts people like that away all the time.”
“The incredibly popular police commissioner will protect me,” Quinn said.
Renz smiled around the cigar. “Thash true.” He removed the cigar from his mouth and held it up. “You want one of these? Against the rules, but so what? We’re celebrating the arrest of the real Skinner.”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re gonna go home and smoke one of your Cubans. That’s okay. I’m gonna hold a press conference this afternoon, talk about how our policy under my administration is never to give up on a case until all avenues are explored and all questions answered. We owe it to the public.”
“I’ll be watching on TV,” Quinn lied. He’d already seen Renz blow enough smoke for one day.
“You did a good job, Quinn. If you were still in the department, I’d present you with a commendation. But you can understand why I won’t mention your name or Julie Flack’s in the press conference.”
“Sure. It’s your press conference. Your political ass.”
Renz smiled and blew more smoke.
Quinn and Pearl stood and watched the workmen put the finishing touches on laying the brownstone’s upstairs carpet. The gray-haired man doing the artful and delicate trimming around the baseboard finished with his tucking knife and then stood up and grinned, admiring his work. He glanced over at Quinn and Pearl.