Slaughter

by John Lutz

  Movement on the periphery of her vision . . .

  There was Casey—no, Corey—standing above her near the foot of her bathtub. The warm water—that must be the trickling sound she heard, a faucet running slightly, slowed to a gradual ticking. The warmth of the water felt so good . . . Was this some kind of kinky sexual experience he’d dreamed up?

  I don’t even know this man!

  He moved closer and she saw what looked like a scalpel or some other kind of sharp knife in his right hand. In his left was a U-shaped saw with a whipcord-thin and taut serrated blade strung between its arms.

  A jigsaw.

  The bathwater turned cool with her knowledge. Margaret remembered her childhood and her father’s basement woodworking shop, his various kinds of saws and what they could do. She made another small, animal noise, raising her right hand to plead with Corey—with the Gremlin. She was shocked by the scarlet, almost black color of her arm. And she knew the liquid in the tub wasn’t water, it was blood.

  My blood.

  She knew what he was going to do with the knife. With the saw.

  He squatted down next to the bathtub, knowing she was too weak even to splash him with her blood. Holding the scalpel up so she could see it with her dimming eyesight, he smiled and said, “Open wide.” Then he laughed and said, “Oh, I’ll do that.”

  There was an icy sensation at the base of her sternum. Then came the pain. Her body arched and rose to meet him. He bent her right arm over the tub, twisting it and pinning it tight against the porcelain. Then he went to work with the jigsaw.

  It was all the same pain that shocked her and sent her whirling toward brilliant white light and the darkness beyond. The relentless rasping of the saw against bone or sinew seemed the harsh breathing of predators.

  Margaret was alive long enough to see him carry her arm over to the shower stall and gently lay it inside to be rinsed off before he studied and reconstructed her.

  It was easy, when he was finished with Margaret, for the Gremlin to leave her apartment building without being seen. A stocky man in dark clothes—Jordan didn’t even know for sure he was a doorman—went halfway to the corner to hail a cab for some people who might not even have come from Margaret’s building.

  To be on the safe side, Jordan waited for the stocky doorman (if that’s what he was) to work his way toward the corner again to hail another taxi. When the man’s back was turned, Jordan simply slipped outside without being seen and walked away. He was wearing a stocking cap beneath a Yankees cap, keeping his ears flat against his skull and unnoticeable.

  As he walked away he knew the doorman might be watching, but he wouldn’t know where Jordan had come from. As small as Jordan was, the man might even mistake him for a woman or child. For good measure, Jordan stuffed his hands in his pockets and skipped a couple of steps. Serial killers didn’t play hopscotch.

  When he turned the corner, he felt safe.

  He continued to walk, relaxed now, replaying in his mind Margaret’s miseries and final moments. Her grasping at life and her inexorable slide into death. Her eyes. Yes, her eyes. They’d fixed on his and the primal understanding was there. This was a shared experience, all but the last brief fractions of seconds, when he, in doom and shadow, turned away from the void as she could not.

  That was his power, and it was monumental.

  19

  Iowa, 1991

  The private road, more a long driveway, actually, ran straight from the Kray house to the county road. The driveway was dirt, the road blacktop. Jordan stood alone at the T of the private drive and county road, a math book stuck under his arm, his hands in his pants pocket.

  Not being obvious about it, he was gazing across the patchwork of farmland where corn, beans, and potatoes were grown. The morning was beginning to heat up beneath a brilliant sun in a cloudless sky. Jordan was watching the house, made small by distance, a neat white geometrical shape among the pattern of fallow and green fields.

  Movement caught Jordan’s attention, and he shielded his eyes from the sun with his flattened hand, like a frozen military salute. The bus was coming to pick him up at the T and, making three other stops along the way, drive him and some of the area’s other students to Robert F. Kennedy School.

  Right now, the bus was a small yellow dot crawling in his direction along the perfectly straight, perfectly flat county road. Jordan’s view was a mosaic of straight lines and ninety-degree angles.

  He looked back toward the distant house and his heartbeat quickened. He was sure there was a barely visible curl of dark smoke rising from the house.

  It’s working!

  He squinted again at the bright morning sun, his friend and accomplice.

  Jordan moved out where he could be seen as the bus grew larger. He knew there would be half a dozen kids on the bus, and he wanted to board fast, so no one would look off in the direction of the house. A glance back informed him that the smoke was rising darker and more visible. He knew it wasn’t rising as fast and high as it might, because the morning was still.

  The bus became larger faster, and then it was very near. Air brakes hissed and the yellow pneumatic doors folded open. Jordan got in fast, flashed his student pass even though the bus driver knew him, and moved quickly down the aisle. He flung himself into a seat halfway back, and saw that the driver, a man he knew only as Ben, was watching him in the big rearview mirror, waiting to make sure he was seated. Ben waited before driving away, making Jordan nervous enough to notice that his right arm was trembling. He willed it to be still, and it became still.

  “Nobody else this morning?” the driver called.

  “Sleepin’ in,” Jordan answered.

  “Lucky them,” Ben the driver said. The diesel engine growled and clattered and the bus moved away.

  Jordan could smell burning. He was sure it was the bus’s exhaust and not the house. Not from this distance.

  The driver caught his eye in the oversized mirror. “How’re your mom and dad?” he called in a loud voice.

  “They’re good,” Jordan said.

  As the bus picked up speed, it rattled and roared and became too loud to talk over. Jordan chanced a glance off to the side. There was now what appeared to be a dark cloud looming behind the Kray house. It could have passed for a rain cloud, but he knew it was smoke.

  Jordan thought about his mother and father, his sister, and his brother, Kent. He was pleased that he felt no stab of conscience. No regret. None of them, including even Nora, deserved his regret. Bad things in this world simply happened. Everyone tried to make sure they happened to somebody else. Jordan had been taught early on that was how the world worked. And it had to be worked. Losers had to learn to become winners, small fish to survive long enough to become big fish.

  He settled back in his seat, excited inside, calm outside. They had taught him how to wear a mask.

  The other kids, not long out of their beds, were sleepy and bored and as quiet as Jordan. Ben the driver began mindlessly humming a tune. Jordan couldn’t place it at first, but soon realized it was from the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.

  Then Rollie Conrad, the fat kid who made top grades, yelled, “Hey! Fire!” He was out of his seat and pointing. “Look! Fire! Fire!”

  Everyone in the bus crossed the aisle or swiveled to look in the direction Rollie was pointing.

  “Fire!” Rollie yelled again, this time louder and spraying spittle.

  “We see it,” an older girl named Mary Ann said calmly. She made a face and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Jordan knew it was time to pretend.

  “Oh, no! That’s my house! My mom and dad—everybody—they’re in there sleeping!”

  “The other kids are in there with your folks?” the driver asked.

  “Yes, yes! I said everybody! My whole family!”

  The driver said, “Jesus H. Christ!” and brought the bus to a near stop that caused two of the passengers to fall on the floor. “Everybody back in your seat!
Now!”

  Ben slowed the bus even more, looking for a place to pull to the side where he wouldn’t go off the shoulder or block the road. Then he thought, what the hell? The bus might be the only vehicle for a couple of miles!

  He stopped the bus, though it was blocking half of the road, and got his brand-new cell phone. No connection. He remembered the phone company hadn’t put the towers up yet. He was too far from any major population center to make a phone call. Too far from anywhere.

  A dead zone.

  The driver looked at his passengers. A boy named Wally Clark appeared old enough, skinny and fast enough.

  “Know where the Johnston farm is?” the driver asked.

  Wally was on his feet, getting the idea.

  “You run there, Wally. Fast as you can. Get them to use their phone, get some firefighting equipment out here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wally said as the doors hissed open.

  Jordan stood, gripping the seatback in front of him hard with both hands, whitening his knuckles. “Let me go,” he pleaded.

  “No, no!” the driver said. Obviously imagining what the poor kid might see or hear. “You don’t wanna go there, son.”

  Jordan couldn’t remember when anyone had called him son.

  He slumped back down in the seat, glimpsing Wally running along the road in the direction of the Johnston farm, the closest phone. Wally’s heels were kicking up dust that hung in the air behind him. He was making good time at a pace made to seem slow by distance.

  Jordan looked toward the house and saw orange glowing here and there through the thick black smoke. The house was blazing. He knew it would take forever for the volunteer fire department to reach the fire. Then their equipment would be inadequate. And how much water could they bring?

  He lowered his head so his face was enveloped by his arms, and sobbed.

  “Stay where you are, kids!” Ben the driver yelled.

  The bus was hot inside and out, and smelled like fuel. Everyone on board was slick with sweat. Jordan’s eyes stung from it and his nose was running. One of the girls was crying.

  Jordan counted to ten and then raised his head. Through the bus window he could see Ben the driver running toward the burning house, limping clumsily under the weight of a brass fire extinguisher jouncing in his right hand. Wally, head down and arms pumping, was pulling away from him at an angle, toward the Johnstons and their phone.

  Jordan got off the bus and followed Ben.

  When they got closer to the house, he saw that a spark or burning tree limb had set the barn roof on fire. Some of the animals were sure to die.

  Forget the barn.

  He made it to the house.

  There were two . . . somethings . . . just inside the porch door, curled and blackened. No one else seemed to have made it that far.

  Jordan didn’t hesitate. Holding his breath, he made a fast tour of the burning house. He could feel the heat coming up through the soles of his shoes.

  Now he had seen them, all of them . . .

  A powerful hand gripped Jordan’s shoulder and squeezed. It was Ben the bus driver, stopping him, pulling him close, closer. Jordan could hear him breathing. Or was he crying?

  Ben dragged him outside, and then Jordan found his balance and was walking on his own. Ben pointed, and immediately Jordan knew what he meant. Unhindered by each other, they began to run.

  That was when the propane tank alongside the house exploded.

  20

  New York, the present

  Quinn and Pearl stood alongside Nift the ME and watched him explore with his instruments what was left of Margaret Evans. Where she had been eviscerated and her intestines neatly coiled, her breasts had been severed and laid aside.

  Reaching so he could probe something in her abdominal cavity, Nift had to stretch and for a second looked as if he might fall across the corpse.

  He shook his head, smiled. “Some set of jugs she has—had,” he remarked.

  Pearl looked at him as if he were last week’s spoiled meat. She thought that someday without warning she would kick the little prick, hard in the ribs. Maybe the head.

  Renz came in. He’d been out in the hall, talking to one of his detectives. Quinn and Pearl both wondered if Renz was sharing information as generously as they’d agreed. Renz, playing his customary parallel game.

  He walked over to Quinn and Pearl, careful not to step near the nude dead woman’s oddly disjointed body on the bedroom floor. “Our guy?” he asked, looking at Nift for confirmation.

  “No doubt about it,” Nift said.

  Renz went over and looked in at the bathroom without entering. He stayed that way about half a minute, then backed away awkwardly, but without touching the doorframe and obscuring any fingerprints.

  “Killed her and let her bleed out in the bathtub,” Renz said, “then dismembered her in the tub, washed most of the blood down the drain, and moved her in here piece by piece, where he more or less put her back together.”

  “Naughty Gremlin,” Nift said.

  “He was reasonably neat,” Pearl said, noting that there wasn’t much blood on the bedroom carpet.

  “Unreasonably neat,” Quinn said.

  Pearl was thinking how closely, and horrifyingly, the dead woman resembled a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  If I sat her on my knee, would she tell me who killed her?

  Renz said, “You might want to talk to the super. Name’s Bud Peltz. His is the apartment right off the foyer. He told one of the uniforms he got a good look at the killer as he was running away.”

  Quinn was surprised by this stroke of luck.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Renz said. “The uniform—his name is Bill Toth—says Peltz’s story doesn’t ring true.”

  “He say why not?”

  “It set off an alarm behind his right ear.”

  “That should play well in court.”

  Fedderman showed up. He looked tired and was wearing a gray suit that appeared clean but was amazingly wrinkled, as if it had been scrubbed and rubbed over rocks. The narrow end of his tie extended half an inch beneath the wide end. It didn’t matter as long as he kept his suit coat buttoned, which he never did.

  Everyone glanced at him, but no one said anything as they let him walk around and take in the crime scene.

  “Our gremlin,” he said.

  “Nasty gremlin,” Nift said.

  Pearl said, “Why don’t you shut up? Or at least think of something else to say.”

  Nift grinned at having gotten under her skin. “Baaad gremlin.”

  Quinn was sure he heard Pearl’s teeth gnash. He thought about her going with him and Fedderman to talk to Peltz the super, then decided it would be better if she talked with Toth, the uniformed cop who’d been one of the first on the scene. They could get together later and see what fit and what didn’t.

  Pearl didn’t object to the plan. Anything to get away from Nift.

  Bud Peltz was a tall, thin man with a bushy, droopy gray mustache that looked a lot like Harold Mishkin’s. The rest of him looked nothing like Harold. The super had handsome Latin features and a muscular leanness about him. Dark, direct brown eyes, and large, callused hands.

  His street-level apartment was small and tidy. It was well furnished, but would have looked larger and more comfortable without such a clash of colors. He invited them to sit on the flower-pattern sofa, which they did. Springs sang softly beneath them. Fedderman had his notepad out and a short yellow pencil tucked behind his right ear. Peltz sat on some kind of woven basket chair that creaked beneath his weight. A large-screen TV sat muted in a corner near what looked like a door to the kitchen. It was showing an old Carole Lombard movie from the forties. Quinn found himself wondering if anyone had actually been watching the TV when he’d knocked on the door. Maybe Lombard was still known and popular in some quarters. Who was famous, who wasn’t . . . it was hard to gauge such things.

  A slender, remarkably attractive young woman entered the living room and
switched the TV off. She was wearing shorts, and had a ballet dancer’s shapely, muscular legs.

  “My wife, Maria,” Peltz said.

  Quinn and Fedderman didn’t say anything. Peltz was uneasy, as if he should have to explain his ancestry. He hated that feeling. But a visit from the police . . .

  Quinn wondered if these two were not long out of Mexico.

  Peltz said, “My mother’s maiden name was Rodriguez.”

  “And mine’s was Perez,” Maria Peltz said.

  Quinn smiled. He didn’t want to know too much about these two. “The great melting pot. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Peltz.”

  When she returned his smile she was even more beautiful. Quinn guessed she was about half the age of Bud Peltz, who looked to be in his late forties.

  “We met when I was working for a contractor in Mexico,” Peltz said. He directed his attention to his wife. “They’re here to listen to my account I gave to Officer Toth.”

  “Ah, yes, your account.”

  A look passed between Peltz and his wife. Something in hot-blooded Maria’s eyes. She seemed angry, but at the same time amused.

  “Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?” she asked.

  Quinn declined, wondering how many times he’d heard that line in the movies or on crap television.

  “Ice water would be good,” Fedderman said.

  Quinn relented and seconded Fedderman’s request, and Maria glided gracefully into the kitchen. He noticed that she hadn’t offered her husband a glass of water. People in hell . . .

  Toth had a good eye, or ear, for a cop. A good gut, really. That was where cops got their hunches. There was something out of tune between Bud Peltz and his wife. Would his statement contain the same discord?

  “I’m going outside to shop,” Maria said. “I slept through everything last night, so I have nothing to relate. Not even dreams. I’ve already talked with Officer Toth. But if you need me . . .”

  “No, no,” Quinn said. “Go right ahead. If we need a statement from you we can get it later.”