by John Lutz
She was spent a block from home and began to walk, her shirt plastered to her by perspiration, her head bowed, her hands on her hips; still drawing stares, a marathoner and wet T-shirt contest winner.
By the time she reached her building, her breathing had evened out but was still labored. The burning sensation in her thighs was gone. Her legs felt heavy, tired, good. She smiled. It had been a productive workout. Someday all her hard work would pay big career dividends. She truly believed she’d make it as a major actress. Had anyone ever made it without believing?
She wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow and drew deep, steadying breaths as she waited for the elevator. The ancient brass arrow above the door trembled and hesitated as if struggling against gravity as it dropped from 3 to 2 to 1, and the elevator’s steel door scraped and slid open.
A sixtyish, red-haired woman Celandra knew only as Mrs. Altmont stepped from the elevator with her tiny Yorkie, Edgemore, on a leash. Mrs. Altmont lived down the hall from Celandra and had the tight, stiff stare of too much cosmetic surgery. Her lean features seemed out of sync with her pudgy body. She’d once told Celandra she’d named Edgemore after her former husband. Celandra assumed Edgemore, the husband, might still be paying off the surgery.
The canine Edgemore growled at Celandra, as he always did, and as she always did, Mrs. Altmont smiled at her. As they passed getting in and out of the elevator, Celandra glanced down and saw that Mrs. Altmont already had a small plastic bag like a mitten over her free hand.
She saw where Celandra was looking and her smile widened and became almost apologetic. “Why do we love them so?”
She might have been talking about either of the Edgemores.
“Sometimes they’re worth it,” Celandra said, returning the smile.
The elevator door slid closed.
Other than her killer, Mrs. Altmont would be the last person to see Celandra alive.
43
The odor was overpowering.
Quinn wondered if the relentless repetition of the butchery was meant to assail the senses and wear down the killer’s pursuers, if it was part of a strategy. If so, it might be working.
Dr. Julius Nift was present for this one. He was dressed for a day in the boardroom, in a black chalk-stripe suit, white shirt, red tie, gleaming black wingtip shoes. He didn’t look as if he belonged in the cracked tile bathroom of this little apartment in the West Nineties, bent over a bathtub and probing at body parts.
Quinn and his team had gotten the call at the office from Renz, so arrived together in an unmarked city car driven by Fedderman. Quinn left Feds to talk to the uniforms who’d been first on the scene, then went inside the apartment.
It was crowded with crime scene unit techs. A police photographer was there, too, sending pops of illumination over the odd sight of people wearing white gloves and assuming various awkward positions so they could see something close up or pluck it up with tweezers and drop it into a plastic evidence bag. So many bodies moving around in the small apartment, it was a wonder they didn’t bump into one another. Crime scene choreography was in itself a science.
Nift and the victim were alone together in the bathroom, though. The techs had finished there as quickly as possible and left it to the medical examiner. After a first glimpse, and sniff, not even the most hardened of the professionals present were tempted even to go near the bathroom again.
The little ME didn’t actually look back at Quinn and Pearl, but by his head movement acknowledged their presence. They glanced around the beige and white tiled confines. There were the empty cleaning containers-a box of powdered dishwasher detergent, green plastic shampoo bottle, laundry detergent, a couple of gallon bleach jugs capless and lying next to each other.
The raw meat stench was stomach kicking despite the obvious use of the cleansers. Pearl unconsciously raised her cupped hand to cover her mouth and nose, then realized what she was doing. She couldn’t appear soft in front of Nift and Quinn, so she pretended her nose itched, rubbed it, and lowered her hand.
Nift shifted to his left and a dim brown eye gazed up at Quinn.
Pearl almost gagged as she returned the dead stare of the severed head resting on its side atop the detached arms.
“Brown hair,” she said flatly, of the dead woman in the tub. No emotion. Better to be a cop instead of a horrified basket case.
Nift said, “Let me introduce you to Miz Celandra Thorn. Forgive her if she doesn’t shake your hand, but you can shake hers all you want.”
Pearl felt like kicking the little bastard.
“Thorn!” Quinn said. “Not the roses themselves. Goddamnit!” He knew it was something they should have thought of; it had been hinted strongly enough by the note about roses. They’d missed the oblique reference in the killer’s note again. It was there for them and so obvious in retrospect. They’d been outsmarted.
“Maybe Celandra is a type of rose,” Pearl said, but she knew better. Like Quinn and Fedderman, she’d researched roses named after women until she’d never see roses the same way. It had been thorn, and they’d missed it.
Nift straightened up, holding a gleaming steel probe in his gloved right hand, and the entire familiar stack of pale body parts in the bathtub was visible. As with the other Butcher victims, the blanched cleanliness of the victim and the crime scene appeared antiseptic and barren of anything that might prove in any way useful. Probably it would be difficult even to find a germ, much less a clue. There was only the ritual arrangement of meat on display.
“Like the others,” Nift said. “Same blades, same saw marks, same technique in reducing the whole to its parts.” He flashed his nasty smile. “If you put her back together, you’d have a beautiful woman.”
“Would you rather we leave?” Pearl asked.
Nift ignored her. “As you can see, she was facially a knockout. She had the build, too. Very muscular as well as shapely. I’d guess she danced, judging by the impressively developed musculature in her thighs and calves. Or ran cross-country or lifted weights or some such thing. But with her looks, I think it’d be show business.”
“Playing detective again,” Quinn said.
“Don’t you watch those programs on television? We forensics guys solve crimes all the time. We shoot pretty damned straight, too.”
“If this was television,” Pearl said, “I’d mute you.”
“Your partner takes life too seriously,” Nift said to Quinn.
“It’s death we’re talking about here,” Quinn said.
“Which brings us to cause of same,” Nift said. “Looks like drowning. Also, the usual traces of adhesive from duct tape. Body fluids, what have you, all washed neatly down the drain. Time of death probably early last evening; I’ll get you closer after the official postmortem.” He bent down and placed his steel probe in his black medical case, then peeled off his gloves and slipped them into a plastic bag, which he also placed in the case.
“So much for the prelim,” he said. “Whenever you’re done playing with her, you can send Celandra down to the morgue.”
They walked with him into the living room and watched him leave.
Fedderman, talking to one of the techs over near a window, noticed Pearl and Quinn and came over. Even though it was warm in the apartment he still had on his wrinkled brown suit coat, and had his notepad stuffed in the coat’s breast pocket behind where he had his shield displayed. He’d been taking notes. A stub of yellow pencil was tucked behind his right ear.
“Just a moment,” he said, excusing himself.
Quinn knew where he was going, though probably there was no need. It was a professional obligation to call on Celandra Thorn.
Fedderman looked pale and somber as he returned to the living room.
“The bastard!” was all he said. Then, “Like the others. Leaving us nothing to work with.”
“Someday maybe he’ll drop his wallet with his ID and photograph,” Pearl said.
Quinn wondered what was bothering her. He could under
stand her being sarcastic with that little prick Nift, but why was she riding Fedderman?
Still sobered by what he’d seen in the bathroom, Fedderman ignored her and pulled his notebook from his pocket. He flipped through the pages for a few seconds then stopped. “Victim’s name’s Cecelia Thorn,” he said. “Acted under the name Celandra. A friend she had a breakfast date with came by to get her, found the door unlocked, then let herself in and found what was left of Celandra.” He glanced over at Quinn and Pearl. “The name Thorn-”
“We know,” Pearl said, cutting him off.
“We should have thought of it,” Fedderman said. “It’s right there in the note between the lines, just like thorns are between the roses. If you’re thinking roses, you’re a fool if you’re not also thinking thorns. Like coffee and cream.”
“Ham and eggs,” Pearl said. “The Butcher is probably feeling pretty smart right now.”
“The smarter he feels,” Quinn said, “the sooner we’ll nail him.”
“Techs told me not to expect much in the way of useful prints,” Fedderman said. “There are various ones around the apartment, but they’re sure our guy wore gloves. No blood-work to be done, either. He drains them as best he can before he cuts, and whatever blood gets splashed or smeared around he scrubs away like an honest Dutch maid.”
“So we’ve got zilch again,” Pearl said.
“Not quite,” Fedderman said. “A neighbor down the hall seems to be the last one who saw Celandra alive, in the elevator about six o’clock yesterday evening.”
“According to Nift, that’s just about the time she was killed,” Quinn said.
“This”-Fedderman consulted his notes again-“Mrs. Ida Altmont was going out to walk her dog and stepped out of the elevator at lobby level when Celandra was coming in. They exchanged a few friendly words, then Celandra got in the elevator. The thing is, when the Altmont woman’s dog was finished doing its business, Mrs. Altmont went grocery shopping, then stopped at a Starbucks for a coffee. Got back home about eight o’clock and saw a man leaving the lobby carrying a white box. He had on a gray shirt and dark pants, and she thinks he mighta been a deliveryman of some sort. Not much help on the description. Average height and weight. Dark hair, she thinks, but he was wearing a baseball cap. She remembered him because her dog growled at him even though he was over a hundred feet away, and the man looked what she called furtive.”
Quill sighed. “Furtive, huh?”
“You don’t often hear a witness say furtive,” Fedderman said.
“He was carrying a box,” Pearl reminded them. “The Butcher’s gotta have something to lug around his cutting tools and power saw.”
“And maybe an apron or change of clothes in case he gets bloody,” Fedderman added.
“Let’s canvass the building,” Quinn said. “Make sure nobody got a delivery or had a pickup around eight last night.”
“We’ve also got Debrina Fluor,” Fedderman said.
Quinn and Pearl looked at him.
“She’s downstairs in the unmarked. She’s a dancer and friend of the victim, the one who let herself in and discovered the body. Pretty little thing.”
“You go down and get her statement,” Quinn said. “I’ll tell the paramedics they can remove the body soon as the techs are finished here. Then Pearl and I will see what Ida Altmont has to say.”
44
The butcher shop stench came after them as they walked a short distance down the hall. Or maybe they carried it with them.
Pearl wondered with sudden irrational panic if maybe they always would.
The Altmont apartment was three doors down. Quinn knocked, and the door promptly opened.
A small, hairy brown dog ignored Quinn and acted as if it wanted to tear Pearl’s leg off. The stocky redheaded woman who’d opened the door adroitly scooped up the dog and clasped it tightly to her breast, saying, “No, no, no, Edgemore. We say no, no, no to naughtiness.”
Shouldn’t we all, Pearl thought, wishing she could have kicked the hairy little bastard.
Quinn was smiling. “Edgemore,” he said. “Nice name. Nice dog.” He reached out and petted the dog, which became instantly quiet and licked his hand.
“It’s sort of a family name,” Ida Altmont said. Pearl noticed for the first time that the woman’s face and eyes were puffy, as if she’d been crying. Though she seemed younger at a glance, he guessed her age as about sixty. “Such a horrible, horrible thing that happened to Celandra,” she said. “And right down the hall. So horrible.”
Naughtiness, thought Pearl.
Ida Altmont sat down in the corner of a graceful blue-patterned sofa with dainty mahogany legs. Pearl noticed there was brown dog hair on one of the throw pillows. She and Quinn remained standing, watching as the distraught woman drew a handkerchief from a pocket of her gray skirt. She didn’t use the handkerchief, merely crumpled it and gripped it tightly in her right hand, keeping it in reserve in case grief or fear overcame her.
“Did Celandra Thorn seem her usual self when you and she talked at the elevator?” Quinn asked her.
“Oh, yes. Very friendly. Celandra was always friendly to everyone.”
“You told Detective Fedderman about the man you saw leaving the building when you returned from walking Edgemore.”
Ida Altmont beamed, obviously pleased that he’d remembered the dog’s name. All in all pleased with Quinn, this mature, ruggedly handsome cop favoring her with his attentiveness. “That’s right. Edgemore and I had gone grocery shopping for some salad vegetables, then we stopped for lattes at Starbucks before returning home.”
“That would have been about eight o’clock?”
“As near as I can remember.”
Under Quinn’s seemingly casual questioning she recounted how she’d been approaching the building, and when she was almost there an average-size, average-looking man came out and bounded down the concrete steps to the sidewalk. She tightened her grip on the handkerchief and waved it in the general direction of her face. “He was carrying a large white box and looked���”
Quinn and Pearl waited patiently.
“Furtive,” Ida Altmont said.
Pearl had been expecting average.
“What size was the box?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, I’m a poor judge of such things, but I’d say it was about as wide as it was high, maybe eight or ten inches, and quite long, maybe twenty-four inches. It looked like one of those white boxes florists use for long-stemmed flowers, only somehow heavier, sturdier.”
“A very good description,” Quinn said. “Are you a trained observer?”
Ida Altmont fidgeted about, made uneasy by the compliment. “Oh, no, no. It was still light out, and I do watch things when Edgemore and I go for our walks. We like to notice what’s going on around us.”
Quinn smiled at her. “If only Edgemore could talk.”
Pearl was pretty sure what Edgemore would say, and didn’t like it.
“Sometimes,” Ida Almont said seriously, “it’s almost as if he can.”
“What would he say about the man you two saw?” Quinn asked.
Pearl was impressed. She’d thought he was simply buttering up the woman.
“Edgemore wouldn’t have liked him,” Ida Altmont said immediately. “He would have said the man was in too much of a hurry and looked furtive.”
“Maybe he was running late and had more deliveries,” Quinn suggested. “So why would Edgemore be suspicious?”
“Why, because he’s a dog. They know things about people; they notice things we don’t.”
“Such as?”
Ida Altmont sat back, frowning, and her eyes widened. Then suddenly she smiled, as if memory clicking into place had tickled her. “Well, it didn’t seem that he was from a nearby restaurant, making a takeout delivery on foot. It wasn’t that kind of package, and he simply didn’t look the type. And Edgemore and I thought it odd that a deliveryman would be dashing about so when he was leaving, and carrying a package he’d
apparently failed to deliver. Also, we could see up and down the block and there was no delivery truck. Surely if the man we saw was there to make a delivery of such a large package, he would have parked his truck or van nearby. There were available spaces right in front of the building, I’m sure.”
“My, my,” Quinn said, “you’re an excellent observer!”
Ida Altmont batted her false eyelashes at him. “We do try.”
“What was parked on the block?”
“Oh, cars. Lots of cars.”
“Do you remember which of them was closest to your apartment building?”
“A white one, I think. Large. With stickers plastered all over the bumpers advising us to vote for the wrong people. It belongs to Mr. Cammering downstairs. Why aren’t those political stickers ever pasted on straight?”
“I don’t know, dear. Were there any unfamiliar cars?”
“Many of them. I really can’t remember much about them. But I am certain that Edgemore and I saw no delivery truck, yet there was a deliveryman.” She said it as if they’d observed an impressive magic trick.
“Might the man have gotten into one of the cars?”
“No, no. When Edgemore and I entered the building, he was near the end of the block, still walking.”
Which wouldn’t necessarily mean he lives nearby, Pearl thought, only that he traveled by bus, subway, or cab, or that he had the good sense not to park his car near the building where he intended to commit murder.
“Did you notice any lettering or a company logo on his jacket?” Quinn asked.
“No, but I might have been too far away to notice. And it all happened rather fast.”
Quinn thanked Ida Altmont for her time and her help, then gave her his card and asked her to call if she remembered anything else about last night.
Now that he was finished with Ida, Pearl spoke to her. “You said the deliveryman wouldn’t have parked far away with such a large package. Did it appear heavy to you?”
“Why, yes. Yes, it did. More heavy than large, actually, if that makes sense.”
“It does,” Pearl said, thinking steel blades and a portable saw.
