by John Lutz
Fedderman’s shot again. His three fellow golfers were already on the green. He was isolated in what seemed a forest of palm trees near a running creek. There was his ball. Not a bad lie, on a stretch of grass that wasn’t so high, because the sun never reached it beneath the closely grouped palms.
Something moved near the creek. Fedderman stared but saw nothing in the tall grass. He’d heard about alligators on the golf course but had never seen one, even on his frequent journeys into the rough. Still, he was sure he’d seen some kind of movement not human and it gave him the creeps.
He quickly approached his ball and set himself. He’d have to keep the shot low and get the ball between the trunks of two palm trees if he even had a chance to get near the barely visible green.
“Shoot the ball!” Chet yelled. “Shoot the ball, Larry!”
Shoot you, you dumb bastard!
Movement again, in the corner of his vision. There sure as hell was something over there in the shadows.
Fedderman took a quick practice swing, then hurried his shot.
He really nailed this one. Solid. It felt great.
The ball flew about ten feet, bounced off a palm trunk, and rocketed straight back and hit Fedderman in the head.
He threw down his club and clutched his skull, then staggered out into the searing sunlight. His cleated golf shoes snagged in the tall grass and he almost fell. Chet was yelling something, maybe laughing.
Damn Chet!
Damn golf!
Damn Florida!
He had to get out of here! Had to!
Fedderman’s cell phone chirped.
4
Two months earlier
Shellie Marston paced in the vast glass and marble atrium of the CitiGroup Building at Third Avenue and Fifty-third Street. She walked again past a display window and tried to glance at her reflection without attracting attention. She saw a woman in her late twenties with medium-cut blond hair, a definitely filled-out but not too fat figure in a new maroon Avanti sweat suit and startlingly white New Balance jogging shoes. She wore a white scarf around her neck. Too much? Not considering that she was wearing no jewelry other than small gold hoop earrings, and her very practical-looking wristwatch with its black Velcro band. This was supposed to be a casual first meeting with…David Adams. It took her a second to recall his name. A meeting in a public place arranged by E-Bliss.org.
The atrium wasn’t very crowded, but all the hard surfaces created an echoing effect that made it seem that way. Voices and shuffling soles created a constant background buzz. New Yorkers and tourists alike were strolling along the lines of shops or hurrying to and from the escalators.
As she looked away from the display window, Shellie saw that one of the small round tables set outside the shops was available. She’d bought an egg cream in a foam cup so she’d have something to do with her hands. Carrying it carefully so it wouldn’t spill, she quickly laid claim to the tiny table and sat down. She placed the cup just so on the napkin she’d been provided.
His first impression would be of her seated. Was that okay?
If she sat gracefully enough. She made sure her thighs were together and placed one New Balance jogger slightly in front of the other, rested her left hand in her lap. That should present a reasonably graceful picture.
She raised her left hand briefly to glance at the watch on her wrist. He was five minutes late. She nervously took a sip of egg cream. Was he actually going to show up? Or was she going to sit here another—how long—fifteen minutes? The two old men playing chess at the nearest table had stolen looks at her; they knew she was waiting for someone.
Shellie tried not to feel embarrassed. It didn’t matter if she was stood up, she told herself, not in New York. This city was full of improbable and unpredictable characters.
None of whom she knew more than casually, however. Shellie had been in the city a little more than a month. She was still operating on the inheritance she’d brought with her from Bluebonnet, Nebraska. All her mother had in the world, plus her mother’s life insurance money. Shellie’s dad had died ten years ago. A distant aunt had died only a few months ago, and Shellie had no siblings. She was on her own in the world, which was one reason why she’d decided to start a new life in New York.
Why not the biggest, most interesting city in the country? Shellie had her nerve, and her college degree in general education. Always a loner, there was no one she was particularly friendly with in Bluebonnet. There was nothing in the romance area, certainly, now that she’d broken off her affair with Mark Drucker. Hulking and ever-smiling Mark. Big high school football hero, college dropout, and TV addict. All Mark wanted to do was have sex and watch movies and shows on TV. Old The Dukes of Hazzard episodes. My God! Well, Shellie hoped that by now he’d found someone to share his passions, both in front of the TV and in the backseat of his meticulously restored ’69 Camaro (his real true love). For her it was time for something more challenging and promising. Time to see if she could make it on her own.
And she could—she was sure of it. But she was so damned lonely. New York could do that to you. There you were, swimming in an ocean of humanity, and if you knew no one well, you were as isolated as if you were a castaway on a remote island.
Shellie had finally given in to something she’d been long considering. Using a matchmaking service to alleviate her loneliness hadn’t seemed like the best idea she’d ever had, but she’d finally decided to give it a try. Sometimes in life you had to take a chance.
After spending weeks visiting the website of E-Bliss.org, she’d filled out the detailed questionnaire that allowed the agency to match her with the best possible bet as a future mate. Then she’d waited.
After slightly more than a week, the nervously anticipated e-mail had appeared on her computer screen. The attached profile hadn’t revealed much about her prospective soul mate, David Adams. It hadn’t even included his photo. Well, that was okay. Shellie remembered how hesitant she’d been to send her photo to E-Bliss.org. After all, once your image was on the Internet, who knew where it might pop up? Someone might even superimpose her head on the body of another woman doing God knew what. Maybe even committing unnatural acts. Shellie had heard of it happening.
She’d been permitted to choose the public place that was to be the scene of their first meeting, so here she was at the agreed-upon time.
Now it was ten minutes past that time, and here was Shellie still waiting to share conversation and perhaps another egg cream with the first date she’d had since moving to New York. (She didn’t count the scuzzy guy who’d stuck out his tongue at her and tried to pick her up outside Starbucks last week.)
On the other side of the atrium, pretending now and then to look into the show window of a luggage shop, David Adams watched her. Shellie Marston. From Nebraska, no less. He smiled. Maybe he’d been expecting too much. She wasn’t perfect, but she’d do.
Adams was wearing neatly pressed khakis, a blue pullover shirt with a collar, white jogging shoes. Even from this distance he could see that Shellie was also wearing white joggers. His smile widened. Already they had something in common. Maybe this would really work.
He was a handsome man with regular features not easily remembered from a glance. It took a while for his bland but masculine visage to register as attractive. His hair was dark brown, wavy, and worn a bit long to disguise the fact that his ears stuck out. He was slightly under six feet tall and moved with athletic ease. His body was compact and muscular, his waist narrow. His was the sort of physique that wore clothes well. He was all in all nonthreatening, and there was certainly nothing not to like about him. Easy manner, nice smile, clean, and well groomed. He was the sort who’d fit well in most women’s romantic fantasies. And of course when he did finally bed them, they saw him as the ideal from the desires and dreams they’d carried since their first kiss.
He took another longer and bolder look at Shellie Marston and decided she was a go. He moved toward her with an easy grace, gaze
fixed on her.
She’d spotted him now. These first few minutes were important. He watched her face.
It was, as usual, good strategy to be late. For an instant, relief that he’d shown up at all flooded her features. Then she had her mask on again.
He smiled at her and she managed to smile back.
Shellie made herself smile at the man she was now sure was approaching her table. He must be David Adams. She didn’t know why she’d had to make herself smile. There was nothing wrong with this guy. Not that she could see, anyway. He didn’t look like the type who’d need a matchmaking service. But then Shellie didn’t see herself as that type, either.
She told herself again that there was nothing disreputable or dangerous about Internet hookups. Not anymore. This was a competitive and busy world, especially here in the largest and busiest of cities. People didn’t have time to move tentatively in finding and developing relationships, as they often still did in Nebraska. She’d even known a girl in high school whose prospective suitors had to ask her parents’ permission to date her.
Quaint, Shellie thought. And even if someone wanted to ask Shellie’s father for her hand, she didn’t have a father. She had only herself. And she could make up her own mind.
The closer David Adams got to her table, the more sure she was that she’d made the right decision in contacting E-Bliss.org.
“Shellie?” he asked when he was within a few feet of her. Even that one word—her name—was smooth and softly modulated. This was a gentle man, obviously. A bit hesitant and shy, like herself. A gentle man, but not at all effeminate.
“Shellie,” she confirmed, then smiled and stood up. She felt the sole of one New Balance slide over the toe of the other. Not noticeable. “You must be David.”
They shook hands. Gentle again.
Flesh upon flesh. Shellie hoped there might be some electricity there. Some arc of emotion that suggested a future truly meaningful. Physical attraction wasn’t everything, except at first.
She wasn’t disappointed.
5
The present
Cindy Sellers sat alone at a corner table in P.J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street. Around her were muted voices, the occasional clink of flatware on china, and laughter from the adjoining bar. The mingled scents of spices hung in the air.
The restaurant part of the venerable tavern was dim, with dark wood paneling, and there was something about the young woman seated in isolation before her bowl of stew and a Guinness that discouraged any of the rogues and business types at the bar or some of the other tables from approaching her. She was reasonably attractive, with inquisitive large brown eyes, short brown hair, and a trim figure, but there was an intensity about her that sometimes drove people away. She was very good at going after those people, overcoming their reluctance, and getting them to talk about matters they wouldn’t have dreamed of telling anyone else.
It was still too early for the dinner crowd, and the place was quiet enough for her to think, which was why she’d come here. Before her on the table were her notes on what she’d chosen to call the Torso Murders, as well as a revised draft of what would be her story.
And a hell of a story it was. The time was near when she’d no longer feel obligated to keep it all off the record, as she’d promised Renz.
In fact, maybe the time was here.
Cindy took a sip of Guinness and allowed that the public had a right to know if a sadistic killer was in its midst and might kill again. It was, in fact, her professional obligation to inform the people, as long as it would sell papers and advance her journalism career. But Renz was police commissioner now, not just another workaday cop with rank, and he was riding a political high. Of course, he didn’t know that he wasn’t her only source, and that she was aware he’d called in retired homicide captain Frank Quinn, along with his detective team, that pushy bitch Pearl and the hapless but occasionally shrewd Fedderman, to work the case. There were people in the NYPD hierarchy who didn’t like the prospect of semioutsiders covering themselves and Renz with glory so Renz could advance to an even higher office. These dissatisfied cops were people Cindy Sellers could and did use.
Certainly Renz wouldn’t like it if the quasi-official presence of Quinn and his team was revealed too soon. On the other hand, he knew they’d be media subjects sooner or later—that was even the idea. They were, after all, part of Renz’s team—working for him in particular as well as for the city. And Renz wouldn’t be shocked by the fact that the NYPD had more than one leak.
Still, he was the commissioner. Cindy understood and respected power. She would give it its due, up to a point.
She took a long pull of Guinness and fished her cell phone from her purse on the chair beside her. Renz’s direct number was on her speed dial.
No answer.
She tried his cell phone.
Apparently it was turned off.
Cindy dialed the general number of the Puzzle Palace, her term for One Police Plaza, and was politely put on ignore. She sighed and drummed her fingers. Waiting patiently for anything wasn’t in Cindy’s nature.
Hell with him, she thought, cutting the connection. She’d tried to give him a heads-up before releasing the story every other media outlet in the city probably knew about anyway but couldn’t confirm. The clock was ticking and she’d done what she could.
Cindy had been here before and knew how it worked. When City Beat hit the newsstands and vending machines tomorrow morning, the hounds would be loosed. Renz as well as the killer would have to play the fox. Quinn and his detectives would occupy the area between hounds and foxes, perilous ground.
Keyed up as she was with anticipation, Cindy wasn’t hungry. She took another long sip of Guinness and pushed aside her barely touched bowl of stew. Placing her half-rim reading glasses low on the bridge of her nose, she arranged the draft of her story—which was jotted down in her own custom shorthand that only she could read—before her on the table. Then she flicked down the menu on her cell phone and pressed the button that dialed her editor at City Beat.
“Are you sitting down?” she asked when he picked up.
Without waiting for an answer, she told him what she had and began reading aloud into the phone, but not so loud that anyone in the restaurant might overhear.
Just as she’d thought, he loved it.
By the time she flipped down the lid of her phone, Cindy’s appetite had magically returned. She pulled the still-warm bowl of stew back close to her from across the table and ordered another Guinness.
He’d sawn the broomstick in half. Now he finished sharpening one end and began the sanding. He enjoyed this part. He would use increasingly more finely grained sandpaper as he shaped the end into a gradually tapered fine point.
For almost an hour he sanded, idly watching television as he worked. An old spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood was playing. The TV was on mute, so he could only read Eastwood’s taut dialogue in closed caption at the bottom of the screen. That was okay. He’d seen the movie half a dozen times and could practically fill in the dialogue himself. The rhythmic sound of the sandpaper on wood was soothing as he felt the tapering broomstick take shape in his hands.
Finally, when his hands and forearms began to ache from the effort, he set the broomstick and sandpaper aside. He ran a finger along the shaft of the broomstick, all the way to its point. The wood was smooth now and would require only about an hour’s more sanding with the finely grained paper. Then he would go over it with tack cloth, and later he’d apply a good oil and rub it in well. Not too much oil. He wanted the sharpened broomstick smooth, but not too smooth. Feeling the resistance, that was part of it.
It wasn’t supposed to excite him; that hadn’t been part of the plan. But it did. There was no denying it. And it made him wonder, did they have to be dead?
His throat was tight. He swallowed.
Amazing, he thought, the things you discovered about yourself. It was his job that kept opening doors
in his mind. He was so good at what he did, sometimes it scared him.
Eastwood chewed on his stubby cigar and squinted at him from the TV screen.
Eastwood, or at least the characters he usually played in his movies, wouldn’t approve of him. But when the actor was younger, he might well have been handed altogether different kinds of scripts and would now be seen in an altogether different light. The man was an actor; his public image and probably his personal image had been shaped by the scripts he was given, written by someone he might never have met. In a way, we were all in the movies, whether we knew it or not.
He smiled at Eastwood, then went over to an antique rolltop desk and removed a drawer. Reaching into the cavity left by the missing drawer, he worked a wooden lever that opened a secret compartment in the side of the desk. From the compartment he withdrew a gray metal lockbox with the key in it. He turned the key, opened the lid, and reached in and got out a small Colt semiautomatic, holding the gun by its checked handle. It fired hollow-point twenty-two-caliber bullets and made little more noise than a loud slap. Not a powerful weapon, but the hollow points would penetrate a human being and break into pieces that would rip and tumble through bone and tissue and cause a great deal of localized damage. One careful shot to the heart was enough to bring someone down. If the wound itself wasn’t sufficient to kill, the person would lie there in shock. And while the person lay stunned and disbelieving, almost certainly dying, two shots to the head would be enough to make sure. That’s what the little Colt was—sure. He had a fondness for the gun.
He glanced at the silent TV screen. Eastwood was on a horse now, raising a lot of dust while galloping hell for leather over terrain that looked like Arizona but was probably in Italy.
What must that be like, flying across a purpling plain on a white and brown speckled horse? It must really impress the ladies. The ones in Rome and Milan, anyway.
