by John Lutz
Pearl felt herself flush. If this wasn’t bad enough, a horrible little prick like Nift could make it worse.
“You’re sick,” was all she said. Admirable restraint.
“She’s right,” Quinn said. He didn’t want Pearl getting out of control. Her temper was what had hamstrung her in her career, even before the missing knife incident that had resulted in her leaving the department.
Even awkwardly stooped over as he was, Nift somehow shrugged and made it look nonchalant. “Well, whatever I have, it isn’t fatal.”
He straightened up all the way and stretched his back, sighing and sticking out his stomach. Like a lot or short men, he stood with rigid posture, as if to make every inch count. Pearl saw that he was getting a little paunchy. He was wearing suspenders so his suit pants draped well. “To answer your question,” he said, “my guess is we’ll find water in her lungs, like with the other victims.” He pointed at the mottled bleached skin, some with bone protruding. “You can still find traces of adhesive from where he taped her.” He shifted around the aim of his index finger. “There, and there.”
Quinn nodded, but Pearl looked and saw nothing.
“The width is right for duct tape,” Nift said. His vision was better than Pearl’s. Also, he knew what to look for.
“She looks older than the other three,” Quinn said. Like Pearl, he was wondering about the variance in type.
Nift nodded. “She was well into her forties. And good tits or not, she wasn’t a looker. I think what really killed her was her name started with an N. Funny how serial killers like to play games. This one even went out of his way to murder a woman not his preferred type, just so he could spell your name right, Quinn.”
“Maybe, but there are plenty of attractive young brunettes whose surnames start with the letter N.”
“So something else could have attracted the killer to this victim. Maybe he’s a guy can’t resist a great rack. We might know more when we get to those boobs.”
Liking Nift less and less, Pearl backed out of the bathroom and left Quinn to deal with the obnoxious little medical examiner. As she did so, she couldn’t help but notice Nift’s shoes, gleaming black and as meticulously clean as what was left of Florence Norton. Strange how images stuck in the mind. Pearl knew that when she was an old lady she’d be able to recall those polished black wingtips contrasting with the clean tile floor and chalk-white body parts stacked neatly in the tub.
“Did you close her eyes?” Quinn asked, as Pearl backed into the hall.
“Sure did,” she heard Nift answer. “I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.”
So sensitive.
Pearl walked over to a small desk that was situated near a window so Florence would have natural light to work by during the day.
“Done with this?” she asked one of the techs.
He nodded. “We got what we can. Your turn.”
Pearl put on her evidence gloves anyway, before opening the top desk drawer. Maybe Florence knew who’d killed her and had his name in her address book. It had happened.
But not this time. There was a dog-eared address book, but it contained almost exclusively the phone numbers of merchants or fellow employees. Or women. It seemed Florence Norton hadn’t had much of a love life.
Still, the numbers would prove useful.
Other than the book, the desk contained only the usual pens, pencils, stamps, stationary, paid bills, and canceled checks for utilities or credit cards. There was a self-inking stamp with the victim’s name and address, a stack of old checkbook pads (which Pearl placed off to the side with the address book and checkbook), and a tangle of rubber bands and paper clips in a plastic drawer divider. Unpaid bills indicated that Florence still owed more than five thousand dollars on her MasterCard.
One way to beat them, Pearl thought, reminding herself that her own monthly payment was due.
Staying out of the techs’ way, she moved across the room to where Florence’s obvious Prada knockoff purse lay on a table near the door. Fedderman and the uniform, who were standing nearby, glanced at her, then moved away to give her room. They were still conversing in low tones. Pearl heard Fedderman say something about an Italian restaurant where the two men used to eat, asking if the place was still in business.
Good investigating, Feds. You’re sure to come away with something.
She caught the same tech’s eye and pointed to the purse. He nodded, then ignored her as thoroughly as did Fedderman and the uniform.
Pearl carefully unzipped the purse and began examining its contents: wadded tissue; a small folding umbrella that didn’t look as if it could be more than a foot in diameter when opened; loose change; a tiny round mirror; comb; lipstick; wrapped condom (Florence living in hope?); half a box of lemon-flavored cough drops; and a bulging red leather wallet.
It continued to bother Pearl that this victim wasn’t in her thirties, like the other victims, and she wouldn’t be regarded as a beauty. She’d died simply because of her last initial. And Quinn was right; there were lots of younger, more attractive brunettes whose last names began with the letter N, so why Florence?
Pearl decided to look through Florence’s wallet.
She withdrew it carefully from the purse, then opened it.
Lots of credit cards, way too many. Pearl wondered what the dead woman had owed on them combined. Or did she merely carry the extra cards as backup, as many women did? A plastic security blanket. Or were they in her wallet simply to make her feel richer?
The bills in the wallet added up to twenty-seven dollars. An old theater stub from a play called I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change was stuffed in among them. There were no photos, but there was a New York Public Library card, a small plastic calendar from an insurance company, a Metrocard, and a medical insurance card that had been laminated.
Pearl held the med insurance card up and squinted at it. Florence had belonged to an HMO Pearl had never heard of. Pearl, who was barely insured.
The card had Florence’s account number and the expiration date—six months from now. On the flip side of the card was some general information about the insured. She’d been five-foot-two and would have been forty-four in December. She—
Pearl felt a chill on her neck and stood motionless, staring at the card.
If she hadn’t once loved and lived with Quinn, she might not have noticed.
She returned to the bathroom, carrying the insurance card.
Quinn was still watching Nift work. Some of the body parts were spread out in the tub now. The head was near the drain. Quinn looked over at Pearl, his face completely without emotion—holding his feelings at bay like the pro he had been and still was. His dreams, the sudden unbidden images, would come later.
Fedderman had finished his conversation with the uniform and had come to stand in the bathroom doorway. He was looking over Pearl’s shoulder. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said softly, staring at what was in the tub.
“I guess He’s here someplace,” Nift said, still leaning over the tub, his voice echoing faintly against porcelain. “You want I should call Him?”
“We want you should go see him personally,” Pearl said.
She handed Quinn Florence’s medical insurance card.
He glanced at it, then looked inquisitively at her.
“The victim’s date of birth,” Pearl said. “December fourth. The same as yours.”
That caused Nift to pause in what he was doing. Pearl instantly regretted having told Quinn about this in his presence.
Nift turned only his head. “You and the victim shared a birthday?”
“It looks that way,” Quinn said.
“That’s why the killer couldn’t be so particular about looks,” Nift said. “He wanted one with your birthday and the last initial N. That’s why he killed such a dog.”
Pearl couldn’t hold it in. “You little asshole!”
Quinn gripped her shoulders, pulling her away from Nift, out of the bathroom. Pearl heard N
ift chuckle.
“He’s such a…a…” Pearl sputtered.
“But he’s right,” Fedderman said somberly. “First there’s the note to Renz about Quinn, then the dead women whose last initials are spelling out Quinn’s name, and now this victim, whose birthday’s the same as Quinn’s. She had two criteria to meet. The killer couldn’t be his usual particular self, which is why he settled for Florence.”
“Feds, why don’t you—”
“Ease up, Pearl.” Quinn handed her back Florence Norton’s insurance card. “And don’t forget the ‘coincidence’ of one of the victims living in your old apartment.”
“So what’s it all mean?” Pearl asked, still too angry, primarily at Nift, to think clearly.
“It suggests the killer maneuvered the police into assigning Quinn, and us, to track him down,” Fedderman said. “Spelling out Quinn’s name, he’s finishing what he started, and he chose a victim with Quinn’s birthday so we wouldn’t have any doubt about what he’s doing.”
“And so we know he’s in control,” Quinn said. “Moving us around like pawns.”
Pearl did some deep breathing, feeling her rage at Nift dissipating now that she had something else to occupy her mind. The person she should be mad at, the killer. “You really figure that’s what this is about?”
“It’s at least a possibility,” Fedderman said.
“We all know when we can be positive,” Quinn said.
“She did have pretty good boobs,” Nift called from the bathroom.
Pearl started toward him, but this time Fedderman held her back.
“Ignore the little prick, Pearl. He just wants to get to you. We’ve got other things to think about.”
They both knew what Quinn had meant. There was little doubt that the killer knew how to spell Quinn’s name: with two Ns.
13
Manhattan was like a kiln that had been shut down, but only temporarily and not for long. It was another morning already uncomfortably warm because of yesterday’s heat still permeating the city’s miles of concrete. Day after day, the heat built pressure. Off in the distance a siren wailed, bemoaning the meteorological injustice of it all.
“There was never much doubt he was jerking our strings,” Harley Renz said. “We just didn’t know how hard and how many strings.”
They were in Renz’s office at One Police Plaza, where it was at least cooler than outside. The office was small and looked as if it had been decorated by Eliot Ness. An old Thompson submachine gun was displayed in a glass-fronted case on the wall behind Renz’s desk. Also on the wall were framed certificates and awards Renz had accumulated through wile or war; a photo of him shaking hands with the mayor; another, older, photo of the two of them on a dais in a similar situation. In that one the younger, less saggy-faced Renz was holding up his right hand as if about to inhale from a cigarette he was smoking, only the cigarette had been airbrushed from the photo, leaving Renz looking like he was signaling someone somewhere that the number was two.
Quinn, seated between Pearl and Fedderman before Renz’s wide desk, glanced around and noted that everything in the office was either functional or laudatory, no doubt exactly the impression Renz wanted to project. Quinn recalled that he’d never been here when there wasn’t an open file with some fanned papers on Renz’s desk, as if he’d just been interrupted while pondering a case. This time maybe he really had been pondering, because the file was the autopsy report on Florence Norton.
“The killer must have gone to a lot of trouble to find a victim who shared Quinn’s birth date,” Pearl said. Renz was important enough to have an office with a window; light shone through the blinds and illuminated her black hair as if it were a raven’s wing.
Renz said, “Our guy’s resourceful, like you people are gonna have to be in order to catch him.”
Pearl didn’t figure there had to be a reply to that.
“Did the lab find anything he left behind on this one?” Quinn asked. He noticed something new on Renz’s desk, a small silver picture frame propped at an angle to face the chair where Renz sat. Quinn knew Renz was unmarried and had no children. He wondered who or what was in the photo, or whatever the silver frame contained. Maybe a romantic interest.
Renz swiveled a few inches this way and that in the brown leather chair while he shook is head no. “Forensics has got nothing to work with. Nothing left behind but death. Our sicko is pathologically neat.” He stopped swiveling and leaned forward in his chair; fitted small, rimless reading glasses onto his nose; and surveyed the Florence Norton file’s contents. “Postmortem indicates this one died by drowning, like the others. Sucked in almost half her bathwater. She was dismembered by a knife or knives, a hatchet or cleaver, and the same or a similar saw used to sever those joints too resistant for smaller cutting instruments.”
“Power saw?” Fedderman asked.
Renz nodded without looking up. The reading glasses picked up the light from the window and made him appear owlish and scholarly. “Same as with the other victims. Kind of saw you’d buy at Home Depot to build your deck.”
“Ah,” Fedderman said. Pearl couldn’t imagine Fedderman building a deck without cutting off at least a finger.
“The cleanser found on Florence’s body parts,” Renz continued, “was Whoosh, a common dishwasher detergent. The empty plastic container was found on the floor behind the commode. A bottle of carpet cleaner, also empty, and devoid of prints like the Whoosh squeeze bottle, was lying on its side in the hall outside the bathroom. An empty bleach container was in the kitchen, its cap in the sink. Apparently all three cleansers and purifiers were used, the dishwasher detergent last. Our neatnik makes do with whatever’s at hand.”
“All these containers wiped?” Quinn asked.
“Signs of wiping. Also signs that the killer wore rubber or latex gloves.”
“Consistent with the other crime scenes,” Pearl said.
“What else is consistent,” Renz said, removing his reading glasses and tucking them in his shirt pocket, “is that we’ve got nothing to work with.”
“We can be pretty sure he’ll be looking for another N victim,” Fedderman said. As usual, one of his white shirt cuffs was unbuttoned and dangling, the shirt’s arm too long for his coat sleeve. Fedderman unconsciously buttoned it as he spoke. It came immediately unbuttoned.
“Which leaves us with a question,” Renz said. “How much should we tell the media?”
“What they’re going to find out anyway,” Quinn said, “which is everything. The more information that’s out there, the more it’s liable to shake something loose.”
“And we have an obligation,” Pearl said.
“Obligation?” Renz seemed puzzled as if by some foreign term.
“To warn dark-haired women with last-initial Ns that they’re in particular danger.”
“Don’t they already know that?” Renz asked.
“Not all of them. And not how much danger.”
Renz looked inquisitively at Quinn. The sun glanced off his glasses again, giving him the same owlish expression.
“Pearl’s right,” Quinn said. “We’ve got an obligation to warn them. This psycho finishes what he starts, and he’s going to finish spelling out my name.”
“We’ve gotta make damned sure they’re warned.” Pearl pressing her point. Maybe too hard, judging by the expression on Renz’s face. She knew she had the reputation of getting too passionate about her cases, sometimes losing her cool. She glanced at Fedderman for support.
“Sure,” he said daringly.
“It’s the politically smart thing to do,” Quinn said, coming to Pearl’s rescue, “as well as the right thing. That combination happens seldom enough you oughta take advantage of it, Harley.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” Renz said. “I’ll issue a press release making it clear that the Butcher’s next victim will likely be a brunette between twenty and fifty with a surname beginning with N.”
Pearl smiled, pleased. If most New
York women hadn’t already heard or caught on, by this time tomorrow they’d be in the know. Brunettes all over the city would be going blond.
“What about the birth date?” Fedderman asked.
“Let’s not mention it,” Renz said. “There’s no guarantee the killer will use it again, and it might cause women not born on Quinn’s birthday to be complacent.”
Everyone agreed that made sense.
As they stood to leave Renz’s office, Quinn made a thing of maneuvering his chair back into some kind of alignment. It enabled him to sneak a look at who or whatever was in the silver frame on Renz’s desk.
It was Renz.
No cell phone vibrator had been found among Florence Norton’s possessions, but Pearl was bored, so she figured why not?
It might not be a bad idea to return to Nuts and Bolts this evening. The lounge was, after all, the one thing other than last initials that seemed to connect at least two of the killer’s victims.
As Pearl had suspected, the place looked better when open for business, illuminated and full of customers. The soft lighting from the rows of dim crystal chandeliers helped obscure imperfections in the ambience and the patrons. And there was music. The background kind. A woman was diddling melodically and faintly on a piano that Pearl hadn’t noticed on her previous visit, seemingly letting her imagination prompt her fingers over the keys without any planning whatsoever, somehow making it work to create a pleasant, restful mood.
Most of the tables were occupied, and all but a few of the stools at the bar. Behind the bar stood Victoria, looking much more beautiful in the flattering light, wearing a paisley blouse that allowed for some cleavage. Her highly piled hair didn’t look so structured now, and her dark bangs were parted in the middle and pushed to the side, making her overly made-up eyes seem larger.
Pearl walked over and stood alongside an empty stool, near where a white towel was spread out on the bar. It was where the servers bustled over to pick up the drinks Victoria concocted.
“Busy place,” Pearl said, when Victoria noticed her and moved to stand by her.
