by John Lutz
“Let’s do what we must to keep it that way.”
“Another scotch?”
Gloria yawned. “No thanks. I’m tired enough already.” She moved again toward the door, this time with more resolution.
“The broomstick, Gloria.”
She paused with her hand on the knob, posing, he thought. “What about it?”
“When you inserted it, was he alive?”
“Go to bed, Victor. Read yourself to sleep.”
She slid out the door into the plushly carpeted hall that absorbed the sound of her leaving.
Victor poured another two fingers of scotch into his glass, wondering if he knew Gloria as well as he thought he did.
Or knew himself.
29
“A man,” Quinn said, staring down at the bare torso wedged in with a cluster of black plastic trash bags and cardboard boxes of refuse.
“Obviously,” Pearl said.
It was a warm night, and the cloying stench of corruption hung in the still air. It might simply have been from the garbage, but there was more than garbage before them.
They watched the CSU techs working around the torso inside a taped-off area alongside a pizza joint on the Lower West Side. The partial corpse had been discovered earlier that evening when one of the cooks carried out some garbage from the kitchen. A nearby neon sign advertising the best pizza in New York cast a greenish glare over the scene, making the torso seem more like a stage prop than what was left of a real human being.
“Our guy swings both ways,” Fedderman said, pointing with a long finger protruding from his oversized sleeve. “Notice the broomstick?”
“Hard not to notice,” Quinn said. “There’s also a lot of blood on the stick. Not like the others.”
Pearl understood at once what he meant. “Sweet Jesus! He was alive when it went in.”
“Looks that way.”
Fedderman moved in to take a closer look. “Not much doubt about it. And it wasn’t gentle.” He straightened up and moved away, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. “I hope to hell we don’t have a copycat.”
“Hard to imagine,” Pearl said.
“This whole goddamned thing is hard to imagine.”
“Whole world,” Pearl said.
Quinn looked at her. Philosophizing at crime scenes wasn’t like Pearl. The Milton Kahn effect, maybe.
“It makes my hypothesis more likely,” she said. “About a compulsive, psychosexual serial killer not being what we’ve been chasing. That could all be a diversion.”
“Profiler says no,” Fedderman said.
“He’s got her fooled,” Pearl said.
“More likely a copycat,” Fedderman said.
Quinn shot a glance at the ghastly green torso. At the two neatly placed small-caliber bullet holes in the chest, among hairs that were just beginning to gray. The victim might have been around fifty, but it would take the medical examiner to know for sure. Almost certainly the bullets were still in him. “We’ll know about the copycat theory as soon as we get postmortem and the ballistics test results on the bullets.”
Motion caught his eye and he looked toward the front of the building, where more cars were arriving. Not all of them were NYPD. The media had caught the scent and were on the scene. Quinn knew more were on the way.
“Wolves,” Pearl said.
“Useful ones sometimes, though,” Quinn said.
“That’ll be a tough sell with me.”
“I’m going back to the office,” Quinn said. His Lincoln was parked out front, half a block down so it might not attract media attention. There were more black Lincoln Town Cars in New York than any vehicle other than cabs, but the media knew his car’s license number, so he had to be careful. “You and Feds talk to the people in the restaurant, especially the guy who found the body, then drive the unmarked back to the office. Meanwhile, I’ll be in touch with Renz and find out as soon as possible what comes out of the morgue and lab.”
As Quinn was walking toward the street, he saw Nift approaching confidently from the opposite direction. He was wearing a well-cut black suit and lugging his black medical case, bouncing jauntily, as he always did, with each step.
He smiled when he saw Quinn. “Leaving so soon?”
“Miles to go before I sleep,” Quinn said.
“Poetry, no less. And I thought you were the victim, you being so green and all.”
“He’s back there waiting for you,” Quinn said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the torso.
Nift raised his eyebrows in surprise. “He?”
“I know it’s a disappointment for you, but this time the victim’s a man.”
“The Torso Killer offed a man? What’s that mean?”
“Means he’s dead,” Quinn said and walked on.
As soon as he turned the building’s corner and started for his car, he heard shoe leather scuffing on concrete, a voice: “Captain Quinn, can we have a statement?”
“Sorry,” Quinn said, “but no comment.”
“But you will say we can assume this is another Torso Murder?” another voice, a woman’s, asked.
“Assume away.”
More shoe leather noise, even though Quinn was walking faster. He sensed numbers behind him, but he didn’t want to turn around and count. It sounded as if they were about to close in on him. He could imagine the headline: MOBBED BY THE MEDIA. The Lincoln was still a hundred feet away.
“Anything different about this one?” the same woman asked.
Quinn put on some speed. “You might ask the M.E., Dr. Nift. He’s back there now with him.”
Several voices in unison: “Him?”
At first Quinn thought they were talking about Nift. Then he realized otherwise.
Shit! Quinn regretted his slip immediately. Not that it mattered; they’d learn it soon enough. Still, he didn’t like goofing up that way. A victim of another sex was just the sort of information the police should have kept away from the press. Something cops could know and all those nutcases making false confessions wouldn’t imagine.
Too late now.
“Is this victim a man?” several voices asked, almost in unison.
“Captain Quinn?” The woman’s voice. Grating and insistent. “Is this victim—”
“I think that’s what Dr. Nift said,” Quinn told them, as he finally reached the car and pressed the fob to unlock the doors. “Dr. Nift knows more than anybody about this one.” He got the door open and managed to ease his way inside the car as the media wolves crowded around him. “He’s the little guy poking around the body who looks like Napoleon dressed like a banker.”
Quinn removed some fingers wrapped around the edge of the door and got it closed, then hit the universal lock button, started the car, and got out of there.
In the rearview mirror he saw at least half a dozen shadowy figures hurrying back toward where the ghastly green torso lay, toward Nift and his black bag of tricks.
Quinn, sitting at his desk in the office, looked up when the door opened and Pearl and Fedderman came in. They looked tired. They should—it was almost midnight. It must have been a late night for some of the pizza people, too.
Pearl went over and slumped in her desk chair. Fedderman trudged to a brass hook on the wall and hung up his wrinkled suit coat, then rolled his chair out toward the middle of the room and sat down wearily.
“Anything?” Quinn asked, knowing the answer.
“Nothing,” Pearl said. “Nobody saw, heard, or smelled a thing other than pizza. The guy who discovered the torso, kid named Enrico, was still shook up, but his story’s simple enough. The head cook sent him out with the garbage to add to the pile of sealed plastic bags, and there was the victim. Kid thought it was a fake at first, some kind of prop. Then it dawned on him what he was looking at and he went back into the kitchen shaking and told the head cook. The head cook came out and verified his story, then went back into the kitchen and called the police.”
“We talked to people in the neighboring buildings,
too,” Fedderman said. “Same no story there.”
“Our guy’s nothing if not careful,” Quinn said.
“According to the pizza employees,” Pearl said, “no one had gone out the restaurant’s back door since about eleven this morning. The torso could have been there quite a while. It was half buried in all the trash, so the eleven o’clock employee might not have noticed it. Busy as the street is, our guess is that it was put there the night before, when hardly anybody was around. It’s a block of businesses, so it’s a good place to ditch a body after dark.”
“Like the other places where we’ve found the torsos,” Quinn said.
“Our guy,” Pearl said.
Fedderman ignored her. It was clear they’d reached the point where they were getting on each other’s nerves. Quinn understood.
“What’s next, boss?” Fedderman asked. “More coffee, or bed?”
“Information, then bed,” Quinn said. “Ballistics did a rush job, and the bullets in and near the heart were twenty-twos, fired by the same gun that killed the other victims.”
“There goes the copycat theory,” Pearl said.
Fedderman made an obviously Herculean effort not to reply to her taunt.
“We’ll know more about the postmortem tomorrow,” Quinn said. “Something different about the broomstick stake, though. The others were cedar; this one’s made of poplar. And the cuts that sharpened it are more visible and were made by shorter, shallower strokes, and from a sharper blade. And it wasn’t sanded as fine. Also, no traces of furniture oil.”
“Ouch!” Fedderman said.
“Believe it,” Quinn told him. “Nift did confirm the broomstick was inserted via the rectum when the victim was alive.”
“After he was shot, though?” Fedderman asked.
“Nift couldn’t be sure. The bullets might not have killed him right away. Nift said he might have lived another few minutes.”
“Hard minutes,” Fedderman said.
“All that blood,” Pearl said. “Any prints on the broomstick?”
“Of course not,” Quinn said. “And what you were looking at wasn’t all blood.”
“I guess not,” Pearl said, remembering the foul odor in the vicinity of the torso.
Everyone sat silently for a long while. Quinn wondered what the other two were thinking. He wasn’t even sure what he thought about this departure, undoubtedly made by the same killer they’d been stalking. There were variations, sure, most notably the gender of the victim, but they were still looking at the same gun, same grisly M.O., same killer. Had to be.
Pearl yawned. Didn’t excuse herself. “Bed?”
“Bed,” Quinn said, standing and switching off his desk lamp.
“I bet I won’t dream,” Pearl said.
“I bet I will,” Fedderman said.
30
Jill hadn’t been able to sleep since her visit to Madeline’s apartment. She played it over and over in her mind, trying to remember the slightest details, trying to be sure the new Madeline hadn’t paid her any undue attention. She couldn’t be positive.
She paced her apartment, moving like a disassociated spirit from room to room. She was exhausted but couldn’t make herself sit down. In the kitchen, she paused at the sink and ran water into a glass, gulped it down. She knew she should eat something, but her appetite had been replaced by anxiety.
It was possible—no, now it was likely—that mad Madeline’s story was true. But even if it wasn’t, there sure as hell was something creepy going on. And if Madeline’s story was true, that meant Tony was…
Jill didn’t dare let herself think about that. It seemed impossible.
She remembered mad Madeline’s distrust of the police. But not all of them. The problem was, which ones could be trusted?
Paranoia.
Jill refused to let her mind tilt in that direction.
She realized she didn’t have anyone to turn to. That was how she’d gotten into this mess in the first place. There was only Tony. Ordinarily he’d be the first person she’d go to for help, but if the real Madeline Scott was right, he’d be the last person she should go to.
Jill tried again to bend her mind around the seemingly inescapable conclusion, but again it was impossible for her to imagine Tony intending she should come to any harm. Incomprehensible. Gentle, loving Tony.
She ran another glass of water and carried it into the living room. She slumped in the corner of the sofa, feeling small and vulnerable, and absently used the remote to switch on the TV.
The set was tuned to a local channel, and a talking head wearing a serious expression said that another Torso Murder victim had been found. “The torso of a man…”
A man?
Jill turned up the volume and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.
The news report had gone to tape. A tall, rawboned man in a white shirt and red tie, with strong features and a bad haircut, was striding just ahead of a gaggle of journalists dogging him with recorders and TV cameras. He ignored them and walked faster, nudged one of them aside, and opened the door of a large black car. It was a graceful but powerful movement. People instinctively got out of this man’s way.
“Captain Quinn?” one of the media people, a woman, kept repeating. “Captain Quinn?”
The big man said something unintelligible as he lowered himself into the car. He had to remove the hand of a man from the door so he could get it closed. There was a shot of the knot of journalists standing and staring as the big black car squatted with power and drove away fast.
The camera moved in for a close-up of the woman who’d been calling the man’s name. She was hastily rearranging her breeze-mussed hair with her free hand while holding a microphone with the other. Behind her, other media people were moving back in the direction they’d come from when they’d followed the big man. A few of them were running.
“As you can see,” the woman said, “the police aren’t yet giving out any information on this new and startling development.” A lock of blond hair flopped over her left eye, and without closing the eye she shoved the hair back in place. “Lead investigator Captain Frank Quinn did let slip that this time the torso is that of a man. Speculation at this point in time is that this murder was the work of a copycat killer, as so often happens in these sorts of cases. This is something that impacts the entire city, and you can count on Team News to get the facts as soon as they’re available and pass them on to you. Bill?”
The news anchor named Bill reappeared on the screen. “Thanks, Mary.” He gazed solemnly at the camera. “As you just saw, Team News is on the scene and on the story, and we’ll pass it on to you at the speed of electrons.” He shook his head at the horror of the developing story. “Hopefully, this nightmare will soon be over.”
He glanced down at his desk, then back up at the camera. “Do you ever wonder what your dog does when you’re not home?”
Jill stopped listening. Quinn. Captain Frank Quinn. She recalled the big man’s name from the papers and earlier TV news. The lead investigator.
There was something about him, something solid and strong. A calm island in an angry sea. He’d be a policeman she could trust. At least he was the best possibility she could think of, and she had to talk to someone.
She got the Manhattan phone directory, balanced it on her knees, and looked up the number of the precinct house closest to her apartment. She picked up the phone.
After punching in two numbers, she slowly put it back down.
It occurred to her what they’d want of her, what she’d almost certainly have to do if she contacted the police and told them everything.
They’d want her to look at a decomposed body. To identify Madeline Scott at the morgue.
Jill didn’t know if she could do it. Didn’t people sometimes get ill when they did that? Throw up? Sometimes pass out? Simply the thought was making Jill nauseated. She’d always considered herself to be a person with the willpower to do what was necessary, a person of commitment and courage
. Now she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure about anything. Her world seemed to have gone insane, and it was the only world she had.
She replaced the phone book and trudged to the sofa. Sat down and pressed her face hard between her palms. Her features were distorted as if squeezed in a vise. She didn’t feel like crying; she felt like screaming. And screaming and screaming…
She held the screams inside, but it wasn’t easy.
Eventually she might call Captain Frank Quinn, but not yet.
Charlotte was daydreaming while walking along Christopher Street and didn’t recognize the car right away. There were so many big dark luxury cars running around New York. Then she used her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and saw the shiny Chrysler emblem. She realized it was Dixie’s brother’s car. What was his name? Ron? No, Don.
The car slowed and then pulled to the curb about twenty feet ahead of where Charlotte was walking. Uh-oh. This might become an awkward situation. She’d caught the way Don had looked at her the other night, when he’d tried to get her and Dixie to go to his place for drinks, and knew he might not know about Dixie’s sexual orientation. He might think she and Dixie were simply friends.
Charlotte pretended she hadn’t recognized the car and kept walking at the same pace, hoping maybe she’d been wrong about it being Don’s car. But when she was almost alongside it the tinted window on the passenger side glided down, and at a slant through the rear window Charlotte saw the figure behind the steering wheel lean over toward the passenger side to say something out the window.
“Charlotte.”
Not Don’s voice. Dixie’s.
Relieved, Charlotte approached the car and bent down.
There was Dixie, leaning across the front seat toward her and smiling. She looked terrific, dressed in black, as usual, with her red scarf, her glossy black hair pulled back to emphasize the prominent bone structure of her face and the force of her dark eyes. It was her eyes that had first attracted Charlotte to her.
Charlotte grinned widely as she moved closer to the car, one foot down off the curb. “Dixie!” She bent even lower to look inside the rest of the car. Dixie was alone. “Isn’t this your brother’s car?”
