Slaughter

by John Lutz

  “Say good-bye?”

  “Nope. I guess neither of us thought we had that kinda relationship.”

  “Did you see him get into a vehicle?”

  “Nope, he just walked outta sight. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

  “When did you think of it?”

  “A few hours ago. I was watching news on TV, and up pops this picture of somebody that looked familiar. Then, during the commercial, I remembered. The safety guy! Then I read about him on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. I still couldn’t believe it, that I was just a few feet away from this guy, talked to him. So I read some more about him. The Gremlin. That just about scared the pastrami outta me.”

  Louie clamped his lips together, looking as if he was in conflict. Quinn waited for him to say more, not asking him, not wanting to be the first to speak. Fedderman maintained the same silence. Sometimes people who are the first to speak say the damnedest things.

  It was Madge who spoke first. “Tell him, Louie.”

  “It’s probably nothing.”

  Quinn said, “Everything’s something.”

  “Tell him, Louie,” Madge said again.

  Louie looked pained, but he spoke. “The big noise when the crane fell was when it slammed into the ground. But there was a small noise before that. A smaller explosion up high.”

  “You sure? It could have been the crane hitting something on the way down.”

  “It came before the crane hit,” Louie said. “Before it fell.” He clamped his lips closed again. Then parted them. “I was in bomb disposal in Afghanistan. I know explosives. I can know some things by the sound of the explosion, the extent and kind of damage that’s done. I’m pretty sure this was a shaped charge.”

  “Which is?”

  “A bomb—and it can be a small bomb—shaped a certain way so that it directs most of the force of the explosion in one direction. They’re used to take out tanks and other armored vehicles. I think one was used to separate the crane from the Taggart building.”

  Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other. They seemed to be thinking the same thoughts.

  “Would it take an expert to build and plant such a bomb?”

  Louie squeezed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, then said, “An expert, yes. An artist, no.”

  Quinn thought, here was a man who loved his previous occupation perhaps too much. “Could you build one?” he asked, smiling.

  “Probably, but I might blow myself up. My expertise was in disassembling bombs so they wouldn’t detonate.”

  “He might have gotten killed,” Madge said, patting Louie’s arm.

  Fedderman said, “My guess is he knew what he was doing, or he wouldn’t be here.”

  “Could an amateur have made and set this shaped charge?” Quinn asked.

  “A gifted amateur,” Louie said. “Gifted and lucky. Like this Gremlin I keep hearing and reading about.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Quinn said. Fedderman shot him a glance. But Louie had jumped.

  “I wasn’t gonna say anything about it at first,” he said. “It was Madge talked me into it.”

  “You’re lucky to have Madge.”

  “I am that,” Louie said, and gave Madge a hug.

  When they were back out on the sidewalk, Fedderman said, “They’ve got a great marriage.”

  Quinn kept quiet. He knew the problems of a cop marriage. He wondered if his and Pearl’s relationship would last, and if it had a better chance because they were both cops.

  It took only a phone call for Quinn and Fedderman to ascertain that there hadn’t been any kind of safety inspection on anything owned by SBL Properties the day of the crane collapse. And the company’s hard hats were white and had a corporate logo on them.

  “What now?” Fedderman asked, as they walked toward Quinn’s old but pristine Lincoln.

  “We get that high-tech artist who made the so-called sketch to get with Little Louie, and maybe Helen, and improve on it.”

  “The Gremlin isn’t getting better looking.”

  “None of us is.”

  “With him, there should be a portrait in his attic, where the subject gets uglier with every rotten thing he does. Know what I mean?”

  Quinn said, “You’ve been seeing too much of Harold.”

  36

  Quinn phoned Renz and told him about the shaped-charge possibility. Renz thanked him, but told him the bomb squad had already been discussing the shaped-charge theory.

  “Do they like it?” Quinn asked.

  “They say it’s unlikely, except for a guy who disarmed bombs in the Navy. He said somebody with a little knowledge and a shit pot fulla luck might make such a bomb.”

  “Why didn’t we learn this sooner?” Quinn asked.

  “We just figured it out ourselves. But it’s only hypothetical. We’re still trying to decide how seriously we take it. Look at it piece by piece, and it doesn’t seem like much, so don’t go getting all excited. And for God’s sake, don’t talk about this to Minnie Miner.”

  “Do I sound excited?” Quinn asked. “Or pissed off?”

  “Do I sound gone?” Renz asked, and ended the connection.

  Louie was still on sick leave, and still wearing the arm sling, when Helen and the NYPD sketch artist visited him in his and Madge’s apartment. They’d stopped for breakfast on the way, but that didn’t stop Madge from offering them coffee. Helen and the artist fell under the aromatic scent of freshly brewed coffee, though they managed to forgo the delicious but wildly caloric cinnamon-butter coffee cake.

  The artist wasn’t Warfield this time, but an affable kid named Ignacio Perez, on loan from the FBI, who asked everyone to call him simply “the artist.” He set his laptop on the coffee table but off to the side. Then he ran some wires, turned on the fifty-two-inch screen on which Louie and Madge watched Justified and The Good Wife. He settled back on the sofa with a small mouse pad and a wireless mouse.

  Up popped the digital likeness of the Gremlin, as it originally appeared on Minnie Miner ASAP.

  “I wonder what he’d look like in a hard hat,” Helen said. “Carrying a clipboard.”

  “I anticipated you,” the artist said. “Except for the clipboard.”

  His fingers danced over the keys. He pressed some others, and there on the large screen was the Gremlin in a yellow hard hat that looked too big for him.

  “My old friend,” the artist said.

  “See anything that doesn’t look right?” Helen asked Louie, leaning toward the TV screen.

  “No. That’s just the way the hat fit him, like he was a little kid playing dress up. How’s it look when you tug the hat down in front?”

  The artist lowered the hard hat until the subject’s eyes almost disappeared. “Something like that?”

  “Yeah. That’s more it. More hair sticking out.”

  Helen said, “Now make the ears somewhat visible beneath the hair.”

  “Like they’d stick out without the hair?” Louie said.

  “Yeah, just like.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about the ears?”

  “Naw. Not on this guy. Except for the right ear.”

  “It sticks out more than the left?”

  “Somewhat,” Louie said. “But like I told you, he was built like a flyweight boxer. Had a cauliflower ear, it looked like to me.”

  The artist played electronically with the right ear. Made it slightly larger and more damaged by countless jabs and left hooks.

  “That’s good,” Louie said. “But his hair should be a little longer, and slightly darker.”

  Again the artist made some adjustments while the others looked on.

  “More chin, less nose,” Louie said.

  The artist complied.

  “The ear that you can see all of, it is rather pointed, at least from a certain angle.”

  Helen squinted at it. “So close to the head. Not like the other ear.”

  “Other one probably came un
stuck,” the artist said.

  “Unstuck?”

  “Like with movie stars. A guy’s or woman’s ears stick out like open car doors, so they got this flesh-colored two-sided tape. Like carpet tape. An ear won’t stay taped in for very long, but plenty long enough to shoot movie or TV scenes. And if it’s still too much trouble, there’s always an operation to make the ears flatter to the skull.”

  “So tell me who’s had their ears operated on?” Madge said, from where she sat over in a corner where she could see the big screen.

  The artist shook his head, smiling. “I couldn’t reveal that.”

  “They’ve got their right to privacy,” Madge said

  “I don’t know for sure about that, but they’ve got the right not to hire me if I shoot them or draw them with car-door ears.”

  “Shoot?” Madge asked.

  “Photograph. Shoot pictures.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, for photo shoots or short movies for TV scenes, there’s always the two-sided tape. The stuff works pretty well. And if you don’t like it, you can always do what this guy probably does . . . did—grow your hair long at the sides and comb it back over your ears.”

  The artist put together another screen image of the Gremlin, this time without the hard hat.

  “Look like the same guy?” he asked Louie.

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t mistake him. Of course, some people do look different with and without caps or hats.”

  “But would you feel confident picking this guy out of a lineup?”

  “Sure. Unless he’s got a twin brother.”

  “Louie,” Madge said, “don’t make things more complicated than they are.”

  “So let’s make some final adjustments,” the artist said. “You never saw this guy’s hairline, right?”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t bald. He had sideburns, anyway.”

  The artist used the mouse to create sideburns on the screen image. He paused and looked at Louie.

  “A little longer,” Louie said. “There. Just right.”

  “We can put out images with different hairlines,” Helen said.

  “Good idea,” the artist said. He created several renderings, finishing with one that left the killer bald except for a bush of hair around his ears.

  “I wish we could have one of him smiling,” Helen said.

  The artist shook his head. “I’d have to see him smile to do that.” He looked at Louie. “Did he smile when you were with him?”

  “Not once. He was all business.”

  “Which you shouldn’t be all the time,” Madge said. “Remember you are not well.”

  They thanked Little Louie and left him with Madge. Not a bad situation, if you didn’t count Louie’s nightmares and broken bones.

  As they were walking toward where their cars were parked, the artist said, “I’d like to draw that woman.”

  “You guys,” Helen said, “for the kind of drawing you’re talking about, you’d have to use a crayon so the other ten-year-olds would understand it.”

  “A crayon,” the artist said, “would melt.”

  37

  An hour later, Renz called Quinn on his desk phone. “No doubt about it,” Renz said, when Quinn had picked up the bulky plastic receiver that fit hand and ear so well. “The crane falling was murder. There were traces of hydrofluoric acid found at the breaking points of the steel cables. It ate through the cables until enough strands popped that they finally broke apart under all that weight. That overloaded the stress on the other cables, then a small bomb separated the crane from the building and down it came. The thing is, whoever was responsible had to have some basic knowledge of how that crane was put together. How the damned thing worked.”

  “Just like he knew about elevators,” Quinn said. “Was this the same kind of acid used on the elevator cables?”

  “Yeah. The base was hydroflouride, along with nitric acid. A devil’s brew, according to the techs. If you want to tote it around, you’ll need a special container. Most likely it was outta the same lab.”

  “Do the techs think our killer is a chemist?” Quinn asked.

  “Not in any major way. But you don’t have to be a chemist or engineering genius to know how to destroy something. Common sense goes a long way. To know how to build up is to know how to tear down.”

  “But we’re not necessarily looking for a scientist or engineer.”

  “That’s right,” Renz said. “Matter of fact, most of the info you need, you can find on the Internet.”

  Quinn doubted if that would be reassuring to the public.

  “The Internet and DNA,” Renz said. “One helps find them, and the other helps prove them guilty. Life gets harder and harder for the bad guys.”

  “Can’t get hard enough.”

  “That’s what my ex-wife used to say.”

  “The crane cables are right out where anyone can see them,” Quinn pointed out. “Or get to them, depending on the position of the crane.”

  “It gets better and better,” Renz said bitterly. “Where do psychos like the Gremlin learn this crap?”

  “Like the artist told us,” Quinn said, “there’s plenty of information on the Internet.” The main air conditioner in Q&A wasn’t quite keeping up with the heat, and his clothes were stuck to him. There was some not-quite-cold-enough diet cola in the little fridge by the coffeemaker, but he chose not to have gas.

  “The Internet is a school for crime,” Renz agreed.

  “And the students get their advanced degrees in prison.”

  “It shouldn’t be like that.”

  “Nobody’s figured out a better way.”

  “I know one.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” Quinn said.

  “The Gremlin. I really hate that little bastard!”

  “We’ll find him, Harley.”

  “Will we? They never found Jack the Ripper.”

  “They might have, if he’d ever been listed in the FBI database.”

  “Speaking of data . . .”

  Quinn brought him up to date on the Little Louie and Madge interview.

  “This is a mass murderer,” Renz said, when Quinn was finished talking and reading aloud. As if Quinn needed reminding.

  “We’ve got a reliable eyewitness that puts him at the scene of the crane collapse,” Quinn said. “And we’re working out a digital image that’ll be as good as a photo, if it isn’t already.”

  “We’ve got everything but the criminal.”

  “I wouldn’t express it that way to the media,” Quinn said.

  “So can I tell the press predators what you just told me? When I step outta here, they’re gonna be on me like a pack of mad dogs.”

  Quinn tried to imagine that but couldn’t. Renz would surely have even larger mad dogs protecting him.

  “I would tell the media only what I wanted them to know, Harley. At this point, we’re using them instead of the other way around.”

  Renz seemed to like that observation. Quinn wasn’t so sure it was true, but at least it gave the illusion of progress.

  “We clear on everything?” Renz asked. “Or do you have any questions that won’t be wasting my time?”

  Quinn said, “I didn’t know you had an ex-wife.”

  Renz hung up.

  38

  The next morning Quinn slept in and Pearl left the brownstone around seven o’clock to open the Q&A offices. The team of Sal and Harold were coming in early to prepare for an interview with the SBL Properties crane operator. He’d given his statement half a dozen times. Another wouldn’t hurt.

  So far there had been only the occasional small contradiction. The crane hadn’t responded as usual to its controls. Quinn had heard that the operator was a redheaded guy named Perry, who looked about fourteen until a second look revealed he was about forty. He was still jumpy, and blamed himself for the crashing and carnage.

  Of course, unless he was connected in some way to the acid that had melted some of the crane’s cables, or
to the shaped charge, he had no reason to feel guilt.

  Quinn poured himself a cup of coffee and went out to the tiny secluded courtyard behind the brownstone. There was a small green metal table there, and three green metal chairs. They were rust-free and weatherproof as long as Quinn painted them every spring.

  Randall, the bulldog that lived next door, began to bark up a storm, until he heard Quinn’s voice and decided to be quiet.

  One of these days, Quinn thought, Randall would be correct in his desperate prognosis of a catastrophe. Those were the odds, anyway. This kind of dog couldn’t be wrong all the time.

  After Quinn used a paper towel to wipe down the table and one of the chairs, he spread open the two newspapers

  Pearl had left for him, the Times and the Post. Despite them being already read by Pearl, and maybe by Jody, they were folded in reasonably neat fashion. He used another paper towel, folded in quarters, as a makeshift coaster for his coffee cup.

  It was a beautiful, clear morning, with only a breath of breeze. Quinn fired up one of his Cuban cigars. He hadn’t kept up on the Mickey Mouse ordinances he kept hearing about. Didn’t know if the Cubans had become legal yet or not. Whether and where in the city he could smoke any kind of cigar didn’t much concern him. People who robbed and killed and blew up other people concerned him. Not if or where someone somewhere else was lighting up some tobacco.

  Scofflaw bastard.

  He sipped, inhaled, read.

  The press didn’t seem as interested in the particulars of fires or crashing cranes or elevators as they were in the two dead, beautiful dancers who had both been elevated by the media to the chorus line in Other People’s Honey. The producers of the play knew how to wring tears and publicity from their prospective audience. There were plenty of questions to be asked. Had the two dancers died at the same time? In the same way? What were their last words? Did they suffer? Have husbands? children? (Neither was married or a mother.) What other plays or movies had they appeared in? What other celebrities did they know? Who were their favorites, not just in plays or in front of the cameras, but as real and dedicated human beings? Who was going to replace them in their current roles? Was the play now cursed?